🎥 Milan barges into Van der Poel, Stewart also takes a hit: "The UCI is not being very consistent"

Jake Stewart had delivered a brilliant lead-out for Pascal Ackermann. But in the final few hundred meters, the Israel-Premier Tech rider found himself being pushed out of the way by Milan. “If I’d gone for the sprint myself, I probably would’ve been a lot angrier,” the Brit told ITV before the start of stage 9. “But that’s cycling. He created the gap, and I dropped Ackie off in a good position. The biggest question mark here is the UCI’s decision and the inconsistency in cycling.”

Other sprinters have been penalized for much lighter offenses. “I don’t wish a relegation on anyone during a Tour de France sprint, but the UCI’s approach is just not consistent. As riders, we don’t really know what we can get away with and what we can’t. If I’d also given him a couple of shoulder bumps, I might have been penalized. If you only get two yellow cards before getting tossed out, that raises questions.” So do you only get penalized when the contact results in a crash? “That’s the impression, yes.”

Van der Poel was asked about the incident by Sporza. The Dutchman isn’t afraid of a bit of bumping in a sprint and didn’t see much wrong with the duel against Milan. “I saw the clip, but to me Jonathan definitely didn’t do anything wrong there,” he said. “I don’t know if the penalty was because of that moment, but if it was, then it definitely wasn’t deserved,” he added regarding the final sanction.

Milan also believed there wasn’t much going on. The Italian stage winner thinks the chaos of the sprint finale drew a lot of attention to him. “Not that much happened. It was just the kind of movements you always see in the final of a sprint. Maybe someone should look at the last kilometer instead of just the final 200 meters. It wasn’t only about me.”

There was a sense of disbelief on the Dutch In Het Wiel podcast. Roxane Knetemann was shocked by the level of physicality from the eventual stage winner. “Wow, wow, wow! I’m no softie, but that was some serious barging, pushing and pulling, focused entirely on Milan. That final shove against the Israel duo… It kind of breaks my sprinter’s heart. Because yes, it was a very professional way of making space, but officially, that’s not allowed.”

Marijn Abbenhuijs also noted that the green jersey wearer had multiple run-ins in the finale. “The first was at the roundabout. I actually think Groves was more at fault than Milan there. He came up the inside, and Milan was taken aback a bit. The second was with Mathieu van der Poel, there he clearly throws a shoulder. And the last one, right at the very end, was with those Israel-Premier Tech riders. That was an even more obvious shoulder bump.”

While Stewart implied that penalties are based on outcome, Gerrie Knetemann’s daughter also believes that a shove goes unpunished as long as no one crashes. “No one crashed, so there’s no card. But how do you justify that Danny van Poppel got a yellow card in stage 3, and this wasn’t punished? That just doesn’t make sense, does it?”