Bike racing, safety, and ‘the spectacle’

The tech is there. It is up to the riders and their teams to use it as they see fit. No one has to go beyond their capabilities. To suggest that this should be the organisers problem is just more nanny state whinging.

Of course there could be restrictions but then the sport, any sport, is not about the best.

I’m a little bit surprised about switching off Garmin crash detection because of false positives.

Have you ever tried it? It will go off if you hit a rocky section on a trail, On my 820 it’ll go off if I brake hard. I did a fairly tame gravel-adjacent ride around southern Manchester and the north Peaks and half way through had to switch it off because of the amount of times “it beeps at you” – perhaps 20 times on that ride alone

The tech is there. It is up to the riders and their teams to use it as they see fit. No one has to go beyond their capabilities. To suggest that this should be the organisers problem is just more nanny state whinging.

There seems to be several things you don’t understand.

First, it’s not up to the teams, it’s up to the UCI what teams are allowed to use, which is why no one even had radios at the World Championships (because no radios means better racing according to David Lappartient and reduced safety is just fake news spread by teams who want to be able to talk to their riders during the race).

Second, no one has to go beyond their abilities but then if you aren’t prepared to go beyond your abilities then you probably shouldn’t be racing.  Competitors are typically not the most safety conscious individuals.  Most don’t see anything wrong with risking their life to move up a place.  That’s why it’s up to governing bodies to step in when the mortality rate starts to get too high.  And if a governing body isn’t ready to step in then it’s up to wider society to do so.

That’s why very few sports let people use PEDs.

Having a few sports with a high barrier to entry and limited exposure (Isle of Man TT or professional bodybuilding, for example) is one thing.  Having a series that is attempting to grow in popularity and reach a wider audience is another (see Group B rallying and possibly rugby depending on how things play out with CTE).

And sometimes insurance companies will step in (or step out) and do the job of wider society for it:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/rfl-losses-accounts-challenge-cup-30344780

https://www.the-race.com/motorcycle-racing/2024-ulster-gp-cancelled-insurance-issues/#:~:text=The%20Irish%20racing%20scene%20has,local%20clubs%20already%20under%20pressure.

It’s one thing to say competitors know the risks but you also have to take into account the fact a governing body can change the rules any time it wants to make the sport more risky in the name of increasing the spectacle.  Everyone knows you should just ignore the sunk cost fallacy but most people can’t even do that with a £1000 investment, nevermind and activity that has probably dominated your life for much of your childhood and all of your adult life.

This means that the focus is always on increasing the drama and the spectacle (no doubt with half an eye on how it’s going to play out on the next Netflix series).

I think there is a flaw with your fundamental premise.  Your implication is that these accidents happen because they make good telly, but then you say nobody saw them happen.

No competitor in any sport can never be held responsible for their own safety.

is that what you meant to type?  The rest of the para sounds like you meant ever rather than never.

A competitor’s job is to do everything in their power to win.  They have to push every rule to the limit and common sense simply cannot come into it.  Competitor safety begins and ends with the governing body.  Riders are going to push the rules and so the rules have to be enforced in such a way that the risk reward ratio of breaking safety rules means that breaking the rules simply isn’t worth it.

i think you’ve got that fundamentally wrong.  Certainly organisers have a huge burden to bear for rider safety but the idea that left unchecked riders will simply push before safe operating envelopes to win is frankly a bit bizzare to me.   If I understand correctly none of the crashes you are talking about were win or loose situations?  Living to see another opportunity to win is surely essential – even a minor crash has potential to end a season.  A ruined season can end a career.  Which of the current rules were being pushed by the riders?

adding tracking technology so that you can spot someone had just had a potentially fatal accident won’t stop the accidents.  At best it will alert you quicker and perhaps save a life – but if it saves a life it is because of a serious injury which we should be keen to avoid.  More likely it will actually make for better telly and drama around crashes – exactly what you want to stamp out.  If you want to stop crashes then even barriers or marshalls are probably a poor UCI intervention.  But the idea that we ride down steep wet roads on slick tyres seems worthy of a raised eyebrow.  I don’t know if better grip would have prevented it but it would be fairly simple to require minimum tread when the surface is wet.

