Nacer Bouhanni may have initially apologised to Jake Stewart for the sprint move in France last weekend resulting in Stewart breaking his hand, but the French rider has now issued harsher remarks about the incident.
He has suggested if Stewart’s life flashed before his
eyes during the sprint, as he claimed, then he should give up contesting bunch
sprints. And Bouhanni insisted again that nothing he did was deliberately done
to hamper Stewart or put him in danger.
“He is young and he will do other sprints - for a long
time I hope,” Bouhanni said of Stewart, the 21-year-old British rider with
Groupama-FDJ.
“If he really saw his life flash like he said in that interview, I would advise him to give up sprinting. Everyone knows there are risks, unfortunately. This is not the Care Bears and sometimes there are crashes. That is part of cycling."
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Bouhanni wrote on social media, apparently in response to a discussion on French TV about last weekend's incident, that people could call him aggressive in the pursuit of a victory. But that didn't mean he would deliberately put himself or a rival in danger, he said.
“You can say anything you want, but to throw me into the barriers for trying to win a cycling race, is madness. Actively wanting to injure someone and put my rival’s life at risk as well as my own - that is crazy talk."
Last Sunday Bouhanni
significantly moved to his left in the final sprint at Cholet-Pays de la
Loire (1.1), pinning Stewart to the barriers, which he brushed off at high
speed. He was very critical of Bouhanni, who has since apologised.
Stewart suffered a broken bone in his left hand which will mean missing the Tour of Flanders tomorrow and a period on the sidelines. Bouhanni’s case has been referred to the UCI to its disciplinary committee.
Afterwards Stewart tweeted a video of the sprint from the overhead shot, with the words: “I would ask you what you was thinking… but you clearly have no brain cells. The ironic thing is, you told me I had ‘no respect’ after the finish. Here’s an educational video of what ‘no respect’ looks like…”
Stewart (21) has enjoyed a fantastic start to 2021, his first at
WorldTour level. At Etoile de Bessèges he was 2nd on a stage, 4th
overall and won the young rider classification before taking 2nd at
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (1.UWT) and 6th at Danilith Nokere Koerse (1.Pro).
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