Watch: Tour de France cyclist clocks oppenent mid-race
If you were on a bike in a major race like the Tour de France, and a guy got too close for comfort to your bike in a tightly packed peloton, what would you do?
If your answer is “slug the guy,” move to the front of the line, because you have the mentality of a professional cyclist.
Gianni Moscon exclu du #TDF2018 après avoir frappé un coureur Fortuneo ! pic.twitter.com/JzwOi5l8To
— Tout Le Sport (@toutlesport) July 22, 2018
“Avoir frappé” is the past tense of the French word for hitting someone, not the word used in Bostonian English for a milkshake (a “frappe”), incidentally.
But “Gianni Moscon got kicked out of the Tour de France for giving a Fortuneo member a Boston milkshake” is as good a translation as any considering the liberties the language already takes with reality (“coureur” is French for “runner,” the same root as “courier” in English — anyway, pardon my French).
Moscon was a half mile into Stage 15, part of the most grueling section of the race through the Gallic countryside, where the bicyclists ascend the French Alps and have to fight a literal uphill battle against the limits of their endurance, when he reached out and smacked Fortuneo-Samsic’s Elie Gesbert.
Monday is a rest day for the athletes. Moscon’s Team Sky gets no rest, however, as they get to spend the off day deciding whether or not to fire their rider and, if not, what other punishment they can mete out that would be consistent with the circumstances of the infraction.
This isn’t the first time Moscon’s got himself in l’eau chaud at an event, either.
Last year, his team suspended him and sent him to diversity training after Moscon flung racial epithets at Kevin Reza during the smaller Tour de Romandie in western Switzerland.
Team Sky posted a video response from Moscon to its Twitter account.
A message from @GianniMoscon: pic.twitter.com/pzYVjygHgQ
— INEOS Grenadiers (@INEOSGrenadiers) July 22, 2018
“I’m sorry for today’s incident and I totally regret my actions,” Moscon said. “I would like to personally apologize to Elie Gesbert for the incident on today’s stage. What happened was wrong and was a bad example coming from me to everyone. I want to publicly apologize for what happened to my teammates, everyone involved in Team Sky and everyone involved in the Tour de France.”
The race, meanwhile, moves on. The riders have gone from the Alpine region to the foothills of the Pyrenees, that imposing barrier of crags that forms the border between France and Spain.
And the world’s attention turns to Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome, who are first and second in the standings for the famed yellow jersey but who now must engage a completely different set of skills and level of endurance in the mountains compared to the valleys of the race’s early game.
Moscon, meanwhile, gets to wait and see if his employers serve him up a pink slip.
And the world gets to wonder if maybe cycling would be more fun to watch if there was less “dudes in tight packs riding bikes like a swarm of locusts on wheels” and more “dudes turning it into roller derby and serving each other Boston milkshakes.”
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