Tour de France 2026 ***Spoilers***

[misforturob]

From what I've seen the first 3 or 4 Visma riders go round the corner fine then Vingegaard crashes

 

[Dogtrousers]

Well, that seems clear. What's the punishment? I can't see that site from here because it's been cloudflared (aka cloudf'd) and cloudflare hates wobblies and gimps.

Didn't the UCI change from using WADA to some small startup a few years ago?

The site I linked is the French govt legislation website. As to what relevance, if any, it has to this incident I don't know. Maybe none.

The rest of the section burbles on about privacy, respect for private life and proportionality.

Maybe it's possible that Visma could say OK, show us your soupçons graves et concordats that justify you waking our rider at 2am. I have no idea, I just found it interesting.

 

[Pblakeney]

Discussed on The Move. Were it Wimbledon or Messi testing at ridiculous hours wouldn't happen. No one is going to the winning team after the World Cup asking for a sample.

Players regularly get held back for testing after a Champions League final and it can take hours.
While they are listening to their teammates celebrating down the corridor.
(Don’t know about the WC).

 

[Pblakeney]

As for the crash, I think the road was poorly laid out and the sign posting non-existing, like the marshalling.
I feared the worst when I saw the lead rider (apologies for a name blank) go round there.

 

[M.R.M]

Think it was Mauro Schmid. It was all terrible today. Course design & doping control time.

 

[misforturob]

Middle of the night doping controls clearly shouldn't be a common thing but the possibility needs to be left open to discourage micro dosing

 

[Blazing Saddles]

The site I linked is the French govt legislation website. As to what relevance, if any, it has to this incident I don't know. Maybe none.

The rest of the section burbles on about privacy, respect for private life and proportionality.

Maybe it's possible that Visma could say OK, show us your soupçons graves et concordats that justify you waking our rider at 2am. I have no idea, I just found it interesting.

The UCI rules say pretty much the same thing.

 

[Dogtrousers]

So either:
1) Le Tour has a special protocol that overrides the 23:00-06:00 window mentioned in UCI 5.2.2 or ...
2) The testers had "serious and specific suspicion" about both Jonas (2am) and Pog (5am) or ...
3) The testers screwed up and overstepped the mark because they hadn't read the rules properly or thought they didn't apply to them.

Speaking as someone who has in the past been involved in policy compliance (in a very different area) my money's on 3.

Edit, there's another possibility: 4) JV and TP had each identified "a sixty (60) minute testing window between 11pm and 6am" but didn't realise it. This might have been in the small print of something that the teams signed and no one realised its significance.

 

[Pross]

Players regularly get held back for testing after a Champions League final and it can take hours.
While they are listening to their teammates celebrating down the corridor.
(Don’t know about the WC).

The key there is ‘after’. They aren’t being woken in the middle of the night before a game. That’s effectively the equivalent of the post-stage testing riders have to deal with every day and which no-one complains about, just that midweek football finishes later.

 

[Archie from BR]

Belgian pundit Michel Wuyts reckons it’s French sabotage because they now have a credible contender in Paul Seixas, as he got a full night’s zzzzzzzs.

I reckon the Frenchies just have the hump because the know they aint gonna win any stages this year and that includes young Paulie.

 

[mididoctors]

It shouldn't.

It really isn't fair on the riders to wake them up in the middle of their sleep during a hard stage race.

And it is entirely possible that without the resulting tiredness, Jonas might not have crashed today.

I have some sympathy with this and was the first to say so

 

[mididoctors]

It's going to be impossible to.quantify the effects of the lack of sleep on that crash .

 

[T4tomo]

From what I've seen the first 3 or 4 Visma riders go round the corner fine then Vingegaard crashes

The issue was they went round too quickly, but at the front with better sight lines, just made it round. The DS's should have been called that junction out, as going rounds the way they wnet on the outside, there was a a very narrow "prime racing line" due to cobbles, gutters and infrastructure. Would have been better of slowing further into the approach and taking the inside line.
Schmid only just made it thru solo. No idea whether it was highlighted as a danger point in the road book

 

[mididoctors]

Staying super focus all stage is draining

 

[mididoctors]

For the record it's amazing how few crashes there are. ... Just on vibes I think the stress of lack of sleep shouldn't be in the mix