Giro d'Italia: Wiggins reacts to Miguel Angel Lopez fan fight: 'I sympathise'

It’s impossible to cut it out and barriers create their own problems. This is quite a rare thing actually, it doesn’t happen all the time. Lopez reacted in a way that nobody really agrees with, but I can sympathise with him in that particular moment – it’s a bit like driving down the motorway and seeing someone driving erratically, you have to monitor all that around you. But you have to accept that they’re part of the race, part of the fabric of the race.

But a moving obstacle is hard, because you never know where the obstacle is going to go – is it going to shorten the road in a sec. It’s the people that are running, dressed as Mr Bean or things like, they’re the danger I think. They’re moving slower than you are, but when you’re riding you don’t know where that’s going to go – that unpredictable and I think that’s the problem there.

It’s the running where the problems start to come. We can’t take the fans off the side of the mountain because that’s what makes this sport so special. You can’t put barriers all the way up. We have to accept that it’s part and parcel of the sport. But I can sympathise with Lopez, that would be your initial reaction – we can’t berate him now. He can be forgiven, maybe say ‘next time mate don’t do that’. But what about the guy laying on the floor who’s lost his hat and is now the victim.

Sometimes these fans get a little bit over-exuberant, a little bit overexcited. They’ve been waiting at the top of that mountain all day long for their heroes to come, and the moment they come they maybe lose the run of themselves a little bit. We can understand Lopez, the adrenaline is pumping – but I’m not sure anything really justifies punching a man on the ground, that’s my interpretation.

We’re talking about a minority; it doesn’t happen often. When you think about the millions who come out to the roadside to watch it – I would take my family to watch it – but there are just idiots in all walks of life. I’m not saying he’s an idiot… a couple of drinks, the excitement, he just got carried away a little bit. The Tour de France organisers put educational videos out there, but nobody watches it. They’re trying to do something. Even in sprint finishes when you see the flags get caught in the handlebars… I don’t think we’ve got the right solutions. You can’t ban people from going up finishing climbs like that as well, so what do you do?

It’s a travesty that these things happen. You can kind of understand it with the volume of spectators on the roadside and how long they’ve been waiting. But to actually see their excitement spill into the peloton and cause a crash like that is awful. I can sympathise with the outburst of emotion from Lopez like that. In the cold light of day an outburst like that looks awful, it is awful, but when you’re riding at full gas and perhaps your whole season has been based around this… I really feel for the guy.