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Alexander Kristoff’s shoulder: 1, spectator’s iPhone: 0 

Alexander Kristoff’s shoulder: 1, spectator’s iPhone: 0 

There is a question that has long haunted me. Perhaps it haunts you, too. That question is this: would Alexander Kristoff’s shoulder, at speed, absolutely obliterate an iPhone? 

Now, thanks to a contentious sprint at the Volta ao Algarve, we have an answer: yes. Yes it would. 

Kristoff, who has rediscovered the magic since shifting teams to the snappily named Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Materiaux, has already notched up his first win for the season this week. The veteran Norwegian felt he was in the mix at yesterday’s Portuguese race, too, but was forced to stop pedalling as he was pushed toward the barriers due to an iffy move from Jordi Meeus (Bora-Hansgrohe). At which point, chaos:

Meeus was relegated, while Kristoff – who picked up third – was not well pleased. “At the finish I asked him ‘why the fuck did you change line?’ He said he had to go there but I don’t agree,” Kristoff bluntly told journalists at the finish. “He moved me into the barriers and I hit a lot of spectators with my shoulder, so I’m not very happy about it.”

Someone who was presumably even less happy – although it was totally, 100% self-inflicted – was the owner of the phone that got sent bouncing across the tarmac.

Here is the moment just before impact:

Kristoff ‘s shoulder (right of screen, behind stage winner Fabio Jakobsen) on the cusp of violence. (Photo by Luc Claessen/Getty Images)

Here’s Kristoff, expressing himself through the timeless medium of fy faens and helvetes, while the phone in question pirouettes across the Lagos tarmac:

Some further choice words from a stroppy Stallion, presumably:

To sum up, in the immortal words of one Fabian Cancellara, “the phone has given to the world good things, but also bad things.”

One bad thing being idiots leaning into a race in the path of riders, and one good thing being a six-foot chunk of untameable Scandinavian muscle and rage laying waste to a telephone with his enormous shoulder.

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