Dev

Since the Sailing Analogy was brought up a couple of times, I will add to it. I knew Ken back in the day, we traded tacks on the race course many times, and even had a few beers together. He was/is a fierce competitor on the water. Yet the article clearly puts into perspective his regard for his fellow competitors and friends - at that level many sailors know each other.

And yes, pre-event at the Skippers Meeting it is generally emphasized that safety and sportsmanship is of paramount importance.

And to give the example, at a North American Championships I was racing my boat, a J/22 in Galveston Bay. Long story short, one of the competitors fell overboard going downwind ( with spinnakers up). Most of the fleet passed him by, and he had essentially given up hope. I happened to see him and spun around to pluck him out of the Bay, losing many places in the race. Turns out it was a buddy of mine ! Later on, over one of many beers, he admitted that he had given up hope and was about to go under. Afterwards, the Race Committee, upon hearing the story and recognizing the places I had lost, issued redress, and had my standings improved.

So, the moral of the story is that stopping to aid a fellow competitor that is hurt or in trouble- no matter what the circumstances are - is what we have to do. As athletes we are fiercely competitive but should respect our fellow athletes by giving aid when required - no question.

db

I think you're off base with some of your criticisms. My position is pretty clear and I bet it's shared by most. I'd 100% stop if I was the only person around. And as soon as I felt like I wasn't useful I'd be gone. Sooner the better for all parties. I'm no doctor.

And your complaint that no one around you was yelling at the aid stations that someone was down? Well if I was cycling near a guy yelling that they're was someone in need of help I'd keep my mouth shut so people could understand him. Maybe the ones out of earshot of you were doing the same. In fact they likely were.

Racers can be decent humans too.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

Very sorry to hear about your crash, RowToTri. I was amazed at how many unnecessary risks people were taking - I was no where near the front of the 30-34 AG, and many around me were not either, so don't see why the risk was so needed, especially when you can tell most had never even tried.

I rode the course twice prior to race day, and can honestly say (with data to back up) I was able to descend faster without other reckless guys around me. I am not a technical descender like some of the gents on the course who were riding well in the 2:30-2:45 range, but also know my limits.

Saw a few gents in stretchers with heads bandaged up - one was on the left side of the road near the cliff on the back part of the Col De Vence. When I went by there was a lot of blood, but luckily the first responders were there and directing racers to slow down and stay to the right when approaching the blind corner.

Speedy recovery to you my friend.

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IG: NCGregory8778

Thanks for sharing this for racing. I've been around the block in triathlons and generally there is not much help going on for downed riders. I am just calling what I have seen out on the race courses. Can we do better. For sure, I have tried doing better but if the general etiquette is "we all stop to help" then it just would be what we do. But that's not what is going on at races out there today...at least no universally!

Well, i think there is a difference between "stop to help" and "stop because you hit someone"

Personally, if the guy is moving, i'm not stoping, but i will tell (probably stop) the first person in a real position to help (ie: with a phone at a minimum)... if the guy is not moving... then it's different.

If you hit someone, your race is over and you have to stop until the person is on their way to hospital, otherwise you are just a bad human...

Hello benleg and All,

Various sources.....



If you start to die on Mount Everest, you're probably on your own. There are rare instances of people going on rescue missions up the mountain, but for the most part, they're simply not feasible. There's no way to transport someone down from that high and no way to get them warm again, and attempting to help is likely to result in the rescuer dying as well. So, even if you're conscious, talking, and asking for help, people know there's nothing they can do, and they'll likely leave you.

David Sharp learned this the hard way. Sharp was trying to climb Everest in 2006 without a team or bottled oxygen. He became exhausted and stopped to rest, and then became frozen in place, in a seated position. At least 40 climbers passed him while he was sitting there, and some even spoke to him on their way up. No attempts were made to rescue him, however, and descending climbers found there was nothing they could do. This lack of effort is still criticized to this day.

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The debate around ethics on Everest has raged since 2006, when an estimated 40 climbers passed a dying British mountaineer, David Sharp, without stopping. A week later a US climber, Don Mazur, and his team gave up their own summit bid to co-ordinate the rescue of an abandoned Australian, Lincoln Hall.

