Whether it was fair to kick Renshaw out of the Tour, or that the judges overreacted to his jockeying, had little to do with the ruling. Instead the judges, in moving quickly and decisively, wanted to send a much broader message to the pro cycling circuit.

Team HTC and its two Marks — Renshaw and the world’s fastest human on wheels, Cavendish — have adopted a win-at-all-costs strategy that, unfortunately, has reached the point of cheating. In making their ruling, the judges were saying, in effect, It’s time to stop with the bullying and “gladiator” tactics and do the racing “straight up.”

It’s time to play fair.

Wenatchee’s Tyler Farrar, who may have been cheated out of his first-ever Tour stage win, was visibly angry but managed to be his usual articulate and measured self, pointing out that the rules state you ride in a straight line during a final sprint. Whether Renshaw meant to cut off Tyler or not is beside the point; he broke the rules, and he did so knowingly.

Still, it seems obvious that had this been an isolated and first-time offense for Cavendish and his Team HTC mates, a lighter punishment might have been meted out. But it wasn’t.

Cavendish in particular has been repeatedly at the center of questionable tactics. He was himself disqualified from a 2009 Tour stage for playing dirty against rival Thor Hushovd. Earlier this season he caused a sensational crash in the Tour of Switzerland, leading to penalization and even a fine.

Most extraordinarily, the rest of the riders joined in a mass protest the next day against Mark the Mouth and associates. Having your comrades align against you is about as clear an indictment as can be handed out.

The protest should have been enough to get HTC to sit up and ride straight. Instead its only apparent lasting effect was to prompt Cav to shed tears of relief on the podium after his first stage win in the Tour last week. Much ink was wasted after Cavendish’s emotional display to the effect that he was putting his bad boy image to rest.

Instead, he may have merely been passing the baton.

Until yesterday, Cavendish was considered a lone outlaw. But when they saw his swagger poisoning the rest of his team with Renshaw’s actions, the judges decided to put an emphatic end to the spread of infection. If the gangrene of Cavendish’s ego is making its way to the limbs of his team support, then the only correct procedure is amputation.

This is bike racing, not professional wrestling, they declared (in so many words). If Renshaw wants to head-butt his way to victory, he is now free to join the WWE.

He’ll have to shed the helmet, though.

That’s right. As fierce as the competition has been on the Tour, we’re now at the point of head-butting to gain an edge.

TV footage showed clearly that Farrar teammate Julian Dean, riding as Tyler’s leadout man in the absence of Robbie Hunter, was impeded by Renshaw in repeated head butts. And that subsequently Farrar himself was cut off by Renshaw swerving alongside him. It may have been the impeding of Farrar, in fact, rather than the head-butting, that got Renshaw DQ’d.

A distraught Farrar — the cool-headed Tyler seldom blows a gasket — all but accused Renshaw of illegal tactics in the post-race Versus interview.

We’ll wait for the judges’ review, but to our eyes it looked like Tyler was cheated. He may not have beat Cavendish anyway, but Renshaw’s actions were out of line. (Renshaw denied in post-race interviews that he intentionally impeded Dean.)

[UPDATE: Twitter feeds are saying that Renshaw has been disqualified from the Tour.]

Full stage results from CyclingNews.com.

At the start of the stage, Farrar got more bad news when his Garmin-Transitions teammate and lead-out man Hunter had to pack it in with a broken elbow.

Joining a parade of riders with an incredible array of ailments and broken bones in this year’s Tour, Hunter withdrew after taking a spill in yesterday’s otherwise uneventful Stage 10.

Farrar himself is riding with a cracked bone in his wrist, an admirable feat given the inevitable pain and suffering any break entails. Farrar still hopes to make it to Paris and has another couple of tries for his first Tour de France stage win ever in sprint finishes.

But it’s not going to be easy with Hunter missing. An experienced, savvy and most of all bullet-strong sprinter himself, Hunter was the key to Farrar’s hopes for a sprint win. Not all is lost with Hunter’s departure, but it makes Farrar’s job all the more difficult.

Tomorrow’s hilly stage could supply some drama if climbers decide to make a race of it.

Additional notes:

If you’re wondering, as I was, if a DQ from the overall Tour had happened before, Belgian rider Tom Steels was disqualified in 1997 for tossing a water bottle at a competitor in the final sprint. (Thanks to @sonofabike on Twitter.)