Before stage 7 of the Tour de France, Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) repeated an appeal to the spectators along the route and even along the barricaded finishing straights to give riders respect and stay back from the roads, saying that he made contact with three fans who were leaning over the barriers in the final kilometres of stage 6.
The Tour de France runs a 'respect the riders' campaign, which asks fans not to do things such as running alongside the peloton. But Greipel says that even in the sections with barriers fans have caused problems. When asked how often it happened, his response was "too often".
"Yesterday, I hit three times spectators on the side of the road, so this is a big appeal to spectators to not lean over the barriers to respect us and to give us the space that we need," Greipel said.
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"Sometimes the roads can be really wide, but we still need the gaps on the side of the road by the fences. Of course, it's dangerous. If you have a big camera like what happened yesterday, it can bring a whole peloton down, and the Tour could be finished for a lot of riders."
Greipel said that it is possible to adjust your riding to accommodate the issue, but in the mix of a sprint, it is an unrealistic challenge.
"Let's say you can make a bit of a safe distance from the fans, but in the end, if someone is leaning their whole body over the barriers then they are really close to us, and the safe distance we have to have from the fans is not realistic enough."
Greipel 'not fast enough'
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