Originally Posted by
Parson
Laggard, it sounds like you don't know the full story. Apparently the officials were going nuts and telling Porte not to take any food, but he did it anyway.
Any articles that mention this? Not arguing, just trying to find out more.
Reason I ask is because I can't imagine officials even suspecting that a rider is trying to take on food until the food is already in the rider's hands. It takes all of 3 seconds to hand off an energy gel. So unless one of these officials could read minds, he wasn't in the position to say anything until the deed had already been done. Yes, I know that Froome raised his hand, but even the Eurosport commentators suspected that it was a mechanical issue. The cameras zoomed in on Froome's rear tire.
He could certainly tell Porte to stop taking on any more gels, but by then, he already had a handful of them. What's he going to do, throw em on the ground? I'm sure he stopped there, which is why their penalty was minimized.