Late last week, while training for the Vuelta a San Juan road