Tejay van Garderen: "Reducing a peloton from 9-rider teams to 8-rider teams hasn't made a single difference, reducing the gears wouldn't make a difference"
Cycling
Safety in the peloton is a very hot topic in the world of cycling at the moment. Tejay van Garderen and Brent Bookwalter, who retired around the time that speeds began dramatically increasing, have shared their opinions on the matter.
"I hate to say this, I hate to be the one saying 'the riders make the race safer' but it's kinda true," van Garderen said in the 'Beyond the Podium' podcast of NBC Sports. "Back in the day we used to go to Mallorca Challenge and there used to be no breakaway because no-one wanted to attack and we'd be going slowly and then ramp up in the end and sort itself out and those early season races were safer".
At the time being there is no chance of that happening, although occasionally we do see similar interestingly enough in the flat stages of Grand Tours, where teams are so focused in obtaining results that they make the decision to not send any rider to the front even if it would bring meaningful exposure.
At the time being the ages in the peloton are getting smaller and smaller, with young riders performing stronger and developing at a younger age, teams constantly increase their focus on them. "95% of the peloton don't even have fully developed frontal lobes so they're going to be sending it any chance they get," he joked.
A few propositions are being sent over the past few months, amongst them being reducing the size of chainring gears to limit the speeds going downhill. But van Garderen isn't optimistic that this would even make a difference: "They are racing the way they're racing, and the way we're racing at the end of our careers, that's what made racing quite a bit more dangerous and I'm glad to be out of it now but these gimmicky things like reducing a peloton to 9-rider teams to 8-rider teams hasn't made a single difference, reducing the gears wouldn't make a difference".
Bookwalter, a former teammate at BMC, agreed. "At the end of my career guys were ratcheting up those chainrings and I was just 53, keep my 53 on. The average age of the peloton, I don't know the exact stat, but observationally it's definitely going down. And that's an example of 'the riders make the race safe'. A young 19-year, 20-year old male has a different decision making process and risk profile than 37-year old Brent on the verge of retirement".
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"95% of the peloton don't even have fully developed frontal lobes. Yeah, they're going to be sending it every chance they get." 😂
— NBC Sports Cycling (@NBCSCycling) January 9, 2025
Tejay Van Garderen and Brent Bookwalter on how the average age of the peloton impacts rider safety. pic.twitter.com/gMjkgVjB3C
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