Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, the two leaders of the 2026 Tour de France, underwent unexpected doping controls in the middle of the night, provoking the anger of their teams in the middle of the mountains, according to Le Parisien.
Vingegaard was woken up at 2 a.m. and Pogačar at 5 a.m., disrupting the athletes’ crucial recovery before the decisive stages, despite the legality of the procedure between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
This intrusion sparked a strong reaction from the UNCP, which denounced a lack of common sense in the face of the physical demands of modern cycling.
“I slept 4 hours last night,” Pogacar explained. It was the check at 5 a.m. I always go to bed late. It was a big shock for me to only have 4 hours of sleep,” said the four-time Tour winner who is already tested every day as a yellow jersey.
“I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was relaxing, listening to some old Eminem hits. And I made coffees. I arrived “over-caffeinated” this morning. It was really not pleasant to wake up in the middle of sweet dreams,” he said, remaining visibly in a very good mood.
“I also feel sorry for the guys who come to check. Because I imagine some riders get mad at them, but it’s not their fault. It’s the one of the guys who send them. The guys who control us are just doing their job,” he said.
“I go to doping control every day when I wear the yellow jersey. And what’s more, they come randomly in the morning during the Tour. And today, they chose the night,” he added.
On the Tour de France, controls are carried out by the International Testing Agency (ITA), an independent body to which the International Cycling Union (UCI) has delegated its anti-doping program in 2021.
