EF Education-EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters has criticised the UCI’s focus on “ridiculous little” safety measures, such as minimum handlebar widths, while failing to ensure smaller races are safe in the wake of Finlay Tarling’s tragic death at the Volta a Portugal.
19-year-old Tarling, riding for the NSN development team, was killed last Friday, midway through the eighth stage of the Portuguese race, in a high-speed, head-on collision with a member of the public who drove his van onto the course, travelling in the opposite direction to the peloton.
A fundraiser established in Tarling’s memory, which aims to support young cyclists in Wales, has so far raised over £62,000. The Tour of Britain Women began in Cockermouth on Wednesday with a tribute to the promising teenager, the younger brother of Netcompany Ineos pro Josh Tarling.
The aftermath of the fatal collision has been marked by a wave of shock and anger within the cycling community, Tarling the sixth elite rider to be killed while racing his bike in the past three years. The CPA, the riders’ union representing the professional peloton, described itself as “speechless and filled with anger” at the “preventable” tragedy.
At the weekend, the CPA’s president, former pro Adam Hansen, argued that an overhaul of cycling’s safety measures – concerning both traffic management and equipment – is necessary.
“One thing we have to look at is helmets,” Hansen said. “They need a major upgrade. Bike helmets only need to meet standard testing like all helmets, EU standard CE EN 1078 is only rated for 19.5kph and I do not believe this is enough for road racing.”
Hansen also pointed out that the circumstances leading to Tarling’s death exposed a flaw in the rolling road closure system in place at the Volta a Portugal and other races, where the route is closed whilst the entirety of the race convoy passes before reopening, with police officers and marshals tasked with stopping members of the public from entering the course at junctions.
“The organisation is [generally] very good, but what happened is a bit of a hole in the system,” the Australian told the BBC.
“If people do not know racing, then they just naturally think the race has passed and go on to the course, where in fact there can be many groups.
“To close every single road and driveway is difficult and it gets to the point how little risk the organisers want to take and if it’s even possible for them to have people at all those points.”
After road.cc published a story featuring Hansen’s comments, EF boss Vaughters commented on our Instagram post criticising the CPA president’s stance.
“A bit of a hole in the system? Really?” Vaughters wrote. “A car going straight into riders full speed opposite direction and the problem is the helmets? I can’t even begin to comment on this level of insensitivity.”
Speaking to the BBC, the American elaborated on that criticism, arguing that the safety measures put in place by the UCI and its SafeR initiative, in the wake of Gino Mader’s death at the 2023 Tour de Suisse, have focused on the wrong issues.
“What I’m really not enjoying is this sentiment that’s coming from very powerful people in cycling, that says: ‘What can you do? Sometimes cars just end up on the road, this is just part of doing competitive sport on the open road’. That is not true. This is preventable,” he said.
“People look at the Tour de France and see a bunch of riders going through the beautiful French countryside, but fundamentally it’s a very dangerous sport. From the start of my career I can’t tell you how many people we’ve lost.
“I’m tired of the governance in charge of this sport introducing changes around ridiculous little issues, when they prove themselves to be unable to govern a sport to keep traffic off the road.”
Vaughters also criticised the UCI for failing to ensure that smaller races adhere to the safety standards of bigger events, following a number of high-profile incidents involving members of the public driving onto race routes in recent years.
In 2023, the peloton at the Tour Féminin des Pyrénées refused to start the race’s third and final stage in protest at a range of safety issues, which included members of the public driving on the course, metres away from the riders at times.
And last February, several WorldTour teams – including Vaughters’ EF Education-EasyPost team – pulled out of the Étoile de Bessèges stage race following two incidents involving motorists driving on the course.
Later that year, a stage of the Tour of Holland was cancelled after an oncoming motorist, seemingly ignoring the warnings of the event’s volunteer marshals, entered the course and drove towards the riders.
“The number of smaller races I’ve been to where there’s traffic on the course is unreal,” Vaughters says. “I’m not blaming anyone other than the ultimate authority which needs to do a better job of governing the sport.
“[The Volta a Portugal] was sanctioned by the UCI. The UCI are a sanctioning authority of the race and take a fee from event organisers. If you are forcing teams to fight for ranking points at this event then you damn well better make sure the event is up to standard.
