niels albert vs

If you haven't heard, seems a drunken cyclocross fan had an unwelcome impact on the Belgian National Championships last weekend. Here's the recap from Joe Parkin's blog:

"... a drunken supporter of 2009 Belgian cyclocross champion Sven Nys reached out and grabbed the arm of reigning World Champion, Niels Albert, causing him to crash, and breaking a rib in the process. Not only did Albert lose any chance of winning the race as a result of the crash, but with a broken rib, he now has a difficult time with hard accelerations and any sort of climbing... Albert, who currently leads the Superprestige and the World Cup, has been officially screwed by someone he was there to entertain. What’s worse, depending upon how the rib heals, Albert may have problems with it for the rest of his career."

Something like this makes me wish cyclocross was a bit more like the Canadian national pastime. Over the years during hockey games there have been fans who interfered with players/coaches and those fans have ended up serving as cautionary tales to future fans: have a good time, but don't touch the players...