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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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/articles/cnv85v7r22ro
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.
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.
I'm not sure the profile of the event or the organiser changes the risk or the consequences of a crash. At a small local event crashing may be more likely (less experienced riders, road surface potentially in poorer condition, perhaps open roads etc). With probably less sophisticated medical arrangements the outcome of "the same" crash could also be worse. Probably more marshals, probably larger number of other riders, more spectators, and team cars etc - I can see how the "likelihood" of an unwitnessed crash might be smaller.
IF you say that with all those things in its favour the UCI should require trackers, I think its difficult to see why your local event doesn't need them. I'd actually say its the other way round. If your event is small the risk increases and a tracker becomes more important. Amateur trail marathons are fairly pricey to enter and part of the reason is the "need" for such tracking. At the World Champs that is a trivial cost, but for your local sportif / TT etc it might be make or break. People have been cycle racing for 100 years without trackers, why just because it is now possible is it so obvious that this is essential? There were confusing reports at the time but she was no more than 30s from other riders, crashed <400m from a photographer and some reports suggested another rider saw her leave the road. Whether those have been discounted or other competitors are not expected to go to your assistance if they see you crash I'm not sure.
To me the questions would be was there a viable way to know the rider was missing anyway. I think this was a "circuit" so there was potential to spot a missing rider on each lap. It might not be viable with a peleton but rallying managed long before trackers to know which sectors of a course were clear. The reporting doesn't say what happened between the crash at 11:04 and being found at 12:26. How much of that was "search" time and how much was blindly waiting for her to finish? Trackers help the search but only when someone knows there is something worth searching for - you need someone (or at least some software) to detect a tracker not moving - initially at least you might not know if its a puncture or a crash, nor know if they've stopped and the team is with them or the are lying in a ditch? Or even if the tracker has just fallen off. So I'm not convinced trackers are the be all and end all.
At the end of the day very few things in life are free from risk and road racing certainly isn't. A tracker won't stop your crashing, won't protect you from harm if you do, and at best means medical help arrives quicker. My view may be controversial but this feels like "something must be done" territory that always follows a tragedy. If you want to stop the tragedies - don't ride fast round corners in the wet - but I guess thats not what anyone wants.
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.
Surely though none of this matters. It doesn't matter who they're racing for or with or what they're racing on; they sign on, they get their number, they get their tracker, all supplied by the organiser (beit UCI or local TT league). The organisers can then dot watch around the course, and if any dots don't move for, say, five minutes (and this will usually flag automatically on the dot-watching site), they dispatch someone to investigate.
I agree that the chance of someone at a lower level event crashing and/or going missing is likely higher, but I just think that similar to the thread on the climber who left their partner on a mountain to die that people (and events organisers) should have expectations on them based on their expertise and status, and not just on the level of risk.
There is possibly more risk of someone hurting themselves on a bouncy castle at a private kids party than at a Softplay centre, but you'd have higher expectations of the staff and organiser at the centre if/when that did happen.
Not sure how I feel about this one. When you take it down to the basics it could happen anywhere, at any event that doesn't have line of sight marshalls, long stages just inherently can have a lot of opportunity to end up somewhere that nobody's going to see you in a hurry. And on top of that, losing riders at events is really common, they take wrong turns or just give up and leave and don't tell anyone.
it feels like one of those things where having high expectations at a high end event feels reasonable but the exact same situation can arise at any level and expecting change at all levels doesn't seem realistic at all.
A horrible case though
Absolutely, at national/local race/sportive sort of level there will be a number of riders that just give up and go home/shortcut to the finish and not tell anyone, so I don't think you'd expect tracking to filter down fully.
It's also understandable that in the maelstrom of team cars, mechanicals, multiple innocuous crashes where the rider hops back on 10 seconds later and continues that the riders/officials on course could miss what turned out to be a serious injury (or worse in this case) in the noise of it all. But I think that's what makes it more useful to have some tracking. You can't mitigate every risk but I don't think tracking a World Tour/World Championship rider to make sure they're still accounted for is too "H&S gone mad" in the grand scheme of things.
It's also true that we wouldn't really be discussing it if it weren't for the consequences of this particular incident, but as in motor racing it takes the worst to happen before people take notice/action things sometimes.
they get their tracker, all supplied by the organiser (beit UCI or local TT league). The organisers can then dot watch around the course, and if any dots don't move for, say, five minutes (and this will usually flag automatically on the dot-watching site), they dispatch someone to investigate.
Haven't you ever raced? Even if you haven't, you must know that punctures happen, people blow up or just give up and sit by the side of the course, eat a snack, take in the world, etc, and limp in a while behind everyone else. How long would it be acceptable to allow before pressing the panic button because somebody's dot hasn't moved?
How many panic teams should an organiser schedule to check around the course every time a rider stops? Should they all be medically qualified? What happens if all the available panic teams are checking out people who have just blown and are sitting trackside when a real emergency happens and someone is critically injured? Who would be liable then?
Rather than just staying static, how about something with an accelerometer that registers sudden rapid deceleration perhaps paired with an unnatural/erratic tracjectory from the gps & raises an alarm.
I believe that my humble Edge Explore 2 has a crash detection function.
Honestly I reckon it's just such an extraordinarily rare event that no-one had managed to dream it up and imagine that the risk needed mitigating. Very sad that it happened of course. But it's not immediately obvious to me that someone needs to be blamed for not anticipating it. However maybe people had been arguing for years that riders should be carrying trackers because of the risk of an undiscovered crash, it's not something I've followed in that much detail.
