The first sprint beef of the Tour de France bubbled up Saturday when tempers boiled as hot as the temperatures in the stage 8 bunch kick.<\/p>\n
Two riders were cited by UCI officials for \u201cintimidation\u201d in the sprint while a third blew his top at a rival.<\/p>\n
Because while Tim Merlier made it look easy Saturday with his second win in a row, the stage into Bergerac finished a hot mess.<\/p>\n
Biniam Girmay (NSN Cycling Team) was warned by officials for \u201cintimidation\u201d after he and Soren W\u00e6renskjold (Uno-X Mobility) wrestled their way around a series of right-handers in the final kilometers of the stage.<\/p>\n
Overhead footage shows the sprinters shoulder-to-shoulder at repeated moments as they fought for position ahead of the final acceleration.<\/p>\n
W\u00e6renskjold didn\u2019t hold back when he was asked about the altercation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe [Girmay] pushes like crazy. It makes me pretty angry. He pushed me throughout the entire corner,\u201d W\u00e6renskjold told TV2<\/em>.<\/em> \u201cIt was really irritating.<\/p>\n \u201cHe bumped into me several times and rode like a complete idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n W\u00e6renskjold was already out of position at the decisive final right-hander. However, the burly Norseman appears to have been pushed further off his line after a not-so-subtle barge by Bini.<\/p>\n Having already finished second in the bunch sprint behind Merlier on Friday, W\u00e6renskjold could barely contain his\u00a0rage at missing out again on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cI was too far back and lost my momentum through the corner. I think the incident needs to be reviewed,\u201d he said. \u201cHe [Girmay] behaves like an idiot the whole way.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s desperate riding, and it is totally undeserved that he finishes ahead of me.\u201d<\/p>\n Girmay told Eurosport<\/em> on Saturday afternoon that it was bunch sprint chaos as the peloton closed in on the finish.<\/p>\n After a day swealtering in the sun, tempers were frayed. And with the next guaranteed sprint not arriving until stage 11 next Wednesday, the stakes were extra-high.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took the last 500 meters so fast. It was the last moment, and nobody braked,\u201d Girmay said. \u201cA guy from Uno-X [i.e. W\u00e6renskjold] went into my handlebars.<\/p>\n \u2018Luckily I saved it, but I lost a lot of speed. That cost me.\u201d<\/p>\n Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) was also warned by UCI officials for \u201cintimidation\u201d in the sprint on Saturday in an incident not caught on TV cameras.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s hoping tempers \u2013 and temperatures \u2013 cool down before the next mass kick at this Tour de France.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/tour-de-france-sprints-are-getting-ugly\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2285665433.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated July 12, 2026 06:14AM The first sprint beef of the Tour de France bubbled up Saturday when tempers boiled as hot as the temperatures in the stage 8 bunch kick. Two riders were cited by UCI officials for \u201cintimidation\u201d in the sprint while a third blew his top at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2040605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2040605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2040605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2040605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2040605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}