EF boss Jonathan Vaughters slams “fat cats who have never raced so much as a child’s tricycle” after Tour de France director blames crashes on “riders going too fast”; Premier blasts bike lanes for congestion caused by Santa parade + more on the live blog

At the end of a season marred by that horrendous high-speed crash at the Itzulia Basque Country and the tragic death of Swiss junior rider Muriel Furrer at the world championships, it is no surprise that safety remains high on the list of priorities for cycling’s powers that be as we head into 2025.

However, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme’s recent claim that crashes such as the one in the Basque Country in April are caused by riders “going too fast” has been scathingly condemned by EF Education-EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters, who branded the comments “absolutely infuriating”, dismissing Prudhomme as one of the sport’s “fat cats who have never raced so much as a child’s tricycle”.

(A.S.O./Etienne Coudret)

Last week in Italy, at the annual general assembly of the association of race organisers (AIOCC), Prudhomme blamed the shocking Itzulia crash – which took place on a steep, technical descent and brought down Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Jay Vine, and Steff Cras, scuppering Vingegaard’s preparations for his Tour defence in July – on the high speeds employed by the modern peloton.

“Beyond the behaviour of the athletes and the work of the organisers, it is absolutely necessary to reduce speed by appropriate measures: the riders are going too fast,” the Tour de France’s general director told the assembly.

“The faster they go, the greater the risk and the more they endanger themselves and others.

“We already said it here last year: our car and motorbike drivers no longer have a safety margin! Imagine the consequences if one of our drivers, subjected to too much pressure, lost control on a mountain descent or when racing through a built-up area.”

> Jonas Vingegaard warned about descent of Basque Country horror crash half a year ago, but organisers “never gave an answer”, claims Safe Cycling CEO

While Prudhomme was quick to pin the blame on the riders taking more risks and pushing the envelope when it comes to speed, it must be noted that the scene of the horror crash – the descent of the Olaeta climb, with around 30km to go on stage four of this year’s race – was flagged by Vingegaard as unsafe six months before the Tour of the Basque Country.

According to the Safe Cycling group, they attempted to contact the race organisers about Vingegaard’s concerns, but “never got an answer”.

So it’s hardly surprising that EF chief Vaughters – never one to shy away from confrontation with cycling’s top brass – wasn’t overly impressed with Prudhomme’s recent assessment.

After initially responding to the Tour director’s statement with the sarcastic hashtag #MakeRacingSlowAgain, Vaughters wrote on Twitter: “It is absolutely infuriating to me how these fat cats, who have never raced so much as a child’s tricycle, turning tens of millions in profit off the backs of others, squarely throw the blame of safety issues in cycling on the riders.”

The former US Postal rider continued: “They are highly competitive people. They are hard wired to the bone to take life threatening risks. Similar to F1 drivers.

“And like in F1, the answer is to create a safer environment around them. Because they will always push the envelope as far as it goes.”

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Shortly after Prudhomme’s rather shortsighted intervention at the race organisers assembly, UCI President David Lappartient also turned to the much vexed subject of rider earpieces, arguing that there are fewer crashes at world championships, where earpieces are not allowed.

Lappartient told the assembly that while teams argue in favour of earpieces by citing safety concerns, they also use them to constantly tell their riders to move to the front of the peloton, causing chaos and crashes in the bunch.

> "Profound safety problem" in elite cycling, finds report... but riders union president says it's "getting safer"

“I’ve also had riders write to me who don’t necessarily want me to publish their names – the majority will want to keep the earpieces – but there are still a lot of riders who consider that it’s an element that contributes to a certain amount of stress in the peloton,” the UCI president said.

“I think it’s a bit of a shame that some people want to draw a conclusion from a dramatic fall such as that of Muriel Furrer, which is under investigation by the police.”

Footage has been widely shared on Facebook showing the moment two cyclists riding metres in front of a Surrey Police vehicle were spotted jumping a red light, before being stopped and issued a fixed penalty notice.

Read more: > Cyclists who jumped red light in front of police stopped and fined, as force shares footage with “red means stop” warning

133km, four hours, Mons-en-Pévèle, Camphin-en-Pévèle, the Carrefour de l’Arbre – so just your steady winter ride for Wout van Aert, then. 

I know it’s never too early to try out equipment, especially for a race as technically demanding as Paris-Roubaix, but November feels very early… and very cold. Get to the ‘cross field instead Wout!

Walking and cycling charity Sustrans could be set for “substantial” staffing cuts, after its budget was slashed by a third following government funding cuts and amid uncertainty over its financial future.

While the new Labour government pledged £100m for active travel in the recent Budget, this only extends Sustrans’ funding for one more year, and it’s currently unclear how much of the £100m – if anything – will go to the charity.

However, Xavier Brice, the CEO of Sustrans – which runs the National Cycle Network (NCN) – described the situation as a “challenge rather than an existential threat”, insisting that its new strategy will focus on delivering more improvements to the NCN.

Nevertheless, speaking to road.cc alumnus Laura Laker for Cycling Industry News, Brice also noted that the network is a “major piece of infrastructure” that needs long-term public investment to bring it up to scratch.

“Funding is going to be really tight, and in the foreseeable future, Sustrans is going to shrink. This is just the fiscal reality of where we are,” he told Laker.

