A big crash occurred in the first stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour as the peloton went under the red kite at a kilometre to go.
When the road narrowed as some barriers demarcated the inflatable gantry, a mass of bikes was seen to go flying. Marcel Kittel (QuickStep Floors) and Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott) went down in that incident, while Owain Doull (Team Sky) suffered some nasty-looking cuts, allegedly as a result of one of Kittel’s disc brakes.
“My shoes cut the pieces, that’s definitely brakes that did that,” Doull said. “It’s gone straight through my shoe into my foot. That’s lucky it is not my leg. If that had been my leg it would have cut straight through it.”
“Unless there are covers on then you should not use them.”
Mark Cavendish stayed out of trouble and reaped the rewards as he secured his first win of the season and the 145th of his career.
Scuff marks on the right side of the shoe would be present due to spokes had the brake disc caused the slice.
Doull’s shoe WAS NOT cut by Kittel’s disc brake. His LEFT shoe had the cut and his LEFT foot was never anywhere near Kittel or his bike.
If you look closely at the cut on the shoe it couldn’t have been created by a brake disk because the cut itself has no kerf or thickness. Brake discs are about 0.1″ wide….you would see this wide mark. The cut on the shoe looks like it was cut with a very thin blade or shard of metal.In addition there are no scuff marks on the right side of the shoe that would be present had the disc cut down the middle as Doull claims.
Evidence per video and on the shoe just doesn’t line up to a brake disc causing this cut.
What COULD have cause the cut is tearing of the perforations of the shoe by a rear tire. You can clearly see a dark scuff mark on top of the shoe about the width of a 23mm tire that appear in a direction from the front of the shoe to the rear of the shoe…which also lines up with the forward rotation of a tire…if Doull’s shoe were to have contacted someone rear tire.
Who was to the left of Doull when he fell to his left? This rider was then in front of Doull. Could his left shoe have hit this rider’s rear tire? Looking at the video I think so.