What's all this about? Stage 10 of the Giro, Richie Porte of Team Sky is in 3rd position on the GC, and just 8km from the end, he punctures.
It's a bad time to puncture - the race is on, it's on a roundabout, so he skids off the road on the wrong side (ie the left side) and all his team mates are now ahead of him, and no sign of the team car.
Disaster!
But wait! O'rica to the rescue! Simon Clarke of O'rica (who happens to be a close personal friend of Richie) does the unthinkable, he gives his front wheel to a bloke from a different team, to the accompaniment of cheers and tears from the watching crowds. Porte cycles on and gets in safely, having lost 47 seconds. Clarke waits for his team car, gets a new wheel and presumably a slap on the wrist, and gets in a bit later.
All seems to be well, but later that evening Dave Brailsford of Sky is summoned to the UCI tent and given a 2-minute penalty and a fine for breaking UCI rule 12.1.040 which prohibits "non-regulation assistance to a rider from another team". This puts a spanner in the works for Porte, who is now pushed down to 12th place on GC. Simon Clarke is also fined and penalised, but as he was 28 minutes down anyway, he's not too fussed by that, although he is no doubt terminally embarrassed by having possibly ruined Sky's attempt to win the Giro.
Outrage on Twitter! Lots of stamping of feet! Boo to the UCI!
On the face of it, penalising a GC contender for this action seems a bit small-minded, especially as earlier in the race, Sky's team car gave a wheel to Gianni Meerkat (Schlecklander Pet) of Ettix-Quickstep, who was punctured and stuck without a team car. Did Sky get penalised for that? No. Did Meersman get penalised? No. So it seems a bit unfair to penalise Richie Porte.
On the other hand, if I were in charge of O'rica I'd have something to say to a rider who takes himself out of the race like that: it doesn't matter that the rider himself was 28mins down, and that the team don't actually have anyone in the GC, it is still wrong for a rider to voluntarily give themselves a delay of several minutes.
Another aspect of this is to ask why there wasn't a Sky rider nearby to give Richie a wheel.
In the photo of the event:
... you can clearly see a Sky rider coming hovering, ready to pace Richie back on, so it would only have been a few seconds more for Richie to have waited for a team-mate to get back to him - although I rather think there is a rule saying that riders are not allowed to ride back along the route (this does not apply after they have crossed the finish line, of course), so they would probably have been penalised for that anyway.
The conspiracy theorists are saying that Richie is probably going to O'rica next year, so his future team members and fellow Antipodeans are looking out for him in preparation, which is plausible.
As an aside, I would comment that the UCI should not be surprised to see a rider being helped by a fellow countryman, as there seems to be this weird convention in cycling that the on-screen graphics always tell us a rider's nationality by showing his national flag, but don't always show the team name. This has always struck me as odd, and would seem to imply that the race organisers/UCI are more interested in the country than in the team.
However, the bottom line is that the rule was broken, and that's that: if Contador had punctured without a team-mate or car, and had taken a wheel from another team, we would all have been screaming blue murder about cheating, so perhaps we should all follow the example of nice Mr Brailsford, and Richie himself, who are being very sensible and grown-up about it: they have ruefully accepted the penalty and the fine, and have admitted that they broke the rule, although Dave Brailsford did make the point about helping Ettix and not being penalised for that.
I will admit here and now, I have not actually trawled through the UCI's soul-sucking rule book to read the rule in full for myself. I suspect that the UCI are making a distinction between a team car handing out a wheel to another team's rider, well, that's their business: but for one team's rider to halt his own race and give a wheel to a rival, that takes it one step too far.
Richie says that he was not aware of the rule, as does Simon Clarke, who said something like "at the speeds we are going, you have about less than one second to make a decision, and I saw him there and just decided to give him my wheel." Dave Brailsford doesn't actually say whether he knew the rule beforehand or not, but interestingly, I saw a brief interview with Micheal Rogers, another Aussie rider, riding with Stinkoff, in which he said something like "I was actually aware of that rule owing to something mumble mumble some months ago..."
Cut to the Stinkoff training camp.
A long room, devoid of furniture apart from two dozen simple folding desks and chairs, with bare light bulbs swinging from long cords and casting deep shadows into the corners of the room.
The door opens, and in clatter the Stinkoff riders, walking like penguins in their cleats, still in full lycra. They sit, and the small amount of nervous chatter dies down.
A bell rings, and a soigneur walks round, handing out examination papers and pencils, one per person, with a stern warning to give the pencil back afterwards. The riders bend to their task, and soon there is an air of intense concentration in the room.
On the other side of a large sheet of one-way class, Mr Tinkoff (yes, I know it's Tinkov, it's my way of showing disrespect, ok?) leans back in his comfy chair, sipping a fine liqueur and smoking a fat cigar. (He's probably eating a doughnut as well, who knows.) He has a copy of the examination paper, and is reading it with all signs of enjoyment, laughing out loud from time to time at a particular question.
His DS pokes a head round the door. "Err, Mr Tinkoff, sir," he begins, "Is it really necessary for them to know all the UCI rules?"
"Yessss, my precious..." hisses Mr Tinkoff, "one day it might be very necssssessssary...."
Superb!!!!
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