"Once again I have been disqualified": the war between Van Schip and the UCI has already resulted in three expulsions

Jan-Willem van Schip is once again facing the UCI over his extreme aerodynamic positions. Just a few months after the controversy he sparked at the Tour of Holland with a bicycle deemed illegal by the highest cycling authority, the Dutchman has been disqualified again, this time at the Tour of Hellas, and from his reaction, it seems he is about to give up. “I don’t feel welcome in cycling,” he stated in a video posted on social media.

“I don’t feel welcome in cycling”: Van Schip erupts against the UCI after another disqualification

The case revolves again around the eternal battle between Van Schip and the UCI's technical rules. If in 2025 the sanction was related to a radical bike setup based on an extremely small size, an excessively long stem, and a non-homologated forward seat post, now the conflict centers on the position of his arms on the handlebars.

According to the rider himself, the commissioners of the Tour of Hellas disqualified him for considering the way he leaned on the handlebars illegal. Van Schip uses a very narrow and aerodynamic setup that allows him to ride in an extremely aggressive position while keeping his hands on the levers. The problem was that the judges interpreted that his forearms acted as a support point, which is prohibited by the current UCI regulations.

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The sanction provoked an outburst of frustration from the Dutchman. “I’ve been disqualified again. This is not normal,” he began saying in the video. He then directly questioned the application of the regulations and denounced differences in criteria between races. “How can it be that I can race like this in a UCI event and not here?” he wondered.

 

 

 

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Van Schip also defended that this type of position is commonly seen within the peloton and assured that he always keeps his hands in contact with the handlebars. “Everyone does that, and I always fully grip the levers,” he explained while criticizing the difficulty of interpreting a rule he considers too ambiguous.

The conflict inevitably recalls the controversy experienced last year at the Tour of Holland when the UCI ended up acting directly against him after competing with an extreme setup on a Tavelo bike. On that occasion, the team defended that all components were registered and homologated, while the UCI argued that the seat post used did not correspond to the officially approved model.

That bike already showed how far Van Schip is willing to push aerodynamics to the limit. The Dutchman, who is 1.94 m tall, used a tiny size accompanied by an enormous stem and an extremely narrow handlebar to adopt a position practically identical to that of a time trial bike.

But Van Schip's history with the UCI goes even further back. In 2021, he was already expelled from the Baloise Belgium Tour after using a peculiar handlebar developed by Speeco that allowed resting the forearms. Later, in 2023, he was disqualified again at the Heistse Pijl for another experimental cockpit.

What started as an obsessive quest for aerodynamic efficiency has now turned into an open battle between the Dutch rider and the UCI's technical interpretation. His team, now called Azerion-Villa Valkenburg, tried to appeal the decision in Greece again, although the protest was rejected, and Van Schip did not start in the next stage.

Beyond the specific sanction, the Dutchman left a particularly harsh reflection on his situation within the professional peloton. “It hurts a lot. It’s really not fun,” he stated before launching the most forceful phrase of the video. “I don’t really feel welcome in cycling.”

Van Schip even requested to hold a direct meeting with the UCI to understand exactly what is allowed and what is not within rules that, from his point of view, continue to be too interpretable.

Meanwhile, a possibility that the rider himself had hinted at earlier is back on the table. Gravel, with much more open and less restrictive regulations regarding positions and equipment, is starting to seem like a more logical destination for one of the cyclists most obsessed with exploring the limits of aerodynamics.