The Tour de France is by far cycling’s biggest and best-financed event in a calendar which boasts about 700 races, most of which make money by charging towns and cities for the race to pass through and selling television rights to broadcasters.
Smaller, lower-level events – such as the third-tier Volta a Portugal – sell their rights to be broadcast at a lower fee and use more cost-effective measures to manage road closures.
The Tour de France’s safety record remains one of the best, thanks in part to extensive safety measures which include total road closures on stages for much of the day, whereas smaller events such as the Volta a Portugal and Tour of Britain use ‘rolling roadblocks’, where police and officials travel in front of and behind the peloton.
“I’m not going to criticise the organisation of the Volta a Portugal,” said Vaughters, whose team did not take part in Portugal but frequently does at a similar level, along with competing at the Tour de France and other top events.
“There have been too many races at this level that have exactly the same problem. This [Tarling’s death] just happened to be terribly unlucky. It could have been any of the other races.
“The costs [for smaller races] are enormous, organisers are really struggling and hoofing it financially and I sympathise with that.
“The Tour de France closes its road for the duration many hours before an event. There’s a gendarme on every T-junction. A barricade at every T-junction.
“As a team, we trust races like the Tour de France, but we don’t trust smaller races.
“Rolling enclosures become a problem when the peloton splits into groups and you don’t have every T-junction blocked, and people think: ‘The race is done – I’m free to go on the road.’
“As soon as they turn on the road, they’re going 100km/h and the opposite way is the peloton at 50km/h – that’s a combined 150km/h. I mean, it’s horrible.”
“Rolling enclosures I don’t think work that well.”