It’s one thing to say competitors know the risks but you also have to take into account the fact a governing body can change the rules any time it wants to make the sport more risky in the name of increasing the spectacle.

which rule did the UCI change (not leave unchanged) to make the sport riskier and more of a spectacle?

I’ve dealt with commissaires for “local events”.  Assuming their culture continues up the grades I’m really not sure they are interested in the spectacle.     I’m not sure if at the top of the sport commissaires are “paid” or volunteers, or perhaps given a small sum for turning up / travel expenses.  In many sports these sort of officials are neither funded nor valued properly.

I think there is a flaw with your fundamental premise.  Your implication is that these accidents happen because they make good telly, but then you say nobody saw them happen.

I think Tom Pidcock flying down Alp d’Huez makes good telly.  I think races with multiple ascents descents and therefore attacking opportunities make good telly.

I think anything that increases the chances of disruption and chaos makes good telly but it also increases the risks.

is that what you meant to type?  The rest of the para sounds like you meant ever rather than never.

Yep, typo.

Certainly organisers have a huge burden to bear for rider safety but the idea that left unchecked riders will simply push before safe operating envelopes to win is frankly a bit bizzare to me.

I don’t think it’s that bizarre.  In multiple sports there have been instances where competitors have complained about safety before being killed in the very way they were predicting.  See the very first link someone posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Toivonen#Death

The idea that any competitor would slow down because of the danger is bizarre to me.  It’s not even a case of winning or losing a lot of the time.  It’s more just a mentality of pushing for every single advantage available because that advantage could be the difference between getting a contract and not getting a contract next season.  Or even just the chance to move up from 11th to 10th.

Yes, in the face of cold hard logic it seems bizarre but then sport in general seems bizarre when you think about it.

which rule did the UCI change (not leave unchanged) to make the sport riskier and more of a spectacle?

Off the top of my head, radios.

The time limit proposed is even more daft.

*In a layby somewhere near the top of the Torumalet pass*

DS: : hey Tom, here’s your areo descending frame with slammed saddle.

Tom: alright, see you at the bottom for a strategy meeting over a 3 course energy gell and rice cake lunch  while we swap back to the climbing frame.

You’re not going to convince competitors to be uncompetitive.

There’s also the cost implications of any tech changes. Arguably they’re most needed on your local cat4 amd 3/2 Sunday morning race that your local club puts on but no one watches. Or even the Sunday club run or Tuesday night TT which is lucky to get a marshal on each junction.  A race with a £2 entry fee isn’t going to survive if they have to provide mandatory spot trackers to all competitors.

And yes, @brucewee radios have ruined the spectacle of racing. That’s not some conspiracy at the UCI to kill riders, it’s the team’s looking for an excuse to justify radios.

but then if you aren’t prepared to go beyond your abilities then you probably shouldn’t be racing. Competitors are typically not the most safety conscious individuals

I think is the fundamental hurdle that can’t be overcome by regulation.

Maybe change the bike rules to slow them down in some way to reduce the impact of crashing at the current high speeds. Definitely have some sort of crash detection  on road races.

But ultimately the speed and control of the bike is down to the risks the rider is prepared to take.

There’s also the cost implications of any tech changes. Arguably they’re most needed on your local cat4 amd 3/2 Sunday morning race that your local club puts on but no one watches. Or even the Sunday club run or Tuesday night TT which is lucky to get a marshal on each junction.  A race with a £2 entry fee isn’t going to survive if they have to provide mandatory spot trackers to all competitors.

You do realise that blanket safety rules don’t need to be applied across every level of racing?

There’s quite a difference in the safety precautions taken in an F1 race and a local navigational rally.

 I don’t know if better grip would have prevented it but it would be fairly simple to require minimum tread when the surface is wet.

Not sure how that works on a 200km stage going through various changes of weather, not all of which could be expected.

which rule did the UCI change (not leave unchanged) to make the sport riskier and more of a spectacle?

Riders seem to think it increases risk;

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-confirm-trial-ban-of-team-radio-at-2024-summer-races-and-yellow-card-punishment-plans-in-2025/

https://road.cc/content/news/race-radio-spat-pro-cyclist-breaks-back-horrific-crash-309887

And yes, @brucewee radios have ruined the spectacle of racing

Really? I think power meter head units and displays of your output have led to more dull races than radios.

