An unavoidable reality of the great cycling tours with kilometer-long stages and hours on the saddle is that cyclists must hydrate, something the International Cycling Union (UCI) accepts and promotes within the rules. Another reality is that this hydration must be released, which makes cyclists need to urinate. And they do, usually on the same bike and in precarious balance, to avoid stopping and losing seconds and rhythm in the race. And the UCI has its reservations about this.
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Four cyclists competing in the Giro d’Italia were sanctioned on Sunday for urinating. More precisely, for how they urinated. Christopher Juul-Jensen (Team Jayco AlUla) was fined 500 Swiss francs (almost 550 euros) for “throwing waste outside designated areas.” The incident also cost him 25 UCI points. Meanwhile, Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto) received a 200 Swiss franc (220 euro) sanction for “urinating in public during the race and damaging the image of the sport.” David De La Cruz (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) was also fined 500 Swiss francs for “inappropriate behavior and damaging the image of cycling.”
The sanctions are based on article 2.12.007-8.6 of the regulations, which punishes cyclists who urinate in front of spectators. This is an added difficulty in stages that gather crowds and force cyclists to urinate when they can, not when they need to.
Some cyclists use empty bottles to urinate in them. When they throw them onto the road, they end up in the hands of the public
But the straw — we won’t say what kind — that broke the UCI’s patience, and forced the organization to make an explicit reminder, is a new relief method implemented by some cyclists. Once one of the water bottles they use is empty, cyclists choose to reuse it as a receptacle for their urination. Then, they empty it and get rid of it by throwing it onto the road. And some spectators, due to the sport’s mythomania, pick them up as souvenirs, perhaps unaware that the last thing those bottles contained was not just water.
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For this reason, the race commissioners emphasized at the end of the ninth stage of the Giro that “riders are expressly warned that it is strictly forbidden to urinate in a bottle and then throw it away, in order to protect the image of cycling.”
So far, it is not known that cyclists have asked the UCI or the commissioners how to protect the limits of their bladders.
