I don’t live in the UK, but I can’t imagine one would be criminally prosecuted for failing to stop at an accident involving only participants in a sporting event (think British Grand Prix , Tour of Britain, or any of the Olympic cycling/triathlon events). This accident occurred during an event that bills itself a “World Championship.”

A few years back, everyone on this forum was outraged when Andrew Starykowicz spent time in an Abu Dhabi prison following an incident at the 2012 Abu Dhabi International Triathlon after colliding with a volunteer while cycling during the race.

So while not stopping is morally reprehensible, I don’t see someone being prosecuted for failing to stop and render aid. I would not want to race is such country.

[quote BobAjobb]Not sure the status of the law esp in France with 'closed roads' but failure to stop at a road traffic collision where there's an injury?

In the UK that's a criminal offence. And just because the roads are trafic closed, doesn't mean other traffic laws (such as stopping at an accident) are also suspended.[/quote]

I like your point of view Dev.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

And you would be wrong. No organization owns the exclusive rights to a call it's event a world championship...except for a full ironman, of course, where ITU lost in court to WTC (aka, the Ironman World Championship predates ITUs very existence). In reality, it is the quality of the competition rather than the status of the host that determines the degree to which an event is a true world championship or at least of world championship caliber. Having done four ITU long course worlds and four Ironman 70.3 worlds, I certainly don't think ITU is any better qualified at hosting an event than Ironman. You certainly can't argue that ITU world championships are more competitive than Ironman at long course. And if you think that ITU isn't a money-grubbing enterprise that makes Ironman look like the model of generosity then you aren't paying attention. The truth is that for both organizations need age grouper's money to host their world championships.

It is tiresome to see the constant bashing on Slowtwitch of one or the other's WC events. The fact that there are multiple opportunities for recreational adult athletes to participate in "world championships" is a good thing. If you don't like WTC WC events ... don't participate. Same goes for ITU.

Meanwhile, I wish a complete and speedy recovery to the OP. His race was ruined by a careless and unfeeling athlete that doesn't belong in any race.

Yes you are correct. After I typed my response to Ed, I went back and re-read the string (It was late and I was hungry after riding all afternoon !). So yes you get the award for the first to ask about his bike.

I apologize

DB

i have not found, in practice, that sports organizations under the olympic umbrella are any more likely to run things for the best interest of the athlete than is a private corporation. they're both whipsawed between the legitimate needs of the athlete and the private ambitions of the org, and of the folks who run or work for the org. beyond that, the ITU lost not once, but twice, when legally trying to enjoin the WTC from calling its races WCs.

otherwise i don't have any quarrel with what you're writing.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Oh man. That sounds terrible. I was once run over by a biker who lost control on a descent (underpass) in the city of Chicago. I was running and he barreled over me without notice. Was not good. Wishing you a speedy recovery.

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The things that hold private corporations that run a championship to account are players Unions. Not governing bodies. The Governing bodies of Baseball, Basketball, and Football in the US are quite young and are heavily reliant upon the leagues for funding. USSF is the only one that seems to have A lot of power over their sports leagues in that through the powers granted to them by US law, they set standards for the professional leagues in regards to things like Funding and total teams. The NASL (second NASL) lost in court when it tried to get an injunction and retain it's Division 2 status after it had dropped to division 3 for failing to expand to 20 teams or so.

So the only thing that would increase standards for say Ironman to limit race slots at a World Championship so it is "safer" is for there to be an athletes Union. Well, there are very few pros in this sport. And the slots at both 70.3 and 140.6 World Championships seem to be more due to market demand and Ironman wanting to make a buck. Now, having just completed an Ironman branded event in IM 70.3 Traverse City. That was worth the money. It's taken USAT YEARS, YEARS to get to the point of putting on high quality championships. However, I'm not sure they have that kind of capacity to do it every week.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I met the guy on my flight to Munich today who was the first to find the guy who went off the cliff. He said he saw a smashed bike by the guardrail and stopped and looked over, saw him and climbed down the cliff.

