'I'm not a bad guy' – Bryan Coquard apolgosies after Jasper Philipsen crash at Tour de France, still hit with fine and yellow card
French💎man emotional after accidentally taking down green jersey in incident that saw him abandon race

After accidentally taking down Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) at the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tour de France in an incident that forced the green jersey to abandon, Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) received a 𓄧yellow card and a 500 CHF fine from the race jury for an 'irregular sprint'.
In a dramatic moment at the intermediate sprint, Coquard collided with Laurenz Rex (𝓡Intermarch&eac🎃ute;-Wanty) as he tried to launch, only just keeping himself up🐠 and causing Philipsen, who was behind him, to crash.
The punishment was confirmed in the Tour's official press release for stage 3, at 20:10, well after Coquard had offered an apology꧒ and spoken with sadness after seeing Philipsen leave the race. If he receives a second yellow card at the Tour, he wi꧑ll be disqualified.
"A bad day, you can imagine that... Having the green jersey abandoned, it's not a pleasant experience. I looked at the images a bit, I really don't know what happened in fact," said Coquard🍨 as he spoke to reporters at the team bus.
"I feel like [Jonathan] Milan is launching his sprint, may🌟be my front wheel is touching his derailleur or maybe it's Rex who is throwing me off balance, I really don't know.
"Obviously, it wasn't my intention to cause a crash; I didn't want to tak🍬e any riꦰsks. I was clearly thrown off balance, I almost lost my shoe. Even if it wasn't intentional, I want to apologize to Philipsen and Alpecin-Deceuninck. Even if I'm not a bad guy, it's not pleasant."
Philipsen suffered a displac🉐ed, fractured collarbone from t🐈he crash, which will require surgery, but his team were not trying to put the blame on anyone as they spoke to the media at the busy Alpecin team bus.
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"Jasper is the victim of s꧑omething he's totally not involved in, that's clear. To be honest, the two others who collided, I think it's not about blaming," said team co-manager Phillip Roodhoft.
"It's just a stupid crash. Things can happen, and th꧂e consequences for us as a team, but mainly for Jasper, are very bad, but what can you say? Bad things happen sometimes."
The other team involved, Intermarché-Wanty, saw it simi𒉰larly, confident that their man Rex had done nothing wrong, but that Coquard too was not to blame for what happened.
"No, I think it's a race inꦺcident. You have one of the smallest sprinters going toward Rex, who is one of the biggest lead-out guys. I think the move was for Coquard to Rex, then he went the other way and took Philipsen down," said Intermarché-Wanty performance manager Aike Visbeek at the team bus.
"I hope Jasper is OK it was a horrible sight."
Visbeek also put down any idea that Coquard should not have been sprinting where he was and trying to move past Rex, aware that the Frenchman was well within his rights to go for th💟e one point, but he did point out how the point of the race itself could have been safer.
"No, it's an intermediate sprint; anyone who wants to sprint can sprint. The last years, they did a few of these sprints uph🦹ill, so the speeds were a bit lower," said Visbeek.
"This was a high-speed sprint, and it was chaos. Laurenz actually puncture༺d 10km before that, so he wasn't actually with the train; he came from behind, and it was chaotic all over."
While Coquard has now receive♋d his yellow card for the incident, Visbeek, like Roodhooft, saw no reason to go further than putting it down to a bad luck racing incident, as he described it two hours before the punishment was confirmed.
"That would be really strange," to expect a🐼ny relegation, "because Rex goes in a straight line, Coquard comes to him, I think there is nothing to blam༺e."
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James Moultrie is a gold-standard NCTJ journalist who joined Cyclingnews as a News Writer in 2023 after originally contributing as a freelancer for eight months, during which time he a🦄lso wrote for Eurosport, Rouleur and Cycling Weekly. Prior to joining the team he reported on races such as Paris-Roubaix and the Giro d’Italia Donne for Eurosport and has interviewed some of the sport’s top riders in Chloé Dygert, Lizzie Deignan and Wout van Aert. Outside of cycling, he spends the majority of his time watching other sports – rugby, football, cricket, and American Football to name a few.
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