“It’s ridiculous how dangerous our sport is" - Quinn Simmons says UCI overlooking rider safety for minor issues such as new brake lever regulations
CyclingFriday, 19 January 2024 at 22:33
The UCI recently announced measures that they hope will clamp down on inward-angled brake levers but Lidl-Trek's Quinn Simmons believes the sport's regulators are wasting their time on minor issues instead of dealing with the big matters.
“First of all, I’m very for anything that increases safety. It’s ridiculous how dangerous our sport is and I think it’s actually over the limit, just the sport in general," the United States national champion told GCN from the Tour Down Under in Australia. "It’s too dangerous and we need to change things."
This change though, limiting the amount of angle allowed in brake levers, is not a big step in improving rider safety Simmons believes. "I think something like this, it’s not really the place that will change so much," he laments. "It’s the dangerous finishes and the dangerous courses that organisers get away with that causes the crashes. Also, riders doing stupid stuff."
“It will have changed no safety at all now that my levers are three centimetres out, it just makes it more uncomfortable for me. But in the end, it’s the new rule and we have to play along by the rules of our sport," he concludes. “At least now, the super extreme ones will be gone. I just hope that if you’re one-degree off or something they don’t start doing something stupid. If they just enforce the really crazy ones then it’s OK.”
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You want to race on a closed road course all the time? Boring ! It's understood that some races happen in cities that have traffic islands and such and stuff needs to be mitigated but you'll never have a completely safe course anywhere where towns are involved. Heck the Tour Down Under has cars parked on the side of the road and was just waiting for a rider to run into the back of one of those while trying to get around the peloton.
Does Quinn just want races to be flat crits? Half of the allure is racing up and down mountains.