Pippa’s skiing pal ‘lost his head’ in road rage attack
AN OLYMPIC athlete and friend of Pippa Middleton launched a road rage attack on a motorist who objected to being blocked by his bike, a court heard.
Bernie Shrosbree, a former Royal Marine and high-performance coach, “lost his head” when victim Howard Harvey beeped his horn at him, magistrates were told.
Mr Harvey was on exclusive Sandbanks in Poole, Dorset, when he encountered Shrosbree, 60, and a friend cycling side by side across the road.
When Mr Harvey pulled up alongside, insults were exchanged before Shrosbree got off his bike and ripped off the wing mirror of the 2017 Mercedes C-class.
He swung several blows at the victim, tried to rip the driver’s door off its hinges and grabbed the keys and threw them into a garden.
Shrosbree, who in 2016 teamed up with Pippa Middleton for a 33-mile ski race
Bernie Shrosbree with ski teammate Pippa Middleton in the Swiss Alps, was arrested hours later. He told police he had been “livid” and “lost his head”.
On Monday, at Poole magistrates court, he pleaded guilty to using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour and criminal damage.
Shrosbree, from Lilliput, Poole, was ordered to pay £3,700 to Mr Harvey with 100 hours community service.
Magistrates heard he and a friend had spent the morning of September 29 last year cycling on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.
They had just pedalled off the Sandbanks Ferry and were riding abreast which annoyed motorists behind them. David Finney, prosecuting, said Mr Harvey, in his 50s and from north London, was driving behind a woman who beeped and had a “verbal exchange” with the pair.
Mr Finney said: “He too sounded his horn and pulled up alongside the cyclists.
“Swear words were exchanged and there was contact between the vehicle and the bike. [Shrosbree] threw blows towards the victim. The victim did not throw blows back.
“He attempted to pull the car door off its hinges and also damaged seats.”
Shrosbree, whose clients have included Olympic rowers Sir Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell and adventurer Ben Fogle, represented Great Britain in the Olympic triathlon and cross-country skiing.
He won ITV’s Survival Of The Fittest three
times.