Paris (France) (AFP) – As at the Worlds, the European Cycling Championships will be held without headsets from Saturday in Slovenia. While some believe that this ban makes racing more unbridled and interesting, it has little chance of becoming widespread.
Published on: 02/10/2026 - 16:30
Removing earpieces, which allow runners to communicate with their sports directors, is a sea serpent that regularly resurfaces without any real progress being made on the subject.
In Montreal, the thrilling scenario of the women's and men's races at the Worlds put a coin back into the machine, with some making the direct link between the absence of earpieces and the spectacle offered, as during the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
"It's the best, running on instinct, without earpieces. It always results in great races. I'm a fan," said Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel, bronze medalist.
“Me too,” said, sharing Van der Poel’s words on social media, the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) David Lappartient, who has long campaigned for the removal or limitation of radios in force in the peloton since 1990.
The UCI first banned earpieces at the Innsbruck World Championships in 2018, with the aim of making races less predictable.
In 2024, it tested an expansion to professional WorldTour races by limiting the wearing of headsets to two riders per team during the Tour of Poland.
Some applauded, like Marc Madiot, president of Groupama-FDJ, for whom the earpieces transformed the runners into “remote-controlled robots”.
“Huge farce”
But other team bosses rushed in. Spearhead of the revolt, Richard Plugge, the boss of the Visma-Lease a bike training, deplored "a huge farce" which would, according to him, put the riders in danger.
In recent years, the debate, beyond the potential impact on the attractiveness of competitions, has slipped more and more into the area of safety, in particular after a succession of violent falls at the start of 2024 involving several stars like Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel.
Critics of earbuds point out that they can be a source of distraction for runners and an incentive to take more risks when all sports directors give the same instruction to place themselves at the front.
Defenders of radio believe that it is, on the contrary, an essential element for security. “If a tree falls on the road or a car is parked incorrectly, what do you do to warn the runner?”, asked Julien Jurdie, sports director at Decathlon CMA CGM, during Paris-Roubaix, deeming the removal of the earpieces “unimaginable”.
A single channel?
Thomas Voeckler, the coach of the French team, who has "always been against the headset" because "the races are more beautiful without it", is not unfavorable to "a single channel in several languages to only warn of dangers".
But he agrees that, overall, most riders are more "for the earpiece," as is the AIGCP, the association of professional teams.
“We need it for our safety,” Cofidis runner Benjamin Thomas explains to AFP, even if he agrees that “overinformation” often leads to “locked races” and “scenarios known in advance.”
“When you do a stage of the Tour de France, when you cross 40 villages, when you have 70 roundabouts, 120 islands, narrowings, speed bumps, you cannot learn everything by heart. We need this information to avoid falls.”
Faced with blockages, the UCI has recently reoriented its thinking in terms of safety towards the deployment of yellow cards or the limitation of gear ratios.
“It’s a bit of resignation,” underlines Benjamin Thomas, also in favor of a common channel for security.
"It's a track that I would like to explore. It would give more meaning to the race. It would be beautiful, a bit like amateur races. When I won at the Giro (in 2024), no one told me in the headset that I had to attack. And in the end, it will perhaps be the best victory of my career. It's proof that you have to follow your instinct."
© 2026 AFP
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