Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France, sparked debate by claiming today’s professional cyclists “are going too fast”, endangering themselves in the process.
The debate has rumbled on for a number of weeks, but now Dan Bigham – the head of engineering at the Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe WorldTour team and a rider famed for taking a marginal gains approach to his illustrious cycling career – has shot back at Prudhomme.
Speaking on the BikeRadar Podcast, Bigham gave an emphatic response: “No, I don't think they're going too fast”.
Bigham also claimed “any protagonist within the sport who proclaims speed is the problem either is trying to distract you from the actual problem or doesn't understand the problem.”
If speed isn’t the problem, though, what is? And more importantly, what, if anything, does Bigham think can be done to improve safety in professional cycling?
The real reasons pro cycling is dangerous
According to Bigham, there are three main dangers facing pro road cyclists: “unsafe roads, unsafe equipment and poor, inadequate or slow medical response when the worst does happen.”
Bigham concedes that the speed at which a crash occurs has an effect, and the data shows events such as the Tour de France are being raced faster than ever.
But, he says, “by changing the speed, you don't actually – in most scenarios – change whether a crash does or doesn't happen.”
The sport’s governing body (the Union Cycliste Internationale, or UCI) and race organisers should, in Bigham’s view, focus on stopping preventable crashes, such as those caused by road furniture or unexpected things on the road, by designing safer courses.
Bigham previously spent a year working as an aerodynamicist at the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team and maintains a keen interest in the sport. Citing developments there, Bigham said those in charge of the sport initially sought to cut top speeds in the wake of high-profile incidents – such as the death of Ayrton Senna – by stricter regulation of car and race-circuit designs.
Noting “cycling tends to be 10, 20, 30 years behind motorsport”, Bigham said his worry is that – as in Formula One – it might take “a significant-profile rider having a life-changing or life-ending injury” to prompt similar changes in cycling.
Bigham says he has engaged with the UCI and other stakeholders within the sport, such as the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (the rider’s union) and Association International des Groupes Cyclistes Professionels (the union of professional cycling teams), and notes they aren’t “burying their heads in the sand”.
However, he believes discussing speed is a distraction from what he sees as the primary issues.
What can be done to make pro cycling safer?
Although he now works as a performance engineer, Bigham is also a former holder of the UCI Hour Record and competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics (taking a silver medal for Great Britain in the Team Pursuit).
So while he’s never raced the Tour de France, Bigham is in the rare position of having been on both sides of the fence.
This offers him a distinct perspective on what interventions might improve rider safety, and aside from safer course design and faster medical response, Bigham feels there are a number of technical interventions that could have a positive impact.
Heavier bikes
Although fans of the sport often discuss the possibility of the UCI lowering its minimum bike weight limit (which currently sits at 6.8kg), Bigham says he would advocate increasing the limit.
Heavier bikes enable “greater factors of safety” (meaning how much stronger something is than is required for its intended load), according to Bigham. It would also enable teams to fit bikes with additional sensors or systems that help track rider-health metrics – without riders worrying about performance losses relative to their competition.
As a side note, Bigham believes raising the weight limit would also help to stop riders stripping the paint off their bikes in pursuit of weight savings, which might also please team sponsors.
The current situation, he says, leads to situations of riders and teams prioritising performance in the short-term over the long-term health of the sport.
Fewer weight-weenie parts
Bigham also cites the increasing use of parts such as 3D-printed components, titanium bolts and ultra-light bottle cages as potentially dangerous examples of riders pushing the limits in order to make their bikes hit the 6.8kg limit without compromising on aerodynamics.
Simply stopping errant bottles from tearing through the bunch could “cut out 10 or 20 crashes a year – a lot of crashes are caused by loose bottles in the peloton,” explains Bigham.
With bottle cages available today weighing less than 20g, Bigham thinks the UCI should simply “regulate them, make them 50 grams – which is easily achievable – and then the [bottle] retention will go up.”
Bigham even suggests bottle cages for pro racing could be mandated to use a “clasp mechanism” that helps to lock bottles in place when not in use.
Better helmets
Then there’s the topic of helmet safety.
When it comes to safety standards, the UCI’s infamous technical regulations state riders must wear a “rigid safety helmet” during competition and “official training sessions”, and that such helmets must be “approved in compliance with an official security standard”.
Bigham, though, questions whether the sport could implement stricter standards, requiring helmets designed for road racing to undergo more stringent safety tests.
He concedes this would likely lead to larger, heavier helmets – something that has traditionally been anathema to road cyclists, despite the obvious risks of travelling at high speeds on only two thin patches of rubber. However, he feels this would be worthwhile if “they're better at absorbing crashes”, and therefore better at preventing head injuries.
Continuing on the subject, Vaughters said pro cyclists “are hard-wired to the bone to take life-threatening risks. Similar to F1 drivers. And like in F1, the answer is to create a safer environment around them. Because they will always push the envelope as far as it goes.”
Not everyone agrees with this stance, though.
Speaking to Le Parisien (a French daily newspaper), Groupama–FDJ team manager and former pro, Marc Madiot, said “The guys are riding faster and faster on terrain where everything is designed to slow down the vehicles. And downhill, it's worse than anything. And since a lot of guys don't want to understand anything, there's only one solution: slow down the bikes.”
Whatever your take on the situation, it is at least reassuring that these issues are being taken seriously by the sport’s stakeholders and discussed so robustly.
As Bigham says, though, we can only hope it doesn’t take further high-profile incidents to prompt meaningful change.
