Visma DS responds to Tadej Pogacar's pleas for more respect: "The same back to him"

Perhaps the greatest drama of today's otherwise calm Tour de France stage from Saint-Méen-le-Grand to Laval was the discussion about an incident from day earlier. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates - XRG) and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma | Lease a Bike) clashed in the feedzone during stage 7, causing each other to fail to get their bidon, something the Slovenian returned to before start.

"Yeah, I think it’s a normal incident, Matteo [Jorgenson] wanted to take a bottle, apparently Tadej also wanted to take one, maybe we should tell our soigneurs to stand a little further apart from each other, I think like this they both didn’t get a bottle because Matteo also missed his," Visma DS Grischa Niermann told ITV Cycling.

Pogacar returned to the incident in a pre-stage interview in Saint-Méen-le-Grand: "For me it was normal, but I don’t know what was their intention," the Slovenian said. "They do this a lot of times, coming in front of you in the feed zone like they are the only ones having the bottles there. Sometimes you have to be patient and stay on the wheel when you’re taking the bottles and pay respect to everybody."

Pogacar's indication that this wasn't the first occurence of such behaviour from the side of Visma | Lease a Bike during the race, nor an accident, Niermann became slightly irritated: "Yeah, the same back to him," he responded.