Because no one else has mentioned the possibility.

I'm saying that Lance didn't need to crash. Clipping a pedal won't take you out necessarily - we've all clipped pedals, even dug them pretty hard. It's normal business for a pro racer. But you roll a tire, forget it, you're on the deck.

Ze - I agree that it's possible to roll a section of tire. I even mention this in my original "thesis". But check out the vid of the bike when they pick it up. At least 2/3 of the tire is flopping around. I wasn't recording stuff off TV, but they replayed it so many times during the day (and I was sitting in the room the whole day).

Of course I can't find any evidence of the crash from Versus's point of view (which includes shots of the bike after the crash on the car roof). It's really clear to me that the tire wasn't glued on properly. If I was an official and if I was being a hard ass, I'd penalize a rider who showed up at the pits with his whole tire flopping around.

I think it's really interesting that there is simply no mention of the rolled tire, no pictures of the bike after the crash (in the Versus video it shows the rolled tire up there, must be on the race-ready mount, not a fork one), the tire flopping around after the crash, etc. Versus seems to skip the Lance crash on Stage 8 (both the 2nd and 3rd ones), showing instead the initial crash at the beginning of the stage. I think it's very curious that Versus skips the crash that really affected Lance, the one where he hits the deck at 40 mph. Instead they focus on the crash where he dabs with his foot and that's it.

What I don't understand is why no one is questioning the rolled tire. It's like it's been erased. I'm no Google expert but I can't find pictures of that rolled tire thing.

I have no idea why it needs to be "suppressed". But the fact that it seems to have disappeared strikes me as odd.

Personally I think it was simple error, not a conspiracy to take out Lance. But rolled tires get acknowledged - Rudy Dhaenens rolled both tires in the last km of a Tour stage for example, and lost a pretty much guaranteed stage win. There are other examples of that. In this case no one mentions the rolled tire.

cdr