Lorena Wiebes has spoken for the first time about her disqualification from the Giro d'Italia Women, explaining how her emotions went from 'sadness' to 'anger' and a now a sense of 'injustice'.
The Dutch champion appeared to have won the opening stage last weekend but her bike failed to meet the UCI's minimum weight requirement in post-race checks, and she was chucked out of the race.
Wiebes kept silent as she flew home to the Netherlands before turning back towards Italy and the Giro, travelling down in her camper van to train and cheer from the roadside.
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It was there that she spoke out for the first time on Thursday, appearing on the Dutch podcast La Koers and insisting she and the team did not do anything wrong. She supports SD Worx's plans to fight the UCI in court and suggested that disqualification from the race was too harsh a punishment.
"At first, I mainly felt sadness. Later came anger about why things turned out this way. The evening of the decision and the second day were very tough," Wiebes said in the podcast, according to Dutch media outlets.
The SD Worx team raised questions about the UCI weighing procedures at the Giro d'Italia Women, claiming in an official statement that there was a weight difference of more than 50 grams between the first and second weighing of Wiebes' bike.
"If it had been the same all the time, I could have accepted it more easily. You could still doubt the equipment, but that it fluctuated, it was even harder," Wiebes said.
Wiebes dismissed the idea that a switch to a lighter 1x chainset could have caused her bike to drop below the UCI's 6.8kg limit.
"I had ridden with a single chainring before and knew that my bike for Milan-San Remo was also weighed with the same set-up," she said.
"The UCI weighing annoyed me the most," she added. "After the race, we did it again at the hotel. It was perfectly fine then too."
'The penalty is too harsh'
The UCI rulebook clearly states 'elimination or disqualification' for an irregular bike, but Wiebes believes that punishment is too harsh.
"If I hadn’t ridden my sprint according to the rules, you can live with the fact that it’s your own fault. Now it doesn’t feel like I bear any blame," she said, not wanting to blame her team mechanic.
"I would like the UCI to take another look at those regulations. Whether a rider really needs to be punished so severely if there is something wrong with the bike that you, as a rider, have no control over it.
"The penalty is too harsh. It is tricky, though. Climbers can benefit from a lightweight bike but on the other hand, I think: are you really going to put minutes on someone if the bike is 20 grams lighter?
"It feels like an injustice to me; perhaps a yellow card and a fine for the team would have been better. If you have a bike that is too light a second time, you can be disqualified from the race. That seems more logical to me.
"What is most important to me is that there should be no more fluctuations in the measurements. The UCI absolutely needs to look into that."
The UCI has not responded to requests for comment surrounding Wiebes' and her team's allegations that there were discrepancies in measurements of the bike's weight.
Wiebes said she will be back racing at the Copenhagen Sprint in Denmark on June 13.
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