Breakaway riders clashed with Jegat during stage 20 of the Tour: "Velasco called me names"

Jegat's move to join the early breakaway ultimately proved to be worth its weight in gold. The Frenchman had been in eleventh place in the GC for more than a week and saw the prestigious top ten spot becoming more and more within reach. Earlier in the final week of the Tour, however, the 26-year-old rider had already given up on a place among the top ten riders. “The top 10, I think it's over, we have to settle for eleventh place, but if they had told me that at the start, everyone would have signed up for it.”

Nevertheless, Jegat would reach the top 10 on the day before the final stage in Paris. Jegat ended up in the breakaway group that would eventually make it to the finish, with Kaden Groves as the strongest of the day. Jegat crossed the line in seventh place, six minutes ahead of the group containing all the other GC contenders. Among them was Ben O'Connor, who lost his tenth place and is now eleventh. With one stage to go in Paris, the difference between Jegat and O'Connor is just under two minutes.

The jump from eleventh to tenth was remarkable in itself, but it was the way it happened that was the subject of discussion. This had mainly to do with Jegat's colleagues, who disagreed with his presence in the breakaway group. "Some guys were yelling at him," Johan Bruyneel said in the podcast The Move. "They said he didn’t belong there... Of course, he belongs there; he was in eleventh place. About thirty minutes behind. This is also part of the race, isn't it? He just wants to try to get into the top ten."

Jegat was greeted with a few hand gestures and words. The reason? With Jegat at the front, the peloton would probably give the leading group less leeway, because they didn't want to give Jegat, as a contender for the GC, too much time. Given that Jegat was well behind in the GC, teams such as UAE Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike didn't see the need to chase after him. Only Jayco-Alula, O'Connor's team, wanted to chase.

“You can see how much it means,” Bruyneel said. “Especially for Jegat, but also for the French team TotalEnergies. It's been a long time since they had someone in the top ten. Even Jayco-AlUla had no riders left in the peloton. Unfortunately for O'Connor, Mauro Schmid got dropped due to a crash.” This held up the chase, giving Jegat the opportunity he had fought for.

The man himself revealed after the finish what he had been through during the attack. “Velasco (XDS-Astana, ed.) called me names. I don't speak Italian, but I understand perfectly what he said. We talk a lot about yellow cards, and he deserved one. Everyone is free to do what they want, which is a shame.”

The local rider also shared his story with L'Équipe, among others. "Velasco yelled all sorts of things at me,’ Jegat complained at the finish. Tim Wellens (UAE, ed.) and others told him he shouldn't have talked like that. Others said it was a shame I was there, but they understood. I did my best and it paid off, so of course I'm emotional, Jegat smiled. ‘I don't know if I deserve it, why me more than anyone else? It's my head and my legs that make the difference."

"How dare you join the breakaway? You can't do that, it's outrageous, really," laugh and joke Thijs Zonneveld and Hidde van Warmerdam in the podcast In de Waaier. Like Bruyneel, the two agree with Jegat's action and begin their analysis with irony. “Even the team leader of Picnic PostNL asked Frank van den Broek if he could ask Jegat to drop back.”

“This is really unbelievable nonsense,” the two continue in a serious tone. "As if Jegat, because he is in eleventh place, doesn't have the right to win the race or to try to finish in the top ten. Asking him to drop back is one thing, that's already bad enough... Are you going to ask Pogacar to take it easy on the climbs so that others have a chance, too? Stop it... Preventing riders from racing is the essence of the sport, isn't it?"

The duo finds Velasco's excessive reaction particularly unacceptable. Zonneveld: "What Velasco is doing is worthy of punishment. I find that very unpleasant. Intimidating, gesturing, and swearing, when all Jegat is doing is racing. And that's why they're here. He's only doing it because it's Jegat, a relatively unknown Frenchman from a small French team. As if he'd dare do that to van der Poel or van Aert. What a crybaby!," he concludes.