Sportive Sabotage...

Tenzor07

Yikes, horrifying story about a sportive in Wales where drawing pins were placed on the roads and disguised to try and cause injury to riders...

http://road.cc/content/news/131686-rider-punctures-80kph-saboteurs-target-valleys-velo-sportive

smacl

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Yikes, horrifying story about a sportive in Wales where drawing pins were placed on the roads and disguised to try and cause injury to riders...

http://road.cc/content/news/131686-rider-punctures-80kph-saboteurs-target-valleys-velo-sportive

Seem to remember something like this on the WW200 about 4 years ago.

Tenzor07

Malicious acts like this really make me wonder why there's such an irrational hatred of bicyclists.. mad!

At another UK sportive, nails were strewn along a stretch of road in Bransgore, Hampshire, as more than 20 participants in the Wiggle Sportive suffered punctures.

And in 2012 French police investigated an attack on the Tour de France after tacks were scattered at stage 14 of the race.

Tenzor07

Yikes!

-man-smears-excrement-on-saddles

furiousox

I was on a sportive yesterday and on several occasions cars came up behind guys riding 2 abreast and beeped them out of it.
Annoying and a bit depressing.

iwillhtfu

Link does not work correctly and it is 10min long so uses alot of bandwidth.

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dx5fPTS_uU&list=UUhSrGK5SwzkZetV-yoOZQdg&index=4

Incredible the number of punctures. What kind of bad egg would do that lucky there wasn't a bad accident.

TheBlaaMan

Not unheard of. The descent off the Maama Rd on the Kelly 160 in Waterford last year was strewn - unlikely by accident - with tacks. Myself and three other punctured at the same time

Darkglasses

Real-life trolls - they thrive on attention too I think.

laraghrider

smacl wrote: »

Seem to remember something like this on the WW200 about 4 years ago.

Indeed. Coming up through rocky valley the section where it passes a couple of houses had thumb tacks all over the road. I have no clue how I made it through but literally about 8-10 around me all got punctures. Horrible thing to do.

Fian

laraghrider wrote: »

Indeed. Coming up through rocky valley the section where it passes a couple of houses had thumb tacks all over the road. I have no clue how I made it through but literally about 8-10 around me all got punctures. Horrible thing to do.

Horrible thing to do, but at least it wasn't on a descent like the one OP mentions.

I guess if I lived on the road beyond enniskerry and didn't cycle I would be irritated by the number of cyclists taking up the narrow roads around there on weekends. Which does not excuse it of course, but i can see local residents are inconvenienced by cyclists up and down those roads.

Not suggesting it was a local resident who dropped the thumb tacks btw, just musing that it was someone who is irritated by cyclists.

ragazzo

Fian wrote: »

Horrible thing to do, but at least it wasn't on a descent like the one OP mentions.

I guess if I lived on the road beyond enniskerry and didn't cycle I would be irritated by the number of cyclists taking up the narrow roads around there on weekends. Which does not excuse it of course, but i can see local residents are inconvenienced by cyclists up and down those roads.

Not suggesting it was a local resident who dropped the thumb tacks btw, just musing that it was someone who is irritated by cyclists.

The traffic constantly passing my house could be classed as irriting or very annoying depending on my humour at the particular time. Sometimes I have to wait 5 minutes or more to proceed out from my driveway. It is quite inconvenient.
I have never thought of breaking bottles on the road or slashing car tyres. It is not acceptable behaviour in any circumstances regardless of annoyance factor or inconvenience.

Fian

ragazzo wrote: »

The traffic constantly passing my house could be classed as irriting or very annoying depending on my humour at the particular time. Sometimes I have to wait 5 minutes or more to proceed out from my driveway. It is quite inconvenient.
I have never thought of breaking bottles on the road or slashing car tyres. It is not acceptable behaviour in any circumstances regardless of annoyance factor or inconvenience.

No, I agree, I wasn't suggesting that it was acceptable at all.

Cookie_Monster

There was an around the mountain race here at the weekend where a bunch of people in a passing car threw beer bottles at the main bunch!
At least one rider came away with a seriously bruised arm, not sure of any other injuries. They got the reg at least and police are chasing it, hopefully something will get done.

jiffybag

Similar incident in Tyrone in August at a local sportive . Prime suspect was a former member of the promoting club. A sad reflection on so called cyclists .

shaka

Sad state of affairs but not unheard of and it's not just the anti cyclist brigade who are at it.
Over the last 12 months I've had TT signs pulled and chucked over the ditch a couple of times when running a club TT , have a good idea who it was but just smile and nod when I see him which I know annoys them more.

We had our signs robbed when running the limerick TT championship a few weeks back. We also had difficulty with one resident on route who accused cyclist of treating residents as second class citizens, on the day he verbally abused a number of the marshals/committee . Turns out organisers or another event that has passed his house for last few years had pissed everyone off the residents by when closing the road- they pulled motorbikes across driveways and were unpleasant ( according to resident) when someone tried to leave their driveways . After talking to him again for a while after the event we got him around to our thinking and asked could he help out the next week in the Munster Hill Climb. Still not found our signs though