Tour of Qatar: Boonen’s on Top, Brown’s Not Winning Friends

By Jessica | Permalink |

No Comments | February 1st, 2007 | Trackback

boonen

Tom Boonen might not be wearing the rainbow jersey, but he’s still riding with the drive of the world champ. He’s now won four stages in a row in the Tour of Qatar, including his team’s victory in the team time trial.

The Tour of Qatar, despite Boonen’s domination, has been eventful. At the sprint during the end of stage two, Graeme Brown swerved in the finish and managed to land Tom Steels on the pavement. The riders behind were able to avoid running over him, but Steels was unable to continue racing due to the broken collarbone he ended up with.

From Cyclingnews:

The Belgian emerged later from the Doha hospital to report a broken collarbone, six stitches in his head and any amount of skin scraped off. At that time, he didn’t blame Brown for what happened. “That’s the way it is in the sprint, these things happen,” he was quoted as saying.

But by the time he got back to the team hotel, things had changed. All of the teams are staying at the same hotel and eating together in the same restaurant. According to Robert Förster of Gerolsteiner, Steels went up to Brown, showed him his broken collarbone and spoke his mind, calling the Australian, among other things “a Kamikaze.” According to Sportwereld.be, Steels yelled at him, “You f**king idiot! It’s always the same with you!”

“Brown didn’t react,” Förster wrote on his website, robert-foerster.de. “Steels was shouting as loud as he could, ‘Go home!’ At the same time another rider stood up, clapped and yelled, too, ‘Go home!’ Then the room went crazy, everybody stood up and yelled ‘Go home!’”

I don’t know anything about Brown, but I don’t think he’ll be winning any peloton popularity contests anytime soon.