Crashes, what can be done?

[CyclistAbi]

They will always measure stage times at some point. GC guys can hence still make a difference there. Due to crosswinds, breakaway, better positioning ... After that point they should move along and let the stage to sprinters. Unless they are in position to take the stage win and then by all means go for it. It's not like it is illegal.

Just don't be there in between the big boys playing the lottery and looking silly.

 

[RedheadDane]

This is mainly gonna be flow-of-mind!

Ciccone DNF and he merely crashed.

As for your general opinion and on how you perceive safety in pro cycling. That is if the safety incident does not involve a hospital it is not a safety related incident worth worrying about. I don't share that opinion at all. But feel free to have such standards. I just don't feel they should be taken seriously. It's like saying somebody had a car accident but as it didn't involve hospital it was basically not a car accident and no need to worry about such accidents. That is to try to prevent them.

Yes, and I feel sorry for him, just like I feel sorry for Valverde.
Because you can feel sorry for GC riders - or any riders - who crash out, or even just - in the case of GC riders - lose time in the GC, but also recognise that there are more important concerns in cycling than coming up with some artificial way to prevent GC riders from getting caught up in crashes on sprint stages.
Of course it's still a crash even nobody ends up in the hospital, but sometimes crashes just happen. Whether it's a touch-of-wheels in the peloton, or a rider overcooking it on a - otherwise perfectly safe - corner, and most of the time riders just pick themselves up and continue, maybe they'll have lost a bit of skin, maybe they'll lose a bit of time, but at the end of the day; not a big deal.
Seriously, though, I just don't understand why you're so concerned about GC riders losing time. In your "What If" scenario for stage 16, your biggest concern seemed to be "What if a GC rider had lost time? " But again; wouldn't it have been a bigger worry if someone - major rider, or not - had been seriously hurt?
This thread was start, I suspect, partly because of two young guys almost losing their lives within 14 days of each other, and yes; Evenepoel might never have lost consciousness, but not much should have been different before it could have gone horribly wrong, landing on a rock rather than a pheasant... And let's not forget the car - a non-race-related car! - that took out Schachmann during Lombardia last year, because that is a serious incident, even if he got up again and finished; something like that simply should not happen!

 

[EliseeReclus]

That would have been unfortunate, yes, but - as long as nobody was actually seriously hurt, not a total disaster.
Don't forget that stage 16 actually did see a pretty serious crash - though too early to be bunch sprint related - that saw three guys abbandon. One of them, Ciccone, was actually riding GC. Another, Molard, got a collapsed lung! (And then he rode for another 100 Ks, because pro-cyclists are crazy!), but even that I'm not classifying as a serious injury, because on the photo FDJ posted, he looked fine... for a guy with a collapsed lung...

Sometimes, I think you're putting way too much focus on the GC guys.

Along these lines, I think a fairly crucial distinction is being missed. We shouldn't be wanting to reduce crashes so that we maintain a competitive GC, we should be wanting it in order to best protect overall rider welfare.

I don't think there should be any effort put into stopping a crash that causes no serious injury, but changes the GC standings. We could have had a crash with 10km to go on Stage 16 that meant that Roglic, Mas, Superman, Haig and Bernal all lost 10 minutes in GC, but as long as they are able to get up and ride away, we should see it as completely fine and acceptable. As it stands this season in Grand Tour sprint finishes the only injuries that have resulted for GC candidates are two fractured collarbones for Haig and Landa. While frustrating, I don't see how this can be seen as an enormous safety or welfare risk that requires a fundamental change in how the race is run in order to eliminate. Especially as both crashes could potentially have been mitigated through designing the course to avoid narrow, wet and downhill corners with adverse camber in the run in for Haig, and to avoid significant road furniture for Landa.

To use the Formula One analogy again, you still see F1 drivers crash (whether this be clipping a wall, going off the track into a a gravel section or something more serious), it's just that these incidents have been reduced and the likelihood of them resulting in serious injury or worse is significantly reduced. Take for instance the crash of Romain Grosjean in Bahrain last year - he literally walked away from it straight away with minor burns and injuries when before it likely would have killed him. But it still meant that he wasn't able to compete in the race any further and this disadvantaged him in the championship standings clearly (even if he wasn't a high quality or competitive driver). The point of the safety measures were not to eliminate the risk of crashing altogether, but to reduce the damage done by their consequences and to ensure the driver does not suffer life changing injuries or worse.

 

[yaco]

And what if a split develops late on or at the line? By extending the time gap needed between riders from 1 second to 3 they're already taking action to mean the GC guys don't need to be up front in the run-in. But Egan Bernal gained a few seconds a few days ago by being more attentive than his rivals at the finish and gaining time on them, and he ought to be rewarded for that, no?

And he ruined the sprint finish because he dropped the wheel

 

[CyclistAbi]

We will see next year if they learned anything or not. On bunch sprint stages, where you send the peloton down the narrow roads of some city or a village. For that last couple of kilometres. And you kill GC race with the lottery ... If they do that again then in my opinion they are stupid.

P.S. Pascal Eenkhoorn should be fined for littering. As at least they take this aspect of pro cycling seriously.

 

[RedheadDane]

We will see next year if they learned anything or not. On bunch sprint stages, where you send the peloton down the narrow roads of some city or a village. For that last couple of kilometres. And you kill GC race with the lottery ... If they do that again then in my opinion they are stupid.

P.S. Pascal Eenkhoorn should be fined for littering. As at least they take this aspect of pro cycling seriously.

Plenty of races this year still to come for them to show that they are in fact taking crashes seriously.

