Irish Corner alpe d'huez

daveirl

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redzerredzer

Casati wrote: »

Agreed- unfortunately I was right beside these French lads and had to dodge the cross-fire - they had planned to jump out of their van in full scrubs when Fromme came through on the last lap. As others have said the French police were useless, allowing the lads to throw punches at one English lad and a lady who suffered a cut lip, and almost knock a cyclist passing to the ground. Very lazy to make a headline out of Walsh's comments I think

How did the fight start and how serious was it?
Is it true that other fans locked these French lads dressed as doctors into a van?

luapenak

High Nellie wrote: »

Some of the reported behavior I wouldn't agree with. But isn't it about time that fans made some form of protest against having dopers on the Tour - but they shouldn't interfere with them on the road. Fans and bike buyers are largely very tolerant of dopers in spite of all the hot air. The proof of this is the fact that sponsors keep re-hiring them and paying them a lot of money. Trek and Schleck for example. Obviously Trek knows it won't interfere with sales, in spite of their former association with Armstrong,

What are you on about, this wasn't a protest against actual or suspected dopers in the peleton? This was solely a protest against Froome/Sky.

Agree with Trek/Schleck comment but is irrelevant to the goings on at Irish corner.

elduggo

redzerredzer wrote: »

How did the fight start and how serious was it?
Is it true that other fans locked these French lads dressed as doctors into a van?

yep. You've answered your own question there.

elduggo

daveirl wrote: »

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Moore's initial tweet was pretty **** too. Theres a pair of them in it.

redzerredzer

elduggo wrote: »

yep. You've answered your own question there.

I thought it was two different incidents.

If some English guys (and a stupid girl by some accounts) took umbrage to the doctor protest so took the law into their own hands they should have been arrested.

elduggo

redzerredzer wrote: »

I thought it was two different incidents.

If some English guys (and a stupid girl by some accounts) took umbrage to the doctor protest so took the law into their own hands they should have been arrested.

you should probably desist from making comments like that if you don't know what happened.

High Nellie

luapenak wrote: »

What are you on about, this wasn't a protest against actual or suspected dopers in the peleton? This was solely a protest against Froome/Sky.

Agree with Trek/Schleck comment but is irrelevant to the goings on at Irish corner.

Squirting from syringes - nothing to do with doping?? But, as I said, they shouldn't interfere with riders on the road. I think the sponsors should be more the subject of protest

redzerredzer

elduggo wrote: »

you should probably desist from making comments like that if you don't know what happened.

Now that annoys me.

I asked what happened. If you knew what happened you could have just told me. Instead you gave a stupid reply. That stupid reply suggested that I had the answer. And now, you are suggesting that I dont know what happened and criticise me for commenting.

If indeed I dont know what happened, would you kindly tell me?

luapenak

High Nellie wrote: »

Squirting from syringes - nothing to do with doping?? But, as I said, they shouldn't interfere with riders on the road. I think the sponsors should be more the subject of protest

I did not say nothing to do with doping. I was simply referring the facts that this was not a simple protest on doping in cycling but a specified attack on Froome/Sky about which I am yet to see any convincing evidence to support. Although comments about protesting doping in general may or may not be warranted, my previous response simply reflects the fact that your comments are irrelevant to the actual goings on at Irish Corner.

Sorry if I'm being a prick on this, as you may gather, I am rightly pissed off by the contents of the initial article posted on stickybottle. I can't see any reason for anything other that positive comments about the Irish fans at the corner. Glad I don't have access to the Sunday Times article from France.

elduggo

this is an account of what I saw happen last thursday week on alpe d'huez

I'll give my account of what happened below. This is pretty much how I saw things unfold.

Firstly, just to be clear on the "Froome Dope" banner that Walsh referred to, please see the following picture;

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/993323_10151463561901326_2055835252_n.jpg

those are the people who owned that banner after having climbed up to pose for photos with it. They own all the other crudely drawn banners in the shot, and had 6 in total - none of the others referred to Froome or even to cycling, that I could tell.

I arrived at corner 10 at around 11am. At that point there were a handful of Irish there. There were some Irish flags hanging from the mesh along the wall (some can be seen in that shot above). The impression I got was that those French guys had been there for some time, at least since the night before. The guys who organised the Irish Corner effort had camped up there the night before so they would probably know for sure. They (french guys) had a van that was parked in amongst a line of camper vans, and those camper vans had been in place for a number of days before the race arrived.

It should also be noted, and its a point that was conveniently ignored by Walsh, there was a pro-Froome banner a little further up the corner from the 'Froome Dope' one. I can't recall the exact wording but it was something like 'Its not where you've been, its where you're going.' and Froome in big lettering. The guy who owned that was with a couple of Irish people (there was a massive tricolour that read 'Bristol City' quite close to it, though whether they were the same people I don't know). He had a union jack draped around his shoulders and had a kid of about 9 or 10 with him who was wearing a green morph suit.

