Stage One Tour de France Crash

My boys and I have been watching the "recap" coverage on YouTube after each Tour de France stage. It's free (as we don't have cable or any other service to watch the live coverage), and it's a nice 20-30 minute version of all of the most action-packed moments of each 2-4 hour long boring stage. I'm really not into watching cycling, but I'm trying.

On Sunday morning, we watched the recap from day 1, and we saw the TWO big pile-ups. The 2nd one is now becoming a little infamous as someone held up a sign and wasn't paying attention to the race, and she ended up causing a major crash:

Screenshot of the cyclist hitting the sign and causing the pile-up.


The scene a few seconds later. Yikes.

Here's some selected text from this article about the crash:

During the first stage of the race, which spanned 122.9 miles (197.8km) from Brest to Landerneau in France, an unidentified woman wearing a yellow jacket was seen leaning into the road and smiling at cameras with her back to the oncoming cyclists while holding a sign that read “Allez Opi-Omi” (which translates from French and German to “Come on granddad-granny”).

It’s unclear if the woman was purely posing for the television camera, or whether she was also being photographed by someone on the other side of the road.

As the peloton (the main group or pack of riders) arrived at the spot, German cyclist Tony Martin crashed into the woman’s sign, lost his balance, fell sideways into the ground, and caused a chain reaction of crashes that wiped out nearly the entire pack.

Here are 2 funny renderings of the crash:

Someone joked on YouTube that her sign should have said something like "we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warrenty!"

Back to the article:

Most racers were able to free themselves from the tangled mess of bicycles and athletes and continue racing, while other elite cyclists and spectators had to be treated for injuries — one racer, German rider Jasha Sutterlin, had to immediately pull out of the grueling 21-stage race.

One of France’s two national police forces, the National Gendarmerie, says it’s now looking for the woman, who left the scene before authorities arrived.

In a statement released on Facebook, law enforcement stated that they’re hunting for the person responsible for causing “unintentional injuries […] by manifestly deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence.”

Once she’s identified and located, the woman will face serious legal trouble: Tour de France organizers state that they’re planning to sue her.

“We are suing this woman who behaved so badly,” Tour deputy director Pierre-Yves Thouault tells AFP. “We are doing this so that the tiny minority of people who do this don’t spoil the show for everyone.”

Here's video of the crash, and it's played and re-played a bunch in the opening minute (with a clear replay just before the minute mark):


Direct link: youtu.be/fi7rJfSrW58

Finally, here are a few tweets about the crash: