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news
Tour de Pologne cyclist breaks back in horrific crash (TVP Sport)"Can't continue with radio ban": Pro cyclist breaks back in horrific crash as Visma-Lease a Bike manager slams "complete farce" and "chaos" lack of race radios created, but UCI President hits back at "fake news"
The UCI President David Lappartient and Visma-Lease a Bike team boss Richard Plugge have clashed over the governing body's trial of limited race radio use at the Tour de Pologne, a war of words, accusations of "fake news" and "complete farce" following a crash on the third stage which left a Cofidis rider lying in a ditch with vertebral fractures.
Nicolas Debeaumarché and Soudal Quick-Step rider Pepijn Reinderink crashed while in the breakaway, the Cofidis pro seen lying injured in a roadside ditch, his team later confirming he was taken to hospital with significant back injuries.
It has been reported by Lanterne Rouge podcaster Benji Naesen, who says "multiple riders" have told him since, that a crash then happened in the same place when the peloton passed around 90 seconds later, an incident riders say occurred because only two per team have earpieces due to the UCI trial, the information about the crash ahead not being communicated in time to spread around the peloton.
Taking to social media, Visma-Lease a Bike's General Manager Plugge had scathing criticism for the UCI's race radio trial, calling the stage "chaos" and a "complete farce".
"UCI cannot continue with this radio ban," he said. "It turns the race into a complete farce like we saw in the Olympics where riders cannot call the car for basic assistance (in case of a mechanical). Hopefully no one was too badly hurt today."
Plugge wrote those words in reply to a post sharing the TV images of Debeaumarché after his crash. On top of just two riders per team having an earpiece to hear the warning of a crash ahead, initially on the race radio feed it was communicated that just one rider had crashed, the French pro's fall missed.
However, responding to Plugge, UCI President Lappartient said he was spreading "fake news" and doubled down on the governing body's trial reducing the use of earpieces in races, with the aim of reducing distractions and improving safety.
"You are caught in the act of fake news!" he wrote. "Today's crashes at the Tour de Pologne have nothing to do with the absence of radios and you know it. The riders were taken care of according to standards. Our priority at the UCI is safety. You want to keep the radios on to give instructions, not for safety. Take responsibility for it! Let's continue working together!"
For teams, riders and fans the images of Debeaumarché calling for help while lying stricken in a roadside ditch were particularly uncomfortable given the recent passing of five years since the tragic death of promising Belgian cyclist Bjorg Lambrecht at the race, the 22-year-old Lotto-Soudal rider crashing into a concrete culvert.
Cycling podcaster Naesen hit back at Lappartient's criticism of Plugge, saying it was in fact him, the UCI's President, the one spreading "fake news" and asserting that his conversations with riders left him in no doubt there was an "increased risk of danger in today's stage" due to fewer riders having earpieces to hear race radio.
It is all part of a UCI trial taking place at selected races this summer, only two riders per team allowed to wear an earpiece in a bid to remove "both a source of distraction for riders and a physical hazard because the radio units are mounted on their backs".
> Yellow cards introduced to pro cycling to clamp down on dangerous riding and driving during races
Announcing the trial, the UCI said: "This decision is based on discussions on the subject within SafeR, which led to the conclusion that earpieces could be both a source of distraction for riders and a physical hazard because the radio units are mounted on their backs, and represent a risk when a large number of teams are simultaneously asking their riders to move up to the front of the race.
"Feedback from all stakeholders will be gathered in order to study the effects of restricting the use of earpieces and to consider studying other measures that could lead to a change in the way earpieces are used, for example limiting their use to two riders per team.
"An overall evaluation will be carried out within SafeR at the end of the season, before being presented to the Professional Cycling Council then to the UCI Management Committee with a view to a decision on the use of earpieces in the future."
