One death is enough to call for change

If you asked fans and riders of the sport of cycling what the biggest issue surrounding the sport was two or three years ago, they would not have hesitated to mention the word doping.

However, over the past couple of years we have seen an even more worrying issue start to eventuate affecting both rider and fan safety.

This issue directly relates to the support vehicles of the media, teams and race organisers causing or being involved with crashes with either spectators or the riders.

Now in most occasions, the people involved in these instances have been able to walk away generally uninjured, but unfortunately at last Sunday’s Gent Wevelgem, young Belgian rider Antoine Demoitié succumbed to injuries suffered after a race official’s motorbike crashed and subsequently hit the Wanty–Groupe Gobert rider.

According to Dutch NOS Journalist Sebastian Timmerman, “Antoine Demoitié crashed with several other riders. An official motorcycle that rode behind them tried to avoid the group of riders, but it went wrong. He crashed and engine landed on Antoine Demoitié. He was immediately taken to hospital and listed as critical, but unfortunately passed a few hours later.”

While cycling deaths from racing are extremely rare, over the past few years, there have been a notable amount of incidents where riders have been hit by official race vehicles; either cars or motorbikes. Unfortunately, cycling once again waits until it is too late before they react to a key issue, and this time such hesitation is deadly.

A tweet from BMC Development Team rider Bas Tietma perfectly explains where cycling is going wrong. “We have protocols for bikes, weather, doping etc! But how many accidents have to happen before something happens that protects the riders.”

Whatever the issue that comes across the sport of cycling, the sport’s top brass fail to make key decisions to help the sport eradicate such issues. This has got to change.

Not just because of the death of Demoitié, but because of the increasing amount of incidents over the last five years which have led up to this tragic death.

Stage 9 of the 2011 Tour de France brought home to the viewers of the sport the first publicised example of race officials causing incidents for riders, when a race media car side swiped Spaniard Juan Antonio Flecha into the path of an unsuspecting Jonny Hoogerland, who then ended up in a barbed wire fence.

This incident caused extensive damage to both riders, with Hoogerland requiring over 30 stitches to close up his wounds.

In 2015 alone, several riders were hit by race motorbikes including Peter Sagan and Sergio Paulinho from Tinkoff.

In terms of Sagan, his incident occurred on Stage 8 of La Vuelta and as you can clearly see from the video shot from a fan below, was caused by one of the race motorbikes riding far too close to the bunch at a ridiculously high speed. Sagan abandoned the race after the stage.

Former world individual time trial world champion Michael Rogers tweeted this which could be a potential way to reduce incident’s like Sagan’s occurring in the future. “Cap moto speed to 15-20km/h faster than peloton when passing = increased reaction time when unexpected happens”.

Another incident occurred to Belgian star Greg Van Avermaet (BMC Racing) at the Clásica San Sebastián, where he was away in front of the race on the final all important climb, but was then clipped from behind, resulting in him falling and being taken out of the race.

Only a few weeks earlier on Stage 18 of the Tour de France, Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang was clipped by a motorcycle while in a break near the summit of the Col de Glandon. He was battling for both King of the Mountains points and the stage win with Frenchmen Pierre Roland and Romain Bardet.

In the video below, he explains the incident, and the injuries he suffered.

The previous two examples of incidents should be one hundred per cent avoidable. The riders are moving so slow up the climbs that vehicles should have the patience to wait for the right opportunity to pass.

You could argue that in Van Avermaet’s case, the crowd were encroaching to far onto the road, and thus cut the space for the passing moto but again, why do you need so many motorbikes to follow the action when the road hits a climb.

Potential solutions to this problem come from removing as many TV motorbikes as possible. With new technology in terms of cameras fitted to bikes and now drones, surely we can get the same level of shots from different angles without hampering the riders and race/team officials from doing their job.

Disc brakes have been introduced by bike manufacturers, so surely the media could use such innovative technology for their own benefit.

Let’s not put all the blame on TV motorcycles though, as even team and race officials can cause accidents themselves.

At the 2015 Ronde van Vlaanderen, Shimano neutral service cars took out both Jesse Sergent (Trek) and Sébastien Chavanel (FDJ) in a frightening accident.

Looking at the vision of the accident below, the driver showed a complete lack of care for any of the riders. To be brutally honest, if you witnessed such an accident out on the open road, the phrase ‘attempted murder’ may come to mind.

Last but not least, at the 2012 Three Days of De Panne, Orica-GreenEDGErider Svein Tuft was approaching a hairpin bend when a race vehicle driven by VIP’s got stuck in the corner and caused the Canadian to lose valuable time on the stage and on general classification.

There is no easy solution to removing such incidents, because every situation is slightly different. Having said this, there are a few areas where broader improvements can be made to either reduce the likelihood of such incidents occurring, or reducing the impact that such incidents have on the race or a specific rider.

The key issue for mine is the sheer number of vehicles following the race. Of course, team cars and commissaires are essential for a race to function smoothly, but the amount of motorcycles and the way they have been riding over the past year and a half has been questionable to say the least.

As I stated earlier, finding other ways to produce the coverage will take a large chunk of media motorcycles of the road. However, I think that the amount of vehicles on the race route can be kept if the drivers of such vehicles are actually trained to ride/drive around a race properly. They must be able to spot the critical danger points that the race often throws up, and act accordingly for the safety of riders and fans.

While the fans often make bike racing so spectacular, they are not effectively separated from the riders, and thus cause problems for the racing itself and for race/media officials to move around the race. The more room that the riders have to use on the road, the easier it is for officials vehicles to move about without the fear of hitting someone, or the need to do it at such speed.

This same point can be used as a reason for race organisers to move cars which have been parked on the side of the road off the street so that the roads can be clear of any obstacles.

Making such changes to the way races are run will not fully rule out the possibility of these types of incidents occurring, but they reduce the likelihood and the potential impact of such incidents.

Bike racing is a tough sport and crashes will happen, and we must as fans always understand that.

However, there has been an increasing percentage of preventable accidents taking out riders and leaving them with missed opportunities, broken limbs and broken families.

It is time for the sport of cycling to grow up and say that there is a problem, and that they will fix it.