Rubén Guerreiro reacted angrily to having his helmet grabbed by Stefan Küng on stage 2 of the Tour de France, but by the following morning he was keen to move on and put the incident in the past.
"It was a normal racing situation," the Portuguese rider told Cyclingnews in Vejle at the start of stage 3.
He clearly didn't want to discuss the incident in any more detail, simply adding: "It's fine, we're friends."
Article continues belowThat view was shared by Küng, who was also similarly keen to move on, but the Swiss rider did suggest the reconciliation process wasn't the most amicable. Asked whether Guerreiro had accepted his apology after Saturday's stage, he let out a big "errr" and a nervous laugh.
"We deal with it ourselves, we say sorry to one another and say 'ok we were in the heat of the moment', let's move on," he added.
"It's very important that we can calm down and settle our differences ourselves. There's a mutual respect. We know we're going to be racing with each other for 19 more days, so there are no hard feelings about this."
Küng was fined 500 Swiss francs and docked 20 UCI points for raising his hand to grab the back of Guerreiro's helmet and hold it in place with 36km to go. After the stage he explained that he was trying to stop Guerreiro looking around and played down any hint of controversy.
On Sunday morning, he went into more detail about what had happened.
"I moved up on the right-hand side of the road, passed Ruben and moved in front of him, and because he had a teammate in front he was not too happy about it. He said some nice words to me, and he was constantly looking around, and I was getting scared. I touched his helmet and said, 'look in front'.
"I know I should not have done this, because it's part of the sacred rule of cycling that you should not touch anyone or take your hands off the handlebars."
Küng suggested that the entirety of the altercation was not caught on camera, alleging that Guerreiro squirted water in his face.
"There's always both sides and for sure you can see me grabbing his helmet but all the nice words he said to me, the slash of bidon in the face, you don't see. There's things happening constantly."
The Swiss rider nevertheless accepted he was in the wrong. He felt a fine was a fair punishment and dismissed any notion that he should have been disqualified from the race.
"I understand the UCI has to fine me, but I insist my gesture was not at all violent," he said.
"It was not a punch. If you punch someone, you have to be out of the race, but I was not punching him or doing any harm by touching him. There's a difference, so there's a difference between being excluded from the race or getting a fine.
"This is what I had and I'm glad I can continue. I accept the fine, but I want to insist there was no violence involved in my gesture."
