"You can immediately dismiss those arguments": Thijs Zonneveld tears apart Prudhomme's defense of Caja Rural Tour de France invitation

Unibet Rose Rockets' non-invitation to the 2026 Tour de France left the cycling world in a shock and disbelief. Rather than the highly-popular team with French license and a number of former Tour stage winners in their ranks, the Tour organizer ASO chose to prioritize a Spanish team Caja Rural - Seguros RGA, a sponsor which returns to Tour after nearly 40 years of absence.

"I've tried to look at it from all angles and gathered information here and there, but if I have to sum it up in one word, it's: absurd," Zonneveld begins on In de Waaier podcast. Tour director Christian Prudhomme explained his decision to include Caja Rural - Seguros RGA over Unibet Rose Rockets based on the 2025 UCI ranking where the Spanish team indeed earned more points than their rivals.

But Zonneveld finds that justification absurd as Unibet's projected 2026 performance with powerful signings of Dylan Groenewegen, Wout Poels, Victor Lafay, Clément Venturini or Rory Townsend among others, is leagues above Caja, who will be strengthened only moderately with arrival of Fernando Gaviria, Stefano Oldani and José Felix Parra.

"Caja Rural mainly lost points during the transfer window; they signed a number of good riders. They did sign Gaviria, but he hasn't performed well for a while." The Rockets, on the other hand, made enormous strides. "They've done well as a young team, they've acquired a French license, they've brought in French riders like Venturini and especially Lafay, they've ridden Paris-Roubaix, they've brought in three former Tour de France stage winners in recent years: if you compare all that...."

Bas Tietema's team brought in no fewer than 15 new riders. Zonneveld sees this in the UCI rankings as well. "There are seven Unibet riders ahead of the top two in the Caja Rural. It's almost impossible to explain when you compare all that. You can't start them all at the same time, but they really fielded a great team."

Prudhomme argued that the most important benchmark was the 2025 UCI team ranking, and that the Tour de France had been using it that way for years. "That's nonsense, because they haven't done that for many years," Zonneveld counters. "That's an argument you can immediately dismiss, because for years they've simply invited the French teams by default."

Unibet Rose Rockets has a French license, but the Tour director dismissed that argument. "They had to get a different license than a Dutch one because gambling laws are stricter than in other countries," Zonneveld explained. "So France was a smart move, to appease the Tour organizers. But essentially, Prudhomme is simply saying: we won't fall for it."

But with his very next argument, Prudhomme immediately ruined the credibility of his reasoning in the eyes of Zonneveld: "But if you also have two very good French riders, I think that's a good reason. Because one sentence later, he says: Caja Rural has a good Catalan. So there he implies that nationality is important. That's also flawed, of course. It's not an explanation."

Zonneveld sees a further reason that has not been mentioned yet. At least not officially. "This is speculative, but important to mention: Unibet is a gambling sponsor, and has already been banned from the Tour in the past, in 2007 or 2008. Advertising gambling is bad; you can categorize that as a company that doesn't necessarily contribute significantly to social benefit." Yet Lotto or FDJ will be at the race...

"I find that quite hypocritical," he continues. "You allow the UAE, where human rights aren't particularly important. Or INEOS, which pollutes the oceans on a massive scale. And they still have a connection to PMU. Over the years, all sorts of gambling companies have been allowed in, FDJ in the lead. They have very close ties to the Tour; they never kick them out."