Nearly two years ago, a driver in China narrowly missed death when a runaway circular saw blade impaled the front of his car.
I was reminded of that today after reading about what happened to Owain Doull.
The Sky Team rider crashed with one kilometre remaining in the opening stage of the Abu Dabhi Tour. Normally, that wouldn't elicit much attention--riders crash during races all the time. What is causing controversy, though, is an injury he suffered and, more important, what he believes to be the cause.
When he was being treated for road rash on his back side, he pointed to his foot and showed a cut that was visible through a tear in his sock.
It's unusual, to say the least, for riders to incur that sort of cut on their feet. Even if they are wearing flip-flops, they are unlikely to incur more than some scrapes, painful as those wounds may be.
So what could have cut through Doull's shoe and caused such a wound? He says that it was the rotor of a disc brake. "If anything, I've come off lucky here," he said. "If that'd been my leg, it would have cut straight through it, for sure."
In other words, by a dint of fate, he narrowly avoided--at the very least--the kind of injury Francisco Ventoso suffered last year in the Paris-Roubaix race. The directeur sportif of Movistar, Ventoso's team, said "The cut was so deep you could see the tibia."
That mishap led to a temporary ban on disc brakes in the peloton, which was recently lifted "on a trial basis" according to the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale. Disc brakes were allowed on the condition that the rotors' edges were rounded off. Marcel Kittel, the only rider using disc brakes in the Abu Dabhi tour, was using rounded Shimano rotors after insisting he wouldn't use technology otherwise.
Doull was asked whether he has a stance on disc brakes. "I do now," he said. "In my opinion, unless there are covers on those things, they're pretty lethal."
Others have expressed the opinion that "everybody or nobody" should use them in a race. Whatever one thinks of disc brakes (I have never used them myself, and probably won't unless some compelling reason presents itself.), I think it's fair to ask why Kittel or anyone else saw the need to use them in pancake-flat Abu Dabhi.
I was reminded of that today after reading about what happened to Owain Doull.
The Sky Team rider crashed with one kilometre remaining in the opening stage of the Abu Dabhi Tour. Normally, that wouldn't elicit much attention--riders crash during races all the time. What is causing controversy, though, is an injury he suffered and, more important, what he believes to be the cause.
When he was being treated for road rash on his back side, he pointed to his foot and showed a cut that was visible through a tear in his sock.
It's unusual, to say the least, for riders to incur that sort of cut on their feet. Even if they are wearing flip-flops, they are unlikely to incur more than some scrapes, painful as those wounds may be.
So what could have cut through Doull's shoe and caused such a wound? He says that it was the rotor of a disc brake. "If anything, I've come off lucky here," he said. "If that'd been my leg, it would have cut straight through it, for sure."
In other words, by a dint of fate, he narrowly avoided--at the very least--the kind of injury Francisco Ventoso suffered last year in the Paris-Roubaix race. The directeur sportif of Movistar, Ventoso's team, said "The cut was so deep you could see the tibia."
That mishap led to a temporary ban on disc brakes in the peloton, which was recently lifted "on a trial basis" according to the sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale. Disc brakes were allowed on the condition that the rotors' edges were rounded off. Marcel Kittel, the only rider using disc brakes in the Abu Dabhi tour, was using rounded Shimano rotors after insisting he wouldn't use technology otherwise.
Doull was asked whether he has a stance on disc brakes. "I do now," he said. "In my opinion, unless there are covers on those things, they're pretty lethal."
Others have expressed the opinion that "everybody or nobody" should use them in a race. Whatever one thinks of disc brakes (I have never used them myself, and probably won't unless some compelling reason presents itself.), I think it's fair to ask why Kittel or anyone else saw the need to use them in pancake-flat Abu Dabhi.
