"If cycling from A to B is no longer feasible, then we must switch to circuits" - Plugge proposes a radical solution to race safety issues

Cycling encountered an enormous tragedy just a week ago, yet the peloton keeps moving almost as if nothing had happened. At least that is the assessment of Visma | Lease a Bike manager Richard Plugge, who finds the lack of response from peloton rather disheartening.

"We are just carrying on. What disappoints me enormously is that everyone says it is terrible, but then immediately a 'but' follows. I would say: we need to skip everything after the 'but'. This simply cannot happen. That is the attitude we must adopt as the cycling community," states decisively Plugge in an interview with WielerFlits.

Plugge reiterates that while it might not be an attractive solution (for spectators), it might become a necessity that cycling shifts from "A to B" stages to circuit racing. That is already the case in the Netherlands where even the Amstel Gold Race runs its final phase on a (quite large) circuit.

"We have already indicated to the authorities, organizers, and teams: if cycling from A to B over public roads over 200 kilometers is no longer feasible, then we must ride laps of 15, 20, or 25 kilometers. Provided those routes can be secured one hundred percent. Ultimately, it is simply about our riders. They must be certain that they can race on a safe course."

Plugge is particularly infuriated by the failure that is allowing non-race car onto the course while there are riders yet to pass. He then draws comparison to if such event were to occur during even more high-speed sport.

"This boy encounters a car on a descent. Can you imagine this happening during Formula 1 in Zandvoort? That a car is suddenly driving on the track in the opposite direction? Of course, everyone says that this doesn't happen at Zandvoort. But this actually does happen in a cycling race."

Plugge would've liked it more to see some reaction - a fierce statement - from people in charge of cycling... but none of that happened. Few quick words to pay respect and the authorities have moved on while no visible changes have been made to prevent such event from occuring again.

"That neither UCI President David Lappartient nor anyone else from the umbrella organizations stands up and says: 'Yes, but wait a minute, we really need to get together now and think about how we are going to prevent this from happening in the future?' We had a fantastic initiative with SafeR, but I don't hear much about that anymore either."

"Maybe we as teams need to take responsibility for safety in races ourselves again. I don't know, but the lack of anger about what has happened again is very disappointing to me."

Cycling does have it's own agency in charge of securing safety of riders during a race; and the safety nets which saved Sepp Kuss on Col de Sarenne, or modifications to Monaco time trial course were its doing. But the results of their only seem to emerge sporadically, and at the most followed events. Meanwhile smaller races still suffer from critical flaws.

"I have said it before: SafeR has become a political construct where compromises are made simply to ensure that the church remains in the middle. But it is about ensuring that riders can do their job safely. It is about safety. It is about ensuring that you can do your job safely. And that is uncompromising! It is either safe, or it is not safe. We provided a fantastic starting point for this when SafeR was founded, but it is no longer being acted upon. It has since become a completely different construct."

"We are standing here at the start of the Vuelta a España in Monaco. The area around Nice and Monaco is full of traffic. We need to think now about how we can still organize a cycling race here in five years. What will our sport look like in five years? Will we still be able to drive 200 kilometers from A to B? Probably not, because then you would need a thousand traffic controllers. Whereas, if you ride laps of 20 kilometers… Everyone is super enthusiastic about the World Cycling Championships being held on a local circuit. And rightly so! Because that is at least manageable," Plugge concludes.