The New Zealander happened to be nearby with his prized De Rosa Protos bike worth approximately 6 000 dollars.
“We could see him on the side of the road and asked ‘do you need a wheel?’ and he said ‘Na, a wheel is not going to cut it. Then it went to ‘well, what pedals are you running’? He was on Speedplay and I was on Shimano, and as soon as that was decided it was just ‘well you might as well just take everything’. Then the next question was ‘what size shoe are you?’ He was a size 43 and I’m a 44, so we swapped shoes, he jumped on my bike, we gave him some water and ‘seeya later’,” described Anthony the unbelievable situation to The Advertiser.
Under normal circumstances, Farrar would be probably disqualified for accepting outside assistance, but the race officials deemed the situation extraordinary and the American rider was allowed to continue. He finished 13 minutes and 7 seconds behind the stage winner Simon Gerrans and went on to complete the whole Tour.
The extremely nice New Zealander was given a team cycling kit by Dimension Data team for his help and has been praised all over social media as a ‘legend’.
