In the mad dash to the line in the opening Tour de France stage 1 to Utah Beach, experienced Katusha lead-out man Michael Morkov reportedly clipped one of the exposed feet of the barriers that keep back the crowds, setting off a chain-reaction crash that also took down Sam Bennett (Bora-Argon 18) and held up a number of other riders.
Michael Carcaise, the executive director of the Association of North American Professional Road Cyclists (ANAPRC) reiterated the organisation's urgent call to the UCI to adopt the safety recommendations proposed by the riders' association CPA to require flat-footed barriers in the final kilometers.
"This is not a new problem," Carcaise said to Cyclingnews, recalling that Zdenek Stybar highlighted the issue with barrier feet after crashing heavily in the Eneco Tour in 2014.
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"It is way past the time for the UCI to prohibit barriers that encroach onto the roadway in the final kilometers of sprint stages. At this point the teams bear some responsibility for putting their employees into a needlessly dangerous work environment. This is sport, but this is also a workplace. If the UCI will not act and make footless barriers mandatory then teams and riders need to circumvent the UCI governance process and work directly with race organizers to develop and implement safety standards."
Lotto Soudal sprinter Andre Greipel agreed. "With the old fences the feet are on the road and the people were leaning over. I think that ASO or the Tour de France needs to change something for us, for our safety, to put the new fences, which are not straight, and the people are farther away off the road. I think that there were really bad circumstances but the team did a good job. A disappointing finish."
Greipel finished fourth on the stage behind Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data).
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