Believing that his sport is too dangerous, the former winner of the Tour de France Jonas Vingegaard would advise cycling to his children if they wanted to practice it in competition.
Mathieu Van der Poel, Lenny Martinez, Markel Beloki, Julien Bernard, Pavel Sivakov … there is no shortage of “son of” in the international peloton. But we will probably no longer see the name of Vingegaard after Jonas’s retreat. The 28 -year -old Danish runner has indeed entrusted in an interview to
Newspaper that he did not imagine his children at all (he has a 4 -year -old daughter and a 6 month old son) to cycling in competition, because he considers his sport too dangerous.
“To be honest, if my daughter or my son asks me the question” Dad, can we participate in races? ” “, The answer is” no “. Sport as it is today … It is simply too dangerous, ”explains the former winner of the Tour de France. If cycling is too dangerous according to Jonas Vingegard, it is first because of the behavior of the runners: “We, the runners, we fight and also run at times when it is not really necessary. We also noticed it in Algarve: sometimes we are fighting for a position in a turn that does not lead anywhere. Sometimes there is too little respect. Too many runners run as if there were no brakes on their bike. »»
Vingegaard accuses the instances
But the Danish also accuses the authorities, starting with the international cycling union, taking the example of the last round of the Algarve where during the 1st stage, most of the peloton did not take the right road in the last hectometers, due to poor report. “In general, I would say that everyone in cycling must become aware of the magnitude of the security problem. This is not yet enough, continues Vingegaard. And everyone has a responsibility: the runners themselves, the organizers and the UCI. Such a thing should not happen in cycling. We didn’t really know where we had to go. In my opinion, in a sprint, you should clearly know where you have to go and where you should not go. Hopefully everything is going well for him in Paris-Nice, that he is playing this week.
