The peloton on the Tour Down Under are adjusting to a slew of latest UCI guidelines for 2025, most notably a provision that restricts meals and water hand-ups to designated feed zones and from group vehicles within the convoy.
While race organisers and groups gave the impression to be blindsided by the rule, which was revealed on December 23, 2024, groups affiliation president Brent Copeland clarified the rationale behind the rule to Cyclingnews.
“It’s been an ongoing dialogue for fairly some time now inside SafeR, the place I’m representing because the AIGCP president on the SafeR fee, in addition to being concerned in case administration on the SafeR supervisory board,” Copeland stated.
While water hand-ups outdoors of feed zones have been allowed below UCI guidelines earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, the apply exploded over the past 4 seasons as groups got extra leeway below loosened guidelines designed to permit for social distancing.
One results of the scattered water factors has been group workers scrambling to get from one level to the subsequent, creating an unintended hazard.
“Many folks do not see what occurs when the soigneurs, medical doctors, mechanics or whoever is being informed to do a water level, how they’re leapfrogging from one level to the opposite and what occurs outdoors of the race surroundings,” Copeland defined to Cyclingnews.
“If the group comes previous and so they’re actually going quick, it’s a must to anticipate the dropped group to get bottles, [then] leap within the automotive and race to the subsequent one earlier than the group goes previous. We’ve heard of and seen loads of rushing, loads of reckless driving, and we dread the day {that a} horrible accident occurs outdoors of it.
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“We’re making an attempt to keep away from all of those components inside motive and clearly, the precedence is the security and wellbeing of the riders, with out having them going into dehydration, and utilizing widespread sense when there are sizzling days.”
While the brand new rule precipitated the Tour Down Under organisers some stress looking for assets so as to add extra feed zones, groups have discovered the UCI to be versatile in permitting extra water factors up to now.
Copeland says the stricter guidelines will benefit from leveling the enjoying subject along with enhancing security on and astray.
“There are very excessive funds groups that use the water factors for particular causes [and] there are the decrease funds groups that sadly do not have the assets to do as many water factors, so [we are] making an attempt to simply stability that out with out going to extremes.”
He added that riders who turned skilled after the pandemic will now must study a talent that was second nature for professionals – going again to the group automotive to get bottles after which using again via the group.
That circulation of riders going backwards and forwards to the convoy, Copeland says, adjustments the dynamic within the peloton. It is perhaps counterintuitive to counsel that extra riders within the convoy may very well be safer, however Copeland explains, “If you get the riders going again to the autos, you get a superb circulation of the peloton, whereas, with the water factors, it is actually stagnant. The riders discover themselves within the prime 20 place … and so they by no means return to the automotive. So they do not achieve that have as a extra skilled rider would have of going via the peloton.”
Riders nonetheless may need an opportunity to get hand-ups from the roadside outdoors of the feed zone, however the brand new guidelines additionally require anybody doing hand-ups to be UCI licensed, which is one other security consideration.
“It appears straightforward to provide a bottle, however when a rider comes previous at 60 kilometres an hour … you have to know what to do.
“So we’re making an attempt to make it as protected as doable, and perceive that there are … loads of riders which have turned (professional) recent in the previous couple of years who’ve by no means identified a special method.”