(upbeat electronic music)
- Hello guys, what a huge day
in the Tour de France today.
You know, stage four, 2017,
Cavendish and Sagan collide.
Cavendish is out of the Tour de France,
possibly with an injury to his elbow
and also Sagan sadly
has been disqualified.
But the very latest news is
Sagan's now launched an appeal.
Sagan's now launched an appeal
against the disqualification
and because of this hard news,
we're gonna have a quick look
at this footage in a
little bit more detail.
Typical Fast Fitness
attention to detail here.
Looking at this footage between
Cavendish and Sagan to see
if we can see what happened.
And remember the rules here are
actually a little bit vague.
There's only really two rules.
One, violent or, you know,
disorderly conduct of one rider
against another and in
sprinting, this rule, 2.3.036,
which is a rider shall
be strictly forbidden
to deviate from the lane they selected
when launching into the
sprint and, in doing so,
endangering others.
So the question you need
to hold in your mind is
did Sagan deviate from the lane
more than others in a sense
and in doing so, did
he endanger Cavendish?
Let's look at this, we've
drawn up the footage here
in our video analysis and
it's quite interesting.
Let's watch it at full speed.
This is the full speed footage
of the riders going along.
Demare launches his attack,
all the riders press onto
their right hand side,
as we're watching it, the
left hand side of the road.
Cavendish goes down,
you know, it's a mess.
It's a hell of a mess.
It looks bad.
Looking from above the helicopter
footage in live real time,
you can see Sagan there going across,
all the riders have gone across.
Does Sagan go across any more than others?
I'm not gonna ...
Slow motion now.
Now what does the slow motion
in our analysis suggest?
There's a tiny movement
and certainly Sagan's elbow
comes out, so does his
left knee, by the way.
Sagan's right elbow comes
out, so does his left knee.
Cavendish has got very little space
and now Cavendish is clipped,
his right leg has come out
of the pedal, he's falling,
thus an instinctual
reaction to keep it right.
Now let's look at it in
slow motion from above.
Now this is more illuminating.
Now start with Demare here,
Demare's launching his attack
and he's basically gonna
end up with the stage win.
He goes past Sagan, Sagan and Cavendish
and most of the riders
avoiding the incident
in the middle here.
Now at this point, all
of the riders have moved
actually safely onto the right hand side.
No rider is particularly under deviating
any more than the other.
No rider is particularly causing
this effect at this stage.
The incident is about to occur.
And then, unfortunately,
slightly obscured by that tree,
but Cavendish is certainly
falling at this point.
You can see that Sagan's elbow is out.
I don't believe Sagan ever
made contact with Cavendish.
Was it off-putting to him?
I don't know, it depends on
whether that was involved.
If you put yourself in
the position of Sagan,
you will actually see he's off-balance
but he's doing what Sagan does
best, he retains his balance,
he's desperately fighting with the bank.
He can't take his hands off the handlebars
otherwise he'd fall, his
hips are out of line,
which is unusual for a sprinter.
He's basically twisted around the hips
and because of that he's
thrown his elbow out,
in my opinion, to maintain his balance.
And at that point, Cavendish
is already falling.
Just go back one or two frames here.
You see, it's obscured
by the tree a little bit.
You know, whatever
happens in the line above
is obscured by the tree.
Demare is away here,
Cavendish is already
falling at this point,
and look at Sagan's elbows at this point
as they come out from
under the tree cover.
His elbows aren't particularly ...
I don't know if there's
just very, very little room.
He isn't also deviating into the path.
Notice the bike paths of the
two bikes are facing forward.
Everyone's bike is facing forward.
It's not deviation that's
caused any problem here.
It's really the lack of
room while they've all
got squeezed onto that right hand side.
Going further, Cavendish is
going down at this point.
He's down.
Sagan's still trying to keep straight.
And there, the incident's over in a flash.
Now, Cavendish has come out and said,
"I'm confused about the elbow,"
but it's actually line-deviation.
It's line-deviation that
causes the problem in sprints
unless Sagan was considered to be
connecting aggressive
behaviour towards Cavendish.
And Cavendish, ironically,
isn't really one to talk
about line deviation.
Who remembers his line
deviation in the Olympics 2016?
He had a massive line deviation
and completely got away with it.
You know, Cavendish
isn't really one to talk
about line deviation
after some of his sprints.
So in the opinion of Fast Fitness Tips,
and this is just our opinion,
Sagan hasn't conducted himself
violently or aggressively
towards Cavendish and the
elbow was, in our opinion,
an attempt to keep on the bike himself.
And if anything, no riders
there particularly deviated
from any other and the deviation itself,
such that there was,
didn't cause any dangerous or foul-play.
In other words, it didn't
cause harm to another rider.
So I personally think that
Sagan's appeal should be upheld.
What do you think, guys?
This is a quick one on Fast Fitness Tips
just because of the
incredible events of today.
All right, I'm sure you'll let me know
in your comments below, guys.
Take care.
Have a good ride.
(ambient music)
