Tour course designer warns rising speeds make race safety harder

Gouvenou points to a harder safety problem

Tour de France course designer Thierry Gouvenou has warned that increasing rider speeds are making race safety 'significantly harder' for organisers, according to road.cc.

His point is not that organisers are absolved of responsibility, but that the modern safety equation is becoming more difficult to control. Gouvenou said that 'no race organiser can ever guarantee that an incident will not occur during their event', which is a blunt reminder that course design can manage risk but cannot remove it entirely.

The most telling part of his comments concerns descents, where he said rider behaviour can make racing look 'more like motorcycles than bikes'. For serious cyclists, that matters because it frames safety as more than a route-planning issue. Terrain, speed, and rider choices interact, and once speeds rise, the margin for correcting mistakes narrows.

This is a significant statement because it comes from the person responsible for designing the Tour de France route. It underlines how the sport’s growing speed is not just a performance story, but an organisational challenge.

Full details are at the linked road.cc source.