“If Van Aert, Pogacar or Van der Poel have a life-changing injury, or worse, we will have blood on our hands” - UCI told cycling is nearing its 'Ayrton Senna moment'

So far, the 2025 Tour de France has been a race highlighted by a number of nasty crashes. As such, the topic of rider safety and how the UCI can better protect the peloton has been thrust back into the spotlight and according to some, the sport's governing body simply aren't doing enough at present.

Big name riders such as Filippo Ganna and Jasper Philipsen has already been forced to abandon because of a crash in the opening week, with barely a day going by without multiple riders being left with scuffs and abrasions by the time they crossed the line. Speaking at the Science and Cycling Conference during the Grand Depart in Lille, Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe's Dan Bigham hit out at the UCI and urged them to do more to protect the riders. 

“If Wout van Aert, Tadej Pogacar or Mathieu van der Poel have a life-changing injury, or worse, we will have blood on our hands,” the 33-year-old former Hour Record holder warned those in charge of the sport. “We have the power to make changes."

One of the UCI's recent efforts to curb the potential dangers to the modern peloton, is a proposed restricting of the gears on the actual bikes. According to Bigham however, this is clear miss of the target.

"Restricting gear ratios simply distracts from making meaningful changes to rider safety," argues the Brit. “From my analysis, for reducing ratios to have an impact, we need to presume professionals would adhere to unrealistic cadence limits that aren’t supported by the literature. It’ll impact on as little as 0.01 per cent of a race and will arguably reduce speeds by no more than 0.5kph. All of this to change entire groupset design? It really doesn’t seem effective to me.”

“Whether you’re a GC rider or sprinter, if you want to limit a rider to 75kph and they can pedal at 200rpm, that means a gear ratio of three or less," Bigham continues. “So, will riders have to ride with – solely – a 30-tooth chainring? Even dropping cadence to 130rpm with a UCI ratio of five, you’d still ride at 80kph. But we know riders can do much higher than that for shorter periods."

Bigham also argues that the actual threat of high speeds the riders go, isn't the major issue. “What do we see? That riders don’t spend much time at high speed!” Bigham claims. “The huge speeds happen on descents where you have huge input from gravity. If you’re on a 15 per cent descent and you weigh 80kg, that’s around 4,000 watts from gravity alone.”

“We must use data to improve the situation,” Bigham concludes. “Cycling is close to its Ayrton Senna moment. Ayrton died, and it changed things because he was a superstar. The FIA took it upon themselves to use science and data… Formula One has a lot to teach road cycling about going faster, but also about teaching us about safety. Take rider safety. We should have race-relevant helmet standards. But road-race helmets are tested at 20kph impact speeds. That’s not relevant or good enough.”