Pidcock 'mad' after police motorbike strikes two teammates at Tre Valli Varesine
Tom Pidcock said he was “mad” after a police motorcyclist drove into the peloton and struck two Pinarello–Q36.5 teammates during the Tre Valli Varesine in Italy, an incident that left Thomas Gloag forced to abandon while Marcel Camprubi carried on and Pidcock finished second.
Pidcock described the moment as shocking and said he came close to stopping himself. “A police motorbike was going the wrong way down the course and crashed into two of our guys. I wanted to stop racing myself. I was mad. The guys all riding in front of me – for me – and two of them on the floor,” he said, adding later: “Luckily Marcel was OK, he could continue,” and “Tom was also OK, in the end, but he stopped the race, and he has some stitches in the knee.”
Team sources said the police rider had been ahead of the field, entered a roundabout and then circled back into the advancing peloton. Gloag was treated at the scene and taken away in an ambulance, described by the team as “pretty shocked”. Camprubi posted images of his damaged bike on social media with the caption: “Sad that you have to risk your life to race, one month after a tragic accident.”
Organisers and officials face heightened scrutiny after the collision came weeks after the death of Welsh rider Fin Tarling in August, when a van driving against the peloton struck him during the Volta ao Portugal; that incident remains under police investigation. Pidcock had dedicated his recent World Cross Country Mountain Bike Championship win to Tarling and his family.
The episode was cited alongside other incidents this season in which non-race vehicles entered closed roads. Races mentioned by critics include the Sauerlandrundfahrt in Germany, where cars twice entered closed roads, and the Tour of Britain women, where Australian rider Maeve Plouffe said she was nearly hit by a car: “While the race convoy was still in sight, and I was less than two minutes down [behind the peloton] there were cars from the general public coming at me from all directions, including one that nearly hit me on a roundabout,” Plouffe said.
Questions have been raised about the sport's governance and race safety. “Neither UCI president David Lappartient, nor anyone else, stands up and says: ‘Wait a minute, we really need to think about how we are going to prevent this from happening in the future,’” Richard Plugge, manager of Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease, said. Matthew Brennan criticised organisers and said “nothing has changed” in the aftermath of Tarling’s death: “I really think that is disgraceful,” Brennan told the BBC. “Instead of someone somewhere in these organisations saying: ‘OK, this should never ever happen again’, it feels the world has moved on, nothing has changed and there’s events where cars have been on the course still.”
The collision at Tre Valli Varesine remains under police investigation. Richard Plugge and Matthew Brennan have publicly criticised the UCI’s response to recent safety concerns in the sport.