Opinion: Why road racing can never be ‘safe’

There’s a ****ing car on the course!”

Fourteen years on and I can still remember the moment of panic very clearly.

It still makes me shudder to think what might have happened if it had occurred just twenty seconds later as we rounded a blind right-hand corner – and it all came flooding back this week as the cycling world tries to process the infuriating and tragic events that took the life of young Finlay Tarling at the Volta a Portugal.

The moment I’m recalling happened when I was still racing regularly in Sydney.

It was a Saturday afternoon at the Sydney Olympic Park Tennis Centre and we were in the middle of a humble club criterium. $30 cash and two tubes for first prize, that kind of thing.

Despite having all the necessary permits, permissions and traffic controllers, an impatient driver had forced his way on to the course during the race – driving directly towards us in his car – clearly in no mood for making a short detour.

As you can probably imagine this was quite a shock, and I confess arms were raised in parallel with our heart rates and colourful words flew freely. Yet despite being hugely disconcerting at the time we were able to quickly neutralise the racing until the driver was gone and it was safe to continue.

Of course, the advantage we had that day was there were just 20-25 riders in our race and it was on a (supposedly) closed 1.3km loop circuit. Yet even that was hard enough to control.

Now, extrapolate that type of club-racing chaos to a professional road race with more than 100 riders strung out along a public course with rolling road closures and the associated race convoy snaking behind it with speeds and stakes immeasurably higher.

Frankly, it’s a major miracle there aren’t more incidents like this each year in the pro peloton.

As to be fully expected, there has been a massive amount of blame and speculation surrounding Finlay Tarling’s death and who should be held accountable. I’m not here to add to that and hopefully time will reveal the full truth of what happened and why.

But regardless of what actually happened, what will never be possible is to make the sport we all love completely safe.

As we all know, road cycling brings all manner of danger at every level, from riding to the shops to racing on the UCI WorldTour. Courses can be safer. Equipment can be safer. Organisation protocols can be safer.

But they can be never be completely ‘safe’ given the nature of the sport itself and the finite resources available to run events at all levels.

To think so is both impractical and naive. Thousands of professional cyclists take part in hundreds of UCI sanctioned races every year all over the world.

Yes, there are accidents and occasionally there are tragic fatalities as we saw last week. But in the vast number of instances this does not happen. We need to remember that.

In a way it reminds me of sharks attacks. Hugely dramatic and horrific events when they occur that are devastating for the families and friends involved. But they also command a disproportionate share of media attention, yet they are in reality extremely rare occurrences.

I am not saying for a moment that we should ever accept deaths as part of cycling. One life lost or irreparably changed through injury is one too many.

Race organisers and teams should always be trying to do better, and when gross negligence is identified, those responsible should absolutely be held to account.

But for me this is no time for a wide-scale witch hunt. It’s a time for calm and a time for perspective.

If we truly want to end tragedies like the one that occurred in Portugal, riding endless loops on completely closed, fenced and purpose-built racing circuits provides a likely answer.

But that’s not road racing, is it? Where do we draw the line?