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The Tour de France’s anti-doping crackdown reached at least six more teams Monday after controversial overnight tests involving Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard sparked concerns about riders’ sleep and recovery—and questions about the extent of doping suspicions.
The race leader is tested after every stage of the Tour, along with a targeted selection of other riders. Before the Tour, the ITA said it planned to conduct approximately 600 tests during the three week race.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Decathlon CMA CGM, Groupama-FDJ United, Picnic PostNL, Jayco-AlUla, and Bahrain Victorious were among the teams visited on Monday. Those tests took place within the standard testing window, which generally runs from 6am to 11pm, unlike the ones that woke Pogačar and Vingegaard the night before.
“I got four hours of sleep today,” Pogačar said on Sunday. “They were [at my door at] 5am in the morning. I always sleep late, it was a big shock for me to get four hours of sleep.”
Vingegaard questioned whether the early morning testing was being applied equally across all riders. “Of course it’s good that they test, but when it’s affecting performance and your sleep, I don’t think it’s so good,” Vingegaard said in an interview. “It has to be equal for everybody, I think. It’s not the nicest at 2am.”
Later on Sunday, Vingegaard crashed near the end of Stage 15, fracturing his collarbone and forcing him to abandon the race. Vingegaard and his team, Visma–Lease a Bike, have not said that the overnight test contributed to the crash.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed Monday that the ITA petitioned a judge to authorize the tests conducted on July 19. Under French law, testing between 11pm and 5am requires serious and corroborating suspicions that a rider has committed or is about to commit an anti-doping violation, as well as a risk that evidence could disappear. Officials have not disclosed why Pogačar and Vingegaard were specifically selected.
Jonathan Vaughters, the American manager of EF Education-EasyPost and a former rider who admitted to doping during his career, defended the approach, saying that late-night tests would catch substances that leave the blood quickly. “2am testing is one of the very effective ways to prevent peptide(EPO,hGH) and testosterone micro dosing,” Vaughters posted on Monday. “If UCI had tested us in 2001 at 2am? We’d all have been suspended and saved the sport 25 years of drama.”
Lance Armstrong—who was banned for life from cycling and had his seven Tour de France titles stripped in 2012 for rampant doping violations—chimed in as well, saying, “2am is a human rights issue. I’m speechless.”
Stage 15 winner Remco Evenepoel also criticized the timing, calling the tests “disrespectful” and urging the Professional Cyclists’ Association (CPA), the riders’ union, to respond.
In a press release, the CPA said it supports “a strong, credible, and effective anti-doping effort” but raised concerns about the impact of overnight testing on riders’ sleep and recovery.
“Professional riders are the first to want a clean sport,” the association said. “However, nighttime testing raises questions about its relevance. Interrupting their rest in the middle of the night for testing now warrants serious consideration.”
The Tour’s anti-doping program falls under the UCI, cycling’s global governing body. The UCI delegated its testing operations to the International Testing Agency (ITA) in 2021.
“The ITA is conscious that nighttime testing may be disruptive to riders’ rest and recovery,” the agency said on Monday, according to the Associated Press. “However, the ITA, on behalf of the UCI, has the responsibility to ensure the effectiveness of the cycling anti-doping program and the integrity of cycling races.”
The ITA said the results will be disclosed only if a test produces an apparent anti-doping rule violation, as Pogačar entered Tuesday’s Stage 16 in first place with a five-minute lead after Vingegaard withdrew. Pogačar has won the four of the last six Tour de France titles and the last two.
Neither the Tour de France nor the CPA responded to a request for comment.
The 1998 Festina affair, in which a team employee was caught transporting EPO and other banned substances during the Tour, helped spur the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency the following year. Armstrong then won the next seven Tours; winners in 2006 and 2010 were also stripped of their titles for doping violations, but the sport has not seen a similar drug scandal since.
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