Declercq on the dangers of cycling: “Some riders don’t care if they crash, Mohorič brakes late and that leads him to cut across others’ lines and…”

After years in the peloton, Tim Declercq has decided to retire, partly because of the many dangers in cycling. When he was younger, he admitted he was ready to take certain risks, but now, with a family at home and age catching up, fear has emerged—and with that, he admitted, “you can’t race.”

In an interview with Het Nieuwsblad, he spoke about the safety problem in cycling, the very issue that pushed him to hang up his bike, though it may not be a concern shared by everyone. Many less cautious riders even race with the mindset: “I don’t care if I crash”—an attitude that puts the whole peloton at risk. Declercq even mentioned one name as the rider who best embodies this spirit: Mohorič.

Here are his words:

“I no longer dare to take the risks I used to take. The danger weighs heavily on me, and with fear, you can’t race. I don’t want to exaggerate, but as an experienced rider I’m simply very aware of how dangerous all this is. Becoming the father of two children makes you see it differently. While in many riders, I see the opposite. They race with the idea: ‘I don’t care if I crash.’

Right now I can afford to name someone. Matej Mohorič is a rider who, like everyone else, tries to race as efficiently as possible. I have full respect for that. But he does it by braking as late as possible into corners, which leads him to cut across others’ lines. And that causes crashes—not his own, but those of the riders behind him.

After the last stage of this year’s Tour de France, he literally said: ‘I gave everything on the Montmartre descent, I didn’t care whether in the evening I would be sitting at the dinner table or in the hospital.’ Everyone thinks those are fantastic words, but what happens if in his crash he drags ten other riders down with him? For me, that’s a problem.”

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