Brandon McNulty, an American rider with the UAE Emirates XRG team, was involved in a collision with a car on Tuesday, on his way to the start of the Tour de France's Stage 16 time trial, according to ESPN.
By the account given, an angry motorist overtook McNulty and then stopped the vehicle in front of him, and the rider collided with the car. He was not hurt, and was due to race the time trial later the same day.
What happened
The incident took place near Thonon-les-Bains, in the French Alps, where Stage 16 was a 26.1-kilometre individual time trial run beside Lake Geneva, on the Swiss border.
The motorist was a member of the public, unconnected with the race. That distinction matters: this was not a crash within the event or involving a race vehicle, but an ordinary road-rage confrontation that happened to involve a professional cyclist during the world's biggest bike race.
The team's chief executive, Mauro Gianetti, played it down. He told Eurosport it was "nothing so big, but it was not nice."
Why a minor incident is worth noting
On its own, a rider colliding with a car and walking away unhurt is a small story. It is worth reporting for two reasons.
The first is who McNulty rides for. He is a teammate of Tadej Pogačar, the overall race leader, who held a lead of around five minutes going into the stage. Riders in that position are domestiques whose job is to protect and support the leader, and an injury to one of them, even from something as random as a roadside argument, can affect a team's control of the race. That it came to nothing is the relevant fact.
The second is what it illustrates about professional road cycling, which is uniquely exposed in this way. Unlike almost any other elite sport, its athletes train and often travel to stages on open public roads, sharing space with ordinary traffic. That exposure is a running source of danger, most of it far more serious than this: riders are regularly hurt, and sometimes killed, in collisions with vehicles. An incident that ends with a shrug and a race start is, in that context, a reminder of the risk rather than an instance of it.
The race goes on
The Tour was due to finish in Paris on July 26. McNulty took his place in the time trial as scheduled, and the general classification continued to be led by Pogačar.
For the rider, the episode amounts to an unpleasant few minutes on the way to work. For the sport, it is one more small illustration of a hazard that its competitors live with every day, and which usually attracts attention only when it ends far worse than this.
