Cycling wants to become safer with a new database. The UCI, the Tour organisation ASO, the teams and the riders' union presented the "SafeR" project in Bilbao.
The database will record dangerous situations in races, such as falls, will be filled in by all those involved and should be fully functional from the beginning of 2025. The knowledge gained will be used to prevent falls and other dangerous incidents. However, the funding of the programme is still unclear.
"Our mission is to make the roads safer," said UCI President David Lappartient. "The speed of the riders is getting higher and higher, it's becoming much more dangerous." Despite all efforts, everyone involved agreed that it will be impossible to prevent all serious crashes. The death of Swiss rider Gino Mäder a fortnight ago, for example, has been categorised as tragic but probably unavoidable, as previous findings suggest that it was a rider error.
According to project manager and ex-professional Michael Rogers, valuable insights have been gained from the database so far. For example, almost 60 per cent of all crashes occur in the last 40 kilometres of a race. This year's figure of almost 200 incidents is already 24 per cent higher than last year at the same time. "We don't want to see anyone die at the age of 26," said Tour Director Christian Prudhomme, referring to Mäder.
Copyright 2023, dpa (www.dpa.de). All rights reserved
