We’ve seen some nasty accidents in races in the last few seasons – the most notorious was the one at Itzulia Basque Country that brought down Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič, and Remco Evenepoel among others. The long shadow it threw over the season means it was at least as consequential to the year as, say, the collected efforts of Team Ineos.
How you make the sport safer is an important question, with no easy answers. At the recent race organisers’ conference, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme drew on years of experience to tell the room, “The races need to slow down. The riders are going too fast.”
He’s not really wrong, per se. But, “the riders are going too fast” is like standing by the roadside flapping your arms and shouting, “Careful!” I know that doesn’t work because those were the exact words I heard a few years back immediately before going headfirst over a wall into a field of sheep. Coming from someone like Prudhomme, whose entire business model exists only to incentivise bike riders to go as fast as possible, it’s more like irony than analysis.
But, to take it at face value for a moment, could we slow it all down? Limiting the size of gears has been a proposal, which would stop riders pedalling on descents. Here’s the problem, though. If you’re belting down a 10% hill, pedalling at 300 watts in something like 58 x 11 and doing 85kph, you’re clearly at some risk. If you had to freewheel instead, you’d still be doing 80kph. Except that if you don’t have to pedal you can adopt a more aero position and do most of 85kph anyway.
There have been other ideas. We could use the regs to unwind some technology advances. If we mandated flapping jerseys, box-section wheels, helmets with vents big enough to suck in whole birds and frames made out of big round tubes, it would set aerodynamics back 30 years and slow racing at a stroke.
Here the problem is worse than physics. It’s optics. Would anyone want to watch a race where all the riders have arrived fresh from 1985? Do you want to see pros racing bikes that aren’t as good as those on your club’s over-60s cafe ride?
We could try a turbo-trainer style electromagnetic brake in the rear hub to just slow everything down, but then Tadej Pogačar would likely set fire to his own arse.
What might work? Honestly, I’ve nothing helpful to offer. It’s a sport that’s all about going fast and I’ve no idea how you turn that round. The best I’ve come up with is neutralising descents, but while no one wants to watch a crash, everyone wants to watch Tom Pidcock slicing down an Alp. My over-60s WorldTour doesn’t work either, because if anything, old bike riders are even bigger maniacs than young ones and they’re as subject to gravity as the next rider.
The truth is that safer racing probably requires several things. Careful course design, maybe using more multi-lap courses so that riders have fewer surprises to deal with. More scrutiny of road surfaces in the design process. And while getting riders to slow down is very hard, getting them to ride more safely might be easier, but needs intelligent commissairing.
The one thing I do know is that telling riders they’re going too fast will only encourage them to go faster. They’re racing cyclists. They’re like that.
This article was originally published in Cycling Weekly magazine. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.