And Eenkhoorn didn't litter! He gave a gift - and an experience of a lifetime - to a kid. So glad they stopped DQing riders for beautiful stuff like that.

 

[CyclistAbi]

AFAIK nobody is doing any meaningful about crashes in general. To be methodical about it and to reduce the number of occurences over years. Hence the answer to your question is rather rhetorical one.

As for the things we talked about extensively. Regarding the end of bunch sprint stages. Here i feel that if the same things will still happen in 2022. Then we will just call them stupid. By them i don't mean the riders.

 

[RedheadDane]

They banned the Supertuck to prevent crashes.
They banned the Poland organiserers from using that finale - and I guess downhill sprints like that are banned in general - to prevent crashes.
They're implementing better standards for barriers to make sure the consequences aren't too severe if a crash does happen.
They're getting better at putting padding on stuff by the route, probably because - as you might recall - Lambrecht died because he hit his upper body against a concrete structure.

What they're not doing is creating some artificial way of keeping GC riders off the front during sprint finishes.

 

[CyclistAbi]

That are your claim not mine. You made that up. That is the crashes at the end of bunch sprint stages are less important or severe compared to other ones.

They are surely not.

 

[EliseeReclus]

That are your claim not mine. You made that up. That is the crashes at the end of bunch sprint stages are less important or severe compared to other ones.

They are surely not.

If they are not causing injuries that are as bad as crashes in other situations, then aren't they literally less severe? And the logical conclusion from this is that they should take less importance when considering safety improvements than severe crashes

 

[Leinster]

Eenkhoorn would never have been fined under any version of the rule; he handed a bottle to a fan, he never threw it on the ground. Schar got DQ’d at the Ronde for throwing his bottle at spectators’ feet.

And tossed/dropped bottles are a safety issue. It literally took Thomas out of the Giro last year.

 

[EliseeReclus]

And tossed/dropped bottles are a safety issue. It literally took Thomas out of the Giro last year.

IIRC, Thomas was taken out by one that fell out of a bottle cage when they went over cobbles in the neutral zone (Although, having some construction rules about bottle cages and retention probably wouldn't be a bad improvement though tbh). I thought the UCI stuff on bottles was more to do with littering than a safety issue per se.

 

[RedheadDane]

That are your claim not mine. You made that up. That is the crashes at the end of bunch sprint stages are less important or severe compared to other ones.

They are surely not.

What did I make up?
And of course bunch sprint crashes can be severe, if riders are injured. However, a crash in which the only consequence is the tiny and insignificant "issue" of GC riders losing time is not a severe crash!

Also, you gotta admit it looks a bit silly to be talking about next season, when this season isn't exactly over.
I definitely hope they're gonna put up some sort of net at the spot where Evenepoel crashed at Lombardia, and be a bit more vigilant with keeping non-race cars off the route.

 

[Leinster]

IIRC, Thomas was taken out by one that fell out of a bottle cage when they went over cobbles in the neutral zone (Although, having some construction rules about bottle cages and retention probably wouldn't be a bad improvement though tbh). I thought the UCI stuff on bottles was more to do with littering than a safety issue per se.

Yeah, just pointing out the contrast of people making fun of the bottle toss rules, while at the same time insisting we fundamentally alter the finish of flat stages to protect gc riders.

 

[CyclistAbi]

@RedheadDane

And why is a crash plus killed GC race less severe then a mere crash?

P.S. I am not saying you are making things out. I am saying you put too much emphasise on one aspect and just disregard the rest. The crash.

 

[RedheadDane]

Who gives a *** about "killed GC"? I'm talking about crashes causing actual injury, even death!

And you really shouldn't talk too loudly about putting too much emphasis on one aspect. What with you constantly harping on about GC riders...

 

[CyclistAbi]

Let me put it this way. If the crashes i am talking about wouldn't cause injuries then the GC race would not be killed.

 

[Bonimenier]

Who gives a *** about "killed GC"? I'm talking about crashes causing actual injury, even death!

And you really shouldn't talk too loudly about putting too much emphasis on one aspect. What with you constantly harping on about GC riders...

"GC riders"

 

[CyclistAbi]

Yeah, just pointing out the contrast of people making fun of the bottle toss rules, while at the same time insisting we fundamentally alter the finish of flat stages to protect gc riders.

As it should be.

P.S. Now we take bottle toss rules seriously and are crashing GC riders in sprinters stampede.

 

[RedheadDane]

Let me put it this way. If the crashes i am talking about wouldn't cause injuries then the GC race would not be killed.

Let me put it this way:

Crash that causes a GC rider to lose time, but no serious injury = Good!
Crash that causes serious injury - whether GC rider, top-sprinter, or basically unknown guy - but no time-loss for (other) GC riders = Bad!
Of course; crash that causes neither = Also good!

And that's not even taking into account the races with no GC; you know... the one-day races!

However, and I think I might have mentioned this before, sometimes it's not so much the outcome that should be looked into but the cause. Sometimes - and it's horrible to say - even crashes with the worst possible outcome could not have been prevented, while on the flip-side sometimes stuff happens that - through some crazy luck - does not cause major injury, but just shouldn't have happened; that car hitting Schachmann in Lombardia last year springs to mind.

Why did you even ressurrect this thread to start talking about "next year" when this year's season isn't exactly over yet?

But anyway; I'll give you a challenge, since this minor issue seems to be oh-so-important to you... why don't you come up with a way to prevent these "GC killing crashes"? But bear in mind that you can't just go "NEUTRALISE EVERYTHING!", as that could prevent GC riders from taking time in unexpected places, and I'm not just talking cross-wind action.