A series of recent high-profile incidents among race motos and riders – including a moto colliding with Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) in the Tour de France, and Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) being knocked over by a moto while leading Clasica San Sebastian less than a kilometre from the finish – has raised the issue of rider safety once again.
BMC Racing has threatened legal action over the Van Avermaet crash, and team general manager Jim Ochowicz told Cyclingnews this week that the “powers that be” have got to step up and address the situation.
“We’ve been dealing with vehicles and unsafe conditions for some time,” Ochowicz said. “There was the incident with Taylor Phinney over a year ago, and since then it’s only continued to escalate. I’ve spoken out on this for some time now.”
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Ochowiz said one of the issues creating the problem is the size of the peloton and an increase in the number of vehicles allowed on the course with the riders.
“You can’t put 200 riders on the roads anymore,” he said. “There is too much road debris for a field that size. And another thing is the quality of the peloton is not up to those conditions.
“All of the efforts in road construction now are to slow down the traffic,” Ochowicz said. “They’re not thinking about bike races when they build them. We will continue to speak out about it. We’re losing players at a rapid pace who are paid a lot to race their bikes in an unsafe environment.”
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