Brussels (AFP)

Attention falls! The peloton is struggling with the series of accidents which marked the resumption of races. From now on, the runners no longer hesitate to share their fear with the organizers.

"Fortunately, he is alive". After the spectacular fall of Remco Evenepoel last Saturday at the Tour of Lombardy, the reaction of Patrick Lefevere, the manager of the Deceuninck team, speaks volumes about the stress that plagues some at the start of the races.

The deaths, among others, of the Italian Fabio Casartelli (on the Tour de France 1995), the Belgians Wouter Weylandt (at the Giro 2011) or Bjorn Lambrecht last year at the Tour de Poland still haunt people's minds.

On Tuesday, the riders expressed their anger after the 2nd stage of the Tour de Wallonie, contested on roads strewn with potholes.

"The course was unacceptable, much too dangerous," stormed the Olympic champion, Belgian Greg Van Avermaet.

- Red card -

"It's part of the race, but it's true that the roads are sometimes very dangerous at home (in Belgium)," said Arnaud Démare.

"Red card for the organizers," concluded Frenchman Florian Sénéchal.

The organizer Christophe Brandt "assumes (his mistake): it is true that the roads were steep and in not exceptional condition", he apologized.

Fortunately, there was no drama comparable to what had happened a few days earlier in Lombardy. Does fatality alone explain the fall of Evenepoel, falling 8 meters into the void after hitting a low wall?

For the former Belgian rider Johan Museeuw, triple winner of Paris-Roubaix (1996, 2000, 2002), "cycling has become more dangerous today than before". In 1998, he himself had almost had a leg amputated following a fall in the Arenberg gap, one of the high places of Paris-Roubaix.

"It has become dangerous everywhere," he recently explained to the daily La Derniere Heure. There are roundabouts, obstacles, speed ".

"The riders descend faster since using the disc brakes. They brake two meters from a turn. We had to brake twenty meters before," he explained.

However, it should be remembered that, most often, the behavior of runners is the determining factor in accidents. Either because of fatigue and the lack of lucidity that accompanies it, or because of the stakes exacerbated by the long stop which has concentrated the race calendar.

- The particular case of the Tour -

The recent example (August 5) of the fall of the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen in the Tour of Poland is proof of this. The Dutchman had been pushed into the barriers in the middle of a sprint (at 80 km / h) by his compatriot Dylan Groenewegen.

Result: vital prognosis for a while, coma (from which he has since emerged) and disfigured face which will require numerous cosmetic surgery operations. Proof of the violence of the shock, the young 23-year-old runner lost all his teeth.

"I made a huge mistake by leaving my trajectory," said Groenewegen today "traumatized" by his unsportsmanlike gesture which could have sent his colleague six feet under the ground.

"Psychologically, falls leave traces. And you have to live permanently with the stress of the accident," Thibaut Pinot recently declared. The Frenchman is one of those who publicly protested last Saturday during the Dauphiné by deploring the "lamentable" state of a municipal road, "practicable limit by mountain bike, then by road bike ..."

The danger is therefore everywhere. Even if, on the Tour de France, the 2020 edition of which will start on August 29, the road is the subject of special treatment, orchestrated by the technical team of the ADF (Assembly of French departments), and minimizes the risks.

© 2020 AFP