Swapping out injured or sick riders during the Tour de France and cycling’s other grand tours?
It’s an idea whose time has come, says Team Movistar boss Eusebio Unzué.
Speaking to L’Equipe, the veteran Spanish manager said cycling should be able to slot in replacement riders across a three-week grand tour to “make the sport more humane.”
“All the teams prepare with 10 or 11 riders, we leave two or three at home at the last moment, and if a rider falls, are you not entitled to any solution?” Unzué told L’Equipe, saying cycling should, “humanize the regulations. Stop being so crude, so overly inhumane.”
It’s not the first time Unzué has floated the idea. In fact, it’s been a pet project of his for years.
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The way Unzué sees it, cycling needs to adapt to the times, and the old-school “prisoners of the road” mindset should be exiled to the past.
The notion is even more cutting for Unzué, who saw his GC captain Enric Mas crash out on the first stage of the 2023 Tour de France, meaning months and even years of preparation and investment were down the tubes barely out of the start ramp.
“Why not authorize replacements in the grand tours when a rider abandons in the first week?” Unzué asked. “It wouldn’t be for technical or tactical change, of course … Why not try, test, let’s take a step forward and see if everyone finds it interesting. We need change.”
The radical proposal cuts against the traditional notion that grand tours are all about suffering, and that racers must endure everything nature and their rivals throw at them.
Under Unzué’s plan, an injured could be replaced before the first week is out.
That new rider would be slotted into last place on the GC, meaning that they wouldn’t have a direct impact on the overall standings.
Fresh legs could, at least with Unzué’s thinking, give a team a chance to win a stage or to fully support its remaining riders in the classification.
Full team rosters going into the second and third weeks would keep all the teams on a more equal footing before going into the more decisive mountain stages, he suggested.
Replacement riders: ‘We must protect their health’
Unzué also suggested injured or crashing riders be allowed to stay in the race, adding that banged up riders could leave the race to be attended to by medical staff in a timely manner.
And if they’re healthy enough to continue after medical exams, riders could rejoin the race the next day, but also see their time reduced to last place despite not finishing the previous stage.
“Today, for a rider who falls to be able to start again the next day, he sometimes has to ride 60 or 80 kilometers with a broken wrist,” Unzué said. “Because he can only take exams once he arrives, after having suffered like an animal.”
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Many have pushed back against such suggestions, saying replacement riders or allowing riders to rejoin the race without having finished the previous stage would open the door to sand-bagging and other manipulations.
100% agree (even though this goes against tradition which is always a difficult concept to agree on) however we have had this discussion many times over the past many years, we are one of the few team sports that don’t allow substitutes for injuries, it would make sense and if… https://t.co/jJn3yHg5vI
— Brent Copeland (@copelandbrent) February 6, 2024
UCI rules clearly state that if a rider cannot finish a stage or concludes a stage beyond the allotted time limit, they are removed from the event.
Unzué insists he’s not saying to replace a sprinter after the first week of flat stages with a fresh-legged climber before going into the Alps, but suggests that under certain circumstances, replacement riders or a rejigged GC could work for the sake of the rider’s health.
“We really can’t humanize this?,” Unzué said. “If a racer crashes, isn’t that enough reason for him to go to an ambulance, see if anything is broken, and in this case he leaves again the next day without having to finish the stage?
“We are not going to ask, like in football, that everything stops while the riders to recover, but we must protect their health.”
Unzué confirms Movistar’s participation in ‘Super League’: ‘The sport hasn’t changed in 40 years’
Unzué also expressed support for other changes within elite men’s professional cycling, and confirmed Movistar’s participation in ongoing back-room negotiations involving key stakeholders within the sport.
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Talks of a “Super League” and the possible arrival of $275 million in investment from Saudi Arabian interests could be a boon for the sport, he said.
“We are thinking about the future of this sport, we are among those holding meetings,” Unzué said. “Cycling is the most immobile sport currently. We continue to do things like 40 years ago when I arrived.”