Exactly what I thought. After all, they'll only be using a neutral bike in extremis, as a stop gap until their team car can arrive, so they can take what they are given in terms of setup as long as it's rideable. Or else make all riders carry a 15mm spanner to transfer their own bloody pedals over. Or is that a bit old skool?
Listening live, I think they also booed the explanation when it came over the speakers. I felt it was as much frustration that they'd made quite some effort (some walking kilometres back down the mountain) to watch a race that was partly erased from the official history because of the actions of fans and motorbikes before it reached that section of the crowd.
I think threading the pedals in correctly and tightening them would take too long. If they can't cook up some sort of multi-attachment pedal that at least allows a wide range of cleats not to foul a flat surface, then maybe some sort of folding-bike-style click-on adapters would allow them to fit the right pedals quickly. Sort of the inverse of the MKS EZY adapters that let you put removable pedals into a threaded crank - does it exist yet?
I would make some joke calling the neutral service mechanics spanners because it seems to take them much longer to fix bikes than the team car mechanics, but it's not really fair because neutral service have to deal with a wide range of unfamiliar bikes and often don't get radio warnings of what they're about to deal with.
Goodness, you do want to molycoddle these riders.
I think any soigneur holding a Sky bike among that crowd would want danger money!
D'oh. He won it from Pinot yesterday, then Pinot retired. This makes sense now I've had more coffee.
Because that's the physical order in which they crossed the line.
