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The last two days have been dominated by one theme at the Tour de France following the nighttime anti-doping tests for Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard. Neither rider has been accused of any anti-doping rule violation, and no positive test has been reported.
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The tests were carried out by the ITA, with French authorities granting clearance for the anti-doping body to act on the eve of stage 15. Vingegaard was tested at 2 am, and Pogačar received a knock at the door at 5 am.
Since then, the press and social media have been awash with reactions, updates and opinions. Then, last night Jonathan Vaughters posted on Twitter stating the following:
As I’m sure everyone on this newsletter knows, Vaughters rode in an era defined by doping and confessed to his part before founding Slipstream Sports and embarking on trying to restore credibility to the sport.
Read more: Cycling Transfers main index page: All the moves for 2027
This morning, at the start of stage 16 in Évian-les-Bains, I headed to the EF Education-EasyPost team bus to ask him about the tests, what they mean for the sport, where we are in terms of the continued fight against doping and how he sees the situation playing out.
Daniel Benson: Let’s start with your Tweet from last night. What prompted you to post that?
Jonathan Vaughters: I just saw a lot of people who were making or taking a perspective that I felt was unfair. Clearly some of them had limited scientific knowledge. So I thought that I’d share an opinion that’s based on what I think is best for the sport, and what sets the sport apart in a good way from any other sport was needed. And then, I wanted to shed some light on why this was done this way, and why they chose to come in at 2 a.m., because it’s not something that you would intuitively understand.
Daniel Benson: What do you make of the punditry or ex-pro element that calls the nighttime testing ‘inhumane’ or a ‘human rights violation’?
Jonathan Vaughters: I can only speak for myself as an ex-pro. As a rider who was on US Postal Service, many from my generation would have full knowledge of exactly why they would test at 2 am and exactly why, if they had tested at 2 am when I was racing, we would have tested positive. That would have probably saved the sport some 25 years of some pretty hellish drama.