Falls in cycling: "The bike will jump away like a tennis ball" - ex-professional cyclist Mike Kluge tells

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Crashed professional cyclists in Katowice on August 5th

Mike Kluge used to "take such things into his own hands". In his time as a professional there was another cyclist who practically provoked his colleagues to fall through his driving behavior: "Sometimes he rode in such a way that you thought: It's not really tight." Kluge resorted to self-help: "I took that aside and gave him one." After that there was peace.

These were obviously the wild times in cycling that Mike Kluge, professional in the eighties, world champion in cross racing, is reviewing. But cycling has been wild in the past few weeks as well. Several serious falls have brought the sport into disrepute after the corona interruption.

The Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen was pushed into the barricade by his compatriot Dylan Groenewegen during the sprint finish in Katowice, fell and had to be put into an artificial coma afterwards. The Germans Emanuel Buchmann, fourth in the last Tour de France, and Maximilian Schachmann fear that they will participate in the next week's tour after falling. Schachmann collided with a car, Buchmann and top driver Primoz Roglic fell at the Criterium du Dauphiné. The young Belgian star Remco Evenepoel fell down a bridge on the Lombardy tour on the same day as Schachmann suffered his mishap.

"They lack motor skills training"

Falls are part of cycling, but such an accumulation is not normal - and, according to Kluge, can not only be explained by bad luck and unfortunate coincidences. But here, too, Corona is behind it, the 57-year-old is sure of that. "They come from a month-long break, they lack the motor skills training to drive at a tight pace, the feeling of what it is like when another driver is on the road in every direction at a distance of 50 centimeters," he told SPIEGEL.

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As a professional, Mike Kluge especially loved the cross-country course (1985)

Kluge switched from the road to the cross-country course and later to mountain bike early on, he never rode the Tour de France, but only commented on it as a TV expert for Sat1 2007 after the public broadcasters stopped reporting in the wake of the doping revelations and the private broadcaster stepped in from one day to the next. What was noted in the reporting at the time, to put it cautiously. Kluge has now recovered from this and has stayed with cycling as an observer. He is now designing his own bikes, he has co-organized races - but the frequency of serious falls these days is something unusual for him too.

He also explains it with the special situation this season, "having to make an impression within 100 days in which all the highlights of the season are concentrated in order to then look good in contract negotiations". This leads some riders to take too much risk: "You sit in the saddle under stress for five hours, and when you cross the finish line you don't feel like having the butter removed from your bread."

Nevertheless, ego actions like that of Groenewegen are also an expression of the thinking that "only take the money with you, instead of showing compassion and empathy for colleagues". The Dutchman did not do himself a favor anyway: "He will now be under massive surveillance in the paddock."

Years of debate about mandatory helmets

The race organizers have recently been criticized - for example, for putting the finish sprint in a descent in Poland and for chasing the pros over gravel on the Dauphiné tour. Schachmann demanded in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung": "I hope that the pressure will increase. I have thought many times: What is being done with us here?"

However, Kluge cannot fully understand this criticism: "As a driver, you also have to be able to adapt to different conditions." Many professionals also demanded extreme difficulties, he himself had "not been able to be dangerous enough in the past".

Kluge recalls the resistance to mandatory helmets, which the world association UCI wanted to introduce in the 1990s, but it did not come until 2004, because not least the drivers were reluctant to do so. The then Telekom professional Udo Bölts groaned: "Wearing a helmet at almost 40 degrees in the shade - no one can be expected to do that."

It is now common practice to wear a helmet, but the number of fatally injured drivers did not decrease, but actually increased. Nineteen cyclists were killed in the past decade, compared to three in the 1990s. Because you feel too safe with a helmet?

Extreme tire pressure

No, says Kluge. The helmet has alleviated many serious consequences of falls. For him it is more due to the technology that so much happens despite the helmet: "The wheels are getting faster and faster, the frames are getting stiffer, the tire pressures are getting more extreme." This brings you closer to the goal of minimizing rolling resistance, but at a high price: when there are bumps in the road, there are situations "the bike will jump away like a tennis ball". Today's bikes "can withstand a lot, but at some point it is the end of the day".

During his playing days, Kluge boycotted a race in Scotland because the conditions seemed too dangerous to him. He also protested against other routes, and to this day he believes that this was why he was not nominated for the 1988 Olympic Games. Drivers who open their mouths were too rare back then, they hardly exist today either. "The solidarity in the field of drivers has never been particularly pronounced in cycling," he says.

Today Mike Kluge is active in sports management. He says: "In cycling everyone can be very happy if they can still run upright after their career."