He survived. On the weekend the Shuttleworths reached the summit, an Israeli climber, Nadav Ben Yehuda, carried a Turkish-born American climber, Aydin Irmak, to safety on his back for eight hours. So should the Shuttleworths have stopped and tried to help?

There are no formal guidelines issued to climbers, and we don't know the risk it might have meant for their own lives.

But can it ever be right, in the words of mountain leaders Chris and Simon Holloway, for climbers to "carry on to the summit, while there are living people dying behind them"? Ben Yehuda, a former soldier, described his decision to stop as "automatic".

For others, it plainly isn't. In an era when climbing Everest has become a form of extreme tourism open to anyone with $10,000, has human life come to count for less than the fulfillment of a personal ambition?

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

 In an era when climbing Everest has become a form of extreme tourism open to anyone with $10,000, //

I want to know who gets to climb Everest for only 10k. Plane flight and hotel just at the beginning and end probably costs that much. I'm thinking that on a budget, maybe some can do it for $50 to 60k?? About the same as getting into Kona, if you use eBay...

Maybe he did not finish the bike or dropped out at the run. That will narrow down the field for you some. If you remember what he looks like you could scour the photos to see if you recognize him. Not much help. Hope you find him and you heal well.

I agree 100% with you Dev. What I saw (in the last wave) was 90% or more did not know how to really ride their bike and it was their inability to ride that caused the accidents. That course is not technical in the least. All the switchbacks were easily seen and the gradient was never more the 6-7%.

I think this course was the perfect example to show how the drive to ride indoors has turned triathletes into riders who cannot ride. Sadly, I bet the feedback will send WTC to find less 'good' courses and we can all ride up and down highways like in Texas.

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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Elliot | Cycle2Tri.com
Sponsors: SciCon | | Every Man Jack

I can't imagine not stopping if he also went down.

Then again I'm a strange one, become friendlier on race day as compared to training. It clears my mind as opposed to going terminator mode.

With that being said, outside the races I'm not so nice and I would track that f**k down via photos and time splits and do what I could whether legally or just getting him out of the sport.

There is no place for that behaviour, if you're involved in a serious accident... Stop!

Sorry was off ST for a bunch of days with work and travel. I hope your wounds are getting better, (physically and mentally). You'll be kicking butt again. Sorry you were not able to get to your full potential on this race day. It really does suck.

To the guys on the rest of the thread, its an imperfect world and we're talking in hypotheticals on what others and each of us do in a race situation. My main point is I've seen more "leave the fallen guy there" for himself or others to figure out and carry on racing. If you come from a road bike racing background, its practically an instinct to get up from the tarmac and go regardless of who caused what (maybe a perfect example was Movistar in Friday's Vuelta stage pressing the gas pedal when Roglic was down). This is obviously not the right things to do in many situations in tri, but I've seen more of that going on, than people being actively helpful and subjugating their race to show compassion. Mainly I am calling out what I see out there. Most of you guys taking the counter view on this thread may be the real life exceptions, but I am not sure that all of you will react in a race situation how you (and I) say we would here in text.

I like Nealhe's Everest related post. I guess that's the ultimate one where climbers THINK they cannot do anything when actually they "MAY".

By the way, I don't actually hold it against another rider if we tangle and go down and the other guy gets up and moves on. To me, going down is a part of racing that can happen. Establishing who is at fault in the heat of the moment is really hard to do. Heads are not clear. Largely each guy will blame the other guy. If the other person realized that I am badly hurt and on the verge of death, hopefully he stops just for my family as I would like to return his family the same favour. But i am not sure that he may know what state I am in. Hopefully both of us can check on each other and make sure we can both move on, or if one of us can move on, stabilize the person who is there and go ride up and flag down help.

In Ed's accident everything was further complicated by it being downhill after the guy departed. If he decided to change his mind, he's not climbing back up 2km.

Hey, there were a few people approaching the aid station before me. NO ONE slowed down to inform the aid station that a rider was down. Just calling what I saw. I'm not a saint either. I did not stop my race. There was someone with the downed rider, but no ambulance there yet. I could have at least momentarily stopped and asked "can I do something". But instead I took the 'racer option' which was keep my race going till the next aid station and inform them. The really compassionate option would be to penalize my own race time, hang out make sure things were stable and then maybe be the one to seek help. I chose to keep my race alive and "kind of help", but I did not subjugate my race. AND NO ONE NEAR ME DID EITHER....and largely almost everyone else is taking the racer option.

part of the beauty of triathlon is that amateurs can race at the same WC race as the pros. it's the only sport where it happens. a curse and a blessing. if you start making regional championships the only places where people can qualify, you start adding another factor... the wealth factor.

not everyone can afford to fly to a regional championship. i'm not sure how many people it would filter out, but i think it dilutes the competition. a lot of people qualify racing their "backyard" race.

