Mathieu Van der Poel fined after ‘attacking’ two teenage girls at hotel

Mathieu van der Poel was initially summoned to court in Sutherland, a southern suburb of Sydney, on Tuesday. But the Dutch cyclist, charged with assault after an altercation with two teenage girls on Saturday evening in a hotel in Sydney, pleaded guilty on Monday. He has just been sentenced to a fine of 1,500 Australian dollars (1,010 euros), we learned from a judicial source.

The 27-year-old rider was arrested the night before the road race for the World Cycling Championships on Sunday in Wollongong (Australia), a queen event of which he was one of the big favorites. After taking the start, he gave up after about thirty kilometers.

“Yes, it’s true, there was a little argument”

On Sunday, without revealing the identity of Van der Poel, as usual, the New South Wales police confirmed that a 27-year-old man had been charged with two cases of “assault” against two teenage girls. . “At around 10.40pm on Saturday, a man was involved in a verbal altercation with two teenage girls aged 13 and 14 at a hotel in Brighton-Le-Sands. According to the alleged facts, he pushed the two teenagers, one falling to the ground and the other being thrown against a wall, causing a small scratch on her elbow, ”said the police.

At the start of the race in line, the runner had not denied the incident. “Yes, it’s true, there was a little argument,” he told reporters. I wanted to go to bed early last night but there were plenty of kids in the hotel hallway who kept knocking on my door. After a while, I was fed up. I told them, in a not very sympathetic way, to stop. It was then that the police were called and took me to the station. »

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