@nickc yep I ride with it enabled goes off every so often less than once a ride. Mostly from very hard braking or a spill. Riding mostly tweed valley steep stuff.

If I off the loudness of it’s beeping will hopefully help someone find me and the message sent will let Mrs 100th start the insurance paperwork.  I don’t think in the last 5 years I’ve not been able to stop and reset it.

First, it’s not up to the teams, it’s up to the UCI what teams are allowed to use, which is why no one even had radios at the World Championships (because no radios means better racing according to David Lappartient and reduced safety is just fake news spread by teams who want to be able to talk to their riders during the race).

You do realise there is more to the UCI than *just* David Lappartient, yes? He is not some sort of Dr Evil figure, sitting there in a mansion dictating terms and conditions. Every branch of cycle sport has its own Commission – a panel made up of current and ex riders, team representatives, race officials, race organisers etc (and that panel changes every so often, it’s not the same old blokes sitting there year after year). Any rule changes get discussed, get passed along to the Technical Commission (who basically look at HOW a rule change can be implemented, the wording required and so on) and then passed to the Management Committee who have the choice of approving it or passing it back to Tech Commission with some further suggestions.

It’s done with – if not total agreement – then at least broad consensus and acceptance from the teams and anything too controversial is usually done on a trial basis first. Disc brakes was a notable one done in that fashion.

I’m not saying the UCI are perfect or that they get every decision right but I am pointing out that you don’t seem to understand how they actually work, how they manage the sport. It’s not one Mr Big deciding things on a whim and sod the riders, the poor teams forced to go along with everything or else.

And on the subject of radios, everyone at every level knows the Worlds don’t have race radios, that’s not a surprise to the riders turning up on race day or anything. In theory at least, it’s the one time of the year where riders are racing alongside people who, for the rest of the year, are direct rivals because they’re on different trade teams.

The Belgian Men’s team for example was 8 riders across at least 5 different trade teams all in the mix together, they’re not with their normal team set-up (which includes team radios), the one thing they’re allowed to stay with is their trade team bike for obvious reasons (which in itself becomes complicated for race support if a team car has to be carrying spares on behalf of 5-6 different teams all with slightly different set-ups and sponsors).

I think Tom Pidcock flying down Alp d’Huez makes good telly.  I think races with multiple ascents descents and therefore attacking opportunities make good telly.

Actually it makes mediocre telly that is of interest only to people who are vaguely interested in bikes.  Its not love island / celebrity rot my brain stuff!  But you are correct, challenging terrain clearly makes better TV, but if its for TV there’s camera crews watching the action.  Your objection is these crashes went unnoticed.  How then is their danger caused by making better TV.   Perhaps its the style of course, but I don’t think they are particularly different from before TV?   A better solution might be MORE TV so every rider / corner is caught!

I think anything that increases the chances of disruption and chaos makes good telly but it also increases the risks.

Actually a neutralised race is crap TV.   A little bit like motorsport – a red flag and even safety cars are not good for spectators – except in weird strategy games.  People do like to see incidents, but actually small incidents make for better TV!  Either way though presumably if TV has expected crashes there – they would have been filming.  The organisers didn’t expect it, the commissaires didn’t expect it, the TV producers didn’t expect it.

Off the top of my head, radios.

How would radios have PREVENTED the crashes you are most concerned about?  At best, they might have alerted someone to a crash – but that assumes the rider is conscious and the radio survives the crash.  Perhaps silence from a rider would be a warning but it might not.  Here’s the flip side though – could radios actually make things worse – could pressure from the team, or feedback that other riders were managing to handle the course well actually drive a rider to/beyond their limits.  People have been riding bikes much longer than small lightweight radios have been viable options.

You are right that even someone not at the front is potentially fighting for a contract for next season etc.  Crashing is probably not a good way to impress the scouts – but getting badly injured is a sure fire way to write off your chances of a contract.  I don’t want to see people hurt or killed, especially young riders trying to prove themselves, but part of being a winner is knowing when to push and when to back off, whether that’s for injury, mechanical, tactical or other reasons.  It becomes the organisers’ responsibility when its something the rider can’t be expect to foresee – e.g. oil on the road, poor road surface round a blind bend, difficult lighting, a massive group riding where individuals have less freedom to move, etc.  Clearly these incidents have happened when someone has got it wrong (rider or organiser) – but several dozen other riders made it safety past the same hazard so do we really believe that the unlucky ones were trying harder?    We will likely never know exactly why, but no technical solution or rule change being advocated would have stopped at the very least major injuries.

