This past week Jonas Vingegaard called for the ban of Carbon Monoxide rebreathers in the peloton. However, he did not accuse other teams of potentially abusing the device, Team Visma | Lease a Bike states that this was a misinterpretation and now what the Dane actually said.
This came to light after Le Monde conducted an interview with the former Tour de France winner. In it was the quote: "Some teams divert its use by regularly inhaling low doses of carbon monoxide, which causes a significant gain in performance of their riders. This is not fair and the World Anti-Doping Agency should ban it."
This led to criticisms of the Dane throughout social media, as it is known that Visma is one of the teams that has used these devices and is as a result under the same amount of suspicion as other teams including UAE Team Emirates - XRG. But the story has taken another turn, did Vingegaard actually say this?
Ekstra Bladet reached out to the Dutch team, and it's press officer Sander Kleikers explained that this is not what was said. "It is clearly a misinterpretation and confusion between languages. He never said it. Jonas is not the type to accuse others, you know that".
The supposed words of the Visma rider made the rounds online and made it's way into several news outlets including CyclingUpToDate. Hence, the quote that has been used must be taken with caution as it's unclear at this moment what Vingegaard actually said - and this will be reiterated in our own piece on the topic.