On the sidelines of the presentation of the Paris-Nice route, the Tour director called for improvements after the serious falls of recent months.
“We need to talk to the cycle industry” to improve safety in Cycling, insisted Tuesday the director of the Tour de France, Christian Prudhomme, while the peloton has been hit by serious falls in recent months.
“Talking to the cycle industry is absolutely necessary. At the last International Cycling Union seminar, there was precisely a representative of the industry who said: ”They don’t talk to us”. We need to talk to these people who obviously want to do something so that cycling does not become even more dangerous”he declared on the sidelines of the presentation of the Paris-Nice 2025 route in Versailles.
“We unfortunately know that there have been dramatic accidents in recent years. This is not at all an attack on the riders or the teams. But we must face the facts that the faster things go, the more dangerous they are, especially with increasing urban development.”he added.
Cycling was shaken by a succession of sometimes very serious falls last year, such as the one that sent Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel to hospital with multiple fractures last April.
The World Championships in September in Zurich were mourned by the death of a young Swiss junior, Muriel Furrer, a year after the death of her compatriot Gino Mäder during the Tour de Suisse.
One of the ways to slow down the peloton would, according to several players in the field, be to better regulate the development of equipment which is increasingly efficient.
While some are campaigning to play on tires as in Formula 1, Christian Prudhomme spoke on Tuesday “the width of the handlebars, of the handlebars, which can be wider” and to also think about “limited developments downhill”.
The boss of the Tour de France also welcomed the initiative of certain teams like DSM (which will be called Picnic in 2025) to have “jerseys that can really protect runners” et “avoid them being completely grated”.
But the possibility of introducing a «safety car» as in car racing does not excite the director of the Tour de France at all. “To say that is already not to understand that there are red (race management, editor’s note) cars which, in any case, make a roadblock when it is necessary. So no, I don’t see the connection”he said.
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