Sean Yates banned after bottle-throwing incident

Tinkoff-Saxo sport director Sean Yates has been banned from riding in the team car on Stage 16 after a bottle-throwing incident in the closing 40km of Stage 15 at the Tour de France.

The bottle is lobbed towards the moto (SBS) Source: SBS

Yates was believed to have tossed a bottle at a moto-cameraman as the team car stopped to replace the bike of its green jersey holder, Peter Sagan, who was upset that the moto had passed too close to him.

“I was changing the bike when the bike of television passed too close to us, and in a dangerous manner,” Sagan said.

"The video camera was there and he was shoving past me. My car was behind the motorbike, the motorbike stopped 10m from me and he blocked the car. Everyone was angry. The mechanic just threw the bottle. That was the reaction, because we were put at risk.”

Yates has since denied throwing anything, but that has not lifted the ban on his participation in tomorrow's 201km stage from Bourg-de-Péage to Gap. There is no news of a fine at this stage.

Speculative blame then landed at the feet of mechanic Faustino Muñoz. Others suggested it might have been Yates’s fellow sport director, Steven de Jongh, who certainly did express his anger at the situation on Twitter after the stage, as did others, upset at the fact the moto appears to have not been sanctioned for his apparently ordinary riding in search of television pictures.

Perhaps not surprisingly, team boss Oleg Tinkoff felt his charges could have done better.

Sagan retained his green jersey after Stage 15 despite the short stop, and despite not winning a stage many had pencilled him in to do so. He seemed indifferent later in the evening when he posted his reaction to his fans on social media.