Tuesday, March 26, 2024 at 1:18 PM
Wout Poels was beaten by Iván García Cortina in the Tour of Catalonia. The Dutchman told this in In Course, a podcast by himself and Dylan van Baarle. After the incident, Poels filed a complaint with the competition jury.
“On the penultimate day, there was a technical descent in the course after thirteen kilometers,” Poels begins his story in the AD podcast In Course. “Everyone wants to sit in the front, so it was crowded. Then Iván Cortina from Movistar intervened just before the top. He sat up and delivered a punch to my upper arm. He hit me really hard and it hurt quite a bit. So I then had a big argument with him. I asked why he did that. He said it’s always the same old song with me. But I never ride uphill with him, because he has usually already ridden down it.”
The incident continued to haunt Poels for the rest of the ride. “I didn’t want to let him get away with that. We talk a lot with the CPA (the cycling union, ed.) about the safety of cycling. We often criticize organizers because the courses are not safe and then you have a rider who just really throws a punch. That is not possible. I found the jury and filed a complaint. He got away with a fine of 300 Swiss Francs and some UCI points deduction. That was a bit disappointing to me.”
Also a fight with Quintana
Poels did not only have a beef with García Cortina in the Tour of Catalonia. There was also a lesson with Nairo Quintana. “We rode on a final climb and I felt good. I wanted to move up, to be close to Tadej Pogacar, but no one let me in between. So I decided to ride behind Enric Mas (the leader of Movistar, ed.), next to Quintana.”
“That in itself is annoying for him, but I wasn’t riding so close to him that I tried to push him away. At one point he elbowed me and I got into an argument with him. I said that he was definitely on tramadol again, which is why he was acting so aggressive,” says Poels.
Quintana was removed from the results of the Tour de France in August 2022, in which he finished sixth, after a positive test for tramadol. This painkiller is not (yet) on the WADA prohibited list, but is banned by the UCI. After Quintana was left without a squad in 2023, Movistar offered him accommodation for the current season.
2024-03-26 12:18:00
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