They guy survived. Broken femur but he's going to be ok. They sent two helicopters and a roped mountain rescue team to get him.

The man who found him went on to finish the race after he was flown out.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Oh wow; good to hear nothing worse.

How you feeling today.

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2024: Bevoman, Galveston, Alcatraz, Marble Falls, Santa Cruz

How is this any different than skiing? If you hit someone in front of you, you were going too fast for the conditions. Period.

I agree you can get close to the other bikers during a turn, but you should be anticipating that someone will go wide just before the turn instead of staying inside the whole time. You can make the pass after the apex and then fly by them if you're the truly faster rider and would have a higher exit speed.

If true, this is bad. Racers should either have the whole road or not; it shouldn't be fudged like this.

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http://www.jt10000.com/

That's a great guy!
I 'like' Dev's reasoning here. I'm sure whoever hit you didn't do that intentionally. It sucks, it hurts, but sometimes bad things happens, without anybody intending to do bad stuff. And in a fast, technical descent, with a crowded road, during a race, there is so much to pay attention too, that crashes will happen. It just really sucks you were involved, but right now there's nothing to do about it, and your energy is best spend on recovery and the future. Hope the recovery will go well.

I'm a descent climber, but terrible at technical descents... i knew that i did qualified at a race that was not super competitive, therefore mid pack at that race was a good result for me. Whistler was really good course for me, Nice not so much... therefore stay up right was my priority for me.

Given the level of the euros (they have home ground advantage and they all qualified in super competitive race)... the only way to make it into top 100 (AG) was to have really good skills and take a lot of chances.

I was in the first wave, I thought the spacing between rider was reasonable given how similar everyone is.

I think i saw the aftermath of 5-7 different crashes on the descent, and there was a lot of people left behind me... so i won't be surprise if they had 20-25 crashes in total. To be perfectly honest, most of those crashes did appear to be users errors (or people hitting other people, which is really bad !!)

I did pre-ride the course, and to be honest, i though they did an OK job with all the race day signs. Few spots could have been better, but more the confusing roundabout and the narrow cones line on the return to T2 (i actually saw a crash there while i was running).


Overall, I think IM did an good job with the bike course (we all knew it as a technical course)... but they did a terrible job with the logistic: relative to North American races, they had fewer volunteers and the one that were their were clearly at their first rodeo.

What are you talking about? 40-44 is always one of the faster groups. At Wisconsin last weekend they have the second highest number of finishers in the top 10

Nice of the guy to stop his race to find the guy who went over the cliff. I wonder how many bikes went by before someone took that action?

How are you doing today? Getting ready for Taupo?

This was my assessment as well. I was in Wave 3 (M35-39) and found the descent to be treacherous. As it was that descent was technical enough to demand full attention. Under normal 70.3 distributions of speeds, I would bet the number of people really trying to crush the descent would be fine and there wouldn't be much crowding. But put 3500 people of WC-capability onto it and you have a recipe for disaster. I couldn't believe how many crashed, ambulances, cops directing us around downed riders, etc I saw. I was utterly terrified the whole way down, not for fear of myself losing control, but for fear that someone was going to crash into me from behind with nothing I could do about it. One guy passed me dangerously on the inside of a sweeping turn, blew his rear tire just as he goes by. I heard his carbon wheel go scraping across the pavement as he passed in front of me by inches, and face-planted into the rock wall. I couldn't spare him a second glance because I was 1) trying to get my heart out of my throat at having narrowly avoided a 30+mph crash, 2) because at 30+ mph in a sweeping turn I had no attention to spare for the guy and finally 3) I'm sorry, not sorry, but that was the consequence of a dangerous high speed pass in a turn and he paid a price for it.

That course would have been fine if everyone was on well-handling road bikes and had the skills of a pro-tour rider. But put a bunch of fast amateurs on mostly TT bikes with carbon wheels, who likely have no skills regarding 20 miles of twisting descent, and you have a seriously dangerous situation on your hands. That course was inappropriate for use for this particular race.

