Tour de France 2020: Wout van Aert fined for offensive gesture by Tour de France organisers
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Updated 10/09/2020 at 14:36 GMT
Wout van Aert has been fined for 'flipping the bird' at Peter Sagan after the pair's clash during the sprint finish in Stage 11 of the Tour de France.
Team Jumbo rider Belgium's Wout van Aert (C) yells at Team Bora rider Slovakia's Peter Sagan (2nd-L) after the final sprint at the end of the 11th stage of the 107th edition of the Tour de France cycling race
Image credit: Getty Images
Wout van Aert has been fined 200CHF (£169) for making an offensive gesture during Wednesday's Stage 11 of the Tour de France.
Van Aert 'flipped the bird' at Peter Sagan after crossing the line, after the Slovakian had almost caused a crash with what Tour organisers later deemed a dangerous manouevre.
Sagan was demoted from second to 85th in the stage results and fined 500CHF.
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Wiggins says Sagan's choice of line was reason for dangerous situation
Immediately after the stage Van Aert didn’t hold back with his comments, explaining that the immediate reaction from the Slovakian was not to apologise.
“Afterwards I tried to say to him that it was not done and that I didn’t like what he was doing, but the only thing that came back was very strong (swear) words so it was hard to have a conversation."
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Sagan barges Van Aert, Ewan triumphs in stunning sprint finish
“It’s a really weird way of thinking,” Van Aert continued. “I’m also a good bike handler, but it never comes in my mind to create space like that.
There wasn’t a gap and if you use your elbows to open it up… I think it’s completely against the rules, for me it’s not reasonable and not done.
“I think the team leaders will talk about it. For sure we need to focus on the race for the further stages, but I think the UCI and the race organisers saw the images as well. I think the problem is if they don’t do anything with this then, yeah."
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Van Aert on Sagan – There wasn’t a gap, I’d never think of cycling like that
"We had a good example a few weeks ago (Fabio Jakobsen’s crash at the Tour of Poland), it’s not too long ago actually, and if we go on like this then maybe everyone thinks that everything is allowed," Van Aert added.
"For me it’s not done. I think the barriers are quite safe here and luckily we didn’t touch them. I hope that they are stable enough, but that was nothing to do with the barriers, it was just that I was sprinting on one line and… he didn’t.”
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Furious Van Aert makes it VERY clear what he thinks of Sagan after dangerous sprint finish
Analysing the incident on live broadcast, commentator Carlton Kirby said:
"You could see Van Aert moving over to the right hand side and Sagan was boxed in.
"Sagan needs to make a gap and there's that shove, I can't believe he'll get away with that because he hampered a few others."
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'There's the shove!' Analysis of the four-way photo finish that saw Sagan penalised
After a review Sagan was demoted to the back of the group on the day, finishing 85th and slipping further behind Sam Bennett in the points classification.
Sagan was disqualified from the Tour de France in 2017 for elbowing Mark Cavendish into the barriers.
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