“We have governments committed to active travel in the UK but the budget last year was around £150m, and some of that was a backlog from previous years. Already this year we are looking at that being closer to £100m. That means less income to pay for people in the near term to do the work.”

> School Streets guidance to help make it “easier to walk, wheel, and cycle, giving children what they want – an enjoyable, healthy, and sociable journey to school,” Sustrans says

Brice also pointed to a “lag on the consequences of active travel funding cuts” made by the Conservative government in 2023, as money for infrastructure takes time to spend, saying cuts in England “really start to catch up with you”.

This issue is compounded by Transport Scotland’s recent decision to bring cycle infrastructure delivery in-house. This year, £93m of Sustrans’ £146.4m funding came from Transport Scotland under its “permanent infrastructure fund”, Places for Everyone, a significant chunk that will now be lost following the handover.

“The real pressure is that long-term multi-year funding: it’s really hard to build infrastructure with a year’s certainty, and a bit of carry over,” Brice said.

“It would be hard to build a significant home extension if you only had financial certainty for a year, so how can you upgrade and improve an active travel network?”

Ladies and gentlemen, for our latest flyweight bike bout…

> Scott unveils new 5.9kg Addict RC road bike... the same weight as the 2008 version

A Perthshire man who attempted to send 500 bikes to a charity in Africa has criticised the “ludicrous” and “arbitrary” decision made by environment chiefs to block the shipment, on the grounds that the condition of many of the bikes meant that they were considered waste.

According to a waste manager at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), the organisation had a duty of care to prevent Scotland’s waste simply being dumped in another country.

64-year-old Nigel Carter had been collecting bikes from across Scotland to be shipped to Sudan, to help provide access to cheap transport in the war-torn country.

Carter told BBC Scotland that he had gathered the bikes from Scottish recycling centres to offer to local charities, with those not taken set to be given to a charity in Sudan.

The ongoing civil war in the African country has led to a lack of oil and fuel, increasing demand for bikes.

Carter then shipped the roughly 500 bikes in a container to a Scottish port, where they were stopped for inspection by environment officials and ultimately sent back to the 64-year-old – after SEPA concluded that some of the bikes needed repairs before they could be used and were currently unfit for purpose, and therefore considered waste.

In a statement, SEPA told the BBC that they had contacted Carter about the necessary repairs before shipment and were disappointed in their condition by the time when they arrived. The agency also claimed that they were not confident that the bikes would be reused for transport in Sudan.

However, Carter says it was “ludicrous” that the container had not met shipping requirements, noting that he did not think there was a set standard that the bikes were marked against and claimed the inspector’s decision was arbitrary.

“It’s as whimsical as if someone were to have a bad day, they could refuse the container,” he said, accusing the officials of “box-ticking bureaucracy”.

However, he admitted that he knew some of the bikes would need work when they arrived in Sudan, but says he did not understand what else they would have been used for.

Carter also argued that the necessary repairs were only minor and could easily be fixed, such as rusty oil and frames, and broken brake cables, and said that these repairs would be more cost-effective if they were carried out in Sudan, rather than Scotland.

The bikes were approved by qualified mechanics and deemed acceptable by the charity set to receive them, he added, noting they would have been used by children to get to school or to help people run their businesses.

Carter also said that it was costing the Sudanese charity for the shipping container to be sitting in “limbo”, putting them at risk of closing.

As for the salvaged bikes themselves, Carter said they will now most likely be scrapped or taken back to their recycling centre of origin.

He may have had a horribly frustrating, injury-ravaged 2024, but at least Wout van Aert is back where he belongs: on his bike, with his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates, and riding on the cobbled bergs and wet, windy roads of the Belgian classics.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Niklas Behrens (@niklasbehrens)

Van Aert was out yesterday with his Visma colleagues, including newly signed U23 world champion Niklas Behrens, for a 97km route starting and finishing in Oudenaarde, the Tour of Flanders’ finish town, and taking in quite a few of the Flemish monument’s most iconic climbs, including the Oude Kwaremont, Paterberg, Wolvenberg, Molenberg, and Valkenberg.

The Belgian star also passed the spot where he crashed on the run-in to the Kanarieberg at this year’s Dwars door Vlaanderen, breaking his collarbone and ribs and ruling him out for two months, forcing him to miss both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

> Is Wout’s Ronde dream over? Disastrous crash takes out Flanders favourite Van Aert

Alongside Van Aert and Instagram film-maker Behrens on their pre-Christmas Ronde recon were fellow big names Olav Kooij, Christophe Laporte, Edoardo Affini, and Dylan van Baarle, as well as 19-year-old British hopeful and Baby Giro stage winner Matthew Brennan, who’s stepping up from Visma’s development team to the World Tour squad in January.

I swear, these classics training camps are getting earlier every year. Whatever happened to a few gentle weeks spinning the legs in Mallorca?

Blimey, it must be ‘Unofficial 2025 pro team kit leak day’ (or maybe something a bit catchier), as Groupama-FDJ become the latest squad to casually air their new threads on social media… while starting the most frustrating game of Spot the Difference ever:

For the 3rd season in a row, one of the classiest jerseys in the peloton (just a Groupama logo change for 2025) 📷Eddy Lequartier

[image or embed]

— Dan Deakins (@dandeakins.bsky.social) November 26, 2024 at 11:29 AM

(Spoiler: Groupama’s ‘G’ logo has changed. And that’s about it. Good work design team! Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and all that.)