Analyst slams UCI after Van der Poel's Tour de Suisse fine: 'Go do your job!'

On Saturday, the men's Tour de Suisse served up an absolute nail-biter of a time trial. In the end, Tadej Pogačar beat Mathieu van der Poel by the very narrowest of margins. The Dutchman spent a good while in the hot seat, and did so without a shirt on. Despite the heat, that earned him a fine from the UCI — much to the displeasure of analyst and former pro Roxane Knetemann.

0.31 seconds: that's how much faster Pogačar was than the Dutch Alpecin-Premier Tech rider. Van der Poel could barely believe it, but he really had been beaten. After the time trial, a fine was then added on top: Van der Poel had sat shirtless in the hot seat.

According to the rules, that's (apparently) not allowed. "The literal translation of the rule is that you bring the sport into disrepute by sitting in the hot seat like that," Knetemann said on the In Het Wiel podcast. "To me, it looked a bit like: he'd posted the fastest time, so afterwards he took his suit off."

Because, as the Dutchwoman points out: "A fast time trial skinsuit isn't exactly cooling, either. To me, it looked like he was cooling down in his speedsuit, without a cooling vest. So that's the picture we get, isn't it? And apparently that's against the rules. It's pretty laughable. And the UCI hands out a fine for it. Go and do your job, is what I think!" she said firmly.

Knetemann also turns her attention to Alpecin-Premier Tech themselves. "Ultimately, the team don't want Mathieu sitting there like that either, of course. As a team, you simply get less exposure that way. That's actually what the team should be worried about, and what they should have said to Mathieu."

And Mathieu himself? "He should have thought of that too, along the lines of: I'm in the hot seat, so for my sponsor it might be much better if I sit here with a shirt on." Knetemann felt it would have made far more sense for his team, rather than the UCI, to have taken issue with the incident. "Much more sense," even.

"Are we all just a bit prudish, those of us who watch cycling?" was her parting shot.