Naesen replied to Lappartient's fighting talk: "You are caught in the act of fake news! According to multiple riders at the Tour de Pologne today, there was a crash that could've been avoided with earpieces. There was a crash in the breakaway. Race radio told team cars about this corner, to warn their riders.
"Only two riders per team had earpieces, and couldn't tell more than two people about this by the time the peloton reached the same spot. I know because multiple of these riders told me this. A crash happened in the same spot, in the peloton, that according to multiple riders, could have been avoided.
"Multiple riders have told me today about the increased fear of being left in a ditch with injuries because they can't communicate with team cars. During the Giro, [Jenthe] Biermans crashed out of radio communication range, and other riders told their team cars, who searched for him and found him.
"During today's Tour de Pologne stage, race radio missed the fall of Nicolas Debeaumarché, only reporting the fall of Reinderink. Riders were shouting 'help him' hoping someone would hear that there was a rider with potential serious injuries hidden in the ditch. Another example of increased risk of danger in today's stage."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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27 comments
Was nobody here alive BEFORE Motorola introduced the radio earpiece? I was and followed the sport so please tell me how safety has been improved by these gizmos vs the known benefits (not to the sport but to the DS' yelling instructions to "get to the front!") people like the Visma boss don't want to give up.
Are there LESS crashes and injuries since radios were introduced? How many times have we heard riders post-race say "I never heard any instructions over the radio" and similar things? Nobody (other than the DS and maybe a rider who can't think for himself) gets any benefit from this "technology" while many will claim it makes for too much "radio-controlled" racing...dull, dull, dull.
They say male pro cycling fans are "aging out" so viewership is decreasing. More "dull, dull, dull" racing's not the answer. Perhaps LESS tecnology and more excitement is?
Yes, I was, I've followed every edition avidly since 1983, and the five years leading up to the introduction of radios (1995 I believe?), the Indurian years, were just about the five most boring editions of the Tour of the forty-one I've watched. Conversely, the last five years have been brilliant to watch and they've had radios throughout.
Presumably this leading up to only two riders per team being permited to speak within the peloton with fines of 200 swiss franks per rider per infraction this can be easily checked by the infraction drones flying above riders? Rider safety my bum this is about UCI control and cash.
"Rider safety my bum this is about UCI control and cash."
Please explain how the UCI gains control and cash from a radio ban/restriction. Thank you.
How did having radios benefit Demi Volloering yesterday, either in preventing the crash or allowing the team to communicate and regroup to sustain her Yellow Jersey?
We didn't hear it in the radio!
And if you believe that I'm sure we can find a bridge to sell you
There are more than enough race vehicles in the groups that can pass on warnings to riders. Radios for the riders are not necessary
That is simply not the case. Imagine a group of 60 riders coming down a descent at 80 km/h plus, strung out in single file over a distance of maybe 200 m. The commissaire bike in front rounds a bend and finds that a herd of cattle have wandered into the road, or a group of protesters are blocking it, how are the vehicles in the groups going to get the message to all those riders in the 30 or 40 second window they have before they arrive on the scene? By all means ban team orders etc over the radio, ban riders from receiving communication from anything but race radio if you want, but don't take away their ability to receive almost instant updates about the state of the road ahead, something that is an indisputable safety benefit. The sport is dangerous enough as it is without removing such safety warnings.
There is never one single commisaire, as I mentioned before, there are many motos ahead of the peloton, for tv, for safey marshalls, for commisaires, for drinks, for neutral service, for police.
All motos are connected and when a hazard is observed a safety marshall will dismount to use yellow warning flag. Absolutely no different to the current principle of marking road furniture etc. At the same time they report tempoary obstruction or crash to all support vehicles, obviously this will include the commisaire immediately in front of peloton. This commisaire will immediately blow whistles and deploys warning flags/system, yellow for caution, red to stop, same as F1 as required. Everbody is informed. A simple use of the protocol already in place.
Also can you put some actual times into those figures to make sense?
