Oscar Freire describes "The Shoot - Out"

Standing in the hotel entrance in Colmar looking at the driving rain on Saturday morning, Oscar
Freire doesn’t look like a man who’s been shot at the afternoon before. In fact, he’s remarkably
calm about the whole incident.
The Rabobank rider recounts that he was descending the first category Col du Platzerwasel on
stage 13 from Vittel to Colmar, as part of the main pack, when he heard three shots ring out.
“I felt a sudden pain in my upper right leg, looked down and saw what looked like a huge insect
bite.”
“It wasn’t particularly painful, not much more than when you get stung, but I put two and two
together and realised what had happened.”
“I thought about going after the guys who’d been shooting at me, but by the time what had
happened really sunk in I was too far down the descent to go back.”
The injury was not too serious - rather than a bullet, it emerged Freire had been hit by an
airgun pellet. At the finish, he extracted it from his leg and handed it over to the team doctor.
“I was lucky in some ways, if it had hit me in the eye I might have been blinded.”
“I don’t feel particularly shocked, but it does highlight just how vulnerable we all are in this
sport.”
“The public can get close and you can’t control everybody who’s out there that easily.”
“Fortunately normally these things don’t happen in this sport.”
Freire was questioned by the French gendarmerie the following morning and the police are
following up the incident. Another rider, New Zealander Julian Dean was also struck in a finger.
Bizarrely enough, this isn’t the first time this has happened to the Rabobank rider. When Freire
was about 16 years old, he was driving his moped around the streets of his hometown in
Torrelavega, Spain when he was hit by an airgun pellet as well.

Freire was not the only Rabobank rider to have problems on Friday’s stage. Juan Antonio Flecha
crashed early on and suffered a deep wound in his lower leg. He plans to continue, but his
morale is not good.
“I’ve got a bad injury in my arm, but the worst thing is my leg.”
“It’s a very deep cut, it you look at the injury closely enough you can see the bone.”
“The doctors have given me some anti-biotics and I’m just going to take things on the day by
day. Hopefully it’ll heal fast.”
“It’s not been a great race for Rabobank, but let’s hope our luck changes soon.”
Then the two of them go out and walk the 100 metres through the rain to the team bus: now
it’s time for a 200 kilometre bike ride.