Luke Rowe, Directeur Sportif for Decathlon CMA CGM has vented fury at claims that his team had illegally helped Paul Seixas back to the peloton following his Stage 7 crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on June 13.
Speaking on the Watts Occurring podcast Rowe said social-media users and unnamed rival teams had accused the squad of motorpacing and car assistance based on a brief clip of Seixas riding behind the team car in the convoy.
"I was pretty pissed off after this stage," Rowe said. "They see a 10-second video of Paul on the back of the car, which was during whilst we were in the convoy, and 'ah, you were motorpacing, you come back through the cars.' And it really pissed me off."
Seixas had crashed less than 40km into the stage, a 133.6km route from La Bridoire to Grand Colombier. He told reporters afterwards that the crash was entirely his own fault, saying he took a corner badly at around 70km/h. His gap to the peloton reportedly grew to around four to five minutes while he was on the ground, leaving the team with roughly 60km of chasing to do before the final summit finish.
Rowe described how the squad staggered its effort across the remaining terrain, sending riders back in pairs to work on the flat valleys and positioning a local rider at the top of the first passage of the Grand Colombier to guide Seixas on the descent, where the team recovered around 25 seconds. He said the team used every available domestique across the stage but insisted the chase was conducted within the rules.
"Not motorpacing, not giving sticky bottles," Rowe said, referring to the illegal practice of a rider holding a water bottle passed from the team car for an extended tow. "That's something when I took this job as a DS I said I'll never do. We either do it the right way and if we come back we come back, and if we don't come back we don't come back."
He added that the number of spectators with camera phones on the roadside made illegal assistance impractical. "If we did do it in the wrong way, I guarantee there would be people on the side of the road with camera phones. You can't do it. You'll get caught."
Stage 7 fines did not list a sanction for Seixas, despite some social commentators sharing images of Seixas briefly behind a team car. Other riders and staff were fined for irregular feeding on the same stage.
Seixas limited his losses enough to finish Stage 7 sixth on GC, but abandoned the following day around 30km into Stage 8. He could not grip the handlebars properly because of skin loss on his hands and was suffering from elbow pain. Rowe said the team's focus now shifts to a 10-day training block, including altitude and recon days in the Alps, ahead of the Tour de France start in Barcelona.
Cover image credit: Gaetan Flamme
