Rule No. 1 of the Tour de France is that sprinters are madmen. They sit and stew for five hours in the saddle all so that they can be near the finish line for roughly 30 seconds of action, and they won’t let anyone stand in their way.
Tour de France rider headbutts another rider going roughly 40 mph, both get disqualified
Young Colombian phenom Fernando Gaviria took on one of the burliest riders of the Tour de France peloton. Both lost.
Normally when we say they “butt heads” we mean it in the figurative sense — jostling for position, playing mind games with one another, etc. — but Colombian rider Fernando Gaviria took the expression literally, headbutting German veteran André Greipel in the closing meters of Stage 8 in Amiens on Bastille Day.
For Greipel, Gaviria’s headbutt turned out to be just dessert. Earlier in the sprint, with roughly 900 meters remaining, Greipel threw his own headbutt at German rider Nikias Arndt.
For their actions, both riders were disqualified from the stage results. Greipel was second and Gaviria was third at the line, which means they lost 30 and 20 points, respectively, in the green jersey competition. Gaviria has two Tour stage victories already and was challenging Peter Sagan’s dominance in the points classification. Now it appears that if Sagan can stay upright until Paris, the Slovakian will assuredly win for a sixth time.
There will be plenty of debate about the Tour’s decision to declassify both riders. From one perspective, Greipel was simply holding his line — as is his right — and shouldn’t have been expected to move even after he and Gaviria rubbed shoulders. Gaviria, after all, was the one who came from behind and tried to fit through a too-small gap between Greipel and the fences.
Then again, it’s hard to imagine that Greipel didn’t know he was pinning Gaviria and impeding his path.
Everyone can agree that you probably shouldn’t headbutt people. Especially on bicycles. Especially when those bicycles are zooming roughly 40 miles per hour towards the finish line. And especially when the person you’re headbutting is someone nicknamed the “Gorilla” and is the burliest man in the peloton.
At least no one crashed. This time.
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