We should probably consider how many crashes occur due to radios, DS instructions that have increased the tempo of a race so the team do not get caught behind acrash (the crash that bizarely occurs due to the increase in tempo) and how many occur because radios were not in use. We see many for the former but very very few for the latter as radios are in use for nearly all races.
In other instances a rider crossing the median this year in the TdF took out a number of significant players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-GvJ6bYUSM was due, as most are, to rider issues not lack of radios. The other mass spill on newly laid and wet tarmac would likely not have been avoided by any means.
Can not find video footage of the incident in Tour Of Poland, would be interested to view if you have a link, only a still of a rider in the ditch and the bike being on a dirt road next to the course.
We should also consider that one person's danger might be another person's effective zone, quite happy descending 10 kmh faster than others might be, for the others ego might exceed skill in the heat of racing. So being told there is a dangerous bend ahead will mean different things entirely for Pidcock and Pogacar, who appear to lap up high speed technical decents.
I see no significant detriment to safety by removing rider radios but I do see riders having to think more about their riding, having to understand the race, the condition of thier fellow competitors and calculate more about how they will race, on instinct, rather than being automatons of the DS. See the recent Olympic road race where there was some jepoardy and to my mind better racing.
We're lucky to have people who've presumably never raced on the World Tour nor with radios to tell us just why removing them would not impact safety. Otherwise all we'd have to listen to would be the opinions of, um, the pros racing on the World Tour and what do they know, eh?
They know they get paid more if they win. They often have little sense for their own safety, you only need to look at historic events where the riders cross in front of trains at level crossings or want to ride through a landslide to grasp that.
Does someoboy have to be embedded in an activity to judge if it is safe or otherwise? Often people outside an organisation or activity can see normalised risk taking, it is evident in cycle racing. It used to be considered acceptable to lose F1 drivers as part of racing but that changed after Senna. Given the number of significant crashes with significant injuries when riding with radios, the acclaimed safety benefits are not there to be seen, rider attitude has to change.
I feel I am working against a closed mind but....
I tried to counter your simple assertion about "dozens of riders" back in 2010. I suggested that this historic event does not really indicate the need for radios to sustain rider safety. You didn't respond to my questions that might support riders were aware of and responsible for thier own safety, nor with a list of accidents that have occured since the peloton had radios, and there are many, or accidents that could have been avoided, you blathered.
I offered a protocol to manage road contamination, very similar to what is in place now, but you decide not to consider that but blather about the fact that you've been watching racing for 41 years!! And wandering down some rabbit hole about Banesto being a boring team. Yes I agree entirely, they were a machine. As were Team Sky. They were doing their job, (trying to win) with minimum effort. Imagine if Froome had not heard the radio and left the struggling Wiggo the racing would have been more exciting than the processional protect the GC at all costs or lets stop the breakaway "racing" we have seen. But would it have been dangerous?
I asked how the radio assisted Demi Vollering in avoiding the crash or recovering from it where bizarrely they did not protect the GC. You ignored that, why? I mentioned the wipeout that took out Roglic but you offered no reason why that occured with radios on hand.
Wasn't it good to see Remco go ahead in the Olympics and see racing with genuine jepoardy when he punctured, not tainted by unecessary team tactics and orders over the radio. Was it unsafe? I would offer no but the women's TT potentially was, would a radio have helped Taylor Knibb? As was swimming in the River Seine, she did both!
As to your comment about recent racing being good, perhaps that is due to the personalities that are racing now. Riders that race with passion not automatons, eg Alaphilippe's stage win this year in the Giro, Girmay's outstanding Tour as well as 3 excellent riders on the podium. People busting a gut to try and get a breakaway established only to have it crushed once the DS has done the sums and calls over the radio it's time to reel them in so the sprinters can have thier day.
Ride with passion not science and to numbers, that's why we all loved Jens and Tommy V!
