Shootout interrupts UCI bike race
Riders take cover as gunfire breaks out between feuding villages at the Tour of Mesopotamia
Bike races can be interrupted or stopped by race officials for a variety of reasons from exceptionally terrible weather to rail crossings. On Thursday at the Tour of Mesopotamia, the race was never suspended but riders chasing the main peloton were forced to take shelter when gunfire broke out in a small village along the course.
The first stage of the UCI 2.2 race was a 178 km affair that started and finished in Mardin in southeastern Turkey near the border with Syria. As the race passed through a small village, riders who had been chasing following a crash heard shots fired and were yelled at by locals.
Two members of the German team Veloclub Ratisbona were accompanied by their team car when the shooting began ringing out across the road. The team’s sports director Paul Renger and the riders located a stone wall where they hid for 20 minutes before things calmed down according to a recount of the stages events by team member Robert Müller.
“As they drove into the village, they suddenly heard shots falling very close and were yelled at in the town at a military crossroads. Paul put the car back and when they saw a stone wall about a meter high, he left the car on the road, the riders threw their bikes away and they dived behind the wall,” Müller wrote in a piece in German on Radsport News. “There they squatted with their heads down for about 20 minutes, while repeatedly shots flew that were a little further away and sometimes threateningly close.”
Other riders joined the Veloclub Ratisbona team behind the stone wall. One rider had a nervous breakdown and a nose bleed because of the frightening situation. “The travel warning of the Foreign Office is therefore not accidental, as we have seen unfortunately today,” concluded Müller.
According to the race organizers, the shooting was caused by a dispute between villages about a local election. With an increased presence of police and the military in the area, the tensions between the neighbouring villages had escalated. According to ProCyclingStats, “Officially, no one got killed.”
Despite the incident, Belurussian rider Branislau Samoilau went on to take the stage victory.
