BMC Racing Team General Manager Jim Ochowicz has told VeloNews that he would like to see an end to wildcard teams in WorldTour races. He says there is a correlation between crashes and non-WorldTour team.

“As I said in my statement, we have to adhere to a higher standard than Pro Continental teams. And those standards, that are not met by Pro Continental teams, in some cases leads to situations in the race that wouldn’t be there otherwise.”

Ochowicz says in a statement that the smaller teams don’t have as good equipment as the elite teams have and this can cause crashes and that having too many riders in the bunch naturally causes crashes. He wants to see less teams invited to races rather than reducing the number of riders each team can field in a race.

“One step toward eliminating the chances of crashes and carnage is to reduce the size of the peloton,” he said. “In this case, the UCI needs to reduce the number of teams in the races — and not the number of riders on the team at the starting line, which is something being proposed for future seasons.”

“We cannot race three grand tours with less than nine riders on the start,” Ochowicz told VeloNews, responding to questions about his statement. “Or the one-day races with less than eight … If we start with less than nine riders, then in some situations you could end up with two or three riders at the finish line of grand tours … You won’t have enough people to do the jobs, the tasks at hand.”

“This can go a long ways toward reducing the danger and damage to riders during a long and rigorous racing season. Rider safety should be priority No. 1 going forward.”