Albeto Bettiol has dismissed remarks made by top sprinter turned Eurosport commentator Robbie McEwan, who seriously questioned what the Italian rider was doing when he traded turns with Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) on yesterday's stage at the Tour de France.
Bettiol had EF Education-EasyPost team mate Neilson Powless in the breakaway and as virtual yellow jersey for most of the stage. However, Bettiol could be seen several times riding on the front of the reduced peloton, in pursuit of Powless's breakaway.
At one point the Italian appeared to be chatting to Pogačar and then trading turns with him on the front. In the end, the Powless breakaway stayed clear and he missed taking the yellow jersey from Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma) but just 13 seconds.
When McEwan was commentating on what he was seeing, he said of Bettiol: "You can only assume that he's possibly going to UAE next year.”
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However, speaking before the start of today's stage 6 at the Tour, Bettiol dismissed those comments. “Now McEwen is not a rider, he’s a journalist. It’s part of his game,” Bettiol told reporters on the race.
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“I work for EF Education First. I have the contract. I just tried one time to split the peloton where I was. In the end, it was a mistake and I said sorry to Neilson. But I am ok with the team and ok with everything.
“I was feeling really good, and I actually didn’t know Neilson was contesting the yellow jersey. Anyway, I was feeling strong, and I gave it one go to try to destroy the peloton, because then I would have had the opportunity not to pull because I had Neilson and Magnus in the front. In the end, it didn’t affect the GC race a lot and Neilson was still in the front.”
EF Education-EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters confirmed the way Bettiol had ridden was part of the team debrief after the stage, noting the debrief took a lot longer than usual.
However, he insisted Bettiol's riding had not cost the team the yellow jersey, saying Van Aert was well back at the time and had ridden himself back to the reduced peloton to maintain the race lead.
“Very bluntly speaking, Alberto won the most prestigious one-day race in the world a few years ago and he’s had to deal with some incredibly difficult health issues since then, some health issues that since then, some health issues that for a lot of people would have ended their careers,” Vaughters said of Bettiol winning the 2019 Tour of Flanders and then having serious issues.
“He hasn’t been really at the front of a race for a while, he hasn’t had really good legs for a long time and he just got into a situation where he was overly excited and forget himself a little bit. He will own it, and he will say he made a mistake. He will own that and he apologised and said to his teammates that he got a bit excited. It’s really that simple, there are not as many conspiracy theories that people like to make.”
