The Tour de France, although it's debatable, is the most popular event the sport has. It's a mixture of a big historical value, the challenges of a warrior-filled peloton, an incredible and massive audience and frequently a big portion of road cycling's most successful riders. With no surprise then it becomes the main goal of plenty riders each season, who seek to come here in search of glory, whether it comes in the form of a stage win, a nice result in the general classification, or it can be with completely different goals such as representing the team in the breakaway on the long flat days, giving the sponsors who help the teams stay on their feet get the exposure they need. Needless to say, the Tour is often described as a circus and rightfully so, it's not just a race, it's a whole event with almost inconceivable background work. And this work is largely successful, I would even go as far as to say 99% is done quite well and that detail should never be ignored.
With that said let's get onto why that circus becomes a problem. The Tour is essentially the highlight of the season, the moment of the year where even non-cycling fans will occasionally see and support the riders. The bar is high, the stakes are huge, a win here isn't like a win anywhere else on the calendar, and every year you don't just have a peloton, you have a peloton filled absolutely stacked with a grand majority of the world's best pro riders, that come with very specific goals and methodologies in order to succeed.
As you know positioning has over the year become one of the most important aspects of the tactical game in racing, the chance of crashing whilst in the head of the peloton is lesser than if you're riding halfway or in the back, where you can also get caught up in pile-ups. Combine that with the Tour, where the speeds are insanely high and you always have at least 15 GC contenders that won't to be as well positioned as possible, those 15 will have at least 1 teammate with them so make it 30 riders already in there looking for the head of the group. Add to those the sprinters who want to battle it out for the stage win, I would say another 15 riders with an extra 15 that are there to help them out. You have at the very least 60 riders looking to be in the head of the peloton, a third of the whole peloton. It so happens that there is never room for all of them to do it, so there is a constant brawl to be in that perfect spot, and even though these riders have incredible talent and bike-handling skills, crashes are inevitable when you add narrow winding roads into the mix.
There is the classic saying 'You can't win the Tour in the first week but you can loose it' and that isn't just at the Tour nowadays, but specially you find big issues here. In a race often decided by seconds any little detail counts, and loosing time due to being stuck behind a crash can have big consequences. The speeds are insane with the quality of the peloton you have here, the riders are willing to take insane risks because of the big results they can harvest from them, and there are so many riders looking to get into the decisive stages in good position that the opening week ends up being always very hard to deal with.
In the final 12 kilometers it was absolute hell unleashed on the race, as the lack of space and the tension caused multiple crashes to take place, including many of the riders fighting for the top places. Firstly you had Miguel Angel Lopez and Valentin Madouas hit the deck.
Right after an apparent touch of wheels put Primoz Roglic, Jonas Vingegaard, Steven Kruijswijk and Jonas Rutsch on the floor, an incident that may have huge consequences for the team's chances to win this race, which had already been hampered by multiple crashes in these 3 days.
But not only were the narrow roads and the tension responsible for these crashes. As the speeds increased in the fast descent into town you could feel the danger as riders were riding shoulder to shoulder at mind-boggling speeds. Soon enough they washed out as another big crash occured. This led to the abandon of one of the outsiders for the Tour's podium Jack Haig, after Mikel Landa also lost his chances of racing the Giro after a crash in an unnecessarily dangerous stretch of road. Here Haig, alongside Arnaud Démare and Simon Clarke were the worst affected, causing splits in the remaining peloton and holding up many riders including defending champion Tadej Pogacar who had to navigate through the affected.
Even with a mini peloton the speeds were around 80Km/h with just 3 kilometers to the line, with the GC teams visibly still trying to ride in the front of the group.
As they got into town it never actually calmed down, as Tosh van der Sande just barely missed a clash with the TV motorbike that was way too close to the head of the group.
And as @laglammerouge16 accurately pointed out, the final kilometer even included a slight downhill tilt. You may think what difference does 1% gradient mean but when the riders are going around 65Km/h into a sprint the last thing you need is space to go even faster when the finish clearly isn't in a straight line.
And sure enough with just 150 meters to go you find this corner to the right that is just outright poorly planned. This is distance where the sprinters regularly are on hitting the wind and putting any kind of obstacles in their way will lead to accidents like this one. As Tim Merlier gently swerved to the right to have the inside line he closed off Caleb Ewan's attack plan, who had no space and touched the Belgian's wheel, sending him to the ground with a broken collarbone. Now imagine if this crash had happened in an actual bunch sprint, the results could've been catastrophic as we've seen in similar incidents.
So, because just talking won't change much, I have given some thought on some things that in my "couch fan" perspective could be changed to make the race safer. Obviously they come across subjective, everyone will have different opinions, these are mine. Naturally it can be the use of one or more than one in combination:
- On the first week of Grand Tours (at least), all sprint finishes must have at least x meters of road width in the final 10Km;
- On the first week, try not to have sprint finishes inside towns, where the roads are naturally narrower, with more varied gradients and road furniture;
- If conditions aren't ideal or roads likely foresee dangerous racing situations, move the 3Km crash rule further out, around the 10Km mark;
- Opening prologue;
- Mountain stage in the first 4 stages, so as to create meaningful gaps and reduce positioning tension;
- In technical sprint finishes don't allow motorbikes in the final x kilometers. Use static leading car camera (as in BinckBank Tour in the past), helicopter and drone footage;
- Avoid meaningful descent near sprint finishes in the opening week of Grand Tour sprint stages.
Crashes are a part of cycling unfortunately, always were and always will be. It's a sport for hard men/women and having good bike handling skills can surely help quite a lot in preventing them, and it's a part of racing it's true. But nothing is ever perfect, there are always aspects that can be improved, changes that can be made that can always improve the riders safety. Without the riders there is no show, so always prioritize them instead of the show!
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