UCI president backs night tests after Pogacar and Vingegaard controversy

The UCI has defended the use of night time doping controls after Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) were tested during sleeping hours at the 2026 Tour de France.

Pogačar was reportedly visited by anti doping officials at around 5am, while Vingegaard was tested at approximately 2am, in the early hours before stage 15 to Plateau de Solaison.

The timing of the controls prompted debate about whether testing authorities should be allowed to interrupt the limited rest available to riders during a three week Grand Tour, particularly after Vingegaard crashed in the stage that followed the overnight test.

Lappartient believes the option must remain available, although he does not want night time controls to become a routine feature of professional cycling.

“We will not support something they do every night on the riders,” Lappartient told The Guardian during the Tour de France Femmes. “The normal hours are not in the night.”

However, he said the International Testing Agency (ITA) should be able to operate outside standard hours when the effectiveness of a test depends on its timing.

“We support the ITA if they have to do some specific test,” Lappartient said.

At the centre of the discussion is EPO microdosing. Small quantities can become harder to detect after several hours, potentially creating a window in which athletes could avoid a positive result if testers followed a predictable schedule.

“With microdosing EPO, that’s something you can’t detect six or seven hours after,” Lappartient said.

That presents anti doping authorities with a difficult balance. Riders need uninterrupted sleep to recover between stages, particularly during a Grand Tour. Testers, however, need enough flexibility to arrive at a moment when a prohibited substance may still be detectable.

For Lappartient, the possibility of being tested at an unusual hour also has a wider deterrent effect.

“For the riders to know that the ITA may come, that’s always a fear,” he told The Guardian.

He nevertheless stressed that overnight controls should remain rare.

“Night testing is a tool in this fight, but it is not a tool to use every day,” Lappartient said. “You must use it very exceptionally.”

The UCI president made clear that the controls involving Pogačar and Vingegaard should not automatically be viewed as evidence of individual suspicion. He described the checks as part of a broader strategy intended to show the entire peloton that there are no guaranteed periods without testing.

“It’s not suspicion about any rider, but it’s a global message to the bunch,” he said.

Lappartient’s comments echoed an earlier explanation from the CEO of Visma | Lease a Bike, who said the team had been told not to interpret the test as evidence of wrongdoing.

“We understood that these tests should not be seen as a sign of suspicion towards us, nor interpreted as proof of a rule violation, at least not for our team,” he told L’Équipe.

While Lappartient rejected the idea that the controls pointed to specific wrongdoing, he acknowledged that cycling as a whole remains under close scrutiny. 

The sport’s troubled history continues to influence how performances and anti doping measures are viewed, despite major changes to the testing system.

“We always have suspicion in cycling, due to our past,” he said. “I know what has been done to fight against doping.”

Lappartient also insisted that there had been no indication of a positive test from the 2026 men’s Tour de France. He pointed to the absence of an announcement from the ITA, which generally communicates adverse findings and does not issue statements for every negative result.

“The ITA never make a press release about negative results, only about positive results,” he told The Guardian. “We didn’t see any press release in the Tour de France, so it seems there was nothing in the Tour.”