Following the departure of eight groups from the Étoile de Bessèges on Friday in a protest over the organisation’s failures to stop drivers from the general public from getting onto the race course, the Kern Pharma crew additionally dropped out on Saturday.
“The Kern Pharma Team has determined not to participate within the race as we speak at Étoile de Bessèges,” the crew introduced on social media.
“Due to the incidents of the final two days and within the absence of full security ensures, we’ve got made this choice a precedence to maintain the well being of our cyclists and technical employees.
During a miserably chilly and moist stage 4, there have been seven extra abandons, bringing the variety of riders remaining within the race to 64. Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) received the stage and took a commanding lead within the general standings of the UCI 2.1-ranked race.
The mass departures from the race adopted an incident on stage 2 the place a driver turned onto the course between the breakaway and peloton solely to be met head-on by the bunch quickly after. The driver shortly reversed off the course however the response of the peloton led to a crash that injured Maxim van Gils (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
When one other automotive drove onto the course throughout stage 3, groups stopped racing and Soudal-QuickStep, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, EF Education-EasyPost, Ineos Grenadiers and Uno-X Mobility refused to proceed racing.
The UCI launched an investigation into the issues with the course controls on Friday, and on Saturday, CPA president Adam Hansen weighed in, writing: “After the state of affairs in the previous couple of days. The CPA inside SafeR will push a brand new deliverable for the highest race organisers to assist share their data with the smaller organizers.
“We presently have the 4 greatest race organizers in SafeR, RCS, Unipublic, ASO, and the Flanders Classics. We want to assist and assist the smaller organizers placed on races at a sure stage. There shouldn’t be a distinction within the group of race. There ought to solely be a distinction in a race route and format.”
Meanwhile, the race organisers praised the riders who selected to stay within the race in an announcement.
“The organisers want to lengthen their warmest due to the groups who took half within the third stage of the Étoile de Bessèges-Tour du Gard Bessèges-Bessèges on Friday 7 February and who confirmed their professionalism and respect for the organisers, who make it their obligation yearly to organise the occasion.”
The race concludes with a ten.6-kilometre particular person time trial in Ales on Sunday.
