Tour de France rest day amid doping controls: Evenepoel, Seixas, and other top riders involved

The second rest day of the 2026 Tour de France wasn't all that peaceful for many riders. While the champions sought to recharge their batteries ahead of the final decisive stages, officials from the International Testing Agency (ITA) were knocking on hotel doors for the usual doping controls. Among the teams visited were Remco Evenepoel's Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and the young Paul Seixas ' Decathlon CMA CGM team.

The Evenepoel riders were tested at 10:00 PM, while those from Seixas were tested an hour and a half earlier. EF Education-EasyPost, Alpecin-Premier Tech, Soudal-QuickStep, XDS Astana, Groupama-FDJ, and Picnic-PostNL also joined the list of those tested. In some cases, like Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, the entire roster was tested; in others, only a few individually selected athletes.

All this is taking place in the still heated climate generated by the controversial night tests on Tadej Pogačar (examined at 5:00 AM) and Jonas Vingegaard (awakened at 2:00 AM), which took place the night before the stage to Plateau de Solaison. That episode sparked discussion throughout the cycling world, with the ITA forced to publicly defend itself, arguing the need for "effective" testing even outside of regular hours.

Monday's checks, however, were routine: all carried out during the authorized daytime window, between 6:00 AM and 11:00 PM, without requiring special authorization. As confirmed by several teams contacted at the start of stage 16 in Évian-les-Bains, the procedures were completely standard for a rest day at the Grande Boucle.

However, according to sources reported by the trade press, five other teams were targeted before 5:00 a.m., a time that violates UCI and WADA regulations that limit testing to the 6:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m. window. Pogačar and his teammate Isaac del Toro were also examined a second time at 9:00 p.m., confirming the usual intensity of testing on rest days.

Evenepoel himself had already spoken out harshly about the nighttime tests his ranking rivals endured, calling them "disrespectful," "inhuman," and something that "could not and should not be accepted." The Belgian champion also revealed that he went to bed very early on Monday night to prepare for a possible wake-up call from the inspectors. "What happened with Pogačar and Vingegaard served as a wake-up call," he explained, "making me pay even more attention to my bedtime."

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe boss Ralph Denk also confirmed that some riders were already asleep when the inspectors arrived on the night between Sunday and Monday. Interviewed by German public television ZDF, Denk defended the system: "Cycling has a shady past, and it's right that these checks are carried out. They ensure that our sport is clean and credible."

The ITA, a non-profit organization based in Lausanne, aims to conduct a total of 600 tests during the 2026 Tour de France, having already conducted over 360 out-of-competition tests in the previous month. The collected samples will be retained for 10 years for possible further analysis.