Little beer? Not at Jumbo-Visma. Faced with suspicion as Jonas Vingegaard dominates the Tour de France head and shoulders, Dutch team boss Richard Plugge defended himself in an interview with The Team. He explains the attachment of his team to the smallest detail, at a level that he considers higher than other formations: “We were with a French team at our hotel during the rest day (Monday). We saw runners drinking large beers. »
“We, no one drank alcohol, because it breaks you, and even those who are not runners should not drink it,” he says. If Plugge does not name the competitors it is talking about, The Team indicates that it was Groupama-FDJ. The manager of the French team, Marc Madiot, protested these statements Friday to AFP. “The beer thing sucks, how dare you say something like that?” “, he was moved.
“What are they trying to hide? »
“It’s appallingly stupid. They weren’t at our table. A few members of the management drank a beer. But the runners were at Perrier, continues Madiot, reassembled like a cuckoo clock. What does it mean ? That our runners aren’t serious, that they don’t train? I remind you that the next day, our eight riders all finished in the top 80 of the time trial. You have to stop saying nonsense, it’s pathetic, pathetic! What are they trying to hide? »
Asked about the use of a “product, not banned, but the benefits of which have not been discovered by certain teams”, Plugge replied: “No, we don’t have anything like that. He repeats that some riders on his team use ketones, a controversial but not banned dietary supplement. “It’s a supplement like vitamin C or D that everyone can use, not a drug or something like that,” he comments, adding that yellow jersey Jonas Vingegaard personally refuses to take it.