AlUla Tour horror descent sparks safety alarm after brutal crash - 'Our bikes and thin tyres are not made for this'

Three riders came off at the most dangerous point. Laurenz Rex of Soudal Quick-Step, Fabien Grellier of TotalEnergies and Davide Stella of UAE Team Emirates all hit the deck in a crash so gruesome the broadcast camera turned away. 

The aftermath was worse still. Rex somehow finished the stage, only for hospital checks to reveal three fractured vertebrae. Grellier escaped fractures, but suffered a severe tear that required emergency surgery. Stella, just 19, also needed urgent medical treatment and reportedly broke his wrist.

According to Het Nieuwsblad witnesses said Stella had taken too many risks on the descent. He is believed to have clipped one of the reflective road studs embedded in the asphalt, puncturing a tyre and losing control at extreme speed. Estimates from riders suggest the chaos unfolded at around 100 kilometres per hour, with the two other riders taken down in the same moment.

Sprinter Fabio Jakobsen, riding behind with more caution, described the descent as a scenario where a small mistake could turn catastrophic. “I was braking in pulses, I think you have to do that in these steep and super fast descents, although I had the impression that some riders do not know that,” he said to Het Nieuwsblad. 

“My computer already showed 106 kilometres per hour. The guys in front of me were going even faster. I am especially happy and grateful that nobody slammed into the rock face on the side, because it could have been a lot worse.”

Jakobsen knows the consequences of sprint chaos better than most, after his 2020 crash in the Tour of Poland left him in a coma. That experience shapes how he approaches moments like this. “In a descent like that I avoid all risks. These speeds are insane,” he said. “Honestly I think our bikes and thin tyres are not made for this.”

His teammate Frits Biesterbos offered another jaw dropping number from the same drop. “I saw my top speed was 116 kilometres per hour. That is scary, yes,” he said. 

“I saw those three guys crash and that does something to you. In that moment you hope it is not too serious. You still keep going. Is that hard? You just do it, because crashing is unfortunately sometimes part of racing. I was extremely focused on my bike, because one mistake can be fatal. We saw that.”

The incident has again put safety front and centre. Team Picnic PostNL, home to Fabio Jakobsen and Frits Biesterbos, has been exploring protective innovations and is expected to begin testing an airbag system in the coming months.

Team staff recently told Domestique that technology can reduce the consequences of a crash, but it cannot solve the underlying issue: riders still have to decide what level of risk is acceptable when speeds are already beyond anyone’s real control.