That's true. But if you want to limit the entries to 20-30 per age group, rather than 538 like my age group, how else do you do it?

I'm not 100% sure that limiting the field that much is the right thing to do, but it's one way to reduce the danger on courses like Nice - and I wish we had more courses like Nice.

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

Agree, nailed it!

In car racing, you are instructed to not stop. You radio in the accident (but on circuits, usually track marshals on every corner are on it). Marshals come on scene as appropriate, and rescue vehicles are on site asap as appropriate.

But nice would have fewer “marshals” per km of road, so not apples to apples. And bikes have a lower rate of catching fire and exploding.

Make sure i am ok, and let me know you will notify staff at the next aid station if it is that bad.

Sounds like a shitshow with a bunch of bikes/riders not familiar with descending.

Riding in a peleton is not for the inexperienced, or faint of heart. Descending in any form of crowd, especially if you are used to solo riding mostly in the flats, is just asking for a big pot of extra spicy trouble...

I bet If you look back 3ish years on ST, we’d have threads on how bad triathletes are at bike handling

This thread made me feel like I would too take the moral high ground and stop. “ Of course I would” I thought to myself when i read this thread on Friday PM.

But in a bike race Saturday, two crashes brought guys down near me and I didn’t have the slightest desire to stop. I candidly thought “that guys an idiot” for crashing like that, and didn’t second guess myself . Only after re-reading new posts on this thread did I realize the irony.

Now I didn’t cause the wrecks either, and I didn’t roll past a guy covered in blood, solo, on the side of the road. I’m hopeful that I’d behave differently in those situations

The key factor in this case is the behavior of the person that caused the crash. It would have been different if the OP was okay and able to get back up and ride off, but they weren't. The person causing the crash didn't seem to accept any responsibility in this situation.

An interesting thing I think I'm taking away from this is that on the whole, the actual bike handling and descending skills of the riders in this race (which admittedly represent the top 1.5-3% of triathletes) were actually very good. I think where a minority falls flat (and it doesn't take many to wreak a lot of havoc) is in their decision making - particularly decisions as they relate to descending in groups.

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

I’m glad you’re doing well , considering.

Body feeling better?

I'm not so sure that's the correct conclusion based on my observations over the years. While the selectivity of this race takes out a lot of the least skilled riders, nonetheless there aren't that many triathlons with descents as long and fast as this one, at least in the US. So those fast descending skills are not developed well by those triathletes that don't regularly do mountainous rides or fast pack riding. I think you've got a combination of:
Riders not that skilled so they are slow on the descent
Riders that are skilled and fast on the descent but take proper caution around the slower riders
Riders that are strong but not nearly as skilled as they think they are and who take unnecessary risks

I've seen plenty of riders that fall in the last category and they are perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the triathlon bike leg. They think strong legs equals good bike handling skills, they don't understand the limitations of their own skills, and they think the importance of their own race justifies putting other competitors in danger.

When you write descending in groups, I assume this means that there were positioning violations involved? Please correct me if my assumption is wrong.

For sure there were lots of violations. But I do not think I saw anything that was an attempt to take unfair advantage. The variability in the speeds people were comfortable descending at, combined with the difficulty in passing safely meant people bunched up until they could pass. Generally it meant people were going slower than they would go if they were riding alone, not faster.

FWIW, at the penalty tent at the top of the climb, there were at least 15 guys packed into (around) it when I rode by.

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

Replying to the thread, not to you. I'm very sorry about your crash.

FWIW, a female friend of mine also crashed on the descent at Nice, she was in one of the earlier waves. She wasn't hit by another rider, she just lost focus and hit the mountain. Two other female competitors stopped for multiple minutes, and left only once my friend urged them to. Her crash wasn't as bad and she was able to finish, after being cleared by medical and having her bike patched up.

If you cut the field in half, would that alleviate the bunching on a course like that?