The Bora-hansgrohe team of Peter Sagan have announced that they are protesting the decision made by the commissaires panel to disqualify the World Champion from the Tour de France.

The disqualification was in relation to a crash in the closing stages of the fourth stage from Mondorf-les-Bains to Vittel which the race jury deemed to have been caused by Sagan.

The Bora-hansgrohe team released a statement saying: “The team disagrees with the decision and protested it officially.”

“Peter Sagan rejected to have caused, or in any way intended to cause the crash of Mark Cavendish on the final 200m of the stage. Peter stayed on his line in the sprint and could not see Cavendish on the right side. The team applied for a redress of Peter Sagan’s result in stage 4.”

The news of the disqualification was announced over an hour after the end of the stage, after analysis of footage of the crash by the commissaires panel.

“We decided to disqualify Peter Sagan from the 2017 Tour de France because he endangered seriously several other riders including Mark Cavendish in the final meters of the sprint which happened in Vittel”, president commissaire Philippe Mariën stated. “We apply article 12.104 of the UCI regulations which allow us to disqualify a rider.”

Sagan said afterwards that he had not deliberately tried to knock Cavendish off his bike, but that the Manxman had ridden into him.

“In the sprint I didn’t know that Mark Cavendish was behind me,” said Sagan. “He was coming from the right side, and I was trying to go on Kristoff’s wheel. Mark was coming really fast from the back and I just didn’t have time to react and to go left. He came into me and he went into the fence.”

“When I was told after the finish that Mark had crashed, I went straight away to find out how he was doing. We are friends and colleagues in the peloton and crashes like that are never nice. I hope Mark recovers soon.”

27 COMMENTS

  1. It’s all political Business.. Sagan’s getting too much attention.. sponsors can’t stand it” look back at the 1998 tour Marco Pantani getting all the attention and camera time.. sponsors said you better make this stop!! And they did.. Tour de France is nothing Big business!!

    • The elbow is only part of it, moving right and taking the space that Cavendish had caused the crash. The elbow, well, for balance or intentional is hard to say.

    • He was simply following the trajectory that Demarre started. If he’d stayed straight or went left, he would have crashed into someone else. Cav should not have been trying to squeeze through where there was no space.

  2. I am disappointed in the panel’s decision. It seems to me they took Sagan out of the race to appease someone rather than standing up for what was right. Everybody loses.

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