A lack of police resources for road closures continues to impact bike racing in the Netherlands.
Cor Vos
Stage 3 of the revived Tour of Holland was called off on Friday after non-race vehicles entered the course, including a frightening near-head on collision, leading to the refusal of the peloton to continue on. Organizers then cancelled the stage.
The incident makes the UCI 2.1-rated event just the latest in a series of bike races impacted by an increasingly acute lack of police support in the Netherlands. Organizers turned to volunteer course marshals for a lengthy stretch this season during which police resources were diverted to train for and then work security at a NATO summit in June.
But the issues run much deeper than the NATO summit, and four months later, the Tour of Holland has been run with little police presence as well.
On Friday, the deficiencies of that approach were laid bare. As XDS-Astana’s Cees Bol told Wielerflits, at one point, a person drove a pick-up truck towards the pack. “It was a close call at the front of the peloton,” Bol said of what was only one of multiple incidents.
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