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Tour de Pologne 2020

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If you think of it, it's quite crazy that the barriers form the edge of the racing zone. If you touch them, you will almost always crash, so there is literally no safety margin. Why not paint lines in the last km that signal the edge of the racing zone, and then the barriers 1 m further to the side. If you cross the line, you're out, if you get pushed outside the lines, others can get punished. At least there would be a margin of safety. Sounds a bit artificial maybe, but it is being done in other sports (like car racing), and it would very likely improve safety a lot.
 
The issue with the finish line is that it's downhill.
As for using inflatable finish line (almost wrote inflamable, which... I think would be a really bad idea...) well... don't know if you've noticed, but those aren't exactly 100% safe either, just remember the Adam Yates incident in the Tour a few years back.

Somebody said this finish has been used for 10 years? The teams/riders should have raised a concern in the past 10 years if they thought the downhill nature of the finish was inherently dangerous. I assume no concerns were brought to the UCI or the organisers in the past 10 years otherwise i find it hard to think they finish wouldn't have been moved?

Barrier and crowd control measure need to be looked at. I have always found it somewhat bizarre that metal barriers with feet stickin out onto the course are used. I am shocked these type of barriers dont cause more accidents when you have riders all over the road in a messy sprint. This incident is really just the cherry on the top of the sundae when it comes to the affect these barriers can have in a crash.

And to have a scaffold structure at the finish line seems also ridiculous. these types of accidents have to occur though for change to happen.

whilst at it, they need to ban photographers being all lined up just after the finish, how there are not more accidents when riders have to swerve them after a sprint finish is beyond me. With todays modern photozoom lenses, why do they need to be directly in the finish area?
 
Somebody said this finish has been used for 10 years? The teams/riders should have raised a concern in the past 10 years if they thought the downhill nature of the finish was inherently dangerous. I assume no concerns were brought to the UCI or the organisers in the past 10 years otherwise i find it hard to think they finish wouldn't have been moved?

As someone has also pointed out; the speeds nowadays are somewhat... quicker than 10 years ago. And I think there has been concerns voiced, but because nothing had happened - until now - it was still deemed safe.
 
Somebody said this finish has been used for 10 years? The teams/riders should have raised a concern in the past 10 years if they thought the downhill nature of the finish was inherently dangerous. I assume no concerns were brought to the UCI or the organisers in the past 10 years otherwise i find it hard to think they finish wouldn't have been moved?

Barrier and crowd control measure need to be looked at. I have always found it somewhat bizarre that metal barriers with feet stickin out onto the course are used. I am shocked these type of barriers dont cause more accidents when you have riders all over the road in a messy sprint. This incident is really just the cherry on the top of the sundae when it comes to the affect these barriers can have in a crash.

And to have a scaffold structure at the finish line seems also ridiculous. these types of accidents have to occur though for change to happen.

whilst at it, they need to ban photographers being all lined up just after the finish, how there are not more accidents when riders have to swerve them after a sprint finish is beyond me. With todays modern photozoom lenses, why do they need to be directly in the finish area?
Riders have been saying that this finish is dangerous since it was first used
 
It's always a huge shock to see or read of incidents and injuries like yesterdays. I guess it's cycling and it's part of the game and injuries happen and yada yada but this just felt so preventable. There are so many things that shouldn't have happened like they did, not just talking of Groenewegens behavior, and I think after everyone's health the next most important thing right now is that cycling finally learns from the mistakes that have been made.

Because you know, it's not the first time a sprinter changes his line in a bunch sprint and pushes someone into the barrier. Often people crash, usually they aren't as severely injured as Jakobsen and most of the time there is just no crash at all because these sprinters are phenomenal bike handlers. The simple fact that it's possible for riders to have a reputation for doing something that dangerous, that life threatening, and still being looked upon as a relatively uncontroversial athlete, often as a sports hero, is ridiculous and it's only possible because these sort of moves aren't sanctioned harder. Right after watching the footage from yesterday I could immediately think of numerous occasions when a sprinter had somehow stayed upright despite being pushed close to the barrier and all of those instances could have ended just like yesterdays.

