19 hours ago
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Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France on the approach to the Alpine climb of Plateau de Solaison, just hours after being woken up in the early hours of Sunday morning to undergo doping controls.
The double Tour champion, who also won this year’s Giro d’Italia, climbed gingerly into a race ambulance, his right arm in a sling, after falling as the main peloton exited a roundabout in Bonneville.
Both Vingegaard and race leader Tadej Pogacar were subjected to unexpected nocturnal doping controls prior to stage 15, as the race headed into the Savoyarde Alps. Vingegaard was tested at 2am by the ITA (International Testing Agency) and spoke about the experience before the stage began.
“I was sleeping very well, but somebody knocked on my door at 2am,” the two-time Tour winner said. “It’s good that they test, but when it’s affecting performance and your sleep, I don’t think it’s so good.”
Whether Vingegaard’s crash was caused by fatigue and a moment’s inattention or down to a sudden movement in the peloton is not clear, although he was in the slipstream of several of his Visma-Lease-a-Bike teammates when he fell.
After a brief hiatus, the racing continued. Once again, Pogacar, this time with Remco Evenepoel and his UAE Emirates XRG teammate Isaac del Toro in tow, moved to the front of the race on the steep final climb, just as Vingegaard, cradling his right arm, gingerly climbed the steps to the Tour’s mobile hospital.
But for once the four-time winner did not have the upper hand and was unable to come past Evenepoel as the Belgian led home the sprint for the stage victory.
Behind the trio, Paul Seixas and Evenepoel’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate, Florian Lipowitz, gave chase but both lost almost a minute in the overall standings.
There is certain to be an angry reaction to the circumstances surrounding Vingegaard’s dramatic exit. Many in the peloton were dismayed by the timing of the tests, which brought a particularly strong reaction from the Dane’s teammate, Matteo Jorgenson.
“I was asked to keep my opinion on this to myself, but this is a complete lack of respect for the riders,” he said. “We are focusing heavily on recovery. That is hugely important, especially between two of the toughest mountain stages in this Tour. And then you get woken up at 2am. That makes me really furious.”
Olympic champion and stage winner Evenepoel was equally outraged. “They told me that it supposedly happened at two o’clock in the morning. That seems very strange to me, because that is not allowed according to the rules,” he said.
“It is good that our sport is, and remains, so on top of the anti-doping fight,” Vingegaard’s team manager, Richard Plugge, said. “Two o’clock in the night is not ideal, although it doesn’t matter what time of the night it is. It remains not ideal. The ITA will have their reasons for this. We have to follow suit.”
