🎥 Zingle nearly collides with spectator and gets yellow card – first by TotalEnergies colleague

The new regulations have been in effect since the Tour Down Under, which means riders can now receive a yellow card. Several have already been handed out, usually for an irregular sprint. But you can also get one for cycling on the sidewalk, as Axel Zingle experienced. The rider from Visma | Lease a Bike was penalized with a yellow card, although he had unofficially received one from a colleague along the way.

It all happened in the fifth stage of Paris-Nice, at a significant bottleneck in the road. The large peloton suddenly had to pass through a narrow stretch of road, and the traffic jam caused considerable chaos. It was too much for Zingle, who was way out on the edge of the bunch. He chose not to get involved in the chaos and went to the bottleneck's right side. He tried to catch up with the pack on the pavement but encountered a spectator who had not been expecting to see a cyclist there. Fortunately, the two managed to avoid each other, allowing the 26-year-old French rider to rejoin his colleague.

However, these riders were not exactly pleased with the sprinter's behavior. Once back in the peloton, Zingle was confronted by a TotalEnergies rider, who playfully used a gesture to show him the yellow card. The rider was later proven right, as the Visma | Lease a Bike rider was also given a card by the jury. He will be on his best behavior for the rest of the race. If he breaks the rules again, he will be suspended for seven days.

Read more below the video!

Yellow cards criticized in the past 

Danny van Poppel made the news earlier this year with a yellow card in the Tour Down Under. He later repeated this trick in the UAE Tour: by deviating from his line, he became the first rider to receive his second yellow card. He did not fully agree with the new system. "Something had to change because cycling is becoming dangerous. But my frustration is that I have already seen a few sprints in which they did not give out a yellow card even though they could have," he said at the time.  

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