"It goes against the whole idea of racing" - Riders are unhappy about UCI's plans to restrict gears

Among multiple other changes agreed upon by the UCI at the recent meeting, we may also note that the union indeed plans to proceed with its gear restriction programme. For all the teams using SRAM gearsets these are bad news as they don't match the proposed 54x11 (or equal) setups.

"The decision to carry out these tests is based on discussions on the subject within SafeR, which led to the conclusion that gearing could be contributing to excessive top speeds in certain sections of races such as downhills," the UCI memorandum reads.

"Following the implementation of tests, relevant data will be monitored and feedback from all stakeholders will be gathered to study the effects of restrictions on gearing and to consider other measures related to gearing that could achieve the desired outcome of improving safety."

Although UCI informed that tests could potentially take place from August 1 onwards, for now only the Chinese WorldTour race, the Tour of Guangxi in October seems to be the experimental grounds for the new gear restrictions. Whether it is an ideal place is debatable as the Chinese race has normally fairly low crash-rate due to the wide roads.

CPA president Adam Hansen told Cycling Weekly that the riders union is neutral on the decision to potentially permanently reduce gearing: "We've accepted the decision on testing it," he said.

According to his research, the riders, who will be affected the most by this change, don't seem on boat with this change: "However, the majority of riders say that this is not the biggest issue... It goes against the whole idea of racing, the whole idea is going as fast as possible and being first to the finish line."

Hansen suggests that while reducing speeds can reduce the risk of scary high-speed incidents, quite a few more crashes are caused by poor route designs by race organizers. "The course design should be set up for that and that's the position of the CPA. Course design is very important and that’s the number one thing that we’re pushing now."