- Writer, Michael Sheils McNamee
- Position, BBC Information
French bicycle owner Julien Bernard has given a light-hearted apology after being fined for kissing his spouse throughout a Tour de France time trial.
The Lidl-Trek rider was made to pay 200 Swiss francs ($223; £174) by the Worldwide Biking Union (UCI) for stopping briefly throughout stage seven of the race.
The governing physique stated the high-quality was for “unseemly or inappropriate behaviour through the race and harm to the picture of the game”.
Writing on social media, Bernard apologised to the UCI for “having broken the picture of sport” however stated he was prepared to pay the high-quality “daily and relive this second”.
Stage seven of the Tour de France is a brief course of 23.3km (14.5 miles) and is one in every of two time trials within the race – the place cyclists race in opposition to the clock for the most effective time.
The climb takes place within the well-known wine area of Burgundy. Based on Biking Information, Bernard was simply half-hour from the place he lives when he was met by his supporters.
As he reached the highest of a climb, buddies ran in direction of him holding indicators and his spouse stepped ahead – at which level she gave him a fast kiss, holding their son who was wearing a duplicate biking equipment.
A high-quality for a similar quantity and for breaking the identical rule was given earlier within the race to Italian bicycle owner Davide Ballerini, after he stopped to look at Britain’s Mark Cavendish dash to a record-breaking thirty fifth Tour de France stage victory.
In a tv interview following the stage, Bernard stated the encounter together with his family members had been a singular second in his profession and he had pushed exhausting earlier within the stage so he would have sufficient time to take action.
“It was actually unbelievable. My spouse has been organising this with some buddies for a number of weeks now and he or she did a extremely, actually good job,” he stated.
“On a time trial, you will have time to get pleasure from your self. It is these moments that maintain me going and biking.”