"Stopping is the normal thing to do" - Joxean Matxin appreciates solidarity of other teams after Tadej Pogacar's fall

The news of the day, and probably of the entire Tour de France 2025, was the crash of Tadej Pogacar on stage 11. With 4 km to go, the world champion set off all the alarms when he crashed in the group of favorites after hooking up with Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility).

Luckily for Pogacar, the race was not launched. Ahead he was fighting for victory from the breakaway, and all his rivals, including Jonas Vingegaard and the rest of the Visma, decided to stop to wait for him.

Still, the UAE Team Emirates - XRG star finished the stage angry, with clear gestures of rage. He had abrasions and wounds on his shoulder. Such a situation is far from ideal before the key high mountain stages. UAE's tactician Joxean Matxín spoke about the incident afterwards.

"It was a scare. The teams' cars were behind us, and we didn't get a good look at it. But there was fair play on the part of our rivals. When the race is underway and you hit the ground, it's a racing incident and you have to continue. But in these cases, stopping is the normal thing to do, since the breakaway was ahead," Matxin began.

As mentioned, it was Tobias Halland Johannessen whose attempt to follow another riders attack inadvertently caught Tadej Pogacar's rear wheel, and caused him to crash. The Uno-X Mobility rider felt guilty, and went to the UAE boss to apologize:

"Johannessen apologized to me for the incident. It's clear that falling before important stages is complicated. We'll see how it goes tomorrow," said Matxin, knowing that the next stage with Hautacam on the menu could be important for the general classification. And Pogacar will be far from 100%.

We will have to wait and see to what extent will be the Slovenian affected, but the sharks will smell blood and we can certainly look forward to fireworks of attacks coming at the Slovenian from all directions on Thursday.