The way I saw it, the guy is spent, loses his wits and bearings, drifts a little, Cav sees him drifting and does a pre-emptive move to protect himself. Looks like Cav holds his racing line but shifts his shoulders left to prevent more detrimental contact. The Argos rider was caught in the middle and should have just held his line instead of playing the wandering salesman.

Agreed, dont get me wrong, it sucks that Veelers went down, and it was aggressive riding but I think it's a huge stretch to say it was intentional (that Cav intentionally crashed Veelers).

"“The road was bearing left … I know you’re trying to get all the ‘Mark Cavendish is a really bad sprinter again,’ but with 150 meters to go the road bears left,” he said. “All I do is follow the road … There will be net forums with people going mad about it but I follow the road, I’m not going to hit the barriers.”

When asked outright if the crash were his fault, Cavendish took a tape recorder belonging to Associated Press reporter Jamey Keaton onto the bus before returning it.

Road looks pretty straight on the overhead shot! "I'm not going to hit the barriers" Really, that's what you're going with?

no doubt. Intentional and out of frustration when he realized he was so badly positioned for the coming sprint; you can see his face a few seconds after his unfair action....he will get it back...

so true. doesn't someone here have a sig line that says "this ain't wiffleball" or something like that?

i really don't see this as a big deal. even if Cav was a little pissy this is what happens at the pointy end of the race. its why the GC guys slow-pedal across the finish. no need to get killed at the line. i hope the Argo guy didn't get hurt. this is a pretty good tour for them.

OPQ didn't have nearly the lead out they are known for. Not good when Cav has to try to come off someone else's wheel. Glad he wasn't sanctioned. Pretty fortunate no one rode into the wreck and caused a pile up.

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I think a pile-up would have gone poorly for Cav. Glad no one was seriously hurt today and hopefully Veelers is okay-- he looked it right afterwards.

To clarify, I don't think Cav intentionally tried to crash the guy, but I do think he intentionally threw a shoulder into Veelers to move around him, as Cav wanted Greipel's wheel and is clearly moving left across the road (as seen in the overhead shot in the prev. post). To me, Veelers looks like he's drifting back into a pretty straight line, though going waaaay slower than everybody else in the middle of the pack, not super wise.

I'm sure Cav didn't mean to crash the guy, or even thought he would, as has been said, there's always contact in the sprints and even more contact than Cav/Veelers in the sprint today behind these incidents.

It almost looks like Cavendish preemptively leaned a little left to brace himself for Veelers moving into him, and Veelers ended up bouncing off him.

If you watch the video from the front, Veelers moves waaay to his right. There's a highlight here and the crash is about 2 minutes in. If you watch it slowly you can see how much he really moves.

I don't think a little bump on Cav's part was uncalled for, but he did tag Veelers pretty hard. Too bad Cav tried to overtake him on the right.

Ack! Forgot the link: http://www.letour.fr/...2013/us/gallery.html

Nope. Where Cav was looking the road was turning left. Watch the overhead for a couple more seconds and you see a left turn. Greipel even tweeted he got scared in the final corner and slowed down a little.

What lead out is that? They've had mediocre (at best) lead outs for Cav all season long. Nothing like the HTC-Highroad days when they would dominate the last 5k. Even when OPQ manages to get more than 2 guys on front they end up losing control of the race before the final kilometer, and Cav is lucky if he has Steegmans to lead him out. And Steegmans is no Eisel, Renshaw or Goss.

Funny thing, I was actually watching some 2009 Tour stages the other day, and forgot just how stacked the HTC train was. T. Martin, Grabsch, M. Rogers, Hincapie, Eisel, Renshaw, Monfort, Kirchen. It was ridiculous to watch that team control the race.

Agreed. HTC was an amazing train. They owned the final kilometers. Nothing like that now.

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Exactly, and I bet OPQS will have more of those ballers back next year. Sooner than that, hopefully there won't be any more morons suggesting he intentionally crashed someone out.

As we all know from before, Cav just isn't a very good bike handler.

x2. If you watch the entire finish, you'll see just how hard that last left bend is considering they've already wound up their sprint at close to 50 mph. It's the reason why Greipel lost to Kittel...because he didn't take the right line into and out of the turn. If you're a lead out guy and are going to sit up before that turn, you better be ready for guys like Cav or Sagan to be coming any which way around you and cutting you off to get into that turn. To me, that's part of bike racing.

80 km/h? You might want to knock that down to 50-60 km/h.

Right, he's a poor bike hander like we saw before with Madison World Championships, Road World Championship, MSR, and 100 other road victories.

I'm begging you guys: please stop with the idiotic comments.

Did you watch him chase back on through the cars in stage 6? Dude can handle his bike just fine.

CN reported that Renshaw is signed with OPQS for 2014. Watch out.

This x1000.

Good lord. Maybe he just forgot the pink font?

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Ha! What timing. It's good to see Renshaw going back to what he does best.

Worse than a triathlete?

on a tangent, guess who else just inked a deal?

i wonder if the most disappoint classics rider of the past two seasons will continue bad showings. Hopefully he bags a few more Liege along with Ronde van Vlaanderen before it's all said and done.

I see the myth continues that Cav is a decent bike handler. FYI none of those palmers has anything to do with bike handling skills. More to do with his raw power and his aero position during sprint. His handling skills still are lousy for someone as established as him.

Okay...50 mph was a nice round number and an exagerration given a flat finish..but it's likely a lot higher than 50-60 km/h considering Orica Green Edge averaged 57.8 km/h for 25k in the TTT. 70ish km/h or somewhere under 45 mph for a flat finish.