They had to be 93 runners to start the Tour de Romandie on Friday August 15 in Huemoz, Switzerland. They were ultimately only 63. A few hours before the start of the first of the three stages-a 4.4-kilometer time trial, won by the Spanish Paula Blasi (UAE Team Adq), 19 seconds before the French Juliette Labous (FDJ-Suez)-The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced the exclusion of five teams-including the Recent Visma-Lease, Winner of the Tour de France, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who was not aligned with this deadline.
“The decision of these teams to oppose the specific rules of the event is surprising and compromises the efforts of the cycling family to ensure the safety of all the runners on the road”explains the UCI in its press release. In question: the refusal of the five training courses in question that one of their runners is equipped with a GPS tracer of 63 grams, whose location data is transmitted in real time to racing officials, medical teams and UCI commissioners.
This device, in the test phase, “Will strengthen the safety of runners during competitions and allow rapid intervention in the event of an incident”explained the Federation in another press release in early August. The Tour of Romandie seemed to him to be a “Ideal field” of experimentation due to the different format of its three stages (an individual time trial, a mountain day, and the third on a circuit).
The teams refuse to “discriminate a runner”
The process will also be tested at the Kigali World Championships (Rwanda), from September 21 to 28 (all runners will then be equipped with such a device). The UCI’s approach followed the death of Muriel Furrer in September 2024. The 18 -year -old Swiss was the victim of a serious fall during the online race of the Junior Worlds in Zurich (Switzerland) and had been found more than an hour after his accident according to local authorities.
To justify their refusal to wear the GPS tracer, Visma-Lease A Bike and the four excluded training courses (Lidl-Trek, Canyon-Sram, EF Education-Oatly and Picnic Postnl) published the same text on their social networks or their official website, entitled “The UCI cannot confirm the request to clarify the rules despite the cooperation of the team monitoring system”. Inside, they assure wanting “Safety of runners”but refuse to “Select a runner” as well as “To install or remove the device”.
The five teams also believe that “The UCI was free to select a runner and install the device under his own responsibility if he considered it being entitled to do so”. But they regret being “Obliged to discriminate a runner in relation to others in terms of obligations”. In its own press release, the International Cycling Union stresses that the five excluded teams “Are part of the Velon organization, which has its own data transmission system and works to develop its own GPS monitoring system”.
