Friday, June 13, 2008

Scott in 5th Place; Injured Preihs drops to 7th

Story updated 6/13/08 3:11p EDT. See below.

First, here's an update on last night's post concerning the weird "incident" involving the alleged assault of a RAAM competitor.

Bryce told me the racer involved was Mark Pattinson, but I haven't found any information on the RAAM website or on Mark's own website to confirm. The only thing I could find that looked close on RAAM's blog was a mention of Franz Preihs's involvement in some sort "incident". Updated: The YouTube video embedded in the blog post tells the whole story. I missed this originally.

Next, I checked Preihs's website and the story began to unfold -- partially. Franz is Austrian, so I used Google translate to read the German text on his blog. Google translate is great, but it's a bit like reading tea leaves. But I did get some information.

First, it appears either Bryce was incorrect and Preihs's team was involved with the physical altercation (not Pattinson's), or multiple bikers were assaulted.

From Preihs's blog (translated): "The drunks men who 1h early today attacked our team, also attacked other teams and their campers, including a team from England, in their camper the men were able to penetrate and crew members of the Englishman in a brawl were involved with a person of this team has been violated even ......"

So things were already bad for Preihs when they suddenly took a dramatic turn for the worse. "Franz ramm(ed) at a quite high speed (at that time was slightly downhill) head a speed limit traffic sign that due to a construction site something in the roadway," again from the translated blog.

Franz Preihs broke his collarbone, but is somehow, some way, continuing to race. He's fallen to 7th as of this writing, but the mere fact he's even back on a bike is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

For Scott, things are looking up. Mark Pattinson, in 4th, has a little over an hour lead on Scott. 6th, held by Martin Jakob, is about 20 minutes behind Scott.

More updates to come later today...

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