After cars got on the race course and chaos descended on last year’s Étoile de Bessèges, with several leading teams pulling out, the organisers of the small French race have strengthened security efforts for 2026, albeit with a hit to the start list quality.
The 2.1 race in southern France had a warning sign on stage 2 in 2025 when a driver entered the course and caused Maxim Van Gils (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) to crash after reversing away from the peloton.
Well-aware of the dangers pro riders face daily, former Arkéa-Samsic rider Romain Leroux is now the race’s security director and had feared for the race’s future. He said, “It would have hurt me to stop there; we would have thought about it all our lives. But we had things to change. Couldn’t we have avoided this? We took measures in that direction, we thought about a different way of working.”
With the new security measure in place, it may keep things afloat, but there has been a cost, both financially and to the quality of start list, with only 16 teams taking the start in Bellegarde on Wednesday – down from 21 – and only four WorldTour teams instead of last year’s 10 being present.
Without the big names such as Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and last year’s winner Kévin Vauquelin (Ineos Grenadiers) returning, Fangille didn’t fret and described it as the race “going back to our roots.”
Leroux admitted that they’d “got used…
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