By Julien Pretot
PARIS (Reuters) – In a sport that has a heavy doping past, any Tour de France winner is being put under scrutiny and Jonas Vingegaard was no exception after Saturday’s final time trial.
The 25-year-old Dane won two mountain stages in dominant fashion, greatly helped by his mighty Jumbo-Visma team, to dethrone two-time champion Tadej Pogacar.
The Dutch outfit crushed the opposition, taking six stages, including three for Wout van Aert, the stand-out rider of the peloton over three weeks.
Asked about his team’s performance and whether they were clean, Belgian Van Aert snapped.
“It’s such a shit question, it comes back every year,” he told reporters.
Asked to elaborate, Van Aert said: “Because we’re performing at this level, we have to defend ourselves, I don’t get it.
“We work super hard for this. Cycling has changed. I don’t like it that we keep on having to reply to this. We have to pass controls every moment of the year, not only at the Tour de France, also at our homes.
“We’re just training for it. If you just look through our team, how we’ve developed through these years, it hasn’t come from nowhere.”
Asked if he could be trusted, Vingegaard said: “We are totally clean, every one of us. I can say that to every one of you.
“None of us is taking anything illegal. I think why we’re so good is the preparation that we do. We take altitude camps to the next step. We do everything with material, food, and training. The team is the best within this. That’s why you have to trust.”
There has been no positive doping test on the Tour de France since Italian Luca Paolini’s sample returned positive for cocaine in 2015.
Before him, the previous case was that of Frank Schleck, who tested positive for a banned diuretic in 2012.
The 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions, however, were raced under a dark cloud of allegations and affairs.
Vingegaard’s compatriot, Michael Rasmussen, was kicked out of the 2007 Tour while wearing the yellow jersey after he had his contract terminated for lying on his training whereabouts by his team, Rabobank.
Rabobank pulled out of cycling in 2012 but the team remained under various sponsors until Jumbo-Visma took over in 2019.
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
