Eight days that reshaped the 2024 WorldTour season

Pro road racing is a nearly year-round sport these days. That means there’s always a steady stream of racing, crashing, team news and more to keep everyone entertained. But some weeks stand out. While some level of crash happens every other day in the pro peloton, rarely do three of the sports biggest stars all get caught u pin, and injured in the same crash. Let alone twice in the span of a week.

The last eight days had not only the biggest crashes, taking out Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard out of Visma Lease-A-Bike’s roster, but significant moves in riders pushing back to improve safety at races and actually getting listened to.

A week of high-profile crashes

The action started last week at Dwars door Vlaanderen, the final lead-up to Tour of Flanders. Wout Van Aert was caught up in a crash as the peloton dealt with cross-winds and mid-race accelerations. Jasper Stuyven and Biniam Girmay were also stopped in the high-speed tumble. Van Aert suffered a broken collarbone and several broken ribs, ending his Classics campaign before it really started and putting a question mark on his Grand Tour ambitions.

Then, A week and a day later at Itzulia Basque Country, another crash involved a dozen riders including Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic. All three were injured to some extent, with Vigegaard and Evenepoel both breaking collarbones as well. The next day, Soudal Quick-Step suffered another blow at Itzulia when Mikel Landa crashed out and also broke his collarbone.

Separately, Bora-Hansgrohe’s Lennard Kämma was involved in a serious training crash in Tenerife, being struck by a car the crossed into his path during a team training ride. Kämma remains in hospital in stable but serious condition.

All of that before Paris-Roubaix even starts rolling towards its infamous cobblestones.

Rider’s union making inroads to safety, even if it involves a few U-turns

It’s not all doom and gloom this week. There are positive signs that riders are having some success pushing organizers to make racing safer. The ASO, one of cycling’s most powerful organizations, heeded riders requests to slow racing down as this weekend’s Paris-Roubaix approached the infamous Arenburg Forrest cobble section. The organizer did also publicly insult riders and the somewhat-bizzare resulting fix has divided the peloton. But ASO has also said they’re already looking at a better solution for the future.

Adam Hansen also used the Itzulia crash to raise riders wish that, when they do crash, cameras refrain from continuing to film them while they lie on the ground injured. The broadcast coverage of the crash at Itzulia raised serious questions, including from the announcers during the live broadcast, fans online, rider’s spouses and, after the stage, the riders themselves, about how much crash footage it is ok to show. Thursday’s broadcast repeatedly showed the fall, often in slow motion, and spent significant time trained on the riders that lay injured on the ground until the organizers finally made the call to neutralize the stage.

This request sparked debate online that is, let’s say, lively. To be fair, not all riders or their families agree on this front. Some have spoken up saying that the live coverage provides their only source of immediate information on the condition of the racers. Hopefully the two sides can find a middle ground. And hopefully organizers and broadcasters will respect the riders wishes in this regard.

A re-shaped race calendar

While each of those injuries alone would be news, all of them happening within eight days significantly changes the shape of the 2024 men’s WorldTour racing. It means around half of the Grand Tour (and Olympic) favourites will be building momentum towards the summer while the other half attempt to restart their season after returning from injury.

Van Aert’s Classic’s season is over and the team is staying mum on the longer-term implications of his crash. Visma Lease-A-Bike did update that Vingegaard’s injuries may be more serious than initially thought and could even put his Tour de France ambitions in jeopardy.That’s bad news for a team that is also seeing Merijn Zeeman, the sports director behind much of the team’s Grand Tour success, move on from cycling. Bora-Hansgrohe hasn’t added much detail to Roglic’s condition while Soudal Quick-Step and Evenepoel are, at least initially, more positive about the Belgian’s return to the peloton.

Returning from injury is far from straight forward, though. Van der Poel struggled for months with a back injury, then knee injury after a crash at the Tokyo Olympic mountain bike event. More recently, Pogacar’s LBL crash saw him struggle at the Tour. On the other hand, an early-season injury can also see a rider rejoin a road-weary peloton fresh and very motivated mid-season.

Mathieu van der Poel, Tom Pidcock and Tadej Pogacar, among others, all leave Classics season unscathed. Or for van der Poel and Pogacar, significantly boosted by big wins. The others leave in bandages.

That trio can’t win every race, though. While crashes are an unfortunate part of pro cycling, this rash of concurrent injuries opens the door for new names to establish themselves in a sport that is, in recent years, more dominated by big stars than at any time in recent memory.