PatrickG said:

I should probably add that I can't remember the last time the UCI made a ruling we felt good about

It's as if they feel compelled to make increasingly random and unfair rulings.

what i really i can't believe is that all these pro races with a sprint finish have curbs lined with metal barriers and concrete curbs at the finish. where are the hay bales?! the pros crash constantly in these finishes. totally foreseeable risk. why aren't we watching cavendish fall into soft bales of hay? surely TDF could afford the hay?

as for a sanction for sagan, maybe they should get more creative. dock him a zillion green jersey points, but let him stay? i guess only time will tell what his absence does to the race

I'm for affixing glue traps along the finishing straight...this way riders and bikes will be safely stowed and the rest of the race can proceed safely and unencumbeted.  

It was the right call. PS is a dick that everyone feels they should love because he is "enigmatic", but ultimately that was the move  of a fuckwit and I am mightily glad he is out of the race.

Don't sugar coat it Ian...tell us what you really think

Yeah. That was a bit strong. But having reviewed it a few times - the elbow is what seals his fate. If he had just closed the door - he would be in the race. But the elbow move was on the level of Renshaw's headbutts in 2010 (just too obvious to ignore). And Renshaw was ejected from the race for that.
Anyway - it adds some interest back into the Green Jersey competition

+1 Ian's take.
Remember this? ... 
If you have sprinters like McEwan and Matthews saying the sprinter toddlers need a time-out, then it's likely best for the welfare of riders and race. 

^I don't understand what I'm seeing in that video John. There are plenty of sprinters commenting on this and the verdict is *at worst* split.

Regardless, there are three reasons I think this verdict is a 100% slurry of finely crafted swiss bullshit:

1. It's inconsistent - sprinters do worse and no sanction
2. It's a punishment that is contrary to the Detailed UCI rules
3. There is zero transparency or accountability to the race jury

I'll leave aside the issue of jury qualifications.

So yeah if you don't like a guy I suppose it's fine to eject him from a race. Especially if you decide to ignore your own rules which you selectively enforce anyway.

I say

I will say if you have ever had someone come up inside you in a sprint...as Cav's was doing to Sagan...it's the scariest thing you could ever imagine...I can see where Sagan's brain may have shifted to pure survival-elbows out mode.  Elbows out gives you an opportunity to correct if someone hits your bars.  If you are elbows tight and a rider comes under you and hits your bars = shit lost & maybe some teeth..... at 6:09
https://player.vimeo.com/video/221195646

eloy said:

Ultimately, whatever, Sagan rode the full last KM like a monkey (so did Demare, btw) the result was a pretty severe crash. Behave like a jerk, be treated like one. 

I keep missing the UCI rulebook section under "behave like a jerk"

Making up rules as we go isn't a sport, no matter how "deserved" it feels like. I have no problem with the UCI changing their rules to summarily eject someone from the race. Last I checked, however, they haven't.

From the UCI rulebook:
http://www.uci.ch/mm/Document/News/Rulesandregulation/16/26/68/12-DIS-20160101-E_English.pdf

Page 13, Number 10; 10.1 & 10.2

"The Commissaires Panel may, in particularly serious cases..." = "If the Commissaires Panel thinks you behaved like a jerk"

Jules said:

^I don't understand what I'm seeing in that video John. There are plenty of sprinters commenting on this and the verdict is *at worst* split.

Regardless, there are three reasons I think this verdict is a 100% slurry of finely crafted swiss bullshit:

1. It's inconsistent - sprinters do worse and no sanction
2. It's a punishment that is contrary to the Detailed UCI rules
3. There is zero transparency or accountability to the race jury

I'll leave aside the issue of jury qualifications.

So yeah if you don't like a guy I suppose it's fine to eject him from a race. Especially if you decide to ignore your own rules which you selectively enforce anyway.

@Jules here's another view, elbow look familiar?

1) Is it inconsistent to biff him based on the evidence we have in hand? Maybe. But we don't know what Cav and other riders told them, we don't know what other evidence the race jury had. Definitely Cav et al have done far worse and gotten away with it. 

2)

3) Yes they should be transparent about evidence/decision, but end of day they're still basically umpires not judges.

If all Cav was talking about was elbow, then it was probably elbow. Yacks has a good point, you know Cav would have swept Sagan's wheel without blinking an eye. 

I don't know why I pick this instance to be opinionated about something... apologies for the lack of brevity. I didn't intend to write this much but this world tour level wreck seems to conjure up the feeling of being taken out by some over-eager careless person in a local amateur race.

First watch, Sagan leaning whole body, then elbow it looks like pure aggression. A few more watches and I felt the same way as yacks; having someone creeping up on you in a sprint, while leaning on you: you have to lean back into that for survival. Seems like Sagan reacted (over-reacted) in the moment and it just happened to look very bad and result in Cav going down. Ejection seems like a drastic decision but to me, it's a move in the right direction, but to me, it seems unjustly applied.

I would want the rules enforced in this race as much as I would want them enforced in a local race. Watching a wreck like this on TV conjures up the same nausea I feel in a race when someone goes down near me.  I agree with Patrick that it makes me want to watch it less. It also makes the race less exciting because now two exciting riders are out of it.

The ejection seems to be a reaction to imagery more than rules. The image of Sagan, with elbow out, is compelling and seems to play to an audience wider than us (racing cyclists) = it's easy to read and believe. I would imagine that has something to do with the jury's decision. I think if you're protecting the IMAGE of the race, it makes sense to react strongly, simply because the footage replay itself and selected stills from the replay have already have traction and if you want to look like a race organization that cares about safety, it says a lot that you're willing to eject the most dynamic, popular rider.

