He might, perhaps, feel aggrieved at the penalty after two riders were merely fined a total of 800 swiss francs for fighting last week, but Mark Renshaw cannot deny that he deserved to be punished, and punished harshly.

The reason he can’t deny it is the very same reason officials had no choice but to remove him from this year’s Tour de France.

For those who have not seen, (Spoiler alert for you DVR warriors) Renshaw appeared to headbutt his Garmin-Slipstream counterpart Julian Dean several times at the head of Thursday’s field sprint. It’s unclear exactly why Renshaw did what he did, whether it was born of anger or a desire to move over for his sprinter, Mark Cavendish. According to the eventual stage winner from the Isle of Man, it was to move Dean off Renshaw after they had hooked elbows, something he attempted to plead to a race official to no avail afterward.

Now, the physicality of a pro peloton as it masses for a field sprint is predictable, from weekend races on up. Headbutting, elbowing, jostling, it all happens. Hell, it made Robbie McEwen famous.

But Renshaw’s mistake — or rather, mistakes, as he appeared to go for Dean with his head three times — came at the worst possible moment: In the final meters of a sprint finish at the Tour de France. (One could also easily make a case for unfair impeding, as Renshaw moves right after moving Dean and then appears to swing back to his left after noticing that Garmin sprinter Tyler Farrar was coming up hard behind Cavendish.)

It goes without saying that cycling is a sport with an image problem. Not this image so much, granted, but an image problem nonetheless, one that from time to time probably leaves race officials feeling somewhat devoid of power.

If they had chosen not to punish Renshaw, or simply to disqualify him from the stage and fine him, they would essentially have been okaying his behavior, which was, once again, quite blatant.

Too many cameras caught Renshaw’s rather obvious action for officials to even consider swearing off the incident by claiming they could not adequately see it. What he did was put on display for the world.

Renshaw headbutts Dean once, then twice, then backs off, and then a third time. There could be no other decision that would not have compromised race officials’ authority.

Now, this does seem heavy-handed compared to the simple fine levied against battlers Rui Costa and Carlos Barredo. But that’s more an indictment of poor decision-making in the latter situation than the other way around.

Renshaw has, to my knowledge, not said anything publicly yet, nor has his Twitter account been updated today. When asked, Cavendish and Farrar took up predictably opposite sides of the debate.

But at the end of the day, Renshaw had to go, for the sake of authority, and for the sake of common sense.