Richard Plugge blasts the spectator that took down half of peloton in stage 15: "Stay at home if you don’t respect the riders"

Jumbo-Visma boss Richard Plugge has blasted the spectator who caused a mass pile-up on stage 15 of the Tour de France, saying that such fans should stay at home if they cannot respect the race.

About 60km into Sunday's stage a fan's arm appeared to strike a Jumbo-Visma rider (Sepp Kuss), while the peloton was moving at a high speed. They went down, which meant many riders behind were also caught out in the same incident.  

Plugge quote-tweeted a video of the crash, saying: "My goodness. Here is very clear what’s happening. What on earth are you doing there?! You just hit a couple of riders off the bike. Stay at home if you don’t respect the riders."

Jumbo Visma's Nathan Van Hooydonck was among those that hit the ground hard, with the Belgian spending time on the ground before he got going again. Coming so early in a hard Alpine stage, there must have been fears at Jumbo that the team helping defend Jonas Vingegaard's yellow jersey would be seriously depleted.