(written by peddelen)
The 18th of March, 2011, will always be remembered by the OCM community as the start of the Big Strike.
However, the story begins much earlier than that.
It was a sunny day in Germany and the most important tour of the season had just started. Stage 1 was finished and the big surprise was that Gregory Levis (Equipo Easy On), the best time-triallist in the world, was not the winner. He wasn't even close, he finished the prologue in the slowest time ever. Levis had a good excuse though. A photographer popped up just in front of him after a few kilometers, leaving him no chance of avoiding a collision.
Levis later commented, 'I passed out for some | | moments and the first thing I saw was my team's manager Eli holding a replacement bike. Not knowing what happend and still full of adrenaline I finished the stage. But when I got off my bike at the end, I felt this enormous pain in my knee and I knew Germany tour was over for me.
However the following morning the team said I had to start and told Eli I couldn't because of my knee.'
Eli later added, 'I really wish I could have left him there to recover but the Germany race organisers told me if Levis did not start the entire team was not allowed to start. Not to mention the life ban on all official races.'
Matthias Drebjo, leader of the riders' strike explains why the riders chose such drastic
| | action. 'Cases like this one with Levis are incidents they happen a lot, especially in Tours where injured riders are often forced to finish. We want to make it so that all riders can join an OCM cyclists' Union to prevent this ever happening again.'
However, approval of this Union still has to be given by the highest officials of OCM, approval which has still to be given. We are hoping for an answer on Sunday evening - until then the strike will go on.
Vasco Assis later added, 'The OCM officials know there are problems and has indicated that a solution will be sought. We won't stop the strike - we won't race, we won't train, we won't rest - until there is an agreement that there will be a Union which stands up for our rights!'
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