Bessèges, I love you, but you're bringing me down 💔
Safety concerns, talks of protests, and anger at the authorities for not protecting the riders
Tempers were frayed at the end of stage 2 of the Etoile de Bessèges after an incident saw a driver enter the course with 17km to go and motor towards the peloton.
Luckily, there was no direct contact, but the debacle ended with a crash involving several riders, and Maxim Van Gils was forced out of the race on his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe debut.
Tensions were still high this morning at the start of stage 3 in the centre of Bessèges, but there was also a sense of resignation, a feeling that the show would go on until someone was truly hurt in a similar incident or the riders put their collective foot down and said ‘enough is enough’.
As the rain poured down and the riders signed on in the cold weather gear, we caught up with Van Gils’ sports director, Heinrich Haussler, and Lidl-Trek’s Steven de Jongh about the poor safety within the race, the lack of apparent accountability at the top of the sport, and feeling that it’s always the riders fault when it comes to their well-being on the road.
“I’m new in the business as a sports director. I’ve only been a director for one year, but at the end of the day, the UCI needs to ask, ‘Do these guys deserve to put on a race?’” Haussler bluntly put it as he watched his remaining riders return from their sign-on.
“They need to really look into it, and in my eyes, definitely not,” he said when asked about whether the race was safe and deserved to go ahead.