Is danger level increasing at Tour de France

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Created on Monday, 12 July 2010 22:29

Written by Nathan

By CHRIS CARMICHAEL, BICYCLING.COM

What a first week! Love it or hate it, the stages that the organizers laid out for the opening week of the 2010 Tour de France led to some exciting racing. Unfortunately, it – along with the weather – also led to an enormous number of crashes.

Personally, I think the sport and the environment have changed, at least since the days when I was racing and even since I was a team director in the caravan. Some of the changes have made racing safer, and some have added to the danger – and the consequences.

“Traffic Furniture”
I don’t know who first coined the phrase, but it’s appropriate. There’s a lot more stuff in the roads these days compared with 10 years ago. The small towns and cities throughout Europe have been steadily placing roundabouts, speedbumps, chicanes, and purposefully-narrowed sections of road in place in order to slow traffic.

Why not avoid the small towns and stay on country roads? In many areas of France, there are no alternatives. And plus, anyone who has seen a race in the US that uses a four-lane highway for part of a road course can attest to how boring it is to watch. I realize that racing is about more than entertainment for the fans, but keeping the courses interesting is a factor in route planning.

Training
Advances in training, including the use of power meters, have raised the level of performance for the entire peloton. The difference in sustainable power output between the team leader and the domestiques is not as wide as it used to be. This means that the pace being set at the front is higher, but it also means there are more riders capable of fighting for position near the front. This competition for limited real estate makes the chances of touching wheels and tangling bars greater.

Radios
I think it’s a valid debate as to whether race radios hurt or enhance cycling competitions, but I absolutely believe they have made racers safer. Just listen to what the directors are able to tell their riders when the TV coverage goes inside the cars. They can tell them about specific turns, or places where the road narrows, up ahead. You have to remember, the vast majority of riders have no idea what’s around the next corner. On the other hand, you could argue that the race radios have made racing more dangerous because providing riders with information about upcoming turns allows those with the information to rip through them with no hesitation.

Bone Density
I don’t have actual numbers to prove this point (perhaps someone could help with that…), but it certainly seems like more crashes are resulting in broken bones than a decade ago. If you go way back in cycling history, cyclists were not very well paid and they had other jobs during the rest of the year. Many of the riders in the 40s-70s worked in manual labor and factory jobs, and as a result they had sturdier physiques. As the sport transitioned into a more lucrative profession (it’s still not very lucrative compared to most other professional sports, though) and top pros were able to be only cyclists, we started to see a transformation in the physique of a top cyclist. The value of being lightweight has steadily increased over the past 15 years, and when you combine high training volume with a drive to lose weight, you can start to see problems with bone density.

What’s the Solution?
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. At the end of the day, it will be the riders who drive any decision about safety, as it is their skin being scraped off and their bones being broken. As long as they are willing to compete on the courses laid out by organizers, there will be no change.