The UCI came out in defense of the late-night dope tests that rocked the recent\u00a0Tour de France.<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Guardian<\/em>, UCI president David Lappartient said the \u201cout of hours\u201d tests performed on Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Poga\u010dar \u2013 the race\u2019s biggest stars \u2013 served as a warning shot.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always have suspicion in cycling, due to our past,\u201d Lappartient said Sunday. \u201cI know what has been done to fight against doping. Night testing is a tool in this fight, but it is not a tool to use every day. You must use it very exceptionally.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not suspicion about any rider, but it\u2019s a global message to the bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n Dope testing, and its timing, was the hottest topic of the final week of the men\u2019s Tour de France.<\/p>\n Vingegaard and Poga\u010dar were among a very select few who were tested in the dead of night \u2013 well outside of authorized hours \u2013 by International Testing Agency [ITA] officials ahead of a massive climbing stage in the Jura.<\/p>\n When Vingegaard crashed out the very next day on stage 15, the cycling world wondered whether a sleepless night played a role.<\/p>\n Lappartient told The Guardian<\/em> the exceptional overnight tests are an unfortunate but essential tool. They\u2019re an anti-doping measure that he supports.<\/p>\n Surprise out-of-hours tests help officials catch riders \u201cmicro-dosing\u201d illegal substances in an attempt to work around the thresholds of the biological passport system.<\/p>\n Jonathan Vaughters, CEO of EF Education-EasyPost, voiced his support for overnight controls for the very same reason when he chimed in on the dope debate during the Tour.<\/p>\n Vaughters and Tour de France boss Christian Prudhomme both said cycling should be thankful for such extreme scrutiny.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will not support something they [the ITA] do every night on the riders. The normal hours [of testing] are not at night,\u201d Lappartient told The Guardian. <\/em>\u201cHowever, we support the ITA if they have to do some specific test.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that, with micro-dosing EPO, that\u2019s something you can\u2019t detect six or seven hours after. So, for the riders to know that the ITA may come, that\u2019s always a fear,\u201d Lappartient said.<\/p>\n WADA forbids out-of-competition controls between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless specific legal conditions are met.<\/p>\n According to L\u2019\u00e9quipe<\/i>, officials obtained specific authorization from a French judge to conduct the early-hour tests at the Tour de France on the grounds of \u201cserious and consistent suspicions.\u201d<\/p>\n Lappartient told The Guardian<\/em> this week he supported night-time testing in such \u201cexceptional cases\u201d.<\/p>\n The \u201csuspicion\u201d required to just such a high-level sign-off may lead some to ponder the outcome of the tests performed on Poga\u010dar and Vingegaard \u2013 the two dominators of grand tour racing.<\/p>\n The ITA warned Velo<\/em> last week that any positive results might take weeks to show through.<\/p>\n On the flipside, no specific communications will be made of a negative result.<\/p>\n Lappartient was hopefully optimistic that no news, some two weeks removed from the tests, is good news.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ITA never make a press release about negative results, only about positive results,\u201d Lappartient said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see any press release in the Tour de France, so it seems there was nothing in the Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/uci-backs-controversial-dope-test-pogacar-vingegaard-tour-de-france\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2285578740-2-scaled.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated August 4, 2026 02:21AM The UCI came out in defense of the late-night dope tests that rocked the recent\u00a0Tour de France. Speaking to The Guardian, UCI president David Lappartient said the \u201cout of hours\u201d tests performed on Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Poga\u010dar \u2013 the race\u2019s biggest stars \u2013 served […]<\/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-2076566","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\/2076566","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=2076566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2076566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2076566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2076566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lappartient warns of microdosing threat<\/h2>\n
![\"UCI](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2288649948.jpg?width=2048&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
Vingegaard and Poga\u010dar subject to tests after legal sign-off<\/h2>\n