"Blood, broken bikes, and some poor bastard walking into an ambulance are what they love" - Michael Woods calls out Tour de France organisers' approach to rider safety

The topic of rider safety has been thrust back into the spotlight once again after a disastrous stage 3 at the 2025 Tour de France saw Green Jersey Jasper Philipsen abandon and numerous other riders hit the deck. Israel - Premier Tech's Michael Woods has so far managed to avoid any crashes, but the Canadian has been left far from impressed by the ASO's handling of the incidents.

"At our team presentation, just before the grand départ, ASO brought all the riders into the Lille Opera House for their annual pre-race briefing. As always, they kicked the meeting off with a video of the highlights from the previous year’s race," recalls Woods in the latest of his Tour de France columns for Velo. "Stage wins, epic scenery, and of course, crashes were the main features of the film. No matter what ASO says, they love crashes. Despite their claimed 'attempts' to make the sport safer, one gets a sense – when watching any highlight reel they create – that blood, broken bikes, and some poor bastard walking into an ambulance are what they love to sell."

"What struck me most during this presentation, though, wasn’t the graphic images of riders hitting the deck, but what was said to us at the tail end of it," Woods adds. "One of the heads of ASO spoke about recent efforts to make the sport safer, but, in his closing remarks, he laid a lot of blame on the riders."

Paraphrasing what was said by the narrator, Woods recalls the tone of the ASO's message to the Tour de France peloton. "Something along the lines of: 'Riders must also take greater measures to reduce risks, and if they don’t, they may have to be forced to wear protective equipment in the future,'" recalls Woods. "He said this as if wearing protective equipment would be punitive. To me, this showed a significant misunderstanding of what riders want and how sports, and life in general, work."

Woods even comes up with a comparison to the NBA in attempt to clarify what he means. "Under the current set of rules and the current speed at which the peloton is traveling, riders must take enormous risks to succeed. ASO telling riders 'you need to take less risk' is like the NBA telling Steph Curry, 'you need to shoot fewer threes.' It does nothing. If the NBA wanted fewer three-pointers in a game, they would change the lines," he explains. "If ASO and the UCI truly want to make the sport safer, they will have to do the same."

So how do the ASO, the UCI and the whole sport of cycling go about 'changing the lines' to make the sport safer? Woods has some ideas. "Both the UCI and ASO have taken measures toward this, and I am optimistic that SafeR is making progress. However, nothing dramatic enough has been done yet to significantly decrease risks and crashes. Furthermore, warning us that we will be punished by having to wear safety equipment is absurd," he assesses. "It’s crazy because we don’t already wear safety equipment. If you dropped anyone outside the pro peloton into this Tour field during any of the first three stages, they would think, 'Why the hell am I not wearing hockey equipment right now?'”

"Just look at the elbows, knees, hips, and hands of every rider in this peloton — it’s clear that it’s foolish that the governing body of this sport has not already forced us to wear protective gear," he continues. "There are many ideas on how to make the peloton safer, but I believe four key approaches are: lowering speed, decreasing peloton size, reducing distraction, and rethinking the relegation system."