Tour De France Rider Throws an Elbow, Causes a Wreck, & Gets Disqualified for Injuring Another Rider

If you’re a fan of circuit racing formats like NASCAR, you know that there are phrases like “Rubbin’ is racing” for a reason. Sure, a little bit of contact might happen out there on the track no matter what you’re wheeling and it’s something that we can all get over but, sometimes, when drivers or riders take it too far, fines and other penalties can be assessed to make sure that everyone is out there trying to keep the racing safe and sportsmanlike. The same holds true when you look at a sport like professional bicycling. The Tour de France, the sport’s most recognized event, most certainly has these safety precautions in place so that riders don’t get too ridiculous out there and this time, they had to put them to use in a situation that was downright ugly.

In the 2017 version of The Tour, we got to see how a late stage crash turned this event from a race into nothing short of a contact sport, complete with injury and all. I guess that, among fans, there might be a little bit of debate as to what exactly happened between world champion, Peter Sagan and fellow racer, Mark Cavendish, in the last leg of the race, however, if you ask officials, it looks like they decided that the actions that went down were way out of bounds here. When you watch this clip back and pay closer attention to Sagan, you can really see why he would be disqualified because of his actions.

If you follow along at the video below, you can see, when they take the chance to slow it down, that an elbow was thrown that ended up knocking Cavendish off of his bicycle. Whether it was intentional or not is up for debate but the fact is that it ended up causing quite the pileup and giving Cavendish a fractured shoulder blade and cut hand in the process! From there, a disqualification would send Sagan packing, cutting his Tour de France just a little bit short. The German team maintained to “reject [the claim] to have caused, or in any way intended to cause, the crash of Mark Cavendish.” Sagan made his own personal statement saying that “I can accept the decision but for sure I do not agree with them, because I think I have done nothing wrong.” “As you saw it was a crazy sprint, it was not the first one like that or the last one. I wish that Mark recovers well.”

Cavendish would also have to call it quits early because of the severity of his injuries. After watching the video down below, be sure to tell us what you think of this decision that would disqualify Sagan in the fourth of twenty-one stages.