sports is soap opera

incredible scenes at the women's tour de france this morning after kasia niewiadoma beat demi vollering by four seconds after not having won a stage race in seven years.¹ vollering started the last stage over a minute behind because she was part of a huge crash in an earlier stage, and the knives are out for her team since it looks like they basically decided to leave her for dead after she fell behind. they claim their radios weren't working at the time of the crash, which would be all well and good if one of her teammates hadn't not only seen her go down but also apparently collided with her during the crash. (what makes this all especially juicy is that vollering announced earlier this year that she's leaving the team.)

and then to add insult to injury, when vollering did break away with one other rider in the final stage, the other rider's team told her not to help by taking turns in the front. for this, she caught a deserved left hook:

1. and until earlier this year, she hadn't won any race for five years; she also broke that streak at the expense of vollering, who gave an all time interview after placing second.