I don't follow cycling as a sport, but I know that many here do.
There's a rather grim article on the BBC website about the death of Muriel Furrer during a road race in Switzerland in 2024. According to crash investigators she lay unconscious and undiscovered for 82 minutes.
There doesn't appear to be any criminal culpability found on the part of the organisers but riders weren't tracked and nobody appears to have missed a cyclist dissapearing from the field.
No mention in the article as to the survivability of her injuries had she been airlifted immediately.
BBC.CO.UK Yeah, it's so bad. I get that they don't want trackers and radios used by the teams as they want all the racing on the road, but the fact that they don't/didn't have them available to the commissaires/marshals is appalling.
Since then there have been disputes over which technology should be used, some teams being aligned with a system which isn't the UCI's chosen one. There is concern over sensitive data being transmitted. See also the link in that article to Tom Pidcock's recent crash "out of sight out of mind".
I think a contributory factor - although its unavoidable as part of the race format - is the Worlds has a much more diverse field of competitors than say a pro team race. So the field is far more strung out, on top of the no radio thing - which is supposed to try and keep the competition as one of individuals rather than teams. The point is to prevent countries with a bigger cycling tradition - and fielding more competitors - swamping competitors from countries that might only be field one rider. Thinking back to the worlds in Glasgow you had riders turn up from countries that weren't even able to send them with a bike let alone a team car and a bunch of team mates.
But that strung-out field means it increases the likelihood of someone getting into trouble unseen.
The Glasgow course maybe worked rather well in that respect in that for a large part of the race the field was both strung out and also in a geographically compact area. With so many tight corners even the countries that were trying to act as team could easily be unhitched from one another because once someone was 100 yards ahead or behind you they were out of sight. But equally if you were to come to harm on the latter half of the race you certainly wouldn't be unseen
Maybe thats a consideration for future worlds that could come from this - devise a course type that suits the race format (one of individual rather than team tactics) rather than trying to run and individual race on the same kind of course as a team race.
But - in the same sense - exactly the same risks exist on any local time trial on any weekend of the year I suppose.
Its madness. THey should all have trackers even if the location data is only avaliable to the commissionaires or the medical teams
but the fact that they don't/didn't have them available to the commissaires/marshals is appalling.
Any more appalling than competitors not having them in the vast majority of amateur racing? I mean, if you fell off the side of the road in an E/1/2 cat road race in the UK watched by one man and his dog with a handful of marshalls and support vehicles you are way way more unlikely to be seen disappearing into the brush than you are at the worlds.
Super sad stuff though. It maybe too late for her, but at least there is a tech solution. My wife has a tracker she wears when on the road for work. Size of a pager clipped to your clothes. Somehow (accelerometer I guess) it knows you have had a crash and as well as passing on her location to emergency services if there is signal it turns into a handsfree phone and automatically opens a call with an operator. You can press a button to do the same if you are about to get attacked or being threatened. I'm assuming it'll be similar tech that they are now using rather than just a transponder type device.
Any more appalling than competitors not having them in the vast majority of amateur racing? I mean, if you fell off the side of the road in an E/1/2 cat road race in the UK watched by one man and his dog with a handful of marshalls and support vehicles you are way way more unlikely to be seen disappearing into the brush than you are at the worlds.
Well, yeah, it is, cos it's the World f___ing Championships, run by the international governing body. It's not unreasonable to expect a higher standard of organisation than a local/regional amateur event.
If MrsIHN can be provided with a GPS tracker by the organisers of an amateur trail marathon, which she often is, as she may well be in the middle of nowhere with no-one around, then each participant in these races could easily be provided with one. It's reeeeeeeally simple.
There was a big thread at the time.
The problem is quite a lot of awful errors are only corrected when that thing that "would never happen" actually does happen. Most of the safety rules we now take for granted have come from tragedies.
I agree with IHN, you should expect a far higher level of risk management and organisation at a World Championship race.
If I was attending a local club TT with a prize pot of £15 run by a handful of volunteers I'd probably just hope that if I didn't cross the finish line someone would notice and any marshal within eyeline responded to me crashing, but that's about the limit of what I'd expect. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect more than that from an international governing body.
I agree with IHN, you should expect a far higher level of risk management and organisation at a World Championship race.
Part of the challenge, as mentioned above is that rather ironically, the standard at a World Championships is FAR wider than in a regular WorldTour event so actually it's much harder to assess - you're effectively working with riders from 3rd Cat to World Champ level.
I worked on both Harrogate and Glasgow road worlds and you've got riders from all manner of "lesser" nations who are unused to riding in events of that scale, riders on borrowed bikes and secondhand kit. It's incredibly diverse and much more difficult to coordinate.
They also don't have the regular team structure; riders aren't racing on behalf of Bora-Hansgrohe or Ineos or Canyon-SRAM, they're racing for Belgium or France or Switzerland with a completely different set of DS, mechanics etc. And no radios.
But yes, based on the findings, there needs to be an overhaul of regulations and the UCI need to step up with their funding and support because a huge amount of what happens in most events is funded by the organiser.