'This shouldn't happen' – Paul Seixas calls for better race standards following Finlay Tarling's death

Paul Seixas has called for better standards of race organisation following the death of Finlay Tarling at this year's Volta a Portugal.

Speaking to Canal+’s ‘Clique’ show this week, the Decathlon CMA CGM rider made clear that riders being struck by cars “shouldn’t happen” in bike races.

Nineteen-year-old Tarling died on 14 August after he collided with a non-race vehicle that had been driven onto the course at the Volta a Portugal. A police investigation is ongoing into the incident.

“Honestly, it’s terrible,” Seixas said. “I raced with him, and it really affected me.

“We end up saying to ourselves, ‘That’s yet another cyclist who’s lost their life in a race this year’. I think it’s really affected everyone, all the cyclists. Sometimes there really are concerns about how races are organised. The organisers are doing their best, but sometimes there need to be better standards.”

The Frenchman was part of a five-minute protest about safety held ahead of this year’s Il Lombardia, a race he went on to win.

In tandem with the protest, riders including Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5) and Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) shared a joint statement on social media calling on the UCI and race organisers to “take accountability and act” against cars on courses. “We will not stand for this any longer,” they wrote.

Seixas told Canal+: “What happened [to Tarling] is extremely serious. Families are affected. It’s serious that this is happening in races, professional ones like that one, and riders are losing their lives. It’s frightening.

“There have been some very serious crashes throughout history, but really, riders dying like that after colliding with a car during a race, this shouldn’t happen.”

Last month, British rider Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) called for the creation of an independent safety body in cycling, telling BBC Sport it was "disgraceful" that “nothing has changed” following Tarling’s death.

The UCI launched a safety body in 2023 named ‘SafeR’, which claims to be independent, despite being funded by the governing body, race organisers, riders and teams. The UCI called in September for safety tracking systems to be put in place across all professional road races “as quickly as possible”.

Still, there have continued to be incidents involving cars on courses since Tarling's death. These include: a rider swerving to dodge a car during a time trial at the German race Sauerlandrundfarht; a delivery van entering the race route behind the breakaway at the Coppa Bernocchi; and an SUV on the course at the Eneco Tour, four days after the Il Lombardia protest.

Race organisers highlight the difficulty of policing hundreds of kilometres of public roads. “It’s totally impossible,” Kiko García, technical director of the Vuelta a España and managing director of the International Association of Cycling Race Organisers (AIOCC), recently told Cycling Weekly.

“In a 200km race, depending on the region, sometimes you have more than 300, 400, 500 different small roads [coming off the course],” García added.

“But believe me, the first priority of every single organiser in the world is safety… This is something super urgent to fix.”