This scenario happens quite often and I struggle with whats the correct call for this.
In my opinion the striped player took a bad line and forced their handlebar into the black player, who could not really avoid the contact.
looks clean from here, like the person in the pink shirt rode into the back of the guy in the black shirt who kept riding through. pink shirt’s reaction was funny tho
just realized their shirts are red and white striped, not pink, whoopsie
no he is talking about the next contact between another striped player :
black goes behind goals and beat stripes out of position. stripe by turning left present his naked handlebars to black’s belly , and get his handlebars caught accordingly
within the ruleset you have two options , it can be an infraction from both sides
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from black , because he is not allowed to interfere any bike parts with his body
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from stripped , because he is not allowed to play another players body with his bike or equipment.
its up to the ref to assess who is at fault here , possibly giving a coincidental penalty to both , but imo stripped is playing the foul a bit too much when he could have tried actually defending more cleanly than creating a “penalty trap”
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there is a few way to handle such situations in our sports as they become more and more litigious:
1st way is if we want to keep “shoulder to shoulder” contacts
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one player that can be legally checked has to be aware at all time of his surrounding and incoming opponent.
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every player subject to be “checked” has to acknowledge it and take a “checkable stance” wich is having both hands on handlebars, or one arm tucked and aligned to his opponent shoulder.
this would put the foul on stripped rider as he didnt presented a checkable stance as he inclosed black player . black player needs to steer away from stripped position to be impecable , if black takes a trajectory that imply that he is looking for that contact as well , then it still remains both players fault.
on the other hand a player with ball possession would have to forget about ball handling and take a checkable position when someone is incoming for a check. a foul would be assess on a player refusing to offer a checkable shoulder , for exemple you wouldnt be allowed to turn away from a check once the defensor is so close that he is about to hit you. you wouldnt be allowed to quickly tap the ball off side and try and control it on your other side , since it would offer your ribs to the check instead. its a difficult concept to implement but horse polo and grass polo kinda revolve around a similar meta.
there is also a big issue here that will make this near impossible because of the high disparity in height but also riders setups : diving stems vs high stems, flat bars vs risers , handlebars length, headtube length, frame sizes, wheel sizes.
2nd way is heavily restricting shoulder contacts , but also random space placements like the one in this video or the ones highlithed during la mazza d oro ( front wheels between another players wheelbase)
- allow only to defend by taking the space in front of the front wheel of an opponent. to claim that space the defender has to be in a straight stance ( not doing a massive lean )
BIG NOTE : this last change goes hand in hand with a timed possession , by adding a time factor on the team who possess the ball , the defense can focus solely on keeping up with the offense speed and placement as they move up towards their goals, taking away a layer of intensity. all strategies aiming at leading the game with 1 or 2 goals up until times run out will be nullified, ive noticed that teams being put into such situations intensify their contact games to get back the ball since they have to make a come back in a very short time ( bike polo games are very short )
IMO this updatz of the meta would suit many aspect of the game evolution
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yeah no, that’s the encounter i’m talking about. black has possession and is moving with the ball ahead of stripes, stripes rolls into black, black rides through taking out stripes. that’s all on stripes. if stripes was playing the front wheel then it would be a different story, but from what we can see in the video it looks like stripe’s front wheel got caught up in the pedals or maybe bars on the steering arm of black, behind the front wheel.
to me it seems stripes should have either gotten ahead of black before trying to pinch them into the wall, or let black through since they were not in a position to try and stop them from riding through
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but maybe stripped was trying to just turn around and let black through , but black purposedly went through the poking handlebar ? ( yes its the handlebar right tip that get caught )
that could be, either way stripes put forward momentum into black’s body as black was traveling past with the ball and caused their own dab.
black’s bike stays on a relatively straight path and their body language makes it seem like they were trying to avoid contact. stripes continued forward, hooking their bar on black’s hip (i finally watched the video full screen on a computer and could better see the details of what was going on),
i agree with op, i don’t really see how black could have done anything differently to avoid the contact
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i agree , although black still have the choice to not go that way and find a pass , or avoid WIDELY the defensor ( imagine thats how the game has to be played at all costs )
although i agree that striped takes advantage of this and is aiming at the foul , also agree on black body s la guage , but that could be simulated too
This is egregious… Pink has zero chance of gaiing front wheel and has given up any attempt to physically challenge black and instead they lean back and poke their bars in the way of the black players left leg.
