{"id":941082,"date":"2026-10-21T08:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T08:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/941082\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T08:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T08:28:15","slug":"jorgenson-praises-protest-for-rider-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/941082\/","title":{"rendered":"Jorgenson praises protest for rider safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another cycling season has come to an end. And it was yet another year full of incidents and crashes. While some of them were unavoidable, at other times the riders\u2019 safety was jeopardised<\/a> by things that could have been prevented, including the tragic death of Finlay Tarling. That\u2019s why the riders spoke out for themselves during the Tour of Lombardy<\/a>. But for Visma’s Matteo Jorgenson<\/a>, it’s not enough.Multiple incidents of vehicles on the road in the autumn races\u00a0The autumn cycling season was packed with unpleasant moments. In the Coppa Bernocchi, a DHL delivery van drove onto the course, while in the Tre Valli Varesine, two riders from Pinarello\u2013Q36.5 crashed<\/a> due to a police motorcycle riding in the wrong direction. A car was also spotted on the road during the Eneco Tour.<\/a><\/p>\n

As a result, the riders in the Tour of Lombardy\u2014a few days after Tre Valli\u2014 refused to start when the race began. That\u2019s when Remco Evenepoel spoke up.<\/p>\n

He said he would no longer tolerate riders getting injured\u2014or even dying\u2014due to unsafe conditions in the race. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a colleague and a brother,\u201d he said, referring to the death of Finlay Tarling in the Tour of Portugal.<\/p>\n

Jorgenson was there, and in an interview with TNT<\/a> , he gave us a glimpse into the process. \u201cI have to give credit to Ben Healy for this,\u201d says the American rider from Visma | Lease a Bike.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe seemed to be the one who organised it. He set up a group chat with one rider from each team in Lombardy for that race. He came up with the idea to stage a five-minute protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"remco-evenepoel\"\/<\/p>\n

Remco Evenepoel spoke during the protest at the Tour of Lombardy.<\/p>\n

Jorgenson hopes for more action from the riders: ‘We need to practice this’Thijs Zonneveld criticised the small scale of the protest,<\/a> but Jorgenson explains why that was the case.\u201cIt was very well thought out: we didn\u2019t want to influence the race. Because the most recent races where these incidents occurred weren\u2019t organized by RCS, the organisation behind the Tour of Lombardy. They had nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the video! <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often that riders come together like this for a race. There\u2019s been plenty of criticism of unsafe conditions, such as in last year\u2019s Tour of Holland, where the riders brought the race to a halt. The same thing happened during the 2025 Ster van Bess\u00e8ges. While protests against a race are rare, Jorgenson hopes this marks the beginning of a new movement.<\/p>\n

“We need to practice this,” says the American, who often serves as one of the spokespeople on safety matters. \u201cWe need to practice to see what it\u2019s like to work together; we need to be on the same page. We won\u2019t be laughed out of the room if you suggest setting something up together\u2014for our safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not a new phenomenon<\/p>\n

Jorgenson said that cars on the road at races was not a new phenomenon, and that he had experienced it across his career. What he thinks has changed is the speed of the peloton, and the risks riders are taking on the route.<\/p>\n

This means room for error is so much smaller, making accidents more likely, and meaning a safer course and tighter controls of vehicles is imperative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another cycling season has come to an end. And it was yet another year full of incidents and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,225903,47944,82,15646],"class_list":["post-941082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-latest-cycling-news","tag-matteo-jorgenson","tag-sports","tag-uci"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}