“I’m not going to criticise the organisation of the Volta a Portugal. There have been too many races at this level that have exactly the same problem. This just happened to be terribly unlucky. It could have been any of the other races.
“The costs [for smaller races] are enormous, organisers are really struggling and hoofing it financially and I sympathise with that. The Tour de France closes its road for the duration many hours before an event. There’s a gendarme on every T-junction. A barricade at every T-junction.
“As a team, we trust races like the Tour de France, but we don’t trust smaller races. Rolling closures become a problem when the peloton splits into groups and you don’t have every T-junction blocked, and people think: ‘The race is done, I’m free to go on the road’.
“As soon as they turn on the road, they’re going 100kph and the opposite way is the peloton at 50kph. That’s a combined 150kph. I mean, it’s horrible. Rolling enclosures I don’t think work that well.”
Vaughters argued that the cycling calendar is bloated and could be condensed, in order to tighten safety measures, while riders are also under increasing pressure to obtain results and UCI points for their teams.
“We have way too many events on the calendar, it’s just too much,” he told the BBC. “It needs to be more selective and the governance needs to look at each race with a much higher degree of scepticism.
“Why do we need 700 race days around the world? It’s fine if those events occur, but not as sanctioned events with riders fighting for points. What’s wrong with 100 days on the race calendar?
“I’m scared for athletes and we are telling them they have to push themselves to the limit – that’s a dissonance that I think is reprehensible.
“Yes, it might mean less sanctioning fees for the UCI, fewer jobs for race organisers. I understand that, but in the modern world the price of a young athlete dying far outweighs all the other problems.”
9 thoughts on ““The price of a young athlete dying far outweighs all the other problems”: EF boss Jonathan Vaughters blasts UCI’s focus on “ridiculous little issues when they’re unable to keep traffic off the road” after Finlay Tarling’s death”
Chapeau, Mr Vaughters
Lessening race days for top teams is a good idea and stop point fighting in smaller races is a great idea, yea these younger guys n girls get experience in them, but not at risk of their lives
I don’t know why no one wants to blame the organizer. It sounds like there have been other traffic issues, and the organizers want to make the race bigger than they can handle. Why can’t the UCI tell the organizers to reduce the race days for a year or so until they show that they can safely run it?
I know the family wanted the race to continue but why wasn’t the next day neutralized? It seemed like the organizer and UCI, etc. wanted to get past the tragedy as quickly as possible.
@ErgoKnees Presumably the family didn’t ask for it to be neutralised? Personally I’m not a fan of neutralised stages after such tragedies, I remember Bjarne Riis had the guts after Casartelli was killed in the ’95 tour to speak out and say it had done nobody any good to ride at a snail’s pace under a blazing sun for six hours with nothing to do or think about but the death and tragedy. Save the commemorations (apart from a few simple marks of respect like a minute’s silence at the start, black armbands etc) for the church. I’d reckon a lot of racers would say the best tribute that could be paid to them was to go out and race the next stage hell for leather in their memory.
Until 2 people die 2 days in a row of course.
@ErgoKnees the riders family asked for it to continue and as Rendel mentioned, neutralised stages are generally a nightmare (one to manage and two for the riders).
Granted, blame has to be with the race organiser but road closures simply come down to a matter of cost. The TdF can afford this, smaller races can’t. Instead of the UCI taking a fee they should be treating these races like a loss leader and supporting them to improve safety measures like using police rather than volunteers and using the proper barriers.
Chapeau, Mr Vaughters. …and why can’t everyone see that this example is also reflective of the general attitude by motorists towards cyclists on all our roads?
It’s the same cause, whether racing, training or cruising with the family. The need for separated cycling infrastructure (and closed roads) only stems from one issue – arrogant drivers disdain for cyclists, breaking the law and putting cyclists lives in danger.
In the absence of an AI algorithm that deletes all human ego, the solution is clearly in effectively policing the road rules that protect cyclists, not the wilful denial blind spot pervading our race organisers, police, city councils and courts.
If it’s true*, as reported, that the driver in question asked and was told that the race had passed, that’s not ‘arrogant disdain for cyclists’ – it’s a mistake resulting from a failure of communication somewhere along the line.
[* recognising that much about the events here are a fair amount of hearsay at the moment.]
Vaughters – often gobby, sometimes very very right.
Slightly sorry for Hansen but spectacularly stupid for focusing on helmets first.