The three national tours of Switzerland, Germany and Austria have the language in common - but apart from that, there are clear differences, especially when it comes to funding. "Income from tourism - for which cycling offers an incredible stage - together with public funding amounts to 15 per cent for us. The rest is covered by sponsors. And two thirds of the stage towns actively apply to us," said Olivier Senn, explaining the situation at the Tour de Suisse. "These are values that we would also like to achieve," said Thomas Pupp, Director of the Tour of Austria. The Tour of Germany under the direction of Fabian Wegmann has only existed in its current form since 2018. "In Germany, football is the absolute number one. After the hype surrounding Jan Ullrich, we had to do a lot of development work in the cities and tourist regions - including for one-day races such as in Cologne, the Cyclassics and the Münsterland Giro. We had to make the decision-makers realise that cycling is a great opportunity for them," says Wegmann.
Safety in professional cycling is on everyone's mind
In addition to funding, the safety of the national tours, as with all races, has increasingly come into focus, not least due to the three deaths in the past two years at the Tour of Austria (2024 of the Norwegian André Drege), the Tour de Suisse (2023 the Swiss professional cyclist Gino Mäder) and the 2024 World Cycling Championships in Zurich (Muriel Furrer). The shock still runs deep, even for the fathers of the Pupp and Senn families.
Races are getting faster and faster
Have professional races become more dangerous? Wegmann takes a different view: "In 2011, I lost my room-mate Wouter Weylandt after a fatal crash. That still has a very deep impact on me, even though he unfortunately made a riding mistake. Cycling races have generally become safer thanks to many measures. There used to be barriers with feet, for example, and safety regulations have also become stricter. But the fact is that material and aerodynamics are making races faster and faster. Unfortunately, the consequences of crashes are more dramatic. Here in Germany, there are also many traffic measures that are at the expense of safety: New traffic islands are constantly being built. Such traffic-calming measures by the public authorities are not conducive to cycling."
Tour de Suisse plans new security system
Olivier Senn, who also managed the organisation of the World Cycling Championships in Zurich, sees a major safety problem during professional races and national tours in the fact that there is sometimes too much information: "Every team has road books, digital maps, VeloViewer. But reality shows that when you reach a dangerous spot, it can look completely different just because of the rain. This information then pours in over the radio, which is often not understood by the sporting directors and ultimately by the professional cyclists due to language barriers. That's why we're working on a real-time system to visualise danger spots. This also works with images that are played in ten minutes before the ride."
"We flew to the moon a good 55 years ago. So it can't be right that we can't immediately recognise the disappearance of a rider. That's why we see GPS tracking as the order of the day, so that we can keep track of all professional riders at races in the future," added Senn. The Tour de Suisse boss would also implement GPS tracking without the World Cycling Union UCI; Thomas Pupp said he would go along with the Tour of Austria. Fabian Wegmann also welcomed a system of this kind, but objected: "What happens if a bike is replaced due to a technical defect? GPS trackers would have to be mounted on the body and I believe the UCI has a duty to draw up binding rules."
Co-operations of the major national tours?
Another topic discussed by the three tour organisers was the possibility of working together across national borders. In the U23 sector, it has already been shown how cycling cooperations can work in German-speaking countries, for example in the course of organising joint U23 national championships in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria. Thomas Pupp from the Tour of Austria would also like to see the two countries join forces; the keyword here is thinking bigger and acting to the maximum: "Why doesn't the Tour of Austria organise a guest appearance in Switzerland or Germany - it would be the first time? And vice versa?"
The next editions of the German-speaking national tours
- Tour de Suisse: 12-22 June 2025
- Tour of Austria: 8-13 July 2025
- Germany tour: 20-24 August 2025
Thomas Musch
Publisher
