Zonneveld joins Vingegaard and blasts ASO: “This is asking for very serious accidents”

The Dutchman did not hold back in his podcast In de Waaier. “ASO is in charge again at Paris–Nice, the organiser of the Tour. It was a sprinters’ day. Yesterday they were already shown a yellow card by Vingegaard, who called it ‘unworthy of the WorldTour.’ Today, you know a very big peloton is heading into the final kilometres. If you look at the corners they are taking...”

It was a chaotic sprint, with several awkward bends and road narrowings. But in Zonneveld’s view, the run-in only became more dangerous the closer the riders got to the line. “With 200 or 250 metres to go, the barriers are still narrowing in. It’s only because Lamperti, in the yellow jersey, brakes and doesn’t try to force his way into that gap against the barriers. But this is simply asking for very serious accidents.”

According to the former rider, that simply cannot be accepted. The sport has already seen too many examples of how badly these situations can end. “Years ago, we were already talking about safety in these kinds of sprints, when Groenewegen and Jakobsen crashed so hard into the barriers. And this is exactly how you create that, by placing the barriers like this. It goes well this time, but do this a hundred times and fifty times it ends in a major crash.”

Had things gone wrong again, Zonneveld argued, the response would have been the same as always. “Then we’d all be talking about it again: ‘This mustn’t happen, blah blah blah.’ The UCI comes up with airbags and things like that, and I think that is actually a very good discussion, but if we can’t even get these basic things right, I really start to lose heart. I refuse to accept this as normal.”

And in his eyes, the organisation is not the only party to blame, because the UCI also has a commissaire at the race to inspect the finish. “I think it’s scandalous from the organiser, but I think it’s just as scandalous from the UCI commissaire who is there, standing behind the finish line, and apparently thinks it is all fine. I’m genuinely going crazy. One glance is enough: it’s simply a bottleneck.”