
Part of the problem does, IMO sit with the organisers. As I'm not that fond of racing I don't do too much of it. I decided to improve my seeding index by doing the Cansa race on Saturday. I was seeded in the "D" bunch and noticed many non-athletic people in the group. I also noticed many non-athletic people in the "c" and "b" bunches. This however does not mean that these people cannot ride though.
I reached the front of the bunch in the first 5kms of the ride without even trying and stayed there for pretty much the rest of the ride. (I hate wheelsitters)
About 15kms into the ride I needed to take a couple of minutes behind some guys to recover from Lactic Acid build-up and moved over to the right. Some poor bugger was half-wheeling me though and our wheels touched. Game over for him and about 8 other riders who came down as a result of his inexperience. I also felt awful. (we were doing 40km/h at the time coz I checked)
We caught the "C" group main bunch at about 50km and they were all over the road. I had to ask everybody in the group to move over to the left do the faster "D" group could come through. (We then inherited about half of the "C" group). We caught a major bit of the "B" group at +-70km on a hill (albeit a slight one) and they were right across the road. Literally. While it was a great opportunity to break the D+C group in 2, I still had to pass this lot and had to try an weave my way through to the front. There were cars approaching from the front and I was just waiting for everyone to try and compress themselves back into the left side of the road. And another time I was actually forced off the road when some guys surged at the front and the fekking wheelsitters did not want to get dropped so the swamped the four guys who had just pulled them up a hill for 20kms. All I can say is thanks to my MTB training and thanks to the puncture gods. (I actually had to do a bunnyhop to get back on the tar.)
So what I think this evidences as that it actually is a bit of both. Organisers think that putting marshalls at intersections is addressing the safety issue. (By the way, these marshalls did a sterling job and I thank them for their efforts). People must be seeded on the past performances and there is no way that some of the people seeded in front of me had the fitness or the experince to do a sub 3 100km race. Never. Also, people need to think a little more when they're on their bikes.
