As head of the CPA (Cyclistes Professionnels Associés) professional riders’ union, retired pro Adam Hansen has been vocal in demanding additional safety measures for riders in races.
He’s also now taking aim at the motos which accompany races and has just tweeted (X-ed?) that he has purchased a laser distance sensor for around £100 from a Czech website, with the aim of developing a device to provide distance information to the moto driver and keep motos further ahead of riders.
Yesterday I purchased a later distance sensor. I will start to develop a sensor that could be attached to motorbikes in races to govern the distance from them to the riders. Motorbikes influence the races too much. Too many teams and riders complain about this. Wish me luck!… pic.twitter.com/9M31bdUuejJuly 25, 2023
There have been persistent complaints about motos influencing races, with two events at the pointy end of the 2023 Tour de France grabbing headlines.
First was Tadej Pogačar’s abortive attack on the Col de Joux Plane on Stage 14, where he was hindered by a moto hemmed in by crowds, saying that he “wasted a bullet”. Next was the incident of the stalled motorcycle on the Col de la Loze on Stage 17, which held up Pogačar’s main rival Jonas Vingegaard as well as Thibaut Pinot, forcing both to stop completely.
Go back further and there was race leader Chris Froome’s run up Mont Ventoux in 2016 after he, Richie Porte and Bauka Mollema crashed into the back of a moto which stopped suddenly, possibly hindered by crowds.
Other moto-related problems include Julian Alaphilippe’s crash with a moto when in the leading trio at the 2020 Tour of Flanders, in which he broke his hand.
Motos haven’t always been bad news for Alaphilippe though – he was accused by rivals of getting a helping hand by drafting the camera bikes on Stage 8 of the 2019 Tour de France. Even if not slipstreaming, they pointed out that motos’ brake lights could help riders judge a turn on a descent.
Motorbikes aren’t the only powered vehicles to have been said to have influenced races.
Only yesterday, on Stage 5 of the Tour de France Femmes, Demi Vollering of SD Worx was penalised 20 seconds for drafting her team car when rejoining the peloton following a mechanical, which dropped her from third to seventh in the general classification.
At the Amstel Gold race earlier this year, the lead car was accused by Jonathan Vaughters, manager of the EF Education-Easypost team, of being too close ahead of Tadej Pogačar, giving him a helping hand to distance Ben Healy of his team and win the race solo.
Hansen has also been on the attack against car-related incidents since becoming CPA president, tweeting his follow-ups to an incident where Lawrence Naesen was hit from behind by a team car at Tro Bro Leon.
It's a small start, but given Hansen's famous propensity for fiddling with tech, it could well blossom into something much more concrete and useable. This is a man, after all, who makes his own cycling shoes, and has been known to gut his race radio to make it smaller and lighter.
