After profitable the inaugural Copenhagen Dash, Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) criticised the UCI in her post-race interview, contrasting the UCI’s announcement about minimal handlebar width with the dearth of signalisation in the course of the race that prompted a number of crashes.
“I’m a bit irritated that the UCI is doing issues in another way with the handlebars and stuff and probably not interested by our security. It was a bit harmful generally, with no one signalling the central reservations,” mentioned Wiebes.
A central reservation prompted one of many massive crashes within the race, the place a.o. Wiebes’ teammate Blanka Vas went down and needed to abandon the race.
The second crash occurred at a narrowing within the street designed to decelerate motor automobiles whereas cyclists can proceed unhindered across the bollards – until they’re in a giant peloton, that’s. Each factors of hazard lacked any type of signalisation to warn the riders.
Lastly, a crash in a right-hand activate town centre circuit took down two riders and cut up the peloton on the ultimate lap.
“Fortunately, I used to be in entrance of it, I heard it behind me. These sorts of crashes principally occur in these metropolis centres, however on the larger lap we additionally had some crashes, and we misplaced one in all our necessary teammates, Blanka Vas, there. She was part of the lead-out, so we wanted to regulate a bit. In the long run, it labored out all good. However I hope subsequent time the UCI takes a bit extra care of our security,” Wiebes mentioned.
Earlier this week, the UCI introduced that it could implement a minimal handlebar width of 40 centimetres in mass-start street and cyclo-cross races from the 2026 season onwards, citing security implications as the rationale behind the choice, as some riders have opted for more and more slim handlebars lately.
Nonetheless, a rigidly fastened minimal handlebar width doesn’t have in mind riders’ distinction in dimension.
Many ladies’s professional cyclists mentioned that their handlebars are beneath the to-be-introduced 40-centimetre restrict just because they’ve slim shoulders, and Karl Lima, Coop-Repsol group supervisor, posted on Social Media that each one 13 of his riders use handlebars narrower than 40 cm.
