“It is important to act”: the boss of INEOS calls for concrete actions for the safety of runners

The images of riders caught in the collective fall of April 4 during the Tour of the Basque Country shocked many cycling followers. By their brutality but also because the fall involved big names in the peloton such as the double winner of the Tour de France Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel. The first, who had surgery on his collarbone, sees his chances of competing in the Grande Boucle this summer diminishing day after day.

This collective accident, which could have cost the lives of runners like the Belgian Steff Crass, pushed Jim Ratcliffe to express himself in an open letter on the Ineos website, of which he is the CEO. “We really need to look at the issue of safety in professional cycling,” writes the man who has owned the Ineos Grenadier team since 2019.

In his letter, Jim Ratcliffe draws parallels with the aftermath of Ayrton Senna’s fatal 1994 Formula 1 crash. “The governing body has transformed the safety rules of one of the most dangerous sports in the world, which made it possible to considerably reduce the number of injuries,” he compares.

“I applaud the UCI for taking the issues on board and agreeing to support the establishment of SafeR. We now need to see real action to ensure the safety of the sport.”

An open letter from Sir Jim Ratcliffe on making our sport safer. pic.twitter.com/zx5pAHjnri

— INEOS Grenadiers (@INEOSGrenadiers) April 12, 2024

The English billionaire is asking the same from the International Cycling Union (UCI), which he does not hesitate to criticize. “So far, the governing bodies [du cyclisme] have brought very few changes and (…) serious accidents are commonplace,” says Ratcliffe.

The latter recalls that his team experienced two accidents by its big names which could have been dramatic, referring to those of Chris Froome in 2019 and Egan Bernal in 2022, although they took place on training roads.

“Cyclists will always push the limits, because they are elite athletes, and that is why it is so important to act”, continues the boss of INEOS who welcomes the “SafeR” initiative, an entity of the specialized UCI responsible for supervising the safety of cyclists and created in 2023. “We now need to see concrete actions for the safety of the sport,” concludes Jim Ratcliffe, recalling that “this is what Formula 1 has so well done over the last 30 years.”