UAE have a striking solution for Pogacar after Vingegaard’s training crash

It was headline news at the end of January when Visma | Lease a Bike confirmed that Vingegaard had crashed in Spain. The story was that he was being followed by an amateur rider, who later responded as follows: “You can be professional, but you can also stay humble. Jonas crashed when he tried to drop me at the Queen’s Fountain, and when I stopped to ask how he was, he got angry at me because I had followed him.”

The cycling world couldn’t stop talking about the debate that followed, but UAE do not appear to have been overly influenced by it. Team boss Joxean Fernandez ‘Matxin’ shared his view in conversation with AS: “This is a matter of timing and getting as many views as possible — something that’s very fashionable right now.”

“I’ve seen some very complicated situations where many cyclists, carried away by excitement, start filming in the middle of the road,” the Basque continued. “If a cyclist responds rudely in that moment because he sees a car coming the other way while you’re riding in the oncoming lane, then the person who responds is probably the one who comes off worst — even though the context is completely different. What we see, we interpret as right or wrong. Sometimes we don’t take the full context into account,” Matxin added.

Unhelpfully for UAE, Tadej Pogacar recently found himself in a similar situation as well. The Slovenian explained that he received an unfriendly gesture from a “fan” after asking him to wait until he had finished a conversation.

“I’m the first to defend the fans, and I’m the first to stop every day for photos and to talk to everyone,” Matxin said. “But sometimes you have to understand that you don’t go to someone’s workplace to film them while they’re doing their job. And that workplace is here, on the bike. Even if it’s leisure time for them, you have to understand it’s working time for the rider.”

The UAE boss admits it is difficult to strike the right balance — but his team have taken measures in training. “We went with a motorbike to protect Tadej because we ride in small groups,” Matxin explained. “If you ride with 20 people, the cars behind can’t pass, so we ride in groups of eight. But if other cyclists join, the groups become too big.”

What UAE do next depends on the situation, he says — “Who decides whether they’re allowed to come along, or whether we need to ride in groups of eight to prevent this?” — but one thing is clear: “We place a motorbike behind Tadej, so that small group is respected and cars can pass without creating a traffic jam stretching for kilometres.”