Boston Beatdown

No, not that Boston Beatdown, I'm talking about Theo Bos. Isn't everyone? My old friend Coco asked about it in a comment on the last post, and I honestly have been thinking about it quite a bit, watching and watching again the slow motion video that was recently posted on Youtube:

My take on it is that Theo Bos is absolutely NOT a field sprinter. He didn't come up racing on the road, and does not have the experience sprinting when there's more than one other person around him. I read a recent interview where he said he didn't do any mass-start racing, and he's only ever been a match sprinter.

He's clearly world class, and he may in fact be the nice guy he claims to be. Match sprinters typically aren't, and tend to act more like football players than bike racers. It's a completely different sport. I will, however, give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he's not the kind of guy who beats up other bike racers in the bike barn at T-Town.

An experienced road sprinter knows exactly how to move another rider out of the way without using his hands. And if you do have to use your hands for self-defense (or even to advance position, which is genuinely on the wrong side of accepted etiquette), we all know how to do it in a way that doesn't take the other rider down, never mind ourselves.

You can clearly see in the video here that Bos is going up through a space he has no business being in. Further, you would never squeeze a yellow jersey in that way. There's a certain respect you give the race leader, and you usually leave them one degree more space and allow them to race freely. Third, when he puts his hand on Impey, it's where and how he puts his hand on him that continues the problem. He literally reaches forward up to where Impey is, putting his hand on his shoulder. This is part of the evidence that Bos doesn't know what he's doing. All he had to do was put his hand on Impey's left hip, and he either could have moved Impey right without crashing him, or at worse, only crashing Impey and not himself, too. If you've ever pushed a rider by their hip, you'll know they go where ever you move them, but they never crash. You're moving them at their center of gravity, and they have the time to respond and stay with their own momentum. A real road sprinter might even have just put his brake hood into Impey's hip and moved him that way, never taking his hands off the bars. Hilton Clarke did that to me in a race in Vancouver last year, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was like I was a puppet on a string. But I didn't go down, and neither did he. On the other hand, push someone by their arm or shoulder, and it means you're turning their handlebars, too, and you're likely to crash both them and yourself.

The final, actual take down was clearly one of panic. By essentially putting his arm around Impey as he came up on him, Bos ended up locked with him, his upper body turned, his weight shifted, and only one hand on the bars, all while dealing with an uneven fence. It's hard to tell if he hit the feet of the fence or just got himself off balance, but there's no question once he was going down, he grabbed on to Impey hard and took Impey with him. Maybe that was instinct, maybe it was intentional, but that's outside of my ability to judge. If I was going to generalize about the jock mentality of most of the track sprinters I've met, I'd bet money that he took Impey down with him on purpose once he started to go. Based on his comments in the press, perhaps it was a survival instinct. Again, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

What I do feel confident about and will say with certainty, Theo Bos is not a road sprinter. He does not have the skill set yet, and rode this finish like a new cat. 3 with more talent than experience. Even Marty Nothstein came up as a junior doing criteriums and always did mass start events on the track. While he was typically aggressive in the sprints, you'd never have seen him doing something as stupid as this.

Bos should clearly get suspended for this, but only for doing something dangerous and stupid, and to account for the injuries that were a direct result of his actions. The suspension should be based on that, not on any malicious intent to take another rider down, since Bos was clearly going down with him. I mean, compare the Bos incident with this:

When Lakatosh takes Carney down after the finish, that's what it looks like when you intentionally crash someone. Lakotash only got 6 months for that, when clearly he should have gotten at least a year. Barczewski crashed himself by overlapping Carney's wheel, and Lakotash retaliated, clearly, openly, and with malicious intent.

Unless you're playing hockey, that's called assault. What would Lucic do?

So excited the Bruins are gonna take out the Habs, even with Lucic suspended for that cross-check to the face. It's different than when the Sox beat the Yankees, because Boston hockey fans actually cherish this rivalry. We love and respect the Canadians. If it's not us, we're happy when it's them. We don't hate the Habs like we hate the Yankees.

Anyway, Bos is a cat. 3. He should stick to kermesses for a while until he's ready to have riders sprinting on both sides of him, and not just above the blue line, out of the sprinter's lane.