No reason given as world champion remains disqualified
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Peter Sagan ahead of the Tour de France(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Stage 3 winner Peter Sagan (Boha-Hansgrohe)(Image credit: Getty Images)
Peter Sagan wins stage 3 at the 2017 Tour de France
An urgent appeal by Peter Sagan and the Bora-Hansgrohe team to have the world champion returned to the Tour de France peloton was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday.
Sagan was excluded from the Tour de France on Tuesday evening after his manoeuvre on the stage 4 finish sent Mark Cavendish crashing into the barriers. Cavendish was forced to abandon the race with a broken shoulder blade. Other riders were injured in the knock-on effects of the crash.
The decision to expel Sagan has proved a controversial one, but in an appeal heard on Thursday, CAS upheld the UCI commissaires' decision to remove the Slovak from the Tour.
In a typically brief statement from CAS issued just minutes before the end of the Tour's stage 6, the Swiss arbitration body said it had rejected the appeal by Sagan and the Denk ProCycling team. "Accordingly, Peter Sagan remains disqualified from the 2017 Tour de France."
After the crash on Tuesday evening, Sagan said he accepted the UCI decision but disagreed with it and he has since issued an apology for what happened.
The Bora-Hansgrohe team were adamant that Sagan had done no wrongdoing, claiming that Sagan was denied a hearing with the race jury before being expelled. They said in an earlier press statement before the appeal was heard that, "The team and Peter Sagan would like to reiterate their position that Peter Sagan did not cause, let alone deliberately, the fall of Mark Cavendish on the last 200m of the fourth stage on July 4, 2017."
"Peter Sagan stayed on his line and could not see Mark Cavendish on the right side."
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Bora-Hansgrohe have yet to comment on the final decision.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
