Tadej Pogačar has said he “totally accepts” anti-doping regulations if they are “necessary to prove that we are riding clean” after he was tested in the early hours before stage 15 of the Tour de France.
The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider and yellow jersey said that this year has been “very strange” with testing, culminating in he and second-placed Jonas Vingegaard being woken up for tests on Sunday morning, mid-race.
The pair appeared to be the only riders tested in such an unusual way. The UCI’s anti-doping rules, Article 5.2 reads: “The UCI may require any Rider over whom it has Testing authority, who has not retired, including Riders serving a period of Ineligibility, to provide a Sample at any time and at any place.”
An additional comment says: “Unless the rider has identified a sixty minute testing window between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., or has otherwise consented to testing during that period, the UCI will not test a rider during that period unless it has a serious and specific suspicion that the Rider may be engaged in doping.”
There has been no communication from the International Testing Agency (ITA), the body that runs anti-doping for the UCI, on the issue. The race leader is subject to a test every day post-stage, along with a random selection of other riders; they can also face other random tests through the Tour.
“They were really nice today, the doctor who woke me up,” Pogačar said in his post-stage press conference. “They were nice, they apologised, it’s not their fault that they come. I asked because I thought the window was 11pm to 6am they cannot come, but they replied to me that it’s a night control. I don’t argue, I hope I will sleep after. I couldn’t. It’s a little bit strange, but I accept it if this is necessary to prove that we are riding clean, then I totally accept it. I commit to it.
“But it’s shit when you sleep for four hours in the middle of a three week Tour. If Jonas, if he was tested at 2am in the morning, he probably slept less than four hours, or his deep sleep was ruined. It ruined the night. If this is what we have to do, then we do it.”
Stage winner Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) did not sound a conciliatory tone: “It’s pretty disrespectful. To be honest, I had it, I would send my team to wake them up to feel how it is. It’s something inhuman, it’s something that we should not accept as athletes. Everyone knows sleep is the only recovery ,moment we have, and if that gets disturbed. This is the hardest and the biggest race in the world. This is a shame that this happened, and I hope it doesn’t happen any more in the future.”
Pogačar, asked if he knew why he and Vingegaard had been targeted, said: “This year, it has been very strange with the testing in general. If I can sit here two more minutes I can explain. It has been going on strange with controlling, they’re doing different a little bit different testing than usual. They’re doing everything. They’re trying to do different things.
“For example, I counted how many controls I had at home from 1 January to end of Classics, when I was at home I was already waking up at 6am every morning to check the doorbell if someone was ringing because I had so many visits. I didn’t want to go for dinner or whatever or to supermarket because they were coming at random hours, not in our slot.”
The Slovenian also spoke of blood tests happening after races, including after Strade Bianche, which he won. A modification to the UCI’s testing and investigations regulations from last month reads: “If a blood sample is to be collected in a serum tube from the rider, sample collection shall not occur within sixty minutes of the rider’s training, participation in competition or other similar physical activity.”
“Then came also Strade Bianche, I had a blood test after the race,” Pogačar said. “This was really strange for me, because normally if there’s a blood test, the rule was before April 2026 that after you have a heat, sauna, hard session, there was a two hour window that you cannot test the blood. After Strade I did the press conference, I came to the control station one hour and a half after the finish and there were still six riders in front of me. All six riders did a blood test as well, so we needed to wait one hour. After one hour from the race they started to test. I think this was out of the rules, because Strade was before April.
“From April on they changed the rule that we can be tested one hour after the stage. It happened here at the Tour, they tested after some stages, the blood. Now, today happened.”
