Tweets of the week: Bottle throw disqualification special!
You can take away future fans' bidon collections, but you'll never take away their tweets
Twitter almost seems custom-built for blind moral outrage, and while a lot of the time it's exhausting we finally have a topic that justifies it.
Cycling is so often divided in debates over minutiae that the fact it's come together in consternation over the UCI's disqualification of riders for disposing of bidons outside of designated litter zones, regardless of whether they are chucking them to fans to keep as souvenirs, says a lot.
If cycling's governing body succeeds in stamping out what is one of cycling's most wholesome quirks then maybe let's just do away with the whole thing entirely. If it was a more mainstream sport we'd have cherry-faced middle-aged blokes on commercial radio going apoplectic over the decision, and that specific vacant space this edition Tweets of the Week special could have filled the whole with just a bunch of angry tweets, but let's try and make light of it. If you don't laugh, you'll cry.
I used to think the biggest shame for our generation was that we are too young to explore the universe yet too old to smoke in pubs, but at least we were the last generation to see a professional cyclist chuck a bottle to a fan standing on the roadside.
1. Technically...not a disqualification, right?
2. No, I don't have hayfever, these are real tears
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3. How long until we start seeing domestiques packing their jerseys with 12 empty bottles to take back to the car?
4. KICK. HIM. OFF. THE. RACE. RIGHT. THIS. SECOND.
5. PREACH
6. Am I high
7. Still doesn't make sense no matter how many times I watch it
8. The video you didn't know you needed to watch today: Mikel Aristi racing a real-life actual horse
9. The Tour of Turkey looks like it's going to be a lot of fun
10. ...DISQUALIFIED!!!!!
We'll be back with more pure fuego tweets and inconsolable moral panic from across the cycling world next week.
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Jonny was Cycling Weekly's Weekend Editor until 2022.
I like writing offbeat features and eating too much bread when working out on the road at bike races.
Before joining Cycling Weekly I worked at The Tab and I've also written for Vice, Time Out, and worked freelance for The Telegraph (I know, but I needed the money at the time so let me live).
I also worked for ITV Cycling between 2011-2018 on their Tour de France and Vuelta a España coverage. Sometimes I'd be helping the producers make the programme and other times I'd be getting the lunches. Just in case you were wondering - Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen had the same ham sandwich every day, it was great.
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