I suspect its not so much that people haven't raced its that they haven't organised an event and dealt with the realities of this sort of decision. Its easy sitting at your desk to take a scenario that has happened and decide how you'd stop that exact same scenario happening again - its much harder to imagine an event/course and real life dynamics and then see what happens. To be sure it works you either need to pilot it or "wargame" it: you discover your trackers don't work well in the mountains, or the comms from "basecamp" to your mobile teams aren't as great as you expected. Then you do get hold of someone and send them off at light speed through the peleton because the tracker says that a breakaway rider has stopped - at a non-zero risk to the peleton. After all that you get back to the debrief and one team is complaining that their rider who had a puncture was stopped at side of the road and nobody came rushing to them but a competitor had similar and was back underway quicker. It may also be a failure to realise that even at very high levels of sports (including the World Champs) a lot of the resources are volunteers - so the people watching the screens, the people responding, the people handing out the trackers and dealing with "this is flashing red - is it faulty", all need to found from somewhere, trained (at least minimally), actually turn up etc.they get their tracker, all supplied by the organiser (beit UCI or local TT league). The organisers can then dot watch around the course, and if any dots don't move for, say, five minutes (and this will usually flag automatically on the dot-watching site), they dispatch someone to investigate.
Haven't you ever raced? Even if you haven't, you must know that punctures happen, people blow up or just give up and sit by the side of the course, eat a snack, take in the world, etc, and limp in a while behind everyone else. How long would it be acceptable to allow before pressing the panic button because somebody's dot hasn't moved?
How many panic teams should an organiser schedule to check around the course every time a rider stops? Should they all be medically qualified? What happens if all the available panic teams are checking out people who have just blown and are sitting trackside when a real emergency happens and someone is critically injured? Who would be liable then?
I don't think its right to say the objection is "health and safety gone mad" - my question would be if you are going to spend money and allocate resources is this the biggest residual risk that remains?
Garmins, and other devices, already have crash detection. It should be too hard to Bluetooth that to a small sender unit that talks with race control.
Garmins, and other devices, already have crash detection. It should be too hard to Bluetooth that to a small sender unit that talks with race control.
The issue with that is there's no standard - riders have got Garmin, Wahoo and possibly a couple of other brands. They can have false alerts - if you crash it'll go off but that doesn't mean the rider isn't straight back up and on their bike. Also crash detection and the subsequent warning requires the Garmin (other brands are available) to be connected to the rider's smartphone with a set list of emergency contacts registered, it's not a generic "send to central admin" system.
It definitely needs some sort of specific system that can be given to every rider with no accusations of unfair play and where there's some definitive monitoring accessible to all.
I don't think its right to say the objection is "health and safety gone mad" - my question would be if you are going to spend money and allocate resources is this the biggest residual risk that remains?
That's a very good point (as is the rest of your post, I just didn't want to quote the whole block!).
I don't think losing a rider on course is the biggest remaining risk, but I just think it's a less acceptable one than a 'common' crash or mechanical that will always have an element of mitigation (or not) from the riders on the road and is more accepted part of racing. I think in the same way that people 'accept' that people will crash and be hurt at the IoM TT as a known risk taken by the riders vs someone crashing out on the mountain and nobody noticing/helping them. I appreciate the number of participants and level of coverage etc. is quite different but just an example.
In this instance the winning time was just under 115 minutes and only 8 other riders of 120 starters DNF'd over a course less than 50 miles in length. On the face of it that makes 82 minutes to locate/miss a rider seem unreasonable but that's a very simplistic view of it I accept.
I also think lack of a perfect solution shouldn't be a reason to do nothing. When they introduced the Halo in F1 opponents argued that it wouldn't work in X,Y,Z situation to prevent an injury so it was a waste of time doing it at all, but it's already saved lives/prevented serious injuries.
Does the fact that this was a junior event change anything? The poor girl that died was 18 but would there have been 16 year olds & perhaps younger involved? I'd have thought that this placed an extra level of vulnerability on the participants and responsibility on the organisers.
Loosing track of a young person for 82 minutes at an organised event doesn't seem great especially considering the outcome.
Riders must turn 17 or 18 during the calendar year of the competition to be eligible for the Junior category....
I guess the point is that this poor girl was unaccounted for 82 minutes with terrible consequences, but at the same race at the same time I'd imagine a pretty big number of the entrants were unaccounted for all that time too. They were either out there still competing in the middle of the peleton. Or had climbed off because of a mechanical or a minor crash or injury that meant they were not in danger but unable to continue. Or had just had enough and we're just sat watching.
It'll be interesting to see how the official dot watchers handle it assuming the rider doesn't press a distress button. How do you make a call as to which stationary dot around the course you prioritise going to with (even at the worlds) what will be a relatively limited amount of marshall vehicles. I suppose an easy fix would be if the tracker had a 'I've retired from the race but am not in danger' button the rider could press if they remembered to eliminate some of the dots.
I suppose an easy fix would be if the tracker had a 'I've retired from the race but am not in danger' button the rider could press if they remembered to eliminate some of the dots.
Retirees normally get picked up by the Commissaires. They'll be seen climbing off and getting into a team car and the DS will usually report it anyway. The issue here is that what happened was out of sight.
Also, putting the onus on a rider to report anything is less than ideal. Riders could be injured, distraught, distracted etc but otherwise basically OK but they'll forget to push a button (or worse, it could be pushed accidentally and give a false positive). Consider the sheer number of people in things like ultra marathons who give up, divert to their car and drive off home without remembering to notify the organisers / marshals. The dot will show as leaving checkpoint 2, never arriving at checkpoint 3 and Mountain Rescue will be out for 3hrs before the police turn up at the participant's home and find them there warm and comfy with a cup of tea and completely forgetting that they should have signed off.
Leaving anything in the hands of the participant is not good practice. It needs to be independent.