I LOVED that bike course. Beautiful and challenging. I wish I had the opportunity to ride it without all the dumbasses around me crashing out. It was a terrible bike course for the WC, though I am sure it's fine for the regular 70.3.

Maybe in a local American race but there weren't any Americans in the top 40 for the overall age group race in Nice, so it is hardly relevant . If you want stats on how M40-44 does in a competitive field look at Nice this year or Kona last year; best male 40-44 didn't come top 30 in Nice.

Dunno how it was in Kona but I would be very surprised if anyone from M40-44 placed in the top 10.

Now that we cleared that up, do you understand what I am talking about?

Wow, I did the old Nice race years ago and a pro went over into trees. We heard he did not make it though after 2 weeks.

I hope you're doing better. I know the sting of not finishing has made it so much worse and one cannot fathom why a fellow athlete would do what the other guy did. Hopefully karma will treat both of you as it should and you'll be back stronger. Good luck.

ITU runs the actual world's. WTC is a private corporation.


And there in lies the challenge with this.

ITU is the world governing body for the sport of triathlon and IRONMAN, owned by Wanda, is a for profit, now publicly traded, Event Management and marketing company. There is nothing wrong with any of this. IRONMAN organizes and puts on fabulous and amazing events - some of the absolute best endurance sports races/events in the world. They have been absolutely brilliant marketers of the IRONMAN brand!

But here in Nice they may have overstepped themselves a bit - with too challenging a course and perhaps too many athletes in the race and on the course. The move to two days - one for the women and one for the men, was helpful, but now if they are going to have races on course like this (which in one way is a good thing - see below), they probably need to look at limiting the AG fields.

A few years ago, I was Race Announcing at a large Gran Fondo. Simon Whitfield was one of the events VIPs and Ambassadors. It so happened it was pouring rain at the start. I had Simon up on the stand, with me doing a quick interview before the start. I asked him if he had any tips, for the riders, waiting for the start for riding in the rain. He said "Avoid the triathletes"!

That was meant as a bit of a joke, but Simon was right, triathletes are not known for their bike handling expertise. As fate would have it I was on some of those back-roads just outside of Nice in the Maritime Alps the week leading into race week. Many very tricky, high speed downhills. Tight turns. Narrow roads with lots of what they call in Europe "Road Furniture" - round-abouts, speed bumps, bollards etc . . I was a bit worried then, from what I saw, and unfortunately, their were many crashes and incidents.

For no-drafting racing to be legit and fair, they NEED challenging terrain - lots of uphills to break things up, but unfortunately, what goes up has to come down, and this is the, if you will excuse the bad play on words, unfortunate down-side of this.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

To the OP - So sorry to learn of this accident. That is awful how the guy just left you. I hope you are feeling better!

I was the last wave to go off in the women's race (45-49). And I was shocked at how fast middle-aged moms were barreling down the descent. One wrong move and you're going to be messed up pretty badly. I'll admit I have gotten really slow on the descents even with a bike racing background from 20 years ago. This year I had 3 friends (all accomplished IM athletes) have significant bike crashes where they ended up in the hospital. And I crashed badly in 1997. Now at age 49 I'm like a little old lady on technical descents (mostly I'm scared of the other athletes who sit on the trainer and hardly ride outside). So I rode down the descent this past Saturday very slowly and carefully. Doing the math I lost about 15 minutes to the women who had comparable times going up the climb. But I don't care. I wasn't going to podium or come close so why take chances and ride dangerously?? I saw two bad crashes with women on the side of the road and ambulances. I was rattled and really worried about them. I knew the men's race would also have some bad accidents. (hate that I was right)

While I thought the bike course was insanely epic and amazing, it wasn't the safest choice for a field of athletes who spend most of their time riding indoors with their power meters.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

"what goes up has to come down"

Guess a two transition race could avoid this, and it sounds like lots of crashes and medical bills and maybe worse.

I wish you a quick recovery and am glad you weren't hurt worse.

