It is not an infrequent sight in spectator sport for the fans to cause a disruption in the dignified proceedings of an international tournament. All of us are familiar with casual spectators walking in front of sight-screens, hurling bottles at players, and even shouting racial slurs in cricket. Fans have been known to riot extensively after football matches, while in tennis there exist more terrifying recollections such as the stabbing of Monica Seles by a spectator in a match against Steffi Graf.
When a sport is watched by a vast number of people, there is bound to be a few bad fish to spoil the whole pond, but when the playing-field merges seamlessly with the spectator area the dangers to the athletes from adoring, self-centred and unruly fans rise up dramatically. For example, a stabbing such as that of Seles would be near impossible in a cricket or football stadium, while it would be infinitely easier in a game of, say, cycling, where the fans have no barriers between them, their unrestricted and sloppy enthusiasm, and the competing athletes.
Fortunately, at the 2016 Tour de France, no stabbings have occurred, but the nature of the sport and the superhuman requirements of the competition dictate that much less of a mindless altercation is required for things to go horribly wrong in cycling. After yet another incident with an unruly fan during Sunday’s stage involving New Zealander George Bennett hurling a fan out of his way while riding, Union Cycliste Internationale chairman Bryan Cookson echoed these dangers, telling The Telegraph that it wouldn’t take much for “something tragic to happen”, and urging the fans to keep safe distance from the competing cyclists for mutual safety.
No small matter
Cookson’s warnings are much more than an uber-parental exaggeration when put in context of cycling as a sport, and especially the Tour de France, where accidents in the past have led to many a loss of lives and tournament-ending falls similar to Alberto Contador this year, which led to his ousting from the tournament, dashing his hopes at the greatest cycling glory after months of relentless training.
Contador’s fall did not come as a result of an altercation with a fan, but in the case of Chris Froome – defending champion and current owner of the all-important Yellow Jersey – that could very well have been the case. Froome has been fined 200 Swiss Francs by the officials for “incorrect behaviour” after elbowing a fan out of his way en route to his Stage 8 victory, although most of his peers have expressed sympathy with his actions, and would’ve likely done the same, as Bennett did on Sunday.
As Froome explained, the fan was running with a flag dangerously close to him, in danger of it colliding with his handlebars or getting tangled in his wheels, forcing him to “lash out” as the alternative could well have been the end of his historic campaign. Imagine months of toil and preparation, not to mention the hundreds of kilometres covered riding a bicycle in perilous terrain and weather (Froome battled four different kinds of weather in one day on Sunday to retain his jersey and a 16-second lead over fellow Briton Adam Yates), only to crash into a fan through no fault of your own and lose the jersey, even if it’s not without a chance to gain it back, which in itself is far from a certainty.
Incidentally, Yates has also had his fair share of the recklessness of overly enthusiastic fans. On Friday, a fan caused an inflatable arch to fall on Yates by accident, sending the Briton over his handlebars and landing on his face. Another fan, inadvertently, walked into Bennett’s path right ahead of a bend on Sunday. Such behaviour is not new to the Tour. Examples of this recklessness are littered on the TV screen every year for those of us who watch the sport, and most incidents avoided are to the credit of the riders much more than the levelheadedness of the crowd, as the UCI chief pointed out on Sunday.
Not just 'a great free show'
“Our sport usually is a great free show,” Cookson was quoted as saying by The Telegraph. “But it does depend on all of us behaving appropriately. I’ve said before I don’t really like to see guys in fancy dress running alongside the riders – the last thing you want as a rider is someone shouting in your ear and waving a flag at you and almost knocking you off”
Such behaviour is usually the result of a long day of drinking while waiting for the cyclists to cross the small stretch where a particular spectator is located, at which point it becomes a show of mindless enthusiasm not unlike the selfish selfie-sprees with animals that show total disregard for the object of adulation, so long as personal adulation can lead to personal gratification. In the worst cases of crowd behaviour, it is even conscious hooliganism, as with Froome, the victor last year, who was yelled and spat at at the very least, with reports surfacing that urine was thrown at him by roadside spectators on his way to victory.
Such disrespect and disregard from supposed “fans” is a paradox, who are supposed to be admirers of a sport and its greatest athletes. However, with much of Europe going through another paradox of a “developed” country with an increasingly regressive and self-centred emergent populous, the average roadside Tour de France “fan” may be the biggest obstacle in the athletes’ way.
