Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale-Drapac) and George Bennett (LottoNl-Jumbo) were penalized with 20 seconds for taking water bottles in the last 10km on Stage 12 of the Tour de France.
However, Romain Bardet (AG2R) escaped punishment although video indicates that he too broke the same rule.
https://youtu.be/IPirE5U4T7I
UCI rules state that no feeding is allowed within the final 20 kilometres of most road stages, while that distance is adjusted to 10km for high-mountain stages.
“The guy who fed Rigo doesn’t work for us. We clearly didn’t tell him to give him an illegal feed,” said Jonathan Vaughters. “This UCI guy, Phillipe Mariën is making it up as he goes. It’s incredible incompetence.
“We would prefer that nobody was penalized but if you have to penalize someone, you have to penalize Bardet as well,” Vaughters added.
“Yeah I got a stupid 20 second penalty from some crazy rule that I didn’t even know about. I took a bottle from a spectator in the last ten K …, and apparently that’s not allowed”, said George Bennett, who finished just behind Chris Froome on the stage and sits ninth on GC, at 4:24.
