Finding. Six Belgian riders go out together to look at the world championship course. Remco Evenepoel, Alec Segaert and Rune Herregodts are on their time-trial bikes; the event is held on Sunday in Montreal. Tiesj Benoot, Quinten Hermans and Maxim Van Gils ride with them. Duration, around three hours. Average, 36 kilometres per hour. Benoot put the video on Strava.
In the footage, the group stops on a gravel track. A deer crosses. The group rides on.
I opened the folder. First. A training ride is not an event: no classification, no time cut, no number to read. Second. The rulebook provides for a great many stops — the level crossing, the neutralisation, the race vehicle, the broom wagon — and it provides nothing at all for an animal at liberty on a gravel track. Third. The order of events was respected: first the deer, then the ride.
I am asked whether this is an incident. It is not. It is a stop, and a stop is compliant as long as it has a reason. That one was crossing. I note the duration, I note the average, I note that nobody raised their arms. What I do not note is that I watched the video twice, and the second time for no administrative reason.
That leaves the question of the kopman. Evenepoel is presented as the leader of the Belgian selection; the rulebook does not know the word, it knows the classification column, and a course recon has no classification. I therefore file the ride outside every column, with the appropriate entry: compliant.
Three hours together before a time trial, that’s a ride where nobody is counting anything. At the front, I couldn’t tell you: there was no front, there was a deer and six lads waiting. De koers, the race, as they say in Flanders, starts on Sunday.
It’s true, we checked: Sporza.
