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Be a good sport

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Every hero needs a villain. Two British sports stars have recently found out the hard way that their friendly rivals are anything but.

I may not be an expert on the Tour de France, but I do know how much falling off a bicycle hurts. Teenage years spent larking around on two wheels left their marks, but my top speed would look like I was a slow-motion replay, compared to the rate the skinny-wheeled professionals go.

Which is precisely why I feel for Chris Froome. When I parted company with my ride, or went over the handlebars because I inadvertently put my foot in the spokes of my front wheel (true story), I largely hurt my pride and got a few grazes.

When Chris was elbowed sideways into the barriers at high speed, he didn’t have the 1970s armour that is a sturdy pair of flared jeans and a hand-knitted tank top. His flimsy Lycra was scant protection as he bounced along the road, and I can confirm no-one ever cycled across my head, either.

Froome apparently “gets on well” with Peter Sagan, whose aggressive move resulted him being disqualified from stage four of the event, earlier this week. A patched up Froome crossed the finish line, but a fractured shoulder and stitches in a finger suggest that warm, friendly, rivalry may well have turned distinctly frosty.

Slovakian Sagan apologised, correctly observing that “it’s not nice to crash like that”. A World Champion and a master of understatement. The incident happened in Vittel, which leads me nicely on to bad guy number two...

Whirl back in time a couple of weekends, and another battling Brit was on the receiving end of some decidedly un-sportsman-like behaviour. In an action-packed Azerbaijan Grand Prix, F1 multiple champion Lewis Hamilton was tootling around behind a Safety Car, whilst assorted bits of very expensive car parts were swept off the track following an earlier incident.

As a race is about to get underway again, the driver in front gets to dictate the pace as the Safety Car pulls in, and they can all resume racing after they cross the start line. Hamilton exited a corner, only to be tail-ended by a surprised Sebastian Vettel. The furious German immediately pulled alongside the startled Hamilton and swerved into him, before complaining over the radio to his team that the Mercedes star has “brake-tested” him.

Vettel received a time penalty, but made it clear in post-race interviews that he felt Hamilton was to blame for the incident. Another friendly relationship ruined, then, as Hamilton described Vettel’s actions as “disgusting”.

A subsequent investigation by the sport’s governing body concluded that Vettel’s penalty at the time was sufficient, and the chastened Ferrari driver has issued an apology, accepting blame and acknowledging the poor example he set.

Whilst Sagan and Vettel have rightly been penalised and vilified, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t add to the thrill of watching sport. Every great story needs it’s bad guy. Just try not to get in their way.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in The Mail, on the 7th of July 2017. "Bad sports make such good copy" was the title used for it online, whilst the print edition ran with "The bad guys come good".

 I'm not a cycling fan, so have no understanding of the dynamic between Froome and Sagan, but F1 is definitely my sport of choice. It's therefore been interesting to see the friendly rivalry between Hamilton and Vettel, in the first season to have drivers from different teams evenly matched for several years.

 Hamilton's relationship with former team-mate Rosberg deteriorated rapidly over the last couple of years, and it seemed inevitable that the Seb/Lewis bromance would crash and burn and some point. And boy, did it. And it was glorious.

(CD A-Z: Pink Floyd's hard-to-love "The Final Cut".)
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