"I refuse to accept it as normal" - Dutch pundit agrees with Jonas Vingegaard's criticism of Paris-Nice safety norms

Stages 1 and 2 of Paris-Nice have perhaps been in the spotlight not as much due to the bunch sprints that have taken place, but instead due to the safety issues and Jonas Vingegaard's remarks after stage 1. But the Dane is certainly not alone, as from within and outside the peloton, there are more vocal voices on the dangerous parts of the route that are visible.

"ASO, the organizer of the Tour, is back in charge in Paris-Nice. It was a sprinters' day. Yesterday, they received a yellow card from Vingegaard (Zonneveld refers to Victor Campenaerts' yellow card, ed.), who called it 'unworthy of the WorldTour.' Today, you know a very large peloton is heading into the final kilometers. When you see the kind of corners they take", Dutch pundit Thijs Zonneveld lamented on the In de Waaier podcast.

On stage 1 Vingegaard was highly critical of the final descent, only with a few kilometers to go and one that was ridden several times; and on stage 2 it was possible to see the Dutch team away from the front of the peloton and the dangerous battles for positioning. But this does not mean they did not exist, specially in a flat bunch sprint.

"At 200, 250, the barriers are still tapering off. It's because [Luke] Lamperti braked in the yellow jersey and didn't try to dive into the gap against the railing. But this is just asking for a major accident," Zonneveld argues. "We talked about safety in these kinds of sprints years ago, when Groenewegen and Jakobsen were flying so hard into the barriers. And this is exactly what you're doing with it, by setting up the barriers like that. It's going well now, but do this a hundred times, and it's a major crash fifty times."

But this is something that never stopped existing in pro cycling. Whilst some races take stronger measures for safety - and at Paris-Nice itself, this was visible as Lenny Martínez crashed directly into a padded area in the final corner of the stage - this certainly isn't applied in all necessary instances.

Zonneveld knows that another crash wouldn't have changed what continues to be seen on the road. "Then we'd be talking about it again, 'it's not allowed, blah blah blah.' The UCI is introducing airbags and things like that, and I think that's a really good discussion, but if we can't get these kinds of things right, I'm getting despondent. I refuse to accept it as normal," he states.

Above all, because it is a World Tour race and one with many of the world's best riders, Zonneveld finds himself puzzled over how the commissaires and safety staff allow such a dangerous feature to pop out in a key moment of the race.

"I think it's scandalous for the organizer, but I think it's equally scandalous for the UCI commissaire who sits there, standing behind the finish line, and just thinks it's perfectly fine. I'm going crazy! If you see it at a glance, it's a bottleneck."