My guess is that life changing / career ending / fatal accidents are more common in training than in competition?

I would be amazed if the UCI don’t have a major incident review after every life threatening crash.  Without sight of these we don’t know if the root cause is really being found and action taken to mitigate at future events.  It may be tempting to simply chalk them up to “rider error”, especially if there are lawyers hovering to attack but it would be just as stupid to knee jerk a bandaid to look like they are doing something.

Really? I think power meter head units and displays of your output have led to more dull races than radios.

Same but different, team radio was the power meter of the 00’s. They should get rid of both.

You do realise that blanket safety rules don’t need to be applied across every level of racing?

There’s quite a difference in the safety precautions taken in an F1 race and a local navigational rally.

Yes, but in that example F1 is the inherently dangerous starting point so requires more safety related regulations.

In the same way a world champs should be well spectated, with team cars, cameras, officials, etc etc. And the riders are competent.

A cat 4 road race is lucky to have a couple of cars and some NEG motorbikes, zero spectators, and if you get dropped you’re on your own to chase back to the group. And cat 4 races can be absolute carnage, It’s not uncommon for the big yellow taxi to be called. If you want to look at safety (and you spent the first page moaning about growing participation being more important than viewing figures) then that’s where the problems are, it’s Martin from accounts thinking he’s Tom Pidcock, not Tom Pidcock. And TBH I doubt there is a good solution to that.

Have you ever tried it? It will go off if you hit a rocky section on a trail, On my 820 it’ll go off if I brake hard. I did a fairly tame gravel-adjacent ride around southern Manchester and the north Peaks and half way through had to switch it off because of the amount of times “it beeps at you” – perhaps 20 times on that ride alone

I used it exactly once, for about 20 minutes.
It triggered when i hit a catseye and rumble strip.

I’ve dealt with commissaires for “local events”.  Assuming their culture continues up the grades I’m really not sure they are interested in the spectacle.     I’m not sure if at the top of the sport commissaires are “paid” or volunteers, or perhaps given a small sum for turning up / travel expenses.  In many sports these sort of officials are neither funded nor valued properly.

I’m not sure what you refer to by ‘culture’ but at every level of the sport, from your local U9 cyclocross to the TdF, commissaires are unpaid volunteers (bar travel expenses and sometimes, a small daily fee to cover incidentals).

I’m not sure what you refer to by ‘culture’ but at every level of the sport, from your local U9 cyclocross to the TdF, commissaires are unpaid volunteers (bar travel expenses and sometimes, a small daily fee to cover incidentals).

This. On big events they get a “daily rate” but it’s a fee to cover sundries, not a fund to drink the bar dry each night.

I’m a little bit surprised about switching off Garmin crash detection because of false positives.

The one flaw that everyone is overlooking with this is that the crash detection stuff requires a paired smartphone (and a mobile phone signal!) but that no rider is carrying their mobile phone with them during a race, nor will they ever do that.

There is a secondary issue in that the rider has to set it all up with predefined emergency contacts so, in the words of Ghostbusters…who you gonna call? Set it all to the Team DS? Some soigneur? The mechanic? What about when that member of staff is not on that race or – as with the Worlds – where you’re not with your normal team, you’re with your national squad? Reset the whole thing at every race with the staff members who are there? Same with things like the Specialized ANGi crash detector thing on the helmet – requires a paired smartphone with predefined contacts.

None of that is beyond the realms of possibility by the way, it’s obviously possible to re-programme emergency contacts but you’re still back at the issue that every rider would need to be carrying their own smartphone. And there’s a number of reasons why that’s a daft idea.

Spot trackers could work with a relatively straightforward changes, just a “lack of motion” timer on each and every riders tracker on the cloud side.
It’s already GPS enabled and carries it’s own data. Also, if you’re racing and back to a hotel/team bus every night, update frequency and accuracy can be wound up to the max (as you’ll be able to charge daily).
A relatively simple protocol once the tracker stops moving for X minutes can then be used.

