After successful 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 aggravated that the UCI is doing issues otherwise with the handlebars and stuff and probably not excited about our security. It was a bit harmful typically, with no one signalling the central reservations,” stated Wiebes.
A central reservation prompted one of many large 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 autos whereas cyclists can proceed unhindered across the bollards – until they’re in a giant peloton, that’s. Each factors of hazard lacked any sort of signalisation to warn the riders.
Lastly, a crash in a right-hand activate the 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 among 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 stated.
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 slender handlebars in recent times.
Nevertheless, a rigidly mounted minimal handlebar width doesn’t bear in mind riders’ distinction in dimension.
Many ladies’s professional cyclists stated that their handlebars are under the to-be-introduced 40-centimetre restrict just because they’ve slender 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.
