"I’m bummed and I’m really upset" - Jonathan Vaughters out-of-tune after Tour de Romandie turmoil

The Tour de Romandie Féminin 2025 was won by Elise Chabbey, but the race will be remembered more for the disqualification of five teams on the eve of the race. Reason couldn't sound any less petty with the GPS trackers and UCI's lack of (will to) communication in the center of attention. Manager of men's branch of EF Education team Jonathan Vaughters is disappointed by the turn of events that saw his team as one of those that were removed from the race.

"It’s a line in the sand. I don’t love that this is like the line in the sand that it had to be," Vaughters told Velo. "I don’t love that. I would have rather seen our girls race. In fact, I think we could have won this race, quite frankly."

"I’m bummed and I’m really upset for riders like Noemi Rüegg, who’s former Swiss champion, who really wanted to win this race, who was super motivated by it, who the organization was super happy that she was there. It’s a real pity. I didn’t want her to be disqualified."

"This is one of those ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ moments. Personally, up until like 10 minutes before the start, I’m like, ‘no, they’re not going to prevent you from starting. This is ridiculous." But when the decisive moment came, five teams were not allowed to participate in the race.

"I honestly just didn’t believe that. I was like, ‘no, they’ll just choose one of the riders and put it on the bike.’ And they didn’t. This is about long-standing tension between the UCI and what I’ll call teams that feel a little bit more strongly about their rights and more strongly about their entrepreneurial possibilities in the world," he explained.

"In about the last year, there are a certain group of teams that haven’t felt like we’ve been really strongly represented in the legislation of the UCI. That’s unfortunate, and we’ll probably need to try to make some changes there in who and what our representation is."