"Isn't going fast also a part of cycling?" - Taco van der Hoorn questions UCI's plans to restrict gears to improve riders' safety

It's not so long ago when Taco van der Hoorn made a successful comeback from a hard concussion suffered at Tour of Flanders 2023. And despite the adversity he had to overcome to make a full recovery, he doesn't find UCI's regulation of chain ring set-ups to be a fortunate solution.

"Personally, I don't have a really high cadence, so I always ride a bigger gear," Van der Hoorn told Cyclingnews at the Tour Down Under, where he ran a 58-tooth chainring and cassette going down to 11 teeth. "I like it to ride with 70 rpm all the time. So I'm used to having a higher gearing than other people. So for me personally, it would not be beneficial."

"I think going fast is also part of cycling, so I think it's a difficult discussion, because if you limit gears, do we also ban skinsuits or aerodynamic bikes because you go too fast?"

But Van der Hoorn doesn't want to only complain as he finds that UCI has made many good changes to improve the riders' safety in the past. Such as when they banned the "supertuck" position made famous by daredevil descenders Matej Mohoric and Peter Sagan and used by Chris Froome to take one of his most iconic Tour de France stages in 2016. "I think [the ban on] sitting on the top tube [aero tuck] was a good decision from the UCI. It was getting a bit dangerous, I have to say."

On the other hand, Van der Hoorn is not a supporter of restricted feeding outside designated of the feed zones which creates to much danger and tension in the peloton. "Every rider is all over the place, getting to their soigneur, going from left to right, braking, so actually, it's quite chaotic. A lot of crashes happen in feed zones because it's messy. People get bottles, and everybody is close to each other. When everybody is spread out, it's much easier to take your bottle and you don't influence the other riders so much."