Roman Vintfeld

Doull claims Kittel's 'lethal' disc brake bike almost caused serious injury | Cyclingnews.com

evan326

wow
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topslop1

Very interesting to see the fight between MFG and folks actually riding the bikes.... Yes popcorn indeed.

Roman Vintfeld

Only one bicycle with discs in there too. What are the odds?

Dan333SP

I wonder what the orange discoloration between the two sliced bits of the shoe could be from?

Dan333SP

Disc coloration?

FlashBazbo

Hmmm. I wonder how the spokes allowed the disk to be that far toward the center of his shoe. Were the spokes gone?

And does he not know that this year's disks have rounded edges?

If the disk were being powered at a high rpm at the time, I could see one eventually wearing a hole in a shoe. But if there's not power being applied (as in a crash situation), the disk/wheel would stop spinning long before the disk wore a hole in the shoe. The shoe itself acts as a brake, folks.

I smell the delicate bouquet of bovine excrement.

Roman Vintfeld

Probably that. Or old blood from its previous victim.

FlashBazbo

I think that's the key clue to whatever penetrated the shoe. Clearly wasn't a brake disk, for any number of reasons. (Placement of the cut, the rounded edge on this year's brake disks, the wide scrape on the shoe, the lack of any electric motors to drive the disk (oops), his foot being on the wrong side of the bike to be cut by somebody else's brake disk, etc., etc., etc.) Maybe road debris -- a piece of glass on the road?

WhyFi

This is what I've been wondering, too - discs only protrude so far from the spokes and you would think that that would mitigate a lot of the potential for serious danger. As far as the potential for minor danger, such as seen here, okay, but weigh that vs the benefits.

WalksOn2Wheels

So what's your theory? Dude kept a knife in his back pocket for just the right occasion?

FlashBazbo

My theory? Road debris. There's a wide scrape that runs over the cuts. (A disk wouldn't make that mark and neither would a knife.) Maybe a piece of glass on the road.

EDIT: Now that I've seen the post-crash video . . . he crashed in the last km against the barriers on his left. Maybe a piece of the bracketing / supports on the barriers did it. It appears that the barriers are the only thing he hit to his left. And the discoloration may have come from scraping the banners that covered the barriers there.

At the end of the crash, the guy's bike, several feet, and Kittel are between him and Kittel's bike. He's positioned well behind and probably 15 feet from Kittel's bike. Three other bikes end up a lot closer to him than Kittel's bike did. Unless Kittel's brake disk did some kind of "grassy knoll" gymnastics, this isn't a plausible explanation. On the other hand, the barrier was knocked out of position and the banner was partially torn down right where the guy ended up. My theory is that the barrier / supports / clamps did it.

WalksOn2Wheels

Ok, I'm too curious. The highlight video shows some brief footage of the aftermath starting around 1:41. I don't even see where Kittel landed, but Doull is clearly pulling himself from underneath the road barrier. Highly likely that there could have been a sharp edge on the bottom of that thing for some reason. It would also account for the large rust colored rub mark along the shoe.

WalksOn2Wheels

BUT, I can totally understand his frustration. He's in the heat of the moment receiving treatment just after a crash and sees a super clean cut in his shoe. Kind of scary when you make a living pushing pedals with your feet. Without going back and looking at any video or anything, he's wondering what the hell he could have gotten that cut from and then he realizes the very popular topic of disc brakes and knows Kittel was involved in the crash. You can see where his mind might go from there.

Racing Dan

So let them ride without brakes, or what ever they fancy. What ever happens in a pileup is not applicable to general road riding anyway.

enzo thecat

Those road barriers are concrete aren't they? Hard to imagine that something sharp would be sticking out of the concrete. Those slices were done from another bike although maybe not a disc.

dalava

you win the internets today!

ARPRINCE

@0:26 it looks like Kittel was on his right side. The shoe had a cut on the left so I'm not sure why Kittel is getting blamed. Kittel ended up far away from him after the collision @0:39



VIDEO - Team Sky's Owain Doull suffers nasty bum injury in Abu Dhabi - Abu Dhabi Tour - Video Eurosport

DXchulo

How much difference do rounded edges really make? If you have a thin piece of metal (possibly very hot) spinning at high RPM, it's still going to do a lot of damage.

Covers would look Fredly, but seem like the only real solution to me.

WalksOn2Wheels

Check out the highlight video in the link from the original post. It's one of those temporary metal gate style barriers.

WhyFi

In woodworking, cutting/scraping tools with 90° cutting edges are not uncommon - they can be quite sharp. Easing the edges on a ~1.5mm disc would blunt a lot of the cutting potential, hot and spinning or not.

FlashBazbo

No. They are tubular steel with flat steel supports and with steel clamps bolting them together, end to end.

WalksOn2Wheels

Yeah, a careful look at that tells you he didn't even hit Kittel, but he DID hit the fence.

FlashBazbo

Agreed. He might want to blame Kittel for putting him into the barriers, but he never came close to Kittel's brake disk -- not with his left foot, anyway. He hit the barriers pretty hard -- knocked them back several feet. That's the only thing he hit with his left foot.

enzo thecat

Thanks. I see it now and I agree, coulda been the metal barrier.