Eighty two minutes. That’s how long Muriel Furrer lay undiscovered off the side of the road after she crashed during the junior women’s road race at the 2024 UCI Road World Championships in Zürich. By the time the 18-year-old was found and given medical assistance, it was too late. She died of a traumatic head injury. We’ll never know if earlier intervention would have prevented the tragic death, but we do know that for almost an hour and a half, the Swiss rider was missing and alone.
Eighteen months on, the investigation into her death has been closed, according to the public prosecutor’s office in Zürich. No third-party involvement or “criminally relevant breach of duty” was found. Furrer crashed alone on a descent, unseen, “out of sight of support vehicles, race officials, spectators, and marshals,” the report read. With no tracking equipment employed, and no race radios, there was no immediate sense that anything had gone wrong, until it became clear that it really had.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
I was in Zürich that day, covering the World Championships. There was no immediate evidence that anything was wrong. Cat Ferguson won the race on the Thursday, and I interviewed her in the mixed zone afterwards, unaware that on the course, Furrer was fighting for her life. Given the timeframe, it is likely she had not been found at this point. We were informed hours later by the UCI that she was in a critical condition, with little known about the incident. The next day, we were first told that the Worlds would continue as planned, then that she had died.
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The rest of the week was strange, as if we were just going through the motions. Nothing mattered once someone had died, but the show went on. Lotte Kopecky and Tadej Pogačar won the blue riband events, on the same course where Furrer crashed days before. What was supposed to be a festival of cycling felt empty; watching fans cheer left me cold.
At a press conference the day after she died, UCI president David Lappartient sidestepped questions on what could have been done differently, and downplayed the idea of race radios in Worlds events. It felt defensive, rather than understanding and sad. A race radio might not have saved Furrer, but who’s to say? Surely everything should be done to give riders support. Last week, Tom Pidcock said his race radio saved him after he crashed off the road at the Volta a Catalunya, something he was lucky to escape from without more serious injuries.
Cycling is a dangerous sport, one in which serious accidents happen. It takes place in the real world, not on closed circuits, and everything from weather to road defects can have an impact. Furrer’s death was more shocking than others, not just because she was so young, but because it took place at the UCI’s biggest event, on a circuit course, with the eyes of the world on it. If this race can’t be safe, what can be?
The investigation essentially concludes that this was a freak accident, which it was, but Furrer is not the only cyclist to die. In the last few years alone, there have been other high-profile incidents, like Gino Mäder’s at the Tour de Suisse, and Andre Dregé’s at the Tour of Austria. Both riders died after crashing on descents.
Some things have changed. The UCI has introduced GPS rider tracking for everyone at the Worlds, but this is yet to expand to all elite races. There has been a lot of fiddling around the edges, with new rules either in practice or floated on things like handlebars, helmets and gear ratios, but nothing revolutionary. Rider airbags have been suggested, but not implemented yet.
Accidents will continue in cycling, serious ones, it is part of the sport, sadly. However, I hope that no rider has to go through something like Furrer did ever again, missing, undiscovered. It might have been a freak accident, but it’s something we can’t let happen again. I hope lessons continue to be learned.
This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
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