Team Visma boss calls for UCI to take action in safety issues: "Aigle now has the greatest responsibility to really work on safety"

Visma | Lease a Bike had a disastrous spring with injuries striking across the board. Their big stars Jonas Vingegaard and Wout Van Aert were taken out in Itzulia Basque Country and Dwars door Vlaanderen crashes respectively, while their shadow leaders Sepp Kuss, Christophe Laporte and Dylan van Baarle didn't have any better season so far. On top of everything, Cian Uijtdebroeks and Olav Kooij dropped out of Giro d'Italia with illness in second week of the race.

Team boss Richard Plugge hasn't got positive to talk about neither in the sporting regard nor in managment as he was stripped of his CEO position within the SafeR organization. As the name suggests, the reason for its establishment was to secure safer competition conditions for riders, trying to prevent dangerous situation in the races.

"Therefore, there is no more decisiveness in the organization, but a position that must carry out what is assigned. Safe, political, with everyone's consensus, the church in the middle. With the UCI as the most important client, Aigle now has the greatest responsibility to really work on safety. All eyes are on Switzerland, fingers crossed," Plugge writes in RIDE magazine.

In his column, Plugge calls on all teams and riders not to sit still. "The vast majority of teams were in favor of SafeR's truly independent status. Because first of all, the physical pain and sorrow of the riders must be prevented. But the commercial damage caused to teams, their employees and the sport must also be stopped. The beginning of the solution was ready."

"Resilience is now required from all teams and riders to continue. Rethinking and seeing how we can manage to keep our beloved sport attractive for participants and the public," is crucial about SafeR, according to him. "Like us at Team Visma | Lease a Bike have shown resilience in the past period by thinking differently."