You may never have heard of Dutch cyclist Theo Bos before (I hadn't), but I'll bet you won't forget his name now.
The cyclist for Rabobank was involved in a crash on Sunday in the final meters of the Tour of Turkey that looks to all the world like he grabbed yellow-jersey wearer Daryl Impey of Barloworld and flung him to the ground.
Both Bos and Impey hit the deck. Impey eventually limped across the line to win the 8 stage Presidential Cycling Tour (Tour of Turkey), but he skipped the podium celebrations and is being monitored for a light fracture in a vertabra; he also lost a tooth.
Calls immediately came in for Bos to be suspended. Among those who offered criticism were Lance Armstrong at his Twitter site:
“rewatched Bos crash 10x. Fences were uneven, sprint looked nervous/sketchy, but imo the hands should never come off the bars in a sprint..”
Watch again and again
Another early critic was Australian sprinter Robbie McEwen. Studying the films later, he concluded:
“You have to watch the Bos thing 30 times – in slow motion. I don't think he did it on purpose.”
Impey said he was taken down deliberately, according to CyclingNews.
“He [Bos] tried to pass me 700m to go in the bunch sprint but there was no-where to go and all of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me into the barriers. We both crashed.”
In his defense, Bos says he just wanted to defend himself against Impey, who came toward him while Bos was already in the barriers, which he said here uneven.
“I touched a foot of one the barriers and that way brought down Impey. … I didn't pull Impey down, I am not crazy. At that speed and that position I would have torpedoed myself. No way [that I would have done that].”
Podium Cafe has a translation from Bos's blog. He begins:
“The reactions to the crash in the Tour of Turkey are no laughing matter. On Youtube you can see how I seem to intentionally cause a crash. Even Lance Armstrong makes it known that I should be suspended for a long time. A reaction which I fully understand after seeing the images and hearing the accompanying commentary.
“Of course I also watched them myself, over and over. It is difficult to see in the view from above, it seems as though I pull him off his bike. However, I am completely boxed in ….
1 second lead
Impey was in that final sprint because he was only in first by 1 second over Italy's Davide Malacarne of Quick Step. Two other cyclists were within 10 seconds of catching Impey on the GC. Since Impey crashed so close to the finish, he got the same time as rest of the group in which he was riding.
The YouTube.com video posted by afx237vi shows the crash again and again so you can make up your own mind.
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