On Sunday, Jonas Vingegaard was crowned Vuelta champion after the final stage in Madrid was neutralised before the riders entered the finishing circuit.\u00a0The final official podium ceremony was also cancelled.<\/p>\n
The disruption followed neutralisations<\/a> and stage shortenings on three other stages, including the race’s sole individual time trial. Other incidents included the Israel-Premier Tech team being held up during the Team Time Trial, and several riders crashing due to protestors in or around the road. At least one rider, Movistar’s Javier Romo, abandoned due to the injuries sustained in a crash caused by a protestor.<\/p>\n Plugge, a former journalist and commentator, took over the Dutch team in 2012 when Rabobank withdrew as title sponsors following a series of doping scandals. The team subsequently became known as Belkin, Lotto-Jumbo and Jumbo-Visma before adopting its current name. The team has since won nine Grand Tours and\u00a0become one of the most successful outfits in the history of the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plugge is also the former head of the AIGCP, a union representing professional cycling teams, and has been a public face of the\u00a0Saudi Arabian-funded\u00a0One Cycling\u00a0proposal that seeks to reshape and organise the professional cycling calendar.<\/p>\n “As far as I’m concerned, the UCI should have given the Vuelta more support much earlier,” Plugge said.<\/p>\n “I’m not worried about the sport yet.\u00a0This is\u00a0something that went beyond\u00a0sport,\u00a0something arose in Spain. Normally, the demonstrations are always done with respect for the sport.”<\/p>\n The protestors in Spain were informally supported by the government, with Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez praising their courage and several regional governments boycotting the ceremonies at the start and finish of stages. Following the race, the UCI and Spanish Government engaged in a heated war of words<\/a> over their respective responsibilities and the place for sporting neutrality in light of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.\u00a0<\/p>\n Barcelona, which is due to host the Grand Depart of the Tour de France next year, and Gran Canaria, which is due to host the finale of next year’s Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, have since stated<\/a> they will not host either event if Israel-Premier Tech is invited to the race, putting next year’s race routes in jeopardy.<\/p>\n Plugge’s criticism of\u00a0the protestors’ cause as well as their methods goes further than the statements made by most riders and other managers. It also put his star rider Wout van Aert in\u00a0bother.<\/p>\n In his weekly Instagram photo-dump, Van Aert included this photo of a Canadian poster calling on spectators to say ‘No to the Israeli team’ in reference to Israel-Premier Tech who were competing in\u00a0Montreal and Quebec at the weekend.<\/p>\n As is the Belgian’s style, his post was light on a caption giving us no additional information to go off until yesterday when the post was suddenly deleted without explanation. Whether it was deleted voluntarily or not isn’t clear.\u00a0But Van Aert signed a ‘lifetime’ contract<\/a> with Visma-Lease a Bike earlier in the year, making it\u00a0unlikely there will be any argument played out in public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visma-Lease a Bike general manager Richard Plugge has further criticised the pro-Palestinian protestors who disrupted the Vuelta a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-144269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/screenshot-2025-09-17-145327.png\" "\\"Screenshot")
Screenshot 2025-09-10 112330 (credit: Wout van Aert\/Instagram)<\/p>\n