I mean, the speculation that abounds once someone doing ultra endurance stops moving to sleep or use the loo… That turned up to 11 would be more than enough.

Obviously not at all levels of racing (they aren’t cheap, and need a contract) but in the higher echelons, definitely.

And FWIW some of the marathon events i’ve done use RFID chips and readers at multiple points on the course to check that you’ve passed through for timing and completion of the event, this could also be used (very coarse grain of course) to make sure everyone is still moving!

And FWIW some of the marathon events i’ve done use RFID chips and readers at multiple points on the course to check that you’ve passed through,

That’s what the red chips on the fork legs are at most races.

In the example being discussed they were either not working (unlikely) or just doesn’t work as a solution as it doesn’t tell you if they’re crashed, or just in the DS’s car, riding back to the start off-course, etc.

From the article:

What’s special about Zürich is that there are laps and timing chips. Every time riders cross the finish line or any timing point, their times are recorded. Technically, her chip should have registered crossing the finish line for those laps. Obviously, it didn’t, and no one checked, which would have been a major oversight.

In this case she dropped off the back and no one checked up on her.  Which TBH is probably normal, the people in the team car will only be caring about the race up ahead, that’s their job after all. I doubt having been dropped that unless there was a major race stopping crash ahead that allowed them to catch up the team would have contacted them until they were back on the bus anyway.

Without radios, DS have no idea where their riders are or what they’re doing. In the case of Zürich, one of her teammates would have looked for her to tell her to go to the car. That alone would have indicated that she was not in the main group. If the DS passed her, the DS would have radioed the feed zone about the situation. If she didn’t pass the feed zone, that would be a red flag. There’s a lot of radio communication within a team to track their riders, so this could have decreased the response time, especially if the organizers didn’t have a marshal to oversee the descent and if the commissaires made a human error.

GPS trackers might be the solution, but most clubs CX and Cat4 road races struggle to break even or get enough volunteers to run them as it is, without adding a whole load more expensive tech and having to find people to admin it.

In motorbike club racing, you buy your lap timer yourself (which is essentially speaking the same thing. It’s about £250 and if you don’t use it you’re not allowed on the grid.

Any suggestions of max speed limit on descents or minimum time going down a descent are going to require the rider to spend a load of time looking at their head unit to comply, which in itself is dangerous.

Some kind of transponder does seem to be a good idea, not to prevent crashes but at to least mitigate potential consequences of a crash in the event. Perhaps would need to place the burden of compliance upon the riders and teams to report and record the riders’ wearabouts.

Just a note that WT riders report that their radios don’t really work for a large part of the time, especially due to being out of range when dropped from the main peleton.

Just a note that WT riders report that their radios don’t really work for a large part of the time, especially due to being out of range when dropped from the main peleton.

Just a note that WT riders report that their radios don’t really work for a large part of the time, especially due to being out of range when dropped from the main peleton. thus giving them an excuse to drop back to the team car and have them “fixed” while they hold on to the door frame. Mysteriously, this problem occurs more often on climbs than descents…

😉

In the example being discussed they were either not working (unlikely) or just doesn’t work as a solution as it doesn’t tell you if they’re crashed, or just in the DS’s car, riding back to the start off-course, etc.

This is why you have some sort of protocol.
Rider X hasn’t passed through checkpoint 3.

Check with Doctor, Sag Wagon, team DS, 2nd/3rd team car, commisaire, convoy radio. Escalate to the point at which you decide something untoward has happened, then work back from the last time they were seen. You can do the same with the spot tracker as well. But it’s an active system.

In 999/1000 cases you’ll find them while escalating. That 0.1% will be the unconscious rider in the ditch.

GPS trackers might be the solution, but most clubs CX and Cat4 road races struggle to break even or get enough volunteers to run them as it is, without adding a whole load more expensive tech and having to find people to admin it.

Unfortunately, the reality is that at the lower echelons of the sport you will have lower tech solutions, so rfid tags and mats. FWIW a lot of the racing round here now requires your own personal tag to race, might even be all racing by now.
And they aren’t that expensive either, i have 3 powered transponders for my RC cars (each with multiple numbers depending on what i’m doing/what class), they are about 50 quid each.

The idea that any competitor would slow down because of the danger is bizarre to me

And yet the overwhelming majority of riders in road races successfully descend hills without incident…