Movistar’s longstanding team manager Eusebio Unzue has launched the idea that Grand Tour teams could substitute riders who become ill or injured.
Unzue’s proposal came at a press conference this week after a question concerning the imminent reduction in the number of riders in Grand Tours in 2018, from nine to eight per team, with the possibility of further reductions in the future.
Unzue’s idea is, on paper, very simple; if a rider is struggling, then teams would have the right – if only in the first week of a Grand Tour – to replace him with a rider from a pre-established reserve group of up to three teammates.
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“Reducing the number of riders is fine, but what’s abnormal is that in this sport, with the number of accidents and injuries that we have, that we’re not able to find a formula that when we lose a rider, we can substitute him,” Unzue reflected.
“That way we’d all be fighting in the same conditions. I’ll buy the idea of eight riders at the start line, but let me reach Milan, Paris or Madrid with eight riders, too.
“I would like this sport to show some kind of humanity and, sometimes, having riders continue just because we can’t replace them, what happens? They fall off, they’re half-destroyed and they do stages the next day that are 200 kilometres at the speeds they go now… If we can’t replace them, why not let the rider get on the team bus for two or three days and then if he’s fallen off on stage three he can come back on stage six when the team doctor decides it’s right?
Spectacle
Pavé at the Tour
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