GreenEDGE Comes (Un)stuck
The Orica-GreenEdge team were hit with a fine of 2,000 Swiss Francs (US$2,116) after their bus blocked the finish line to Saturday’s opening stage of this year’s Tour de France, leading to a chaotic finale. Organisers proposed moving the finish line forward by three kilometres before eventually clearing the bus,…
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The Orica-GreenEdge team were hit with a fine of 2,000 Swiss Francs (US$2,116) after their bus blocked the finish line to Saturday’s opening stage of this year’s Tour de France, leading to a chaotic finale.
Organisers proposed moving the finish line forward by three kilometres before eventually clearing the bus, which had become stuck under a gantry right at the end of the stage.
That allowed them to revert to the original race plan, but not before confusion among the peloton led to a mass crash six kilometres from the end.
Organisers blamed Orica-GreenEdge for “not respecting the timetable put in place for auxiliary team vehicles arriving at the stage finish.”
All kidding aside, it was not GreenEDGE’s fault for this. It was chaos for accredited vehicles to get into the finish area with miscommunication amongst the organisers and police, and there were few side roads from the startline to make the finish in time.