Another thing worth noting is that the guys who organised corner 10, and who were there before any of the rest of us, had some Ras gear that was given to them by an post to hand out. They handed it out to anyone who was in the vicinity. There were 2 french kids wearing Ras t-shirts (though none of the french guys in the group from the photo above were, at any point, wearing anything Ireland/Ras related (with the exception of 1 who I will get to in due course).

Initially, when we arrived, it was clear that there were more than just Irish people at the corner. There were a number of British, a number of French, and a couple of guys from the Ivory Coast (who located themselves there due to the similarities in our flags). It wasn't something we paid much heed to. In time though this one bunch of French guys started to make themselves noticed. There was a bit of banter between them and the Irish, all good natured. Early in the day there were scores of cyclists passing by, doing the climb before the race arrived. The french lads started singling out people in Sky gear, and squirted them with water. I didn't notice that they were using syringes to squirt until much later when I was standing closer to them. But, it was still all very playful. It got to a stage where some Irish lads would should 'Sky', whenever anyone passed by, and the french lads would proceed to squirt water at them.

Just to add too that the numbers of Irish reported as being at Irish Corner were greatly exaggerated. It was probably closer to 150/200 than 1000. My own feeling was that there were more people there an hour before the race arrived than when the race passed, but I could be wrong. It just felt that some of the crowd had moved on, and I had heard some speak of heading up to Dutch corner.

When the race arrived there were a handful of riders off the front (Van Garderen, Riblon, Voight, etc). They passed by individually. The groups behind were still all together so it wasn't like a long, drawn-out procession. Froome was safely in the main bunch with most of his team-mates still around him. It passed by quickly enough and the subsequent groups on the road weren't too far behind at that point.

I didn't really notice anything untowards during that first pass. It didn't even occur to me that something might happen. Once the riders were gone, it was then the long line of team/support cars. The french lads had filled a bucket with water from a paddling pool located in front of their van (they were using this to fill the syringes also) and dumped it over the windscreen of a Sky team car. They did it a second time to the next Sky team car. It was a big enough bucket and so a fair bit of water got dumped on them. A friend of mine mentioned that one of the windows of the Sky cars was open at the time, though I didn't notice that myself.

When any Sky support vehicle had passed prior to that there was a bit of friendly slagging coming from the Irish. By 'friendly' I mean booing (but not in any vitriolic sense) and pointing thumbs towards the ground. It typically drew a smile from the people in the vehicles - taken in the spirit intended.

It was really the second time the race came passed that things kicked off. The french guys weren't really discrete about what they were planning. They were keeping out of sight of the gendarmes, but not out of sight of the people around. After the race passed first time around they all got into their vans (apart from one guy and one girl who was with them), and began 'suiting up'. By 'suiting up' I mean they were getting into full surgical gear. They had surgical masks, hats and gowns on, and they were taping syringes to each other's gown (I'll forward you pics of this).

They had finished dressing and were waiting in the van for the race to come by - from their van they could see both sides of corner 10 and so had plenty of time, once they saw the riders approaching, to all be out of the van and do whatever it was they had planned.

Its obvious enough anyway, from the location of the helicopters, how close the race is.

I could see Frome approaching though a gap behind their van. At the same time I noticed some commotion kicking off at the van. An english guy and 2 english women had noticed what the french lads had planned and they ran over and held the van door shut. There was a minor scuffle but at that point the english outnumbered the french outside of the van. Eventually they managed to overpower the english though. Froome was almost by them and they started panicing in the van. From what I could see, the french guy outside the van started pulling the handle of the van door at the same time the lads inside were pulling the handle from the inside. However they managed it they broke the door and locked themselves in. They couldn't get out the back door as the car behind was parked too close for them to have clearance to open it.

Froome cycled past, oblivious to everything that happened. I doubt he'll have mentioned anything bad having happened during that second pass, as those french guys were out of the picture.

One of the french guys got into the front of the van and released the handbrake. It rolled dangerously forward a few feet - there was a lot of shouting when this happened as it could have been very dangerous. They had moved forward enough to get the back door open, at which point they all piled out of the van. They ran straight over to the english guy who had held the door shut (who was still in the vicinity), and started laying into him. He took a couple of punches but mostly held them off pretty well - the 2 women who had also held the van door shut had placed themselves between him and the french. A couple of Irish people also stepped in to act as peacemakers.

A gendarme ran up from the corner when he saw what was happening. When he did things died down for a bit. But it was fairly clear the french lads were livid. They made a surge past the gendarme and started laying into him again. At this point 2 riders were on the corner. The fight surged out onto the road. One rider, I didn't see who, managed to avoid the ruck. The other rider, Alexandre Geniez, wasn't so lucky. His front wheel hit the back of the leg of one of the french guys and he almost fell. He had to clip out and was looking about wondering what the hell was going on. I ran over to him and shouted 'go, go', and pointed up the hill. He asked me to push him and I nodded that I would. Myself and one of the Lakeside guys pushed him about 10 or 20 yards up the hill until he got himself back into a rhythm.

