Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\nVingegaard confirmed he had been awoken at 2am while Pogacar said that testers had been to his hotel at 5am.<\/p>\n
Both said that their sleep had been disturbed.<\/p>\n
Vingegaard\u2019s Visma-Lease a Bike team-mate Matteo Jorgenson said he was \u201cfurious\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a complete lack of respect for the riders,\u201d he told reporters. The International Testing Agency (ITA) was responsible for the controls and issued a statement defending its actions, insisting that it had to conduct night-time tests to ensure it operates an \u201ceffective\u201d anti-doping programme to protect \u201cthe integrity of cycling races\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said that its \u201ctesting activities\u201d were \u201csubject to the safeguards established under the World Anti-Doping Code, the UCI Anti-Doping Rules and French law\u201d.<\/p>\n
It also denied that it had discarded \u201criders\u2019 welfare, equity and fundamental rights\u201d.<\/p>\n
But the issue took on another dimension when Vingegaard crashed out with 20km left of Sunday\u2019s 183.9km stage from Champagnole in the Jura region to Plateau de Solaison in the Alps.<\/p>\n
Cycling has a dark and murky history with doping but has significantly cleaned up its act over the last 15 years.<\/p>\n
The days of looming suspicion over riders and whistleblowers revealing sordid details have been long left in the past.<\/p>\n
The last Tour winner to be stripped of a victory was Spaniard Alberto Contador in 2010.<\/p>\n
Lance Armstrong\u2019s seven victories from 1999 to 2005 were erased from the record books while fellow American Floyd Landis was also stripped of his 2006 victory.<\/p>\n
Dane Bjarne Riis and German Jan Ullrich admitted to doping in their respective 1996 and 1997 Tour wins, while suspicions remain over numerous other former Tour winners.<\/p>\n
But the current generation race in a different, cleaner era. Pogacar said that he was committed to demonstrating that the sport has changed. \u201cIf this is necessary to still prove that we are riding clean… then I totally accept it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But the peloton was still up in arms.<\/p>\n
His UAE Emirates-XRG team-mate Florian Vermeersch called the night-time testing \u201calmost inhuman and insane\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will say that we are complaining and whining, but it is ridiculous,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel was celebrating his first road stage victory at the Tour on Sunday but was still fuming about the testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something we actually should and could not accept as athletes because everybody knows sleep is the only recovery moment that we have in the night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Stage winner Remco Evenepoel of Belgium and Team Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe reacts after the 113th Tour de France 2026, Stage 15 a 183.9km a 155.3km stage from Champagnole to Plateau de Solaison 1501m \/ #UCIWT \/ on July 19, 2026 in Plateau de Solaison, France.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that gets disturbed… this is the hardest and the biggest race in the world, it makes it even harder.\u201d For Richard Plugge, the managing director of Vingegaard\u2019s Visma team, it is simply a necessary evil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know this is possible. These are the rules,\u201d he told Dutch cycling news platform Wielerflits.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom one minute before the start of the Tour until the finish in Paris, checks can take place 24 hours a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is stated in the rules. So you know this can happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that it is happening is also a good sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep saying it: because in this sport we do everything we can — much more than in many other sports — to ensure that cycling remains fair.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Professional riders and anti-doping testers are at loggerheads at the Tour de France after former winner Jonas Vingegaard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[2620,175833,64,63,386528,784,386522,386527,386523,196559,386529,386524,386533,172961,90670,386530,63661,386531,386526,386525,2591,386521,386520,8396,21528,85,386532],"class_list":["post-811548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-alberto-contador","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cleaner-era","tag-cycling","tag-cycling-news-platform","tag-cycling-races","tag-cyclists-rage","tag-florian-vermeersch","tag-floyd-landis","tag-french-law","tag-fundamental-rights","tag-jan-ullrich","tag-lance-armstrong","tag-looming-suspicion","tag-matteo-jorgenson","tag-night-time-control","tag-night-time-testing","tag-night-time-tests","tag-paris","tag-professional-riders","tag-recovery-moment","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-richard-plugge","tag-sports","tag-testing-activities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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