Safety was again a major theme in cycling in 2025. According to David Lappartient, the president of the UCI, important steps were taken last year, but the Frenchman also experienced "a lot of resistance." He said this earlier this month during a seminar in Geneva, where the UCI evaluated its activities from the past year.
"A lot has been done," Lappartient said during the meeting on the topic of safety. "We introduced a yellow card system, improved the barriers and rules, and obstacles are much better secured. However, some things are still not working very well because we encountered a lot of resistance when conducting tests. For example, when we wanted to introduce a gear limit or when we wanted to use GPS trackers."
Gear Limit and GPS Trackers
The UCI wanted to test a gear limit during the Tour of Guangxi (October 14-19), based on the idea that a restricted gear ratio could reduce speed in the peloton. However, the American components manufacturer SRAM filed a complaint against the UCI with the Belgian Competition Authority (BMA). The popular 54×10 configuration of SRAM RED AXS—a setup used by many of SRAM’s WorldTour teams—would have been excluded by the new limit. The BMA ruled in favor of SRAM, so the UCI's test did not proceed.
Earlier, there was also controversy regarding the testing of GPS trackers. At the 2025 Women's Tour de Romandie (WorldTour), five teams were disqualified after they objected to a test using GPS trackers by the UCI. Visma | Lease a Bike, Picnic PostNL, Lidl-Trek, Canyon//SRAM, and EF-Oatly-Cannondale were not allowed to start in the Swiss WorldTour race. They argued that the rules
"The decision of these teams to resist the specific regulations of the event is surprising and undermines the efforts of the cycling family to ensure the safety of all riders in road racing through the development of this new technology," the federation wrote in response.
