🎥 An angry Noa Isodore speaks about Route d'Occitanie relegation: 'That's what's bothering me'

The second stage of the Route d'Occitanie on Friday was a hectic one. Noa Isidore (Decathlon CMA CGM) took the win but was ultimately disqualified. Ronan Augé, a rider for Unibet Rose Rockets, took advantage of the situation and moved up from second place to claim his first stage victory.

Isidore was penalized for giving a rider from Auber 93 a nudge while preparing for the sprint. “It might have looked intense on live TV, but he actually didn’t move much. He wasn’t off balance and wasn’t about to fall.” It wasn’t a big deal,” he said in his defense afterward to the French media outlet DirectVelo.

"Either that, or I would have had to brake, and then I would have been completely boxed in, because the road narrowed right after that due to the fences. That's what's bothering me a little; I don't think it was a big deal," he repeats.

"To be honest, you see so many things happen in the peloton that this doesn't surprise me anymore… I won't name names, but one rider told me he went through the same thing yesterday, but oh well, it didn't make it on screen… The most frustrating thing is that the rider from Auber wasn’t even in the sprint, so it didn’t matter. We see much worse things happen every weekend.'

"If the UCI decides that we’re no longer allowed to touch any riders, it’ll be tough to manage the sprints. I’m curious to see how things go in the next few finishes," he continued. “It took them a long time to make a decision, and they just sat there in their truck… So I ended up leaving once the decision was made. I didn’t want to keep the whole team waiting any longer,” the Frenchman concluded.