Commissaires?

Not an expert on sprint racing but can anyone explain exactly why Cavendish and Hushovd were DQ'd from the intermediate sprint today - no one else seemed to think this was a problem? Will the rider who squeezed Cav onto the barrier at the finish also be punished?? Are the Commissaires a bunch of half wits???

No. No as he's French and not Cavendish. Yes.

Likewise very confused. If there is no leaning and jostling there will be no sprints. We may as well just do time trials. Its a joke.

To be fair to them, the "leaning and jostling" was verging on blatant barging and head-banging a la Renshaw last year.

They probably want to stamp it out before things degenerate.

(And, of course, the riders weren't French!)

Saw the clip of Cav's push and thought that it looked deliberate. It wasn't as if he was leaning from side to side whilst cycling, but leaned into Hushovd for a continued period of time.

I know he lost ten points, in the big scheme of things how important is that to his challenge for the green jersey?

Enforcer, it could be crucial, ten points is a lot to lose. The way the sprints are set out this year, Cav has to go for the intermediate ones, not just the stage win to gain enough points as possible. I have a horrible feeling this is going to prove costly. I mean, what if he misses out on green by just 7 points or something? He's going to be irate.

I watched replays of the "incident" quite a few times and can't for the life of me see why Cav and Thor were DQ'd from that sprint. You see things like that happening all the time in all the stages, it's just a tad ridiculous to me.

I notcied Cav won an intermediate sprint, last season he didn't bother with these. I'd assumed he realised these points could have won him the jersey last year.

If it happens all the time then the decision to dock points is dodgy, but as I said it looks to me as if Cav made a decision to lean into him.

The points system has been changed this year so that the intermediate sprints are worth much more and more riders count. Last year only the first 3-5 riders got points which was normally the break away. This year its 15 riders so the sprinters need to limit their loses or gain against the others.

For example the intermediate sprint that Cav won the best of the non breakway got him 10 points and winning the stage was 45 points. Not sure what he got for 5th but the inters make a big difference.

Enforcer wrote:If it happens all the time then the decision to dock points is dodgy, but as I said it looks to me as if Cav made a decision to lean into him.

Hushovd, according to Cavendish, admitted fault and asked that it just be him who was deducted points and not Cav - it does happen all the time though, if you look at the sprint at the end something pretty much the same happens with no action taken though. Hushovd came off his line and squeezed Cav, leaving him with no where to go, Cav then pushed back against him to both avoid crashing and try to hold his line. It is pretty dodgy - it looks like a case of taking the chance to punish two big names early on to send a message, even though they didn't deserve it.