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"The reaction is I'm pretty angry. We did a fantastic race. Nils did the race of his life. We saw a great race with a beautiful winner, and then the UCI takes this decision, 'for the sake of cycling', to get him out. That's hurting me," he said. "If they follow their rules, they are right, but sometimes it's also good to look at your rules in the way of cycling, and they clearly didn't do that. It feels like they maybe wanted to make an example or something. It was not the ending this beautiful race deserved."
Eekhoff crashed and dislocated his shoulder with just under 130km remaining. After 'popping his shoulder back in' and grabbing a new bike, he settled in behind the team car and was paced back towards the cavalcade of cars behind the main bunch.
While the UCI eventually said Eekhoff had drafted for "tens of seconds", Helmantel told Cyclingnews it was in fact "a little over two minutes".
"It's true. I took him behind the car after the crash, but I did it in a decent way. I didn't put him by the car with the bottle – just behind. I brought him back to the caravan, then he made his own way back to the bunch."
「... The jury’s decision caused uproar among riders, who questioned why Eekhoff hadn’t been penalised immediately.
However, the UCI later said that the jury had been alerted to the footage by the video referee after the race had finished, with the referee checking video of Eekhoff because he had won.
The day after the race, the UCI released a two-minute video of the incident and clarified the situation.
A statement from the authority said: “The UCI wishes to provide further information on the disqualification yesterday of Dutch rider Nils Eekhoff at the men’s U23 road race. The rider was disqualified for sheltering behind a vehicle (4.7. of article 2.12.007) for over two minutes. The maximum sanction provided by the article was considered appropriate to the time spent sheltering.
“The decision was taken by the commissaires’ panel after the race based on images from a moto camera available to the UCI video commissaire. Race officials have reviewed the images, followed due process by hearing the rider and team before making the decision.”
Eekhoof and two other riders were disqualified from the race for drafting behind their team cars.
Italy’s Alexander Konychev and Andreas Nielsen (Denmark) were disqualified alongside Eekhoff, while the Dutch, Italian and Danish teams were fined 200 Swiss francs (£164) each.」
