Horizons Unlimited - The HUBB - What the Hell was he thinking ?

I'm just going to drop this here, lifted from someone elses post on ADVrider...

Quote:

I have just found this internet blog by italian journalist Elisabetta Caracciolo (shame I didn't find it earlier): quellidellafrica

It is all written in italian, and I did find some interesting insights about the Peterhansel/Ciotti incident, told from Ciotti himself. As the blogger says Ciotti is a nice guy that from day one is on the funny side making jokes of everyone and everything and making up excuses to withdraw. Reality is that he went on racing with his Rieju getting better positions leg after leg. Anyway, here's what Ciotti said:

"..."I was doing my best - says Filippo (Ciotti) - to push the bike out of the river and a spanish guy was helping me out. I was just two metres away from the land when Stephane came hitting my leg and I had just the time to jump to get away from his rear wheel. Obviously I did let my bike go and it drowned into the river" ..... "I didn't get hurt, I was feeling ok - he goes on joking - so unfortunately I had no excuse to withdraw from the race. Then the bike didn't want to start so I thought that it was a perfect excuse. Now I can finally withdraw. But here comes Franco Picco saying: "that's not a problem. Now do this, open that, clean there, then put this aside, put that there and the bike will start again. Is that all clear?" while I was thinking "Thanks Franco, don't worry, go on with your race, do not mind about me". Picco instead wanted to fix everything so I had to get at the bivouac. ()

At that point his first will was to get Peterhansel but he found him already at his tent begging pardon for what he did. "Please excuse me, I haven't seen you, from that car we do not have good visibility, I never did hit a biker, please excuse me, I swear it never happened before....ecc ecc".

..... The frenchman then declared: "I have seen Filippo (Ciotti) in the river and at first I did stop waiting for him to get out. Then I saw he was two metres from the edge and was going to get out so I moved, but at that point the guy who was helping him fell on the slippery surface and Filippo found himself alone pushing the bike out from the water on a steep edge. That is why that manouvre took him more time than I expected and I eventually did hit him".

On a following report another bit is added to the story:

"After Stephane and Filippo cleared the question at the tent, Peterhansel offered himself to get to the race direction to ask a time refund for Ciotti declaring that was his fault. Peterhansel then met Franco Picco at the bivouac and reassured him that the delay accumulated by Ciotti would be canceled. At that point Picco answered "well, if I knew I would also ask refund for the time I have spent fixing Filippo's bike..." Peter answered "You're right" and got back at the race direction to take care of it."

End of the story: Ciotti had 33 mins back and Picco 11 mins.

Sorry, I know it is an old story and I had to "cut" a couple of parts from the articles (sorry also for the bad translations...) but I thought it was interesting to get all points of view.