But then nobody crashed so the next day everyone had already forgotten about it.

But it's not just dangerous movements in the sprint that are responsible for yesterday. If that's an uphill sprint and Jakobsen crashes into the barrier it's still bad and he might still get injured but the outcome would have been nowhere near as dramatic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for every sprint to be uphill, I just think someone with half a working eye could have seen how dangerous yesterday's finish was and how easily it could have been avoided. Just don't make bunch sprint stages where the finish is downhill, just don't finish on a straight where there are rails next to the barrier. As if the entire town of Katowice didn't have a single street more suited to a sprint finish. Bullsh*t. It's just that some organizer thought that place would look good on TV cameras, or that there was a certain spot where they thought a sponsors logo would look really neat. That stuff just mustn't have priority, but it does, and it has for years and seemingly nobody is questioning it. Every year there are races where the last kilometer of a flat stage is ridiculously twisty or where a day before the stage someone posts a picture on twitter showing how dangerous crashing in a certain corner could be. And every time there are some rider protests that get ignored and people like us write meaningless forum posts criticizing the race organizers.

But then nobody crashes so the next day everyone has already forgotten about it.

This just has to stop. The UCI cannot give sprinters leeway because the outcome isn't catastrophic. The next time Nacer Bouhanni does something like this I don't want him to just lose his stage win and be relegated to the back of the group, I want him out of the race. I don't want riders to benefit from dangerous riding anymore and if the sprinters know the only thing changing your line gets you is a DQ and a big fine, they'll stop doing it. But right now they know as long as the other guy stays upright they might keep their win or at worst get relegated with no further consequence.

And when it comes to dangerous routes, the organizers as well as the UCI have to get their sht together. LS mentioned the Pais Vasco sprint stage with the bollards and I'm sure the organizers faced consequences and what not, but holy sht how on earth did that stage ever get started. And the next time the organizer of a race willingly risks the riders lives by not making their route save, don't just ride the stage anyway. Don't just hope nobody will crash so everyone forgets about that one time the route you were responsible for could have had horrible consequences but ultimately didn't. I know cycling is dangerous by nature, but some dangers are so easily preventable. Nobody is gonna complain if you don't have high speed downhill sprints. Nobody is gonna complain if there are no sprints with rails next to the barriers. Stuff like cobbles or twisty descents cannot just be erased from cycling because many riders would consider these sections their strengths but no sprinter is gonna have "sprints really well next to rails you really don't want to crash on" written on his wikipedia page. These sort of dangers are preventable and the only reason they aren't prevented already is because of stuff that shouldn't matter one tiny bit next to the riders health.

Man idk, events like yesterday's just make me sad. Just needed to get that off my chest.
I would add one thing. This finish has been used for 10 years apparently. Ofcourse the damage would be different if they go 65 kph like a regular sprint instead of 80kph. But it's not like Groenewegen didn't know that and he went ahead anyway
 
He doesn't even apologise or admits his mistake.

I guess lawyers have already done their job in telling him not to admit anything with Lefevere threatening with legal and criminal actions.

Unless the translation is wrong, doesn’t he say ‘ I can’t find the words to say how sorry I am to Fabio and other riders who have fallen or have been affected’ and ends it with ‘I think about him constantly’
 
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The implication would be that he regrets what happened, not his own actions.

Can't "sorry" be both? Like, if I missed a stop sign and ran into you then my immediate reaction would be "I'm sorry!" with the "it was my fault" being implicit.
But if you wrote that someone else that missed a stop sign and ran into you, then my reaction would probably also be "I'm sorry (to hear that.)"
 
As Berflamand mentioned, it’s to avoid an admission of guilt in case this goes to trial. I’m sure his lawyers would argue there was no guilt/fault because the actions that led to the incident are things that are “common” in cycling and have been “silently” tolerated as some sort of customary law outside of the rules. If Groenewegen states he’s sorry for his actions then he’s admitting he’s in the wrong.
 

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