Étoile de Bessèges 2025 February 5th - 9th

[Armchair Cyclist]

wtf, what is the point of removing mont bouquet?

edit: i think that actually just says that the team cars wont be allowed up the climb

Apparently the weather forecast is very bad: possible snow on the climb. So at least the formalities are on the lower ground, and they are more ready if the finish needs to be too.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

The person in the car btw apparently ignored a road block, and according to one source even ignored instructions from the gendarmerie. Is it dangerous? Yes, absolutely. Can the organizer do anything about morons on the road? Not really.

Yeah, that's kind of what I expected. And so long as this kind of behaviour has little consequence for the driver (as is the case almost everywhere), there is never going to be anything any race organiser can do.

 

[will-10]

Well going from the Facebook posting the organizers have dropped the climb to mont bouquet, so the stage will end in Brouzet-le-Ales so the stage will be 148.91 km long according to the timetable at https://www.etoiledebesseges.com/wp...vert-Mont-Bouquet-parcours-condense-carte.pdf

Tarling and Ganna robbed

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

And looking at the amount of anti cycling posts in general on Twitter, and the volume and vehemence of complaints on web sites of local media when there have been races in my area (Tour of Britain and Ride London have been hereabouts in recent years), I fear that it becomes very easy and probably free of consequences for any selfish git with a car to force the cancellation of any bike race they don't like.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

The problem for tomorrow is not so much the chance of snow in and of itself (no descents at any sort of altitude, so normally you'd think they can Terminillo 2015 their way up the MTF at worst), but more so the amount of precipitation: there are 50-70 millimetres of rain expected even in the valley. So a) if it does snow at the summit, the road will be totally blocked, and b) the roads in the valley might be prone to flash floods in places.

 

[search]

Tarling and Ganna robbed

as AC pointed out above, it's not what the press release said, though. It's mainly about formalities taking place at the bottom of the climb instead of the top.

There may still be changes, of course, but so far the stage is scheduled to take place as planed.

 

[Zoetemelk-fan]

Just returned to the season. And what a bummer, so many teams leaving my favourite new classic early cornerstone.
A bit of over-reaction when comparing to races I watched, decades before they were even born.
But well, at least a race.

 

[Samamba]

The problem for tomorrow is not so much the chance of snow in and of itself (no descents at any sort of altitude, so normally you'd think they can Terminillo 2015 their way up the MTF at worst), but more so the amount of precipitation: there are 50-70 millimetres of rain expected even in the valley. So a) if it does snow at the summit, the road will be totally blocked, and b) the roads in the valley might be prone to flash floods in places.

There's flood risk and possible landslides, so they're going to make a decision tomorrow morning. I fear they're going to cancel it, but at least the riders who are still in it aren't whiners so they might give it a go. I'm assuming Cofidis and Arkea really want to race for example. For a lot of French conti teams its also a golden opportunity to get a good result, same for Flanders.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

This isn't *that* bridge (the Ferron fingernails incident) is it? Some co-incidence if the two most talked about incidents in the race's history were at the same spot.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

The CQ result page for the day gives no explanation, just a huge list of DNFs. Looks like a stage of the 1998 Tour. That'll get people wondering if they stumble across it in the future.

 

[pastronef]

where's the Lazkano quote from?

 

[RedheadDane]

Either the action in question is legitimate or not. If it's not legitimate, then it's analogous to excusing terrorism if you sympathise with the motivation for it. If the action is legitimate, then you can argue that straightforwardly and you don't have to sympathise with the motivation for it.

Unless, of course, some people just decide to declare it "not legitimate"...

The agreement in the morning was "We'll race, if you can guarantee there won't be another incident. One more incident, and we're out!"
Presumably everyone - including the teams who stayed - agreed with that. Guess some of them just didn't think it would be necessary to follow up with that.

Just returned to the season. And what a bummer, so many teams leaving my favourite new classic early cornerstone.
A bit of over-reaction when comparing to races I watched, decades before they were even born.
But well, at least a race.

Yeah, I think everyone is expecting things to be better than they were in the past.
Besides, surely they didn't have that many issues with cars back in the day; didn't everyone ride horse-drawn buggies then?

 

[Rob5091]

Well, there's certainly no shortage of excitment and entertainment in the race so far. You would not get all this extra stuff if it were the Tour ("30 km to go and Pogi attacks ...40km to go and Pogi attacks ... 50km to go and Pogi attacks ...) so "long live the sh*t races!"
Back in 2023 Pierre Latour came in third and De Lie 8th on the climb up Mont Bouquet so barring weather problems, it'll be interesting.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Unless, of course, some people just decide to declare it "not legitimate"...

The agreement in the morning was "We'll race, if you can guarantee there won't be another incident. One more incident, and we're out!"

Well if that was what was agreed, then it was an entirely meaningless agreement. How could race organisers guarantee that one individual living along the route would not act selfishly, recklessly, and with apparently total ignorance of what was going on around him?

If teams are not willing to take part in races that can be adversely affected by the acts of those with nothing to do with the race (protests, vandalism, determination to drive where they want without following instruction, or blatant stupidity) then racing is finished as a concept.
Extending the same "other people must be able to guarantee the safety of everything I do" approach to wider life, means that we had better not get out of bed in the morning.


It is the nature of probability that rare events can occasionally happen in close proximity: it bears investigation when they do, but genuine co-incidence is a thing. I see nothing that might have been done to prevent a recurrence of Thursday's event that could have prevented Friday's (short of confiscating the car keys of everyone in the area).

And I would think it incumbent on those defending the teams that pulled out of the race to explain what they think the organisers could have done to prevent what happened.

