“Go and do your job” - UCI slammed over “laughable” 500CHF fine for shirtless Mathieu van der Poel at Tour de Suisse

Mathieu van der Poel’s Tour de Suisse time-trial near miss has been followed by a UCI row after the Dutchman was fined 500CHF for sitting bare-chested in the hot seat.

Van der Poel had rolled down the upper half of his skinsuit after stage 4 in Aarburg, where he came within 0.04 seconds of beating Tadej Pogacar. The Alpecin - Premier Tech rider spent a long spell waiting to see whether his time would survive, only for Pogacar to edge him by the smallest official margin of the race.

The fine came after Van der Poel sat shirtless while cooling down in hot conditions. Roxane Knetemann, the former rider and Dutch cycling analyst, was sharply critical on In Het Wiel.

“A fast time-trial suit like that is not exactly cooling either,” Knetemann said. “To me, it looked like he was cooling down in his time-trial suit, without a cooling shirt. That is the image we get, right? But apparently that is a rule. It is pretty laughable. The UCI then gives a fine for that. Go and do your job, I think!”

The punishment appeared to fall under UCI rules around conduct and presentation in public race areas, with the hot seat treated as part of the official race setting.

Knetemann said the rule translated into a far heavier accusation than the scene itself warranted. “The literal translation of the rule is that you bring the sport into disrepute by sitting in the hot seat like that,” she said. “To me, it looked a bit like: he had the fastest time, so afterwards he took off his suit.”

Van der Poel’s reaction to the result had already given the time trial one of the images of the week. The Dutchman could barely believe the margin when Pogacar’s time came in, with the world champion taking the stage by four hundredths after a tense wait in Aarburg.

The fine then shifted attention away from the stopwatch and towards the UCI’s handling of the hot-seat scene.

Knetemann also pointed to the team side of the incident. Van der Poel sitting shirtless in front of the cameras meant Alpecin - Premier Tech lost the sponsor exposure normally attached to a hot-seat appearance from one of cycling’s biggest stars.

“Ultimately, the team obviously does not want Mathieu sitting there like that either,” she said. “As a team, you get less advertising that way. That is actually what the team should be worried about and what they should have said to Mathieu.”

Van der Poel, she added, could also have read the situation differently from a sponsor perspective. “He should have thought of that too, like: I am sitting in the hot seat, for my sponsor it might be much better if I sit here with a shirt on,” Knetemann continued.

Her frustration remained directed at the UCI fine rather than the existence of a team presentation concern. Knetemann ended the discussion with a pointed question: “Are we all a bit prudish, those of us watching cycling?”

Van der Poel left the Aarburg time trial with second place by 0.04 seconds and a 500CHF fine. Pogacar took the stage win, then went on to seal overall victory at the Tour de Suisse the following day.