Cyclist Mark Cavendish's already difficult 2013 Tour de France excursion took a turn for the disgusting on Wednesday.
The English newspaper, The Guardian, reported that a spectator threw urine on the sprint specialist during a time-trial stage from Avranches to Mont Saint-Michel in France.
"He was whistled and catcalled on the course, and a spectator threw urine on him," Cavendish's team manager, Patrick Lefevere, was quoted as saying.
The incident came less than 24 hours after his controversial sprint finish Tuesday in Saint-Malo when other sprinters in the field blamed him for the crash with rider Tom Veelers, in which Veelers suffered a bad crash.
"I didn't see it happen, but you had only to smell his jersey," Lefevere said, according to The Guardian. "Mark is sad, you might have expected him to be angry, but he's just sad. I cannot blame anyone. There are 100,000 or 200,000 people on the road, and one person decided to do this."
According to another newspaper, the Telegraph, Cavendish tweeted a joke about the incident later in the day:
"The apple juice looks far from appetizing for me tonight... And I'm not taking the p---. Did that once already today."
Fellow Briton Carl Froome, who has the yellow jersey as the leader in the event, said he was disappointed by actions of the individual spectator.
"One of the best things about our sport is that the spectators can get close to the top riders in the world and feel the excitement and the color," Froome said. "It's disappointing that one individual should ruin it for Mark. He's one of the great personalities of the sport - some people love him, some hate him - but to do something disrespectful like that is sad. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth."
Sporting director Brian Holm on Cavendish's Omega Pharma-Quickstep team said the team didn't plan to take any further action and blamed the media's coverage of Tuesday's crash as helping spawn the urine-throwing incident.
"I couldn't see it was urine but I thought people were quite negative," he said. "So congrats to the media for yesterday making him look like he caused the crash."
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