There was a hefty list of warnings in the race communique for stage 1 of the Tour de France Femmes, including one for defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike). While there were clear consequences for the other transgressions, with fines and penalties listed, a warning is listed as just that.
So why exactly is a warning noted in the official post-stage report and what are the potential consequences of it?
The UCI road race regulation 2.12.003 outlines that: "Every individual commissaire may issue a warning when observing noting an infringement to the table of race incidents during a race. The licence holder shall either be directly informed of a warning verbally, by gestures, by Radio-Tour or any other means at the time the commissaire becomes aware of the infringement or notified through the communiqué.
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"Upon issuance of a warning during the race, the Commissaires’ Panel or an individual commissaire may at any time decide to impose a sanction as provided for in article 2.12.007, maintain the warning and confirm it in the communiqué or decide to withdraw the warning prior to issuance of the communiqué."
So, just because a warning is given on the road and may be noted at the time doesn't mean it will show up in the official report at the end of the day. Still, at the other end of the spectrum, it also doesn't mean that once the warning is given and noted that it is the end of the matter, given that imposing a sanction after delivering a warning remains an option. The sanction, of course, if gone ahead with will then be noted in the report as such and the type of fine and penalty will be determined by which infringement the rider is cited for.
So, for example, if the warnings for the use of the sidewalk given to Ferrand-Prévot, Lieke Nooijen (Visma-Lease a Bike), Lily Williams (Human Powered Health) and Josie Nelson (Picnic PostNL) had been issued as sanctions they would have been facing a fine of up to 1,000 CHF, 25 points from the UCI ranking and/or a yellow card plus a 20 second penalty.
Plus, had Alison Jackson (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93) been given a sanction for the infringement noted in her warning, using a non-compliant position, that could have resulted in a CHF 500 fine, 15 points from UCI rankings and elimination or disqualification and/or a yellow card.
Ultimately, however, this is all theoretical as these remained just warnings, so does it matter at all given there is no sanction handed down for a warning? The answer is maybe. It all depends on the type of infringement and what happens next.
A number of the sanctions listed in the UCI regulation document include additional penalties depending on the circumstances, one of which is 'repeated infringements". An example is that the use of sidewalk rule outlines that in "serious cases of advantage, endangerment, repeated infringements or aggravating circumstances" the sanctions can also include relegating a rider to last place or disqualification.
So, if a rider has already received a sanction or had a warning listed over an infringement the price, in some cases, of repeating the infraction could potentially even be the end of their race.
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