Ben O’Connor’s Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale had been handed 4 yellow playing cards on stage 11 of the Vuelta a España, for “obstruction by by a rider to stop or delay the motion of one other rider or automobile”.
The French squad had been additionally fined for his or her half in an incident throughout Wednesday’s stage once they tried to cease any extra riders from going up the highway to hitch the break, in a transparent transfer to guard O’Connor’s place within the pink jersey. Had the break swelled to greater than 39, the concern would have been that extra riders may need moved up total, endangering the race lead.
Whereas Decathlon, on the entrance of the peloton, was doing this, Richard Carapaz (EF Training-EasyPost) crashed, though it’s not clear whether or not it was instantly due to the blocking. Carapaz sat in third, 4:32 down, earlier than stage 10. EF’s crew boss, Jonathan Vaughters, tweeted: “Accidents occur in biking. Everyone knows that. It’s a tough sport. However this was not an accident.”
Victor Lafay, Bruno Armirail and Geoffrey Bouchard and sports activities director Cyril Dessel had been all penalised for his or her half within the “obstruction”. Lafay was additionally fined 500 CHF and handed penalties within the totally different classifications, and Dessel was fined 1000 CHF.
The yellow playing cards don’t imply something for the time being, because the the UCI, biking’s governing physique, is trialling ‘yellow playing cards’ as a part of a variety of measures designed to make professional biking safer. Nevertheless, from subsequent 12 months, suspensions will probably be handed out based mostly on the variety of playing cards.
Yellow playing cards will proceed to be examined in races between August and the top of the present 12 months, with the goal of then introducing the system completely from 2025, together with the introduction of sanctions. Not like in soccer, yellow playing cards received’t bodily be proven for offences, however will proceed to be listed in post-race communications, alongside different fines and sanctions.
Barbara Guarischi grew to become the primary rider to obtain a yellow card beneath the brand new UCI ruling on the Tour de France Femmes earlier this month.
Three different yellow playing cards had been handed out on Wednesday, to Txomin Juaristi (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) for non-compliant positions on the bike and in addition sports activities director at Astana-Qazaqstan for irregular help to a rider on his crew.
O’Connor misplaced 37 seconds to his chasers on basic classification on stage 11, which was received by Eddie Dunbar (Jayco AlUla), with the previous later saying he “suffered”.
