Jonas Rickaert doesn't understand online death threats to Jasper Philipsen: "Maybe they should publish some of those messages"

Alpecin-Deceuninck was one of the great teams in the last Tour de France, but all the success of Jasper Philipsen also had a downside. The Belgian received a lot of criticism through social media and that went quite far. Teammate Jonas Rickaert talks about it in the podcast Vals Plat.

The criticism and threats directed at Philipsen have already been discussed. His girlfriend told Vive le Vélo that the messages touched him. "The messages Jasper has received are really not nice. Many people underestimate the mental impact of this. He has received several death threats through social media, which makes me wonder why. You don't even know him. Because it gets a negative look every time, I notice that he can't fully enjoy his performance. This really hurts me."

Rickaert comes with similar words. Philipsen's lead-out also noticed that his leader was having a hard time with it. "Jasper does care about that, he is working on it. I don't understand those people. Maybe they should publish some of those messages. 'I'll beat you to death in Paris,' that sort of thing. Jasper finds that comment difficult, Mathieu often laughs about it and then only says 'look what I got again'. I deleted my Twitter myself, I couldn't read all the comments anymore. I'd love to comment, but I'm not allowed to, so I'd better throw it away."

Another element in the podcast was the soap about Jumbo-Visma and Groupama-FDJ, fueled by Richard Plugge. The director of Jumbo-Visma stated that they were drinking beer with the French team on the rest day and that was not accepted by FDJ team boss Marc Madiot. Rickaert now confesses that Plugge was indeed right. ůWe were once in the hotel at FDJ this Tour and the story is correct. They drank one beer at the table."