A few hundred meters from the finish it could for a brief moment appear as if Tadej Pogacar was a bit more generous this time. A four-man leading group was in front, and the Slovenian slowed down a bit and let the opponents pass briefly – but shortly afterwards the next attack followed, which again nobody could follow. With a decent sprint to the finish, Pogacar, 22, also achieved the day’s victory in the last difficult mountain stage to Luz Ardiden, and the work was practically done. If, after his dominant appearances in the past three weeks, there were any doubts that the Slovenian would win the Tour de France, as in the previous year, those were definitely gone at the end of that day.
There are only two flat stages and a short time trial to complete before the peloton arrives in Paris on Sunday evening, and Pogacar is more than five and a half minutes ahead of Dane Jonas Vingegaard (Team Jumbo) and Richard Carapaz (Ineos), who are fighting for second Only six seconds separate place. “It’s crazy that it worked again. I felt good and I’m totally happy,” said Pogacar after his third win of the day.
But this renewed triumph of the Slovenian was almost a minor matter on this tour day, especially since it was so expected. Because at the same time the doping issue, which cycling is so happy to declare to have been overcome, returned to the tour with full force.
On Thursday it became known that the evening before the team hotel of Bahrain Victorious, one of the strongest teams in the peloton and especially during this tour, the police raided. According to the Marseille public prosecutor’s office, an investigation was launched on July 3. It is about the suspicion of “acquisition, transport, possession, import of a prohibited substance or a prohibited method for use by an athlete without medical justification”.
Bahrain Victorious confirmed in an initial statement that the police had searched the premises. The team is “committed to the highest level of professionalism and compliance with all regulations” and will always “cooperate in a professional manner”. The officials would have requested the release of training data. All the required documents have been handed over, but the background to the action is not yet known. There were no arrests. “It was nothing special,” said team boss Milan Erzen to the specialist portal Cyclingnews: “You asked for the drivers’ training documents, checked the bus, and that was it.”
The Marseille public prosecutor’s office was already active during the tour last year
Is that it? It doesn’t look like that in view of the statement by the Marseille public prosecutor. It was already active in the previous year around the Tour of France. At that time, police officers visited the hotel of the Arkea Samsic team around the Colombian climber Nairo Quintana, the investigators found hypodermic needles and saline solutions, and two supervisors were taken into custody. In the end, neither the public prosecutor nor the French team answered inquiries about the further progress of these investigations.
But Bahrain Victorious is another dimension. The team has been a leader in the peloton since it was founded in 2017, not least thanks to generous alimony from the Kingdom of Bahrain. She also stood out on this tour. In the overall standings none of their drivers are right at the front because the captain Jack Haig had to leave the tour in the first week after a fall. But the Belgian Dylan Teuns and the Slovenian Matej Mohoric won difficult stages, the Italian Sonny Colbrelli was often found in breakaway groups, and the Dutch Wout Poels only lost the coveted mountain jersey to Pogacar during the last difficult stage in the Pyrenees.
However, it is not the first time that there has been excitement around the team about the doping issue. Two years ago the Bahrain professional Kristijan Koren and the Bahrain sports director Borut Bozic were banned in the context of the “Operation Aderlass” around the Erfurt blood doping ring of the sports medicine doctor Mark Schmidt. It was revealed that they had been one of Schmidt’s customers – albeit before their time with the Bahrain team. Team boss Erzen himself also appeared in the context of this affair, where he always denied that he had anything to do with illegal activities.
As part of the trial against Schmidt before the Munich Regional Court, in which the doctor was sentenced to four years and ten months in prison at the end of last year, it was alleged that Erzen had sent an SMS to the sports doctor in 2014. His lawyer explained that Erzen had no role in cycling between 2013 and 2016 and that the SMS to Schmidt had nothing to do with cycling. “Besides, there was never any form of collaboration between Erzen and Schmidt, and they never established a relationship with one another, either professionally or personally,” he said.
The team came into focus again in the spring. Then the French newspaper published The Parisian a longer text about the doubts about the strong performance of the team; The team boss of a competitor also put his concerns on record there anonymously. Bahrain boss Erzen clearly countered that too. “I’m not interested in what other team bosses say,” he said: “I can be 110 percent sure that we are sticking to the rules.”
When on Thursday, the morning after the raid in the team hotel, the field rolled for the start of the last stage of the Pyrenees, most of the drivers in Bahrain ignored the mixed zone. Sonny Colbrelli, actually a sprinter, but noticeably good on this tour among other things as third of the difficult alpine stage to Tignes, spoke up with a remarkable statement. Such a raid, the Italian champion stated, would happen if you hold high altitude training camps, prepare well and spend a lot of money: “We pay the price for our performance.”
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