Following the departure of eight teams from the Étoile de Bessèges on Friday in a protest over the organisation’s failures to prevent drivers from the public from getting onto the race course, the Kern Pharma team also dropped out on Saturday.
“The Kern Pharma Team has decided not to take part in the race today at Étoile de Bessèges,” the team announced on social media.
“Due to the incidents of the last two days and in the absence of complete safety guarantees, we have made this decision a priority to take care of the health of our cyclists and technical staff.
During a miserably cold and wet stage 4, there were seven more abandons, bringing the number of riders remaining in the race to 64. Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) won the stage and took a commanding lead in the overall standings of the UCI 2.1-ranked race.
The mass departures from the race followed an incident on stage 2 where a driver turned onto the course between the breakaway and peloton only to be met head-on by the bunch soon after. The driver quickly reversed off the course but the reaction of the peloton led to a crash that injured Maxim van Gils (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
When another car drove onto the course during stage 3, teams stopped racing and Soudal-QuickStep, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, EF Education-EasyPost, Ineos Grenadiers and Uno-X Mobility refused to continue racing.
The UCI launched an investigation into the problems with the course controls on Friday, and on Saturday, CPA president Adam Hansen weighed in, writing: “After the situation in the last few days. The CPA within SafeR will push a new deliverable for the top race organisers to help share their knowledge with the smaller organizers.
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“We currently have the four biggest race organizers in SafeR, RCS, Unipublic, ASO, and the Flanders Classics. We need to help and support the smaller organizers put on races at a certain level. There should not be a difference in the organization of race. There should only be a difference in a race route and format.”
Meanwhile, the race organisers praised the riders who chose to remain in the race in a statement.
“The organisers would like to extend their warmest thanks to the teams who took part in the third stage of the Étoile de Bessèges-Tour du Gard Bessèges-Bessèges on Friday 7 February and who showed their professionalism and respect for the organisers, who make it their duty every year to organise the event.”
The race concludes with a 10.6-kilometre individual time trial in Ales on Sunday.
