furiousferret

So, I was at Redondo Beach today for the final stage which was great. I was at the first turn after the start, and the volunteers were doing a great job with crowd control, however.

On the second lap this older guy (in his 60's) jumps the line and get out about 10 feet into the street and kneels down with his camera right as the peloton showed up. People in the crowd were screaming at him to move, but to no avail. Since we were on a turn the riders were coming in tight and a T-Mobile rider had to move to avoid him, and the guy had to dive out of the way to avoid getting hit by other riders. I can't blame the staff for it as they were putting out another fire as the peloton came in but it struck a nerve with me. I also heard someone tossed a bottle into the road causing a crash.

At first I was ashamed of the Freddish of the US fans, but that stuff happens at the euro events too.

UmneyDurak

It takes a lot of calm and patience to manage the crowd. You need to be firm and polite otherwise it can get out of control really quick. When I marshaled in prologue, I could smell alcohol from few feet away from some of the spectators.

Guest

You need cops. Cops and gates. And fans who can knock the **** out of dumbasses that interfere with the cyclists and placing them in harms way.

Koffee

squeegy200

I was standing alongside the road on Stage 7 next to some of the event volunteers. We were well off to the side about 500m from the finishline. I was causght off guard as the bunch sprint was right up against the curb and I had to take a step backwards to narrowly miss becoming a news story.

Those guys approach at 40+mph (Some reports said 50mph+) which is much too quick to jump out of the way.

Cleave

Hi,

I was a volunteer at the corner of Catalina and Gertruda. We were trying to keep the race safe by:

1. Keeping people off of the road
2. Keeping cyclists from running over pedestrians on the sidewalk.

Besides the fast-moving racers, the vehicles that weree on course were moving very fast and appearing randomly. Nevertheless, people were wanting to wander across the street wherever they pleased. I can't tell you how many times people ignored us. Fortunately, there were a few times that the local police saw what was happening and went to "talk" with these people. It made a bit of an impact on the crowd.

Also, cyclists seemed to want to play chicken with pedestrians on the sidewalk. We would ask them to walk their bikes but several either ignored us or were belligerent.

airsoft510

where i was there was some volunteers. they couldnt stop people from stepping on the street to get a closer view so a cop comes in and threatons to give people tickets for standing on the road