VIDEO: New Footage of Brutal Rubio Tour de France Crash Emerges amid Alpe d'Huez Safety Debate

Are crowds getting out of control when the Tour de France descends on Alpe d’Huez?

It’s the question that circled the cycling world Friday after stage 19’s summit finish on the switchbacked climb.

The ascent of the most celebrity slope in the Tour de France was blighted by Einer Rubio’s brutal crash into the back of a team car Friday.

Rubio plowed face-first into a UAE Emirates-XRG vehicle after the driver was forced to emergency brake when a spectator fell into the road just inches from his front grill.

The Colombian was left covered in blood and later abandoned the race with 20 stitches in his face.

Also Friday, Remco Evenepoel complained his attacks out of the GC group were stymied by the traffic of race motos navigating their way through near-unprecedented crowds of raucous fans.

‘Every year it gets worse’

Fresh footage of how the incident with Rubio occurred reveal just how lucky the spectator was not to be run over, and the extent of the madness on the mythical Alpe.

Video shared by the Cycling Data Instagram feed shows a spectator lurching into the road, phone in hand, soon after Tadej Pogačar blazed past during his record-breaking attack.

The man appeared to lose his balance as spectators closed in behind him. He fell onto the tarmac, just a split-second in front of the UAE car.

The footage then pans back to Rubio’s high-speed crash and the terrible aftermath of the Movistar racer being supported while in shock at the side of the road.

UAE Emirates-XRG director Andrej Hauptman was behind the wheel Friday. The Slovenian staffer recounted the incident to Delo.Si after the stage.

“We were stressed in the last seven kilometers,” Hauptman told Delo. “A fan fell in front of us, we braked and a Movistar rider flew into our rear window and was lying there covered in blood.

“Every year it [the crowds] get worse, it was hellish in that regard too.”

Has the Alpe d’Huez party gotten out of hand?

The Tour de France was at fever pitch in anticipation of the peloton returning to the Alpe on Friday.

Spectators had been flocking to the famous 13.8km climb for days, loaded up with camping gear and supplies.

Footage on Thursday night showed fans partying deep into the night in scenes that looked like a rowdy music festival, not the Tour de France.

Insiders braced for something going wrong.

The resulting incidents with Evenepoel and Rubio, along with viral footage of drunken fans fighting, littering, and watching the race through their filming phones, proved those fears well-founded.

Has the party on Alpe d’Huez gotten out of hand? The debate raged after the stage Friday afternoon.

While certain stretches of the 8 percent climb were barriered off to safeguard riders, the road was largely open to fans to crowd into the road and “tunnel” the riders.

The revelers at notorious party-points like Dutch Corner were dozens deep, and security officials were few.

“You could see how relieved the riders were every time they could ride between the barriers on Alpe d’Huez,” wrote former racer and DS Marc Sargeant in his column for Het Nieuwsblad.

Ex-pro turned pundit Jan Bakelants didn’t hold back Friday when he spoke with HLN.

“ASO makes over 130 million euros in profit, but they can’t invest even a little bit in safety,” Bakelants said of the Tour de France organizers.

“I find it not only grossly negligent, but it also reduces the quality of the experience for real cycling fans to zero. It is rubbish. You would be better off charging 10 or 30 euros admission.”

Bakelants isn’t the first to suggest a ticketing process as a means of reducing crowds on iconic summits such as the Alpe or Mont Ventoux.

But it’s a concept that’s near impossible to apply and that’s against the grain of a sport that’s free to spectators.

Return to the Alpe

The Tour de France returns to the Alpe on Saturday, albeit not by the iconic switchbacks.

Stage 20 climbs toward the ski town via the Sarenne, an area partly protected by environmental regulations. The race only joins the iconic hairpinned climb 3km from the summit.

Crowd sizes will be resultantly smaller. But the ongoing problem of rider and crowd safety at the biggest race in the world won’t diminish.