Stage 3 Tour de France 2015

Cyclists are tough?

To the outsider, professional cyclists are a weak bunch. Dressed head to toe in often unflattering lycra, with limbs that resemble those of a stick insect and shoes that make walking in anything other than a hilariously uncoordinated fashion nigh on impossible.

As a means of projecting the image of a hard man or woman, clearly there is a shortfall. To the eyes of a fellow cyclist however, the pros inhabit an upper echelon of toughness owing to their ability to push themselves to the physical edge while racing and continue on in the face of often horrific injuries.

Many cyclists wear this toughness as a badge of pride, with road rash, scars and other hallmarks of suffering all scoring points amongst their friends.

Witness Johnny Hoogerland whose stock rose dramatically amongst the casual fan following a hugely disturbing incident during the 2011 Tour de France. Caught in a collision that saw fellow rider Juan Antonio Flecha hit by a passing media vehicle, Hoogerland was catapulted from his bike and into a barbed wire fence, leaving him with horrific injuries that would require 33 stitches in his leg. Hoogerland bravely went on to complete the stage, creating an overnight market in “Welcome to Hoogerland” T-shirts and instantly painting Hoogerland with a well deserved reputation as one of cycling’s “hard men”.

This issue was brought to a head for the Le Domestique Tours team following the aftermath of yesterday’s Stage 3 Tour de France 2015. In a chain reaction type crash that instantly causes anybody who has raced a bike to grimace, a clash of wheels led to a pile up of over two-dozen riders. Pictures live from the race made for difficult viewing with riders in various states of injury laid out across the road as ASO (the race organisers), team members and medical staff frantically worked to assess and treat riders, while clearing the road to allow racing to continue.

Unfortunately these crashes are part and parcel of racing a bike regardless of ability level. With hundreds of riders all fighting for the same tiny piece of road, all it takes is a momentary lapse of concentration for carnage to occur. That always will be the case and while steps can be taken to minimise risk, crashes can and will occur — that’s not what caught our attention.

What did was the aftermath. Scanning the Le Domestique Tours’ twitter timeline and in particular a video circulating from a team mechanic wearing a Go-Pro, we saw some truly mind-bending things. Fabian Cancellara had somehow completed the final 55km of the stage with two fractured vertebrae and head injury symptoms that made him have difficulty seeing and left him feeling dizzy. Multiple riders had visibly damaged helmets, many were stumbling around clearly disorientated and several turned out to have received awful internal injuries such as broken ribs in addition to the obvious road rash and shoulder dislocations.

On a certain level the toughness of these riders is to be applauded — how anybody can even contemplate getting up and continuing on in those circumstances is beyond our and many other’s comprehension.

However

Scrolling through the LDT twitter timeline we came across a tweet that really caught our attention and summed up the majority of what we were seeing:

Initially this sort of mentality, a badge of honour if you will, seems like something to be proud of — cyclists are tougher than you are and this proves it. That was the instant reaction reading it, but after a second or two of pondering, the reality of the statement and the background to it, hit home. People with broken backs, head injuries and internal damage were either hiding the true extent of their injuries, or being given very little choice other than to get back on the bike. Why were they doing this and is it to be applauded?

As spectators we feel that sports persons owe us entertainment. It is easy to forget that these people are ultimately doing their jobs. They just happen to do a job that we enjoy watching. Many of these riders are young, with a very short career ahead of them and are being asked to perform on the biggest stage in an arena where the stakes couldn’t be higher. Their jobs literally depend on their results and those results do not come if they aren’t on the bike able to support their team leader or deliver the goals of the team.

In the eyes of a professional

Put yourself in the shoes of a domestique. You have been involved in a crash, hit your head and feel in need of medical attention. That being said a senior member of your team has recently got back on the bike with a broken back and unknown other injuries and you earn your living in a sport that has a reputation for toughness and ignoring injury. How likely are you to insist to the DS screaming in your ear to get back on your bike that you cannot continue?

Switch the circumstances slightly and put the rider in a position where they are keen to continue on despite such injuries, such as Fabian. Should he be the one making this decision or should independent, or at worst, team medical staff not be the ones empowered to make prudent, safety first decisions? We would submit that somebody who has just fallen from their bike at great speed and is visibly suffering from concussion type symptoms shouldn’t be making that call.

Moving forward

It’s the George North debate from the rugby world and the NFL concussion debate cast in a different sport. In years gone by, the risks of these decisions were poorly understood and some stars were understood to be tough, while others were weak. Now however that is simply not the case as we have the ability to fully understand the potentially life changing effects of poor decision making in this area.

In simple terms, sports men and women are a different breed, they operate on a higher level and perform a job that many fans forget is ultimately a job. That job is to operate to the best of their often incredible ability levels, pushing themselves through the barriers us mere mortals cannot hope to achieve. That job is not to risk serious long-term damage to their health and the health of those around them (would you be keen to ride today’s Stage 4 on the cobbles of northern France surrounded by a collection of concussed riders), in order to live up to an outdated view of being tough.

Ultimately it should be the sporting acts that cement their reputations as true hard men and women, as they battle to push their bodies to the limit and perform incredible feats of endurance. Anyone in the know recognises this as one of the hardest feats in the sporting world, completed in full health. It should not in our humble opinion be necessary to applaud or make their reputations contingent on the ability to also discount basic safety and medical concerns.