Alex Guino Arias

Let me atleast "try" help explain this to the general public that might be easily fooled. 1. If you're on a wheel of a teammate, especially going into a corner, it's your right to fight for that wheel and stay on it (you do not have to give it up simply because someone next to you is in a yellow jersey). 2. It is extremely hard to try pass someone on the outside of a corner, 99,9% you'll end up 2nd best. 3. 100% of the time if you're on a teammates wheel in a corner, you have the right to fight for that wheel. That also means you drift into the same line as your teammate infront of you (also to maintain the slipstream). She did follows Demi's line, so sorry to burst someone's bubble who thinks she has to cut in sharper, endangering herself, simply to make space for a rider on the outside that is trying to take a line that will get you boxed in. 4. An old discussion that happens regularly in the bunch is - both have brakes, but who is forced to brake first. If you have your handlebar a centimeter ahead of the rider next to you, it normally means the other rider will probably have to feather the breaks first. Also its common knowledge that if you have the inside line, you get the benefit of drifting in the direction you think the best line is (this becomes extremely tactical). 5. Don't be fooled by slow motion helicopter shots. Its like cricket. On camera we can all see the ball and see the ball traveling on TV..but if you're to stand with bat in hand, and someone's bowling to you at 150km/h , you'll probably not even see the ball passing you. The same for a cyclist on the bike, its not as simple from the riders point as view even though it looks simple from the television. 6. Lastly, its completely normal in the final corner of a bike race for a teammate to leave a gap in the corner so your teammate infront of you can solo away. It happens regularly and is defined as tactical brilliance. No one ever complains. But all a sudden in todays stage when Demi's teammate didn't even leave the gap (as bad as she could), some want to call it obstruction and call for penalties ect. Absolutely dilutional stuff. There's absolutely nothing here. On another note, if these incidents were to be defined as obstruction you would destroy the sport of cycling, because that would mean by definition ANY type of obstruction would then have to be penalized. What that basically means is that in a Belgium classic when everyone is fighting for an important corner, half the bunch would already be penalized because the fight for the corner automatically forces you to manuaver and OBSTRUCT riders next to you in order to get ahead of them in the corner. The fight is not pretty and there is a lot of bumping and barging going on (and also rider on the inside often drift outward tactically to cut of rider trying to pass on the outside of the corner. Want to ban that?! Then you might aswell turn our sport into triathlon!