The sport’s governing body has yet to pick a system or set a timeline, but is firm that the technology will be deployed “across event classes.”
Kristof Ramon, courtesy Velon
In a private letter sent last Friday from the UCI’s president David Lappartient to the respective unions for pro riders, teams and organisers and seen by Escape Collective, the head of the sport’s governing body said that “the risk of a rider going off course unseen … [is] a fundamental danger to the safety of our riders.” GPS trackers, he said, are “a necessary improvement to safety in professional road cycling.”
Eighteen months ago, at the Zurich World Championships, the Swiss cyclist Muriel Furrer died of a serious head injury in the junior women’s road race at the age of 18. She crashed on a descent and laid unnoticed among trees for over an hour before she was located.
Ever since then there have been calls to make GPS rider tracking obligatory. In the letter, Lappartient wrote that the topic was discussed at December’s WorldTour seminar, where he stated that GPS tracking “will need to become mandatory and phased in across event classes.” It’s unknown which races that will involve at first and whether the phase-in would be rolled out equally on the men’s and women’s WorldTour circuits, or just one to start.
Escape asked the UCI by what date it wishes to make trackers obligatory, but it did not respond before publication. Escape spoke to four other sources regarding this matter, and neither did they have a clear idea of when the new ruling would be implemented. But Lappartient’s letter called on each union to respond by the end of April so that the matter can be discussed at the next meeting of the Professional Cycling Council on May 21.
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GPS ETA is TBD
What system – or systems – will be used will form the basis for future conversations. The UCI trialled its own Swiss Timing-developed system at last year’s Rwanda World Championships, while Velon, an organisation owned by nine teams, developed its own system named SAVE in 2025. It has been deployed in a lot more races, including most recently at Tirreno-Adriatico. Both systems rely on mobile phone networks.
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