As someone who hasn't done a WTC race in more than a decade but will likely always say my Kona finishes were the highlights of my athletic endeavors, put me on the list of those who think they should reduce the size field to 1500 each day. Of course, that would hurt IM's pocketbook unless they doubled the entry fee.

It's not just because of the Nice course. Even if the course is less technical, 3000+ appears to be too many to avoid significant positioning issues on the bike.

Slowman, how about a poll on what folks think the field size should be at future 70.3 Worlds?

FWIW, I think the guy who hit you should be banned from racing for life.
His decision made you crash and endangered your life AND he didn't stay, just because of his fucking race.
If I were in a race and saw someone crash, and in pain on the ground, I'd stay until medical support arrives.
What the fuck is wrong with people??

I am going to "slightly disagree with you" about dumbing down race courses because so many athletes do all their riding on trainers (not controlling their back wheel which is the single most important part of controlling your bike on a descent...you steer with your core, hips and legs and counter steer with your arms, not steer with your hands)....in any case, courses should not be dumbed down because idiots spend all their time on trainers because they are scared of being hit while outside. If you're too scared of being hit outside and spend all your time on a trainer, then you're just a friggin hazard to everyone around you when you show up to race and have not practiced riding outside.

Riding outside is generally pretty safe (50% of us will die from a heart attack or cancer before we die from biking) and in my life I have had two life altering accidents (I got run over by a bus last year in a kind of freak accident)....but I still think that if you want to actually do races on real bikes, then you better be riding outside and not spend your time on trainer and show up and be a hazard to everyone on race day....or pack your bike up to your basement and just race in your virtual Zwift world, but please don't show up to a real race.....especially a race with technical descending.

By the way, when I say "you" in this post, I am not talkingg to 70Trigirl, I am talking to all the people who just train on trainers and show up at races and do stupid things on real bikes in the real world. Once in a while shit happens out on the road (Lance crashed 3 times in his final Tour de France, he almost never crashed before), but there is a whole pile of stupid things that happens at races because guys and girls can't stay upright on their bikes without two prongs of a trainer holding up the rear axle.

I've done Ironman France and as others said in a non championship race, it was clear sailing most of the way. I actually Kona qualified because I out descended a bunch of people in my age group by 10-15 minutes. But I have something like 30ish years of technical descending riding during my trips to Europe and there was generally a ton of space to pass when I did IM France. I would think if you put 15 people of my descending ability together each trying to out descend each other, we'd turn into a hazard to slower riders and probably to each other if one of the guys did something idiotic. But generally good descenders don't do idiotic things around good descenders, because we respect each other and the risk. The problem arises when you mix good descenders and less good descenders and you get massive speed differentials. Thus the no passing zones at Oceanside and IM Tremblant. I get why they do it and it really pisses me off that we don't get to race the descents, but it is what it is.

But I think part of the problem in Nice was people on tri bikes. Lots of people come on ST and ask what is the fastest bike for IM France and for sure if you can handle a tri bike like Lance or Wolfgang Deitrich or Sebi Kienle, its by far the fastest option. But for most of you, on this forum in a championship race, you can't handle your tri bike at speed with people around you and speed differentials...all those aero base bars with no up turn....well on a switchback with your base bar pointing down hill and your sweaty hand sliding off the top, you have nothing to counter steer against and your body wants to fly over the top of the bars. Sebi knows how to steer that bike and he's not around that many people. The rest of the age groupers are not Sebi.

+1

Never going to happen though unless high-profile AGers start declining slots due to the crowds.

Personally, I would pay more for a smaller field, but then again, I wouldn't want the best athletes priced out either. And I realize these races wouldn't exist unless WTC makes a profit

Having large fields like this isn't only dangerous, the results are also kind of a farce because you have to employ some drafting and blocking tactics to have a chance at the podium (yes, I saw this from a bunch of the top AG guys on the ascent and the descent. No one ever gets a blocking penalty even though it is probably the most frequent offense).

A legit WC would have super small fields that would provide adequate, pro-field-like spacing. I would probably not qualify very often in that case, but so be it.

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