Welcome back to JB Squared. I'm JB Hager along with Johan Berniel and we're going to look at stage 15 of the 2023 Tour de France. We see one of the most epic head to head GC battles we've ever seen.

Literally one that people are going to be talking about for decades and we get to see another older veteran rider getting a stage win.

We'll break all that down and get Johan's thoughts on this episode of JB Squared.

Alright Johan and rather than start out talking about the winner or the GC battle which we most often do.

We had another unfortunate incident of a crash caused by a spectator and it took down what 1314 riders something like that and you just hate to see that happen but you actually when we did the move earlier we didn't have any details on it but you you were able to find some video

and have a better idea of what happened in that incident.

Yeah you know as always it was it was a hectic start trying to go and break away.

Break away was going and then the the pattern came through little town and we could see that there was one spectator leaning out a little bit more to have his selfie or a selfie taken or video of the whatever.

I mean if you're going there and you stand there waiting and at least watch the race you know and don't try to film it and then look at it when you're when you're back.

Then you can see it on TV and nowadays with you know with the streaming services you can rewatch it as many times as you want so we saw this one spectator.

There is a arm was out with his phone and touched the forearm of the push the push went down and took out a few other riders one of which was Nate on the know it don't his teammate who went down really hard.

So that was that was kind of it was completely in the front of the peloton I mean if you look you see the crash and on the left side you see Jonas Vingigart and and they forgot you're just escaping.

Like it was completely in the front and so then at that point you know there was some hesitance in the in the peloton the break away was gone already so of course they won't wait but there was this general consensus in the peloton that they would slow down let the riders come back jumbo of course had two guys on the floor.

They wanted to see how they were and and then finally that break away got six seven eight minutes I mean break away was 35 riders it's a big group.

But yeah I mean you know it's it can happen so many if you it's a surprise it's a miracle doesn't happen more often JB that's what I was thinking to the the crowds have been there all day they're drinking their party.

It's just the atmosphere of it is it's just so different than anything on the planet yeah yeah and it's accessible for everyone you know it's free.

People you know there's the baits here you know people people start to say well you know if it would be paying.

There would be more discipline and they would you know they could take the first of all you have to buy tickets they could probably.

Put more money into fencing certain parts of the of the race I mean they can't make a good point friend of friend of mine said that owns a lot of bars it always said all you need is a one dollar cover charge and you get lit get rid of most of the riffraff one dollar yeah it's all it takes that's interesting yeah.

I mean it that's obviously also what makes cycling so attractive you know it is free for everybody it's on the public road so you know you know you don't work with a stadium where you can basically contain all the people and check whoever comes in that's impossible in cycling.

So it is it is a difficult thing to to control.

You know they do three thousand five hundred kilometers it's impossible to fence the whole course right.

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