CPA President Adam Hansen Says Action Needed after Deaths

“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>

The Zürich world championships finished almost a week ago but the tragic passing of the young Swiss rider Muriel Furrer remains to the forefront of discussions. The 18 year old crashed during the junior women’s road race on Thursday September 26 and went off the road.

She lay unnoticed in a forest for an undetermined amount of time after her fall and was finally found and airlifted to hospital with very serious injuries. She died the following morning.

Police are continuing their investigation and precise details are limited for now. However the lack of race radios at the worlds has become a serious topic of debate, with some riders and team personnel saying that safety risks are accentuated by the communication barrier.

Additionally there have been questions about the use of tracking devices, and how Furrer could have been undiscovered for so long.

Adam Hansen is the president of the professional riders’ association CPA and gives his thoughts on the issue below. He speaks about three recent deaths in professional cycling, namely Gino Mäder’s crash on stage 5 of the 2023 Tour de Suisse, Andre Drege’s fall in stage 4 of the Tour of Austria in July and Furrer’s accident.

Hansen talks about a time lag in reacting to the crashes, something he refers to as ‘a major oversight’ in relation to the world championships fall, the need for the UCI and organizers to be more proactive in protecting safety, and possible technological approaches which could help riders who have had serious falls.

Here is a Q&A provided by the CPA with Hansen:

‘No one checked, which would have been a major oversight’

You have been rather silent regarding the tragic incident in Zürich. Why is that?

Adam Hansen: Normally, in the case of the three deaths within little more than a year, I have been rather silent publicly. It’s not the right time to air dirty laundry in such sensitive situations. However, I have been working behind the scenes. Additionally, there is a police investigation ongoing, which means that those involved are not allowed to speak. This is standard practice. I only want to learn from this to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

What needs to happen to stop this from occurring again?

AH: Well, in the three recent deaths, they all have one thing in common: no one from the race organization or the commissaires noticed them. In the Tour of Switzerland, a directeur sportif (DS) found one rider simply because he drove past. The response time was fairly quick in that situation. In the Tour of Austria, another rider was found about 25 minutes after the broom wagon passed. Two ladies riding up after the race saw him, which means he was found about 25 to 45 minutes after his crash. Again, neither the organizer nor the commissaires noticed he was no longer in the race. In Zürich, it’s even worse, from what I understand. The race had already finished before they realized she was missing.

I’ve heard she lay there alive for well over an hour—possibly conscious. We don’t know. But the race passed many times, and not a single person saw her. Basic math explains the timeline: the race started at 9:50 a.m., the winner finished in two hours, and she crashed somewhere in the middle. It’s reported that the helicopter left her at 12:52 PM, which is over an hour after the race had finished and longer when factoring in the time of her crash. In her situation, you don’t want to think about it in more detail. It’s heartbreaking.

How can something like this happen?

AH: Are you asking me to paint a picture in my head? Like how it went down? I think she was dropped on the climb. I heard she was dropped along with two other girls. When a rider is dropped, the commissaires write down the rider’s number and the kilometer mark where they were dropped. This means that the rider is behind the first commissaire car. If she was dropped further back, the next commissaire car would also note her number and the kilometer when they passed her. If the broom wagon passes her, then she is marked off as out of the race. However, if she were to come back, the commissaire would take that note. That’s generally how they manage rider locations.

What’s special about Zürich is that there are laps and timing chips. Every time riders cross the finish line or any timing point, their times are recorded. Technically, her chip should have registered crossing the finish line for those laps. Obviously, it didn’t, and no one checked, which would have been a major oversight. Perhaps the two girls who were dropped with her went back, and the commissaire saw them, leading them to assume she was with them.

Then, obviously, when the race finished, that’s when they discovered she was missing. There was clearly a mistake in tracking where the riders were.

‘Riders are left alone on a course without oversight’

So this was a mistake by the commissaires?

AH: It’s hard to point a direct finger at them. There should have been redundancies in place in case the commissaires missed something. In all three cases I mentioned, not a single person from the organizers had eyes on a rider. In these situations, riders are left alone on a course without oversight. You either need marshals covering all descents or some form of tracking device. We won’t stop crashes; that’s part of the sport. But response time is critical. In Austria, it was a death on impact. In Zürich, it was a totally different story. The response time was … well, there was just not a response.

