On Tuesday, news broke that two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard had crashed on a training ride while trying to evade a random member of the public, who was chasing him down a descent.
Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed that the Dane had crashed but avoided any serious injuries, and whilst they didn't provide any more insight into what had happened, they did make a plea for "fans on bikes to always put safety first" and to "please allow riders to train and give them as much space and peace as possible."
“You can be a professional, but you can also be humble. Jonas fell while trying to drop me down the Fuente la Reina trail, and when I stopped to ask how he was, he got angry with me for following him down the hill," read the amateur rider's Strava caption of his ride in Malaga, attaching a photo of the back of Vingegaard.
I’m not surprised Vingegaard was angry. In fact, I’d be surprised if he wasn't angry, even though he is Danish and by all accounts seems quite mild mannered. If someone tried to chase me down a descent and caused me to crash I’d be livid, and I’m not trying to win the biggest race on the planet.
Sitting on a pros wheel for a bit used to be a thing people would stride into the café and brag about while on a cycling holiday, often without proof, to the admiration of their buddies. Now, when everyone has a camera in their pocket or strapped to their bars, December and January in Spain seems akin to a Lycra-clad safari, with fans hunting down the 'Big 5' and others, on the training roads that are now well known. It may be fun to spot the pros, but deliberately riding so close to them or purposefully seeking them out can clearly be dangerous, and I think it’s also quite cringe too.
The danger factor
The fact that Vingegaard was chased down a hill and crashed is probably evidence enough, though I’m sure some of you will be itching to type ‘skill issue’ in the comments. Footage of another amateur riding alongside the Visma squad on a training ride has also bubbled to the surface recently, with the amateur riding on the wrong side of the road, round a blind corner, holding his phone filming. It doesn’t take a genius to see that it's bad for you and for the team if the worst were to happen.
To take the latest Vingegaard incident as a prime example, even though the amateur isn't directly wheelsucking just the knowledge that someone unknown is right behind you is sufficient to throw you off your game. It's distracting, nerve-wracking, and frustrating, and clearly enough to top you, quite literally, over the edge.
As amateurs we may think we’re incredible bike handlers, and some of us may be, but generally speaking we don’t have the same skill level as the pros and so riding behind and alongside them (it's never in front, is it?) creates a dangerous skill disparity and a risk that, to my eyes, is on the same level as being one of those idiots that run into the road while a race is on to get their five seconds of fame on the TV. Ruining a rider’s season is the same whether it’s during a race or in training.
This desire for a moment of second-hand fame is certainly exacerbated by social media and the rise of short-form video content. Accounts like Artem Shcherbyna’s, whose Instagram and YouTube fame is predicated on chasing pros down, have thousands of followers, and naturally will have created emulators out on the road, phones in hand, looking at their targets rather than the road ahead.
It's even happened in actual races, like when someone rode alongside the riders during Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes in 2025, or last summer when a fan on a bike managed to get on the Tour de France finish line.
It must be said, in Shcherbyna's defense at least, he uses hands free set-ups that at least allow him to keep both hands on the bars, and seems to stay at the back and make himself known to the teams and riders.
It's a bit creepy, isn't it?
In no other profession would members of the public attempt to chase someone down and follow them while they go about their duties. Yes, celebrities get followed, as do politicians, but mostly this happens when they’re not physically doing their actual work.
I’d never dream of just strolling onto Arsenal’s training ground and trying to get involved with their set piece training of a Thursday lunchtime, and neither would I walk into Downing Street, take a seat at the table, and start opining about what I think we should do about the cost of living crisis during a Cabinet meeting, so why do people think it’s OK to ride up, often unannounced, beside someone just trying to do their day job in peace?
What’s more, the glorification of it on social media legitimises people doing it at home. I’ve had people sit on my wheel unannounced for almost the entirety of my commute home. I’ve had to tell them they’re being weird before, and while I am relatively comfortable doing so, it's not that easy for everyone, particularly not more vulnerable riders.
I'm sure there will be those of you who think that, because the riders are on public roads, then this is all totally fair game, but I'm afraid the concept of personal space doesn't simply disappear because you're on a freely accessible highway.
It doesn’t make you look like a pro, it makes you look needy
The underlying implication with anyone posting clips of them riding alongside a pro is 'I could be a pro, too'. I hate to break it to you, but you couldn’t. They’re probably on some mega Zone 2 trundle, while you’re desperately hanging off the back in Zone 5 trying to see straight.
They aren’t going to offer you a contract on the spot, and I suspect they resent you getting in the way. It can look like you're searching for validation, and while I get the excitement – I have ridden with pros on bike launches in choreographed environments, and it is undoubtedly a thrill seeing them in the flesh – I find the excitement is enough in just seeing them fly by.
Just let them do their 9-5 in peace; the life of a pro cyclist is hard enough without having every Tom, Dick, or Harry making life more sketchy.
To close, in Steve Cummings' autobiography The Break: Life as a Cycling Maverick, he details life as a young professional, with some things to bear in mind if you ever happen to find yourself sharing the road with your sporting idols:
"For some reason I was late getting to the camp, and my roommate Ludo Dierckxens was even later because he’d only been signed by the team at the last minute. But far from getting some high-intensity training to make up for lost time, the rides Landbouwkrediet asked us to do were crazy easy, to the point where often as I headed to the hotel lift after our morning’s training, I would be saying to myself 'f******g hell, we’re not even touching the pedals.'
"Ludo and I were so concerned we were under-training, we both opted to stay on for another week after the camp and we went out for high-power rides instead with the top-level Fasso Bortolo squad, who were getting in their early season training in a nearby resort and whose roster featured big name Classics guys like Juan Antonio Flecha, Fabian Cancellara, Filippo Pozzato…we’d sit at the back of their group, trying to keep out of the way and hoping nobody’d notice us. Hardly a glamourous way of getting the miles in, but far better than the work-outs we’d been getting in the previous week with our own team."
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