It's a bold decision but I would argue that calling it 'brave,' as some have, is a bit trite, because the brave thing to do would have been to penalize Demare as well. He's diving across the road, in front of Sagan's wheel, at the same time as Cav is going down and then he comes very close to taking out Bouhanni. In the aerial angle, it looks like Demare's back wheel physically catches Bouhanni's front wheel, even after Bouhanni slams on brakes, to let Demare through.  Bouhani staying up is impressive. There is an edit in most of the broadcast replays, right at the moment Bouhanni almost eats it, that is further obscured by the flag upper frame-left, after the cuts between camera angles, so the severity of the Demare swerve is masked by both the Cav crash frame-left, the edit point and then the flag.

It seems like pegging Sagan as a villain of the crash isn't the whole story and him being ejected is a disingenuous way of enforcing rules, however nice it is to see rules enforced. Making an official rule about people holding their lines in a sprint is, by its nature, a murky endeavor (that I am a fan of), but Demare's swerve seems more unequivocal than Sagan's body / elbow movement, there just happens to be no compelling imagery that captures it and no one went down as a result of it (because Bouhanni grabbed a fistful of brakes and gave up contesting the sprint). Everybody looses... except for Demare.

FYI...this weekends tour stages...especially Sunday with 3 count em...3 Beyond Categorized Climbs...is going to be epic...Anyone dropped on the way up is going to take made chances on the way down...go get your popcorn

goofy video about Peter "So Gone"
i chuckled. maybe you will too.
https://youtu.be/ZDCI89VaFwU

I'm going to go the other way on Sagan.
I think the DSQ was wrong.
I think focusing on the elbow is also wrong.

From what I've watched, I think Cav' was in error. he should have backed off.

The elbow was not Sagan closing the door, it was Sagan trying to make sure that Cav leaning on him didn't cause him to veer left and either hit wheels in front of him or crash himself.

It's pretty simple to me.  If someone leans on you from the right, the only way you can hold your line is to lean right. Sagan's elbow was in reaction to Cav' leaning on him, nothing else.  Sagan was moving his body weight to the right to keep himself upright.

Not that it should have influenced the jury one way of another, but last year Cav' swerved in front of Kittel when Cav' had a straight shot at the line and Kittel was closing from behind.  Kittel rightly complained, as it was far more blatant than what Sagan did, but the jury did nothing.    

(BTW, as for Brendan's wonder about crash barriers, it's a decent question.  When I watched Three Days of De Panne in 2008, they had inflatable pads that were narrow enough to just barely go beyond the feet of the steel fencing used.  It was a good place for it, a downhill sprint into Zoettegem, the usual stage 1.  All the same, the pads meant that room enough for handlebars were taken out on either side of the road on the barriers)

mugwump said:

I'm going to go the other way on Sagan.
I think the DSQ was wrong.
I think focusing on the elbow is also wrong.

From what I've watched, I think Cav' was in error. he should have backed off.

The elbow was not Sagan closing the door, it was Sagan trying to make sure that Cav leaning on him didn't cause him to veer left and either hit wheels in front of him or crash himself.

It's pretty simple to me.  If someone leans on you from the right, the only way you can hold your line is to lean right. Sagan's elbow was in reaction to Cav' leaning on him, nothing else.  Sagan was moving his body weight to the right to keep himself upright.

Not that it should have influenced the jury one way of another, but last year Cav' swerved in front of Kittel when Cav' had a straight shot at the line and Kittel was closing from behind.  Kittel rightly complained, as it was far more blatant than what Sagan did, but the jury did nothing.    

(BTW, as for Brendan's wonder about crash barriers, it's a decent question.  When I watched Three Days of De Panne in 2008, they had inflatable pads that were narrow enough to just barely go beyond the feet of the steel fencing used.  It was a good place for it, a downhill sprint into Zoettegem, the usual stage 1.  All the same, the pads meant that room enough for handlebars were taken out on either side of the road on the barriers)

I also think the DSQ was wrong , when watching live ,i shouted out " he put an elbow in him " but having watched it several times , i think its inconclusive , but then again i'm not a UCI juror 

Mark Taylor said:

then again i'm not a UCI juror 

Yeah, but what exactly is stopping you? Does anyone know what the qualificaitons are, or the process for removing a bad one?

On a totally different subject, today's stage ends in Nuits Saint Georges where my grandpa was born.

@Thierry Bonnaire the NYT was in Nuits Saint Georges for the Tour. Not sure if you saw this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/sports/when-the-tour-de-france-comes-to-town.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/sports&action=click&contentCollection=sports&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Schmalz chimes in... in the NY Times!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/the-tour-de-france-peter-sagan-mark-cavendish.html

https://youtu.be/yyQHyGbS8aQ

this is a good discussion on the cav / sagan incident and a little talk about sprinting generally

if you are interested, Armstrong is doing a daily podcast hosted by the Wedu channel. The full podcast of that stage is here:
https://youtu.be/IO-4C-vF7Dc
I started to listen, but unsurprisingly, found it basically uninsightful and a little bit ugh.

I tried to listen but the first podcast was 100% LA chatting about the history of SRAM.

UGH

only thing I found interesting in the clip I posted was the discussion about sprinting rules and rider type, but that's probably too pedestrian for you all. I was into that part. rest kinda blew.

Riveting stage today, from the intermediate sprint until the finish line--like 140km of full gas (as they say)

Anybody have a good live feed?

I wish I could unsee what I just saw. Consider yourself lucky if you have a bad feed