What about radios or Garmins that can send messages or tracking devices?

AH: For some reason, the UCI is not in favor of technological improvements. We see this. First off, Garmins only work when your mobile phone is connected to the bike computer. The phone itself sends the message, not the computer. Some have eSIM capabilities and can do this, but not as many as people think. While this could be a quick solution, it wouldn’t work well in areas with poor service or mountainous terrain where coverage is non-existent. Regarding radios, that’s a hot topic. A radio wouldn’t have helped in the Tour of Switzerland or the Tour of Austria, but it could have helped in Zürich. I can’t definitively say yes. But no one can definitively say no.

What I can say is that when I used a radio, if my DS hadn’t heard from me for about 20 minutes, they would ask a teammate to check my radio, and I would be instructed to return to the car for a new one.

Without radios, DS have no idea where their riders are or what they’re doing. In the case of Zürich, one of her teammates would have looked for her to tell her to go to the car. That alone would have indicated that she was not in the main group. If the DS passed her, the DS would have radioed the feed zone about the situation. If she didn’t pass the feed zone, that would be a red flag. There’s a lot of radio communication within a team to track their riders, so this could have decreased the response time, especially if the organizers didn’t have a marshal to oversee the descent and if the commissaires made a human error.

So, who is at fault?

AH: I don’t know all the facts, and I’m sure the police will investigate this. I’m just trying to paint a picture based on the information I have. However, from my previous responses, you can see there are gaps in the system, and we need a combined effort to ensure this doesn’t happen again, as it’s becoming a recurring issue.

Can technology help?

What is the solution?

AH: Ironically, the day before the incident in Zürich, I had a meeting with Dr. Bigard, the UCI doctor. I proposed placing a gyro and an accelerometer the size of a five-cent coin on the mastoid part of the temporal bone, which is skin on bone of the skull. Originally, the idea was to measure head impacts during crashes. Many suggestions to add this to helmets have been dismissed because helmets move a lot, creating extra noise for the sensors. Also, on impact, the device would read data related to helmet impact rather than head impact. I worked for a motion analysis company for four years, developing similar sensors, and I have experience in this area; I’ve already created a prototype.

The idea was to improve the concussion protocol. I wanted a system to record the exact impact, so Dr. Bigard could determine that any accelerative event above a certain metric would trigger a signal to the race doctor, requiring the rider to undergo a concussion protocol before continuing. It’s rather straightforward. We could also determine if a rider is still moving after a crash. Dr. Bigard asked me to present this to him because it could be beneficial for the concussion protocol.

Now, after the incident in Switzerland, it seems we need something like this, or at least a basic tracker.

The easiest solution is race radios. While they wouldn’t help in all cases, they could assist in some instances. Even if one of those cases saves a life, we need to implement this.

Since Zürich, I can’t express how many cyclists have asked me to advocate more aggressively for race radios in competitions. When riders train, they have their mobiles with them. In major stage races, I have been many times all by myself in extremely fast descents. It’s not a nice feeling as a rider when your radio does not work and you start having these thoughts in your head.

But all these ideas are fallbacks in case something goes wrong.

Are you saying Zürich was not a safe course?

AH: If I were to quote a race organizer I met, he said, “This is the World Championships. It’s a UCI event. It should be the race that all others look up to and set the standard high.” I know RCS has more nets on descents, and Unipublic uses more padding. This race did not set a high standard.

Can safety be improved in cycling?

AH: Yes, there are many gaps and numerous improvements that can be made. However, progress is slower than I would like. I’ve been trying to improve safety for a long time and have been very vocal about it. Making changes in a historic sport is not easy, especially on open road courses. Organizers need to put more effort into maximizing safety, and the commissaires must realize the importance of their role. They are the ones who can have the most significant impact on safety. The rules set by the UCI are fairly good—not perfect, but very good. We just need some minor adjustments and to ensure that the commissaires enforce the rules. This will lead to a significant improvement in safety.

I truly don’t know why the commissaires are so scared to enforce their own rules; it would actually have a major positive effect.