Cycling Southland call right, if regrettable

Postponements can have sports competitors, and fans, fizzing with frustration. They can be all sorts of awkward and when enough people are affected the rescheduled event is sometimes diminished by the delay.

Hopefully that won’t be the case for the Gore to Invercargill cycling classic but, in any case, Cycling Southland does appear to have acted responsibly in shoving the event back from April 10.

Details are scant but the organisation is reviewing its processes, both internally and in conjunction with the Southland District Council.

This follows an incident in which two cyclists were hit on their way to an annual Southland time trial championship last Saturday. A 24-year-old man is facing dangerous driving charges as a result.

It’s important not to rush to premature judgments, but it’s imperative that organisers of major events prioritise safety.

In many respects Southland is a fine example of cycling getting this right. The major annual event, the historic Tour of Southland, has long been a shining example of a well-planned and executed event.

It’s full of inherent perils but these are reliably negotiated to a high standard.

Nevertheless, the inertia of sofar so-good thinking must be resisted.

Event organisers have a duty of care not only in a moral sense, but underlined in modern times by legislators who have established pointy accountabilities for lapses.

Sometimes these have been lamented as over-fussy meddling. This is a hard complaint to counter, considering that you can hardly count the serious or fatal accidents that have been avoided as a result.

What we might bear in mind, however, is the fallout that many events faced after the notorious 2001 cycle event Le Race, an annual bike event between Christchurch and Akaroa, in which competitor Vanessa Caldwell was struck and killed by an oncoming car as she approached a blind corner.

Event organiser Astrid Andersen faced criminal nuisance charges as a result and was initially fined $10,000 on the basis she had not briefed competitors sufficiently well regarding road closures.

That conviction was later quashed, but many other organisers nationwide were spooked at the time, suddenly all the more aware of their own vulnerabilities.

Atop which, there’s the small matter that organisers in many different sports, and other undertakings as well, now face a raft of regulations in presenting traffic management plans when they foray on to public roads.

Cycling is among the most potentially problematic. The riders are swift, numerous and motivated as all hell. The result – and this is generally a good thing – is nothing if not dynamic.

But that’s also inherently risky. And when cyclists come into collision with vehicles then the upshot, regardless of who was in the wrong in terms of the laws of the land, is that they do tend to be the losers under the laws of physics.

So if Cycling Southland sees a need to hit pause on an event such as the historic Gore to Invercargill classic, then displeasure may well be warranted, but reproach is not.

Event organisers have a duty of care not only in a moral sense, but underlined in modern times by legislators who have established pointy accountabilities for lapses.