 

[Berniece]

Yeah, that's kind of what I expected. And so long as this kind of behaviour has little consequence for the driver (as is the case almost everywhere), there is never going to be anything any race organiser can do.

Reduce the risk of this happening by riding on a circuit. Makes it easier manageable for organisers, you need less volunteers too

 

[pastronef]

Reduce the risk of this happening by riding on a circuit. Makes it easier manageable for organisers, you need less volunteers too

ok Richard ok, we got it
jokes aside, I feel very much for the Besseges organisers. the Marseillaise-Besseges-Provence-HautVar races are very important for the region, the effort of people year after year is great. it will need a big re-thinking and eye opening solutions, together. that's the problem, too many different minds and interests

 

[AmRacer]

Reduce the risk of this happening by riding on a circuit. Makes it easier manageable for organisers, you need less volunteers too

A racing track circuit.

 

[Rob5091]

Our cycling overlords have spoken! Taking time off from his IOC campaign, Lappi says "we feel your pain" (or whatever nonsense politicians say nowadays)
https://www.uci.org/pressrelease/uc...vehicles-at-letoile-de/6fXC6hGfe2g3EBMZpw4Eo5

The UCI emphasises that it takes the matter of rider security extremely seriously ...

Well that's good to know!

 

[QueenStagiaire]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887872730894106949

View: https://x.com/HansenAdam/status/1887872730894106949?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Adam Hansen has a good, but somewhat impractical idea: Just organize it like the Tour!

 

[Salvarani]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887872730894106949

View: https://x.com/HansenAdam/status/1887872730894106949?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Adam Hansen has a good, but somewhat impractical idea: Just organize it like the Tour!

Can he just shut up for once.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Reduce the risk of this happening by riding on a circuit. Makes it easier manageable for organisers, you need less volunteers too

How would racing on a circuit make it impossible for someone to deliberately ignore a blockade or drive out of their driveway into the peloton, which were the two issues at play in the big incidents here? Only if you completely barricade a circuit with barriers does it become impossible, and that's both way more expensive and labour-intensive for a race organiser and also causes way more headaches for residents/local authorities because the roads will be blocked for a significant time before and after the race too. Aside from that, there are other issues at play - in the Dutch national circuit, where it's either do a circuit race or not do a race at all this year, many organisers are not able/willing to do so for a variety of reasons meaning the calendar is heavily reduced. So that suggests that, if you translated that to the UCI level, forcing smaller races to run on circuits will kill off many of said races.

In addition, we've seen major security issues on circuits too - the 2019 Ster ZLM Tour comes to mind, or if we include time trial routes (which are basically the same story where security is concerned) the utter mess that was the 2022 Bloeizone Fryslân Tour. I'm sure there's more, just going off the top of my head here.

If the organisers had outright failed to apply the relevant measures at side roads it would be a different story, but by all accounts that wasn't the case and they were mostly just unlucky. We should be thankful that part of the peloton recognised this (Benjamin Thomas, the rider representative who voted to continue, even said something similar at the vote) in the heat of the moment. And that's no mean feat - it's completely understandable that tempers were running high at that point in time. But it might very well make the difference between the race running and not running next year.

 

[pastronef]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887872730894106949

View: https://x.com/HansenAdam/status/1887872730894106949?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Adam Hansen has a good, but somewhat impractical idea: Just organize it like the Tour!

I'm for ASO buying Marseillaise-Besseges-Provence-HautVar-Drome/Ardeche. to have all the French spring races under their umbrella, from Marseillaise to Paris-Nice

 

[Devil's Elbow]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1887872730894106949

View: https://x.com/HansenAdam/status/1887872730894106949?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Adam Hansen has a good, but somewhat impractical idea: Just organize it like the Tour!

Still waiting for the first time he acknowledges that there are other parties than the riders without which the sport doesn't exist...

 

[RedheadDane]

Well if that was what was agreed, then it was an entirely meaningless agreement. How could race organisers guarantee that one individual living along the route would not act selfishly, recklessly, and with apparently total ignorance of what was going on around him?

Let me point you to two earlier posts, one of which you quoted yourself:

According to Rolland commentating on lEquipe, the car was stopped by the police when the breakaway went past, but didn't wait for the peloton before it got going again. So it's a rolling road closure indeed, and one of the usual problem that comes with it.

So there was an agreement made before the start between organizers and riders that there would be more moto's before the groups to make sure cars were stopped in advance (which usually happend with rolling road closures).

Seems like the organisers didn't make sure there were more motos.

Jose Been translating Direct Velo tweet, Tietema's DS's not understanding the re-start announcements in French and missing the start

Can n't blame the organizers for that mess up!

Not ensuring that important information in their international race is also communicated in English is definitely something the organisers can be blamed for.

 

[search]

How would racing on a circuit make it impossible for someone to deliberately ignore a blockade or drive out of their driveway into the peloton, which were the two issues at play in the big incidents here? Only if you completely barricade a circuit with barriers does it become impossible, and that's both way more expensive and labour-intensive for a race organiser and also causes way more headaches for residents/local authorities because the roads will be blocked for a significant time before and after the race too.

when I was in the Tour of Romania a while back, to get from the start to the finish, I spent a couple of stages in one of those "safety cars" stopping the traffic coming from ahead - and it honestly was pretty crazy, and made you wonder how there aren't more accidents.

Admittedly, the situation may be worse in Romania, where less of a cycling culture exists, let alone any understanding how a bike race works (unlike Belgium, for example). But all in all, those rolling road closures never really looked like a very safe option to me, and although circuits can come with problems as well, I'd think they would improve the situation.

But, exaggeratedly speaking, for cyclists to go in circles we already have crits and the velodrome, and it would change road cycling in a significant way. So it may be a temporary solution for certain kind of stages, but honestly is not a very attractive one.