UCI President Brian Cookson was on hand at the recent World Championships in Richmond, Virginia. He sat down for an interview with Cyclingnews' Kirsten Frattini to discuss a series of topics around rider safety, Astana's year-end review, ASO and the WorldTour reforms, sponsorship and the inaugural Women's WorldTour set to kick off in 2016.
Developing improvements to rider safety
Cyclingnews: If we look at the incidents that took place at Pais Vasco with street bollards, at the Vuelta a Espana and San Sebastian with motos, and the need for extreme weather protocol, what are the lessons learned and what new considerations or solutions have the UCI come up with to help improve the riders' safety?
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Brian Cookson: The Road Commission is the part of the UCI that is looking at all of those issues, they have a safety and security working group that is similar to the group that looked at the extreme weather protocol, and so on. It's important that we analyse those problems that arose and to try to work out whether there is an increase in some of those problems, or whether it's something that has been there for years and there's a structural problem that needs attention, or whether it's something that's a series of isolated and unconnected incidents. We are not looking at an immediate response but we are looking at a detailed analysis. I think that's our role as the governing body.
Everyone has a responsibility for safety including the riders, still the vast majority of crashes in bike races are rider on rider or judgement errors, or whatever, maybe there is something that we can do about that as well. Everyone has a responsibility for safety, spectators have a responsibility not to do crazy things with selfie sticks and all that sort of stuff, and not to get in the way of the riders, run along side them shouting in their ear, getting in the way.
Equally, the organisations' side has a responsibility to make sure they make the conditions on the road as safe as possible. We are seeing an increase in hazards on the road in terms of traffic-calming devices and so on, and that is something that we are having to address more and more in our sport. I think all of those things are important; the driving, the training of the drivers, the number of motorcycles are all things that we have to look at. While any one may be the case of a human error of judgement at any one time, we have to look at the circumstances that have led up to that.
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