OK, I'm just going to explain this and then not bother with you any more as you're not only being very silly and boring but extraordinarily solipsistic: when you look at a comment someone's made on here, have a look at the top line and you'll see to whom the comment was replying. The comment I made about how long I've been watching racing, and about Indurain, was replying to Larry T's comment, relevant to that, and had nothing to do with anything you said. It's not all about you sweetheart.
Oh and:
Funny that, I watched all of those magnificent perfomances and all of those riders were using their radios throughout. Silly person.
According to some of the reports, at one point the race organisers radioed DSs to tell them to warn their riders about a dangerous bend coming up on a descent; at least two teams have said that their radio-carrying riders were out of touch with the rest of the team so no warning was received. At the very least all riders should be allowed to carry a receiver-only radio to receive such warnings.
Wow, branding safety concerns as "fake news" without any consideration because it goes against your vanity initiative?
Way to scupper your career plans of filling Thomas Bach's IOC slippers
The solution is fairly simple, allow all riders to wear radios, allow race commissaires to talk to all riders to warn of safety information, allow riders to talk to team cars to request bottles/feeds/mechanical assistance and allow teams to respond to these requests with a single beep so riders know the request has been received. all other radio communication is banned and riders are not allowed to have the radios mounted on their backs.
Yeah the radio mounted on the backs thing does seem like a bit of a weak argument, they could just enforce them being worn elsewhere.
I don't see that it would be all that hard to implement something whereby only the team leader and a designated rider has a full 2 way radio, the rest of the team have outgoing comms only for requests of bikes/bottles etc, and then safety info transmitted to all riders.
Yes some of the racing is a bit more exciting/chaotic when there aren't radios, although I don't think this is necessarily a good thing, and I can't imagine it going down well when someone loses a monument/grand tour because they couldn't communicate with the team.
Surely, you could put the receiver/powerpack inside the frame in some way, or even just under the saddle, and then do bluetooth to the earpieces? Sure, if the rider needs to change bike, ok, maybe that adds a wrinkle, but in general I don't see why the rider needs to have any box of radio bits under their clothes.
And yes, making all comms open, with delayed access, like they do in F1, seems a very good approach to me.
Even more significantly, how will it go down if someone gets seriously injured because they didn't get a warning about a hazard, e.g. an oil spill on a descent? Potential for a lawsuit against the UCI for banning important safety equipment, one would imagine.
And how does that occur between the outriders, safety marshalls and plethora of other vehicles ahead of the peloton and the peloton itself.
Perhaps an unexpected storm of frogs or fish contaminates the road
Just off the top of my head, 2010 Tour de France, early stage in Belgium (second or third?), one of the motorcycle riders preceding the peloton crashed on a descent in the rain and left oil on the road, dozens of riders came off on it. Thanks for the unnecessary sarcasm though.
14 years ago tell me when did radios become commonplace?
Where were the rest of the outriders to stop and flag the issue?
And why did the riders in the wet not consider the immediate impact of a motorbike going down and take action to avoid it?
At times it's like watching collisions on the motorway in fog everybody is too fast for the conditions and trusting so much to luck.
During time trials radios seem to be worn at the front nowadays?
You don't even need to get particularly clever with the technology - just make the communications open, ban anyone using them for anything other than allowed purposes, and penalise them if they do it anyway.
It's not as though there aren't already rules and ways to deal with people breaking them - cheating doesn't have to be impossible, just obvious.
Unenforceable. Humans are really, really good at deception; sports directors doubly so. Even responding "okay" vs. "yes" encodes a single bit of information.
"Fernando is faster than you"
Sure that'll work - one beep for "get to the front!" two for "start pulling for the leader" three for "get ready to switch to the bike with the motor" etc. etc.
The safety argument is pure BS unless someone can show less crashing/injuries and other benefits that have shown-up since radios have come in vs the bad old daze when the road captain got yelled at by the DS from the team car and had to relay the message to the rest of the team. More chaos and mayhem but were there more crashes, injuries and deaths?
Spot on.