Vingegaard Woken at 2AM for Doping Test, Crashes Out of Tour de France With Broken Collarbone Hours Later

Jonas Vingegaard's Tour de France ended on a fast right-hand bend inside the final 30 kilometers of stage 15, hours after anti-doping officials knocked on his hotel room door at 2am.

The Visma-Lease a Bike leader broke his collarbone in the crash and will have surgery "in the coming days due to the severity of the fracture," according to a team statement reported by BBC Sport. He is out for the rest of the race.

Tadej Pogacar, the race leader, was also woken for testing that same night, at 5am. He finished second on the stage behind stage winner Remco Evenepoel and used his platform afterward to question the timing of the tests his rival endured.

"First they wake him at 2 AM for a control, which I think is very inhumane and ruined his sleep," Pogacar told reporters, according to Cyclingnews. "It got me thinking, we had doping control they did at two in the morning and maybe this is also a reason. One night and your sleep is ruined and you can be a little less concentrated on the descent. I don't blame that, but could be also a little bit connected."

Pogacar was careful to separate criticism of the timing from any accusation against the testers themselves. He described his own experience of being woken at 5am to Eurosport: "I got four hours of sleep today. They were here at 5am in the morning. I always sleep late, it was a big shock for me... It was definitely not nice to be woken up in the middle of sweet dreams," as reported by road.cc.

Vingegaard, for his part, said the 2am knock cost him roughly 40 minutes before he got back to sleep. "Of course it's good that they test, but when it's affecting performance and your sleep, I don't think it's so good," he said, according to road.cc. "I think it took me about 40 minutes before I was back in my room, so it was not the best night. I still feel okay, but just not the best night. I cannot change it, but that's part of it I guess."

Evenepoel calls it disrespectful, then something odder

Evenepoel, who won the stage and sits third overall behind the two riders who were tested, did not hold back. "It's quite inhuman to wake us up in the middle of the night," he said, according to BBC Sport, adding that it was "disrespectful" and something riders "should not accept."

But Evenepoel also raised a more specific concern about the rules themselves. Speaking to Het Nieuwsblad and quoted by CyclingUpToDate, he said he'd been told the wake-up happened at 2am and questioned whether that was even permitted. "That seems very strange to me, because that is not allowed according to the rules," he said. "Normally the rule is from six o'clock in the morning, so I think two hours is going a bit too far. They are really pushing the boundaries then."

Evenepoel is suggesting the International Testing Agency may have broken its own stated protocol on timing, not just made an unpopular judgment call. Neither BBC Sport nor road.cc reported the ITA directly addressing that specific claim about a 6am floor. The ITA has not been quoted confirming or denying a hard rule against pre-6am testing in the material reviewed here.

What the testing agency says

The ITA, which runs anti-doping controls on behalf of the UCI, defended the practice in a statement to BBC Sport. "The ITA is conscious that night-time testing may be disruptive to riders' rest and recovery. Due consideration has therefore been given to minimise as much as possible the impact testing activities have on riders," the agency said. "However, the ITA, on behalf of the UCI, has the responsibility to ensure the effectiveness of the cycling anti-doping program and the integrity of cycling races. As such, effective testing must, in limited and justified circumstances, be capable to occur outside standard daytime hours."

That's the legitimate case for the practice: certain substances are only detectable in narrow windows, and predictable testing hours are easier for a doper to plan around. Random, round-the-clock testing has been permitted since 2016, according to road.cc, and it exists precisely because riders and teams have historically gamed predictable schedules.

Le Parisien first reported the specific wake-up times, according to road.cc, and reports indicate Vingegaard and Pogacar were the only two riders subjected to overnight controls that night, not the full field. The ITA has not commented on why those two riders specifically were selected.

The crash itself

The stage 15 crash happened on a tight right-hand bend off a roundabout, where Vingegaard's front wheel slid out and he landed on his shoulder, according to BBC Sport. The concertina effect sent three other riders over him and into spectators on the outside of the corner. Pogacar's teammate Isaac del Toro landed on a seated woman using crutches. Sepp Kuss and Jai Hindley were also involved but continued racing.

Vingegaard was seen wincing in pain multiple times as he was loaded into an ambulance, BBC Sport reported. It's a brutal turn for a rider who had come into this Tour in his best physical form since a 2024 crash that left him with lung injuries and multiple fractures.

What's unresolved

Nobody, including Pogacar, is claiming the doping test caused the crash. Pogacar explicitly said he doesn't "blame" the testing and called any connection at most a small factor. Whether the ITA violated its own timing rules, as Evenepoel suggested, remains an open question the agency has not directly answered on the record. The Tour continues into its final week with Vingegaard gone and Isaac del Toro now positioned to move up in the general classification.