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.”
