Originally Posted by
CV-6
Sure it was a token fine strictly for face saving purposes. And I will wager Froome did not pay the fine. Would not surprise me if his fellow riders took up a collection to pay it. More likely his team paid it. Does not change the fact the fan endangered the riders and their future livelihoods. If the organizers are going to play that game, they need to do a better job of crowd control to justify levying the fine. The organizers are equally at fault for allowing the situation to exist.
Agree on all point. You do have a situation where any idiot can cause a lot of damage at a moment's notice. I don't really know how you fix that, though. Even in this case, you don't have consensus on whether the runner was causing an actual danger or not from observers, I wouldn't envy being on a board which had to determine which cases were legitimate cases of self defense and which were not, much easier to just hand out blanket token punishments with a generic "no beating fans" policy.
If I were a fellow rider, I'd have chipped in a franc or two to pay his fine, though. Not going to lie, if I knew the extent of my punishment was a $200 fee, there have been a few people in life I probably would have decked
Originally Posted by
KonAaron Snake
I can't remember the specifics (team or game) but NFL players have, in the past, tackled and/or clothes lined fans who ran onto the field. I remember one particularly vicious LB taking a guy's head off, but I can't remember which.
Oh, I'm sure there are many cases where they have gotten away with it, just pointing out there is also precedence in other sports for punishments for taking out inappropriate fans.