{"id":561744,"date":"2026-07-22T01:57:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/561744\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T01:57:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:57:23","slug":"remco-evenepoel-pips-tadej-pogacar-again-as-tour-de-france-night-time-doping-test-row-deepens-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/561744\/","title":{"rendered":"Remco Evenepoel pips Tadej Pogacar again as Tour de France night-time doping test row deepens \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remco Evenepoel took back-to-back stage wins in the Tour de France<\/a>, and eroded some of Tadej Pogacar\u2019s overall lead, with victory in the stage 16 time trial from Evian to Thonon-les-Bains.<\/p>\n

The Olympic road and time trial champion, now second overall in the Tour, won on the Belgian national day from Pogacar by 28 seconds, to reduce the Slovenian\u2019s advantage to just over four and a half minutes. It was the third Tour time trial win of his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve been on this level so it feels amazing to be in this good shape in the Tour,\u201d Evene\u00adpoel said. The Belgian, who described Pogacar as a \u201csuperstar\u201d, added: \u201cIt\u2019s not over yet. There are still some hard stages to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pogacar\u2019s UAE Emirates XRG team-mate, Isaac del Toro, remains in third place, but Paul Seixas is now just 20 seconds away from a podium position after taking time on the Mexican rider in the race against the clock.<\/p>\n

Evenepoel\u2019s success was tempered by the loss of his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team-mate Florian Lipowitz, third in the Tour last year, who quit the race after crashing.<\/p>\n

Lipowitz crashed on a tight right-hand bend as he exited a downhill section of the course. He was carried away from the scene on a stretcher with a suspected broken collar bone. He was the second 2025 podium finisher \u2013 after Jonas Vingegaard on Sunday \u2013 to leave the race in 72 hours.<\/p>\n

While the race continued, the debate over the ITA drug testing agency\u2019s nocturnal activities, which involved 2am and 5am visits to Vingegaard and Pogacar respectively last Sunday, continued.<\/p>\n

The decision to test both riders outside the usual window of 6am to 11pm has been heavily criticised by some, despite the tests being authorised by the Paris prosecutor\u2019s office. \u201cWith a French judge it\u2019s not going to be hard to get that warrant,\u201d Jonathan Vaughters, manager of the EF Education EasyPost team, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to look at the history of the sport, the precedent and then the ITA comes and says: \u2018The two fastest riders are breaking records in the mountains, they\u2019re way faster than Lance Armstrong ever was, will you issue this?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cTo a French judge that is not a sports scientist, or a haematologist, I do not think it would be too difficult to convince them. I doubt if they had to fight that hard for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"YellowYellow jersey holder Tadej Pogacar in action during Tuesday’s time trial. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Vaughters insisted that he is \u201cvery supportive\u201d of the ITA. \u201cI think this is an example of them doing a good job. I just don\u2019t think you should read into the fact they got a warrant from a judge. My guess is the bar is not that high.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pascal Chanteur, vice-president of the CPA, the professional riders\u2019 association that has been critical of nocturnal testing, also questioned the Paris prosecutor\u2019s action, saying \u201cthe judge knew nothing of cycling\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CPA supports night-time testing if there\u2019s enough evidence,\u201d Chanteur said, suggesting also that there was no significance in Vingegaard being tested at 2am and Pogacar at 5am. \u201cThis is because of the ITA\u2019s limited resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

The French sports code specifies that testing procedures \u201cmust be \u00adcarried out under conditions that ensure strict proportionality between the infringement of the athlete\u2019s rights and the objectives of the fight against doping\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking in May this year to Reuters, Olivier Banuls, the ITA\u2019s director of testing, said: \u201cWe do a lot of testing but we don\u2019t do mass testing. To do mass testing is to throw money out the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

The outcome of the tests on both riders, however, remains unknown, leaving the Tour in a state of limbo, carrying on regardless, despite the cloud of suspicion that hangs over Pogacar who is closing in on what would be a record-equalling fifth Tour win.<\/p>\n

The former professional rider Christophe Bassons, who was a whistleblower during the Lance Armstrong era and who now works to combat the trafficking of doping products for the French ministry of sports, said that it was \u201cimpossible that nobody\u2019s cheating\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bassons told RMC sport: \u201cI think the absence of positive tests [in cycling] is not a good sign. If the testing methods have improved, then so have the methods of avoiding detection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banuls rejected the notion that a lack of positive tests in recent Tours de France implied that the sport was clean. \u201cWe are not blind,\u201d he told Reuters. \u201cWe are not naive. We are doing the best possible job to protect the sport and the clean athletes, and to try to find those who cheat.\u201d \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remco Evenepoel took back-to-back stage wins in the Tour de France, and eroded some of Tadej Pogacar\u2019s overall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112,42309],"class_list":["post-561744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}