People who do this kind of thing don’t realise how silly it would be if this tactic became an acceptable and common strategy. Imagine beating someone’s front wheel only to have them poke their bars into your space and brake…
This is clown shit. That appeal to the ref is laughable.
People have a responsibility to avoid someone’s bars but when the player who’s bars are at risk of being hit take no action to protect them or actively put them in the way I have no sympathy for them.
I’d say play on but I’d give a verbal warning to the pink player at the next stoppage.
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I think same it’s happening here. But in this case a foul has been called against orange
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thats literally using the steering arm to do a t bone 
referees have to start realizing what makes a foul and what makes good play , just appying black or white logic isnt working
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Agree, certainly not a foul by orange.
But at least white player kept both hands on the handlebar.
I think the scenario like in the first video where the player takes the mallet hand from the handlebar and just pushes their handlebar into the path of an opponent is more problematic. Especially if it ends up in that arm-body triangle.
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Agreed about the mallet side open bar…
However, in principle, there is nothing stopping you from doing a similarly bad thing with the not mallet side of the bar. Yes, the limitation is that you can’t lean away and drive the bar into an opponents space. But, there are clearly times when Benji’s determination of a t-bone would apply.
I’ve been thinking about this problem for ages and in my mind the distinction comes down to some combination of who is “in front” and who is carrying momentum into whom?
To be clear, I don’t think this is the right framing for the question but it’s the current normative criteria. I think that pesky problems like this, alongside blocking the passage of a rider by hitting their pedal, suggest that we haven’t fully fleshed out the principles that underwrite the idea of priority that being “in front” is supposed to capture.
Perhaps we should attempt to more fully elucidate the general concept contained in the phrase, “players have the right to the space they occupy.” I think it encodes something intuitively correct about the foundation of these matters but lacks the power to help us in these dynamic examples where exactly which space one has the right to occupy is largely ambiguous. If we add the oft sited phrase, “there are no lines in bike polo” we have a dynamic principle to add to our static one. However, much is left to decide after the application of these two. Perhaps we need to add to these fundamental principles or move away from principles and work on the particulars in order to achieve specific aims, aesthetic as they may be.
Sorry for the rant. I spend a lot of time thinking about this one issue.
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it does’t neef to go that deep ,
we just need to define what is a player’s personal space, it’s core.
like in basket ball ( again sorry ) a particular pzrt of the ruleset define what a legal stance is : a player’s limb isnt counted as core space
exemple : so if offense is moving around defense already and defense stretch an arm to impede movement, offense can go through this arm.
although defense cannot go through the core space of “planted defense” : to feets planted , arms up , elbow to shoulders level etc.
offense cant put their legs thru defense stance and pivot for exemple
to simplify and play clean , coach told us to imagine a spherical zone around the player from all their tips that cannot be penetrated
its also relevant on actions like bashing : as a player come up to shoot the ball , defense can slam the ball out its hands. this is subject to a lot of ref confusion if the interaction is done improperly
ive gave that speech many time and i currently apply similar logic to play a clean game in polo , i think the reffing would be way less sketchier if people where all on this same page , and it wouldnt need to rewrite or change ant rules
also i will add in this particular situation with orange , that particular player is a nightmare to play on all these close encounters and i m not surprise to see him come out of this 1v1 with a maximum of the bonus a player can get out with : the ball possession , his chosen lineand his balance are intact , a -1 defensor in a dabbed position , a potential advantage from a contact to the rib … no wonder the ref called it the other way around , you can almost see he is leaning his waist in the contact : to absorb it and bounce off it ? or to create it ? hard to say IRL.
this is where white player space positioning is so important : by not taking clearly the space in front of orange front wheel , he puts himself into a weird 50/50 situation.
by not clearly paralel parking along orange shoulder space , white wasnt offered a chance to check a shoulder high and even, and why would orange , or any ball possessor , ever offer it ?
if defense ( white ) had applied a better form in its positioning , the situation would have played better , so did white choose on purpose to contact orange there or did he tried to take the front wheel and failed and got punished imediately for its weak stance ?
its like martin wired his brain into a mean machine to exploit space and contacts 
very tough player to handle
IDK, the core of something is usually pretty deep down! : P
im replying specifically to this part of your comment
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