Group boss suspended from girls’s Tour after Vollering penalty

SD Worx workforce’s Dutch rider Demi Vollering (MIGUEL RIOPA)

Danny Stam, the top of the SD Worx workforce, was thrown off the Girls’s Tour de France on Friday within the aftermath of a penalty for his star rider Demi Vollering.

After Vollering was hit with a 20 second penalty on Thursday that dropped her from second total to seventh, she and Stam reacted angrily.

On Friday, race commissaires banned Stam from the remainder of the race, which ends on Sunday.

On the fifth stage, Vollering suffered a puncture and dropped again to the workforce automotive pushed by Dutchman Stam.

As a race marshal shouted at her to cease, the Dutch rider tucked into the slipstream of the automotive, which was weaving between the autos of different groups, as she set off in pursuit of the peloton.

The commissaires mentioned on Friday that Stam was responsible of “significantly harmful overtaking of different vehicles and riders” and “inappropriate feedback made to the jury of commissaires”.

Earlier than Friday’s stage set off Vollering repeated that she had not executed something improper.

“I by no means felt at risk, I by no means felt I did one thing improper. I really feel it isn’t so good to get straight 20 seconds,” she mentioned on Eurosport.

Stam had earlier blasted the standard of the jury “for such an necessary race” and known as the decision “ridiculous”.

“I handed a few vehicles within the caravan, and so they discovered it an excessive amount of,” he mentioned, including that the commissaire “did not say a lot as a result of the window stayed closed”.

“Additionally they must look within the mirror and suppose somewhat bit about what is going on within the race,” mentioned Stam. “We are able to lose the Tour de France on 5 seconds.”

Final yr, Vollering completed second to her Dutch compatriot and nice rival Annemiek van Vleuten.

“It feels laborious. I hope it doesn’t change something. I hope the Tour will not be gained by 20 seconds,” mentioned Vollering.

“We are able to speak all day about this nevertheless it would not change something and that is a tragic story.”

The Worx workforce has dominated girls’s biking and Vollering’s team-mate Lotte Kopecky led going into Friday’s sixth stage.

Van Vleuten was fifth with a 12sec edge over Vollering.

The 2 have been driving cautiously forward of the weekend’s two probably pivotal closing phases: a brutal Pyrenean climb on Saturday and a time trial on Sunday.

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