A couple of other gendarmes then located themselves beside the french lad's van. The race was pretty much gone by then and the aggro had burned itself out. They did all run over to the other side of the road where the pro-Froome banner (the one I mentioned before) hung, and they pulled it down. I looked for the guy who owned it but couldn't see him. Nor did I see him at any point after that.

One of the gendarmes asked the british people involved in the fight to walk down the hill to his car. He started taking their details. I overheard the english guy saying that he noticed what the french lads were doing during the first pass of the race (running alongside froome with the syringes), that he took photos of it and had shown it to the police. And because they failed to take any action, he had to do what he did to stop them. If I didn't know any better it seemed like the french lads had managed to turn the complaint against the english guy, saying he broke the door of their van (which he in no way did).

That was the end of it really. It was unsavoury, but I suppose no real harm done. Until Walsh's article.

I will send a follow-up mail with a series of photos showing some of what happened. We didn't take any of the fight itself for fear of antagonsing the french lads. They looked like they'd be set off fairly easily so we were careful not to make matters any worse.

Morrisseeee

elduggo wrote: »

this is an account of what I saw happen last thursday week on alpe d'huez

Fair play, great account of what happened, I was wondering how they had managed to lock themselves in & who had snuffed them out.

Now, Mr Walsh, put that in your pipe and smoke it

elduggo

thanks. Just to put that piece into context (references to follow-up mails, etc), that was an e-mail I sent both to Shane Stokes and stickybottle to explain things as I saw them. It tallies with many of the other accounts I read of the day and is backed up by the photos and videos that were made available.

Walsh was on twitter against last night saying that Richie Porte has told him that the abuse he received on corner 10 was *not* from French people. He doesn't say it was Irish people but I think that is largely what people will interpret it as.

Again I'm amazed by this. There is a photo of Porte going by on pass 1 with a big smile on his face. And we have a video of him going by on pass 2 and its clear to see that no one goes near him.

As I said in my piece above, all the trouble riders reported (apart from Geniez) will have been on pass 1. Nothing happened on pass 2. And the main difference between the 2? Those french lads were locked in their van.

We know who those people were. They used a company van and its not difficult to find the company. We also have photos of them. If there was enough of a will to do so I'm sure someone with the resources at his disposal, as Walsh does, could track these guys down.

I sent a message to team Sky via twitter suggesting they identify the English guy who stopped the 'attack' from taking place. The guy deserves great praise.

Edit: Oh and I guess I protested my innocence to Walsh a little too strongly. I got added to his banned list on twitter last night. Thats me and Lance!

el tel

You'd think Walsh would be better off just buttoning it on the subject before he becomes too liggetty.

Choochtown

I'm not fully informed on the whole saga but am I right in thinking that Walsh has suggested that the "Froome Dope" banner had something to do with the Irish supporters?

My French isn't great (not as good as a TDF journalist's surely) but even I can see from the picture that there is an accent over the "e" of dope making "Froome Dopé" presumably meaning Doped Froome. It's very unlikely an Irish supporter would display a banner written in French and Walsh should know this.

pelevin

elduggo wrote: »

this is an account of what I saw happen last thursday week on alpe d'huez

Thanks a lot for that piece. Walsh has truly disgraced himself. Shat on his own people to please a British audience, and in the process deflect from an article devoid of substance.

BryanL

It's hardly Hillsborough.
I was on the climb near the top, some people were booing Froome, big deal, heckling is a part of sport, it's not for me but it happens. I can see how in the midst of 100,000's of supporters, some drunk and boisterous and 2 climbs there'd be incidents that'd happen and be difficult to report on accurately.
I had a great day and the article doesn't take from that or alter my view of Walsh.

Sky with all their preparation seemed to have been blind sided by a normal alpe dheuz reception. Not everyone is a fan of tours being won by teams riding SRM tempo , C'est La Vie?
Bryan

Captain Havoc

Bringing jump suits and syringes isn't something you think of after a skin-full at the the side of the road. The banners, syringes, etc... were brought up there.

gordongekko

Captain Havoc wrote: »

Bringing jump suits and syringes isn't something you think of after a skin-full at the the side of the road. The banners, syringes, etc... were brought up there.

they had a camper van. Some people get up to all sorts in the bedroom

Captain Havoc

gordongekko wrote: »

they had a camper van. Some people get up to all sorts in the bedroom

Did they borrow it from Dr. Ferrari?

petethedrummer

A great days craic was had by all.

el tel

Inquitus wrote: »

These lads did.

Haha, I know these two.

I've heard a few mentions of guys from the Ivory Coast, but we're there genuinely African fellas at the corner? Those two above are from Antrim.

Brendan Hennessy

I was kindly reminded of this piece I wrote abour Alpe d'Huez (thanks Pat). Apt for the day that's in it.

Brendan Hennessy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/85539897#Comment_85539897

I was kindly reminded of this piece I wrote abour Alpe d'Huez (thanks Pat). Apt for the day that's in it.