By A French cycling race was thrown into chaos on Friday when several teams quit after cars and trucks appeared on the course, endangering the cyclists.
Soudal Quick-Step, one of cycling’s biggest teams, branded the scenes at the Étoile de Bessèges “unacceptable” and was among those who quit the race to “prioritise the safety of our riders and staff.”
Television footage shows the cyclists racing into oncoming traffic, bunching up into one lane of the road to avoid the line of trucks and cars. In another incident, a car which had accidentally turned onto the course was forced to reverse in the face of the oncoming peloton. Several riders crashed in the subsequent confusion.
Then, on the third stage of the race held in south-eastern France on Friday, cyclists saw another vehicle on a roundabout they were approaching. They stopped the race in protest and to discuss their safety concerns with race organizers, according to Eurosport, which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
That prompted eight of the race’s most well-known teams – Lidl-Trek, Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe, Ineos-Grenadiers, Soudal Quick-Step, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, EF Education-EasyPost, Uno-X Mobility and Equipo Kern Pharma – to all withdraw from the race while the other 12 teams decided to continue ahead of the race’s final two stages.
CNN has reached out to race organizers for comment. According to the BBC, organizers said they could not afford to fully close all the roads on the route but were doing everything they could to protect the cyclists.
Former cyclist Thomas De Gendt vented his frustrations about rider safety on X, saying, “Maybe now the organisers and the UCI will start to listen. Otherwise we just stay monkeys in a circus.”
The UCI, cycling’s governing body, said in a statement that it is investigating the incidents and emphasized that it “takes the matter of rider security extremely seriously.”
It added that “measures are being taken to avoid a repetition of the problems that occurred on these stages,” and that it will “take the necessary action bearing in mind that organisers are subject to the table of sanctions.”
