AFP
NOS Cycling•
Mathieu van der Poel has been acquitted on appeal for his confrontation in September with two teenage girls in his hotel the night before the World Cycling Championships on the road in Australia.
The 27-year-old Dutchman had appealed after two fines totaling just over a thousand euros had been imposed on him. He was also banned from entering the country for three years. Those penalties have now been swept aside.
The incident
The incident in the hotel happened after girls aged thirteen and fourteen made a noise in the hallway and knocked on Van der Poel’s door. He became frustrated because of this because he could not sleep just before his participation in the World Cup.
He pushed one girl against the wall in their room and pushed the other girl down, hurting her arm. The fact that Van der Poel had an important race ahead of him as a professional cyclist was not an extenuating circumstance for the court at the time.
Van der Poel regrets hotel incident: ‘Should have done it differently’
The appeal took a different view. The judge who overturned the verdict in Sydney on Tuesday called the behavior of the two girls “annoying”, it read The Daily Telegraph.
While Van der Poel’s actions were perceived as “disturbing”, there was a “significant level of provocation”. The judge also referred to “foolish behavior of children that was not supervised”.
He also stated that Van der Poel had indirectly already received a substantial punishment. He meant that Van der Poel soon had to withdraw from the road race in Wollongong after a sleepless night and the fact that he received a lot of negative publicity after the event.
