Dutch biking star Mathieu van der Poel will try and overturn a conviction for assaulting two teenage women in a Sydney resort the evening earlier than the lads’s world championship highway race.
The Tour de France stage winner was arrested hours earlier than Sunday’s race in Wollongong the place the 27-year-old was one of many favourites.
Van der Poel had confronted two women – grabbing one on the arm and pushing the opposite – after he says they repeatedly knocked on his resort door on Saturday evening and ran away.
After the two-time Tour of Flanders champion pleaded responsible on Monday, Sutherland native court docket Justice of the Peace Hugh Donnelly convicted him and ordered he pay fines of A$1,000 and A$500 for the 2 widespread assaults.
The grandson of famed French bicycle owner Raymond Poulidor was to steer the Dutch group in Sunday’s 266.9km race however withdrew inside the first 30km. Bauke Mollema completed finest positioned for the Netherlands in twenty fifth.
“He [Van der Poel] admits he handled it inappropriately however nonetheless there’s a proof,” prison lawyer Michael Bowe mentioned.
“The injury he suffered was huge. He seems like he’s let his entire nation down and his entire group.”
With the court docket matter over and his bail situations now not in impact, Van der Poel was in a position to retrieve his passport and fly overseas on Monday night.
Nevertheless, Bowe will lodge a sentence attraction on Tuesday morning within the district court docket, searching for to put aside the convictions.
New South Wales police had alleged the bicycle owner pushed two women within the hallway of his Brighton-Le-Sands resort, with one falling over and the opposite hitting a wall, struggling a minor graze to her elbow.
Van der Poel’s CV contains 4 cyclocross world championships, stage wins within the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia and a number of other victories within the one-day spring classics.
He wore the yellow jersey for six levels within the 2021 Tour and represented the Netherlands in mountain biking on the Tokyo Olympics.
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