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Britain’s David Millar and Australian Mark Renshaw hit out at the “crazy” attitude of the thousands of people who lined the road on the first stage of the Tour de France on Sunday.
The stage ended in a bunch sprint win for Italian Alessandro Petacchi, although the Lampre rider’s win came in the wake of three pile-ups in the closing kilometres.
However even before then, the peloton were given huge challenges as they raced, or tried, on the 223.5 km ride from Rotterdam along the windy North Sea coast south towards Brussels.
The first stage of every Tour de France is usually always fraught with danger, but that is usually down to teams pulling off every stunt imaginable in a bid to grab an all-important stage win.
Millar was among four or five riders who came crashing down when a dog ran out on to the road.
But he admitted he had crashed earlier because some members of the public got too close for comfort.
“Probably the most dangerous thing today was the public, I crashed early on because there were moments the public came leaning right out into the road,” said the Scot.
“That was the scariest thing today, not the winds.
“There was so many hundreds of thousands of people, coming out on to the road and causing the riders to clip them.”
HTC-Columbia rider Renshaw is the lead-out man for British sprint king Mark Cavendish, who was left out of contention for stage victory when he crashed into Oscar Freire in the final two kilometres, also ending the Spaniard’s hopes.
Renshaw, who went on to finish second, later said he was stunned by the way some of the public were encroaching on to the road.
But the Aussie sprinter also pointed the finger at riders whose race nerves seemed to be getting the better of them.
“Generally the day was hectic. I haven’t ridden a race like that. It was crazy, at points it was beyond dangerous,” said Renshaw.
“We were trying to race through those roads at three abreast, and we couldn’t do that.
“(The crowds were) unbelievable for the Tour, but absolutely too dangerous.”
He added: “There was guys going down every five minutes. There were points were were riding 10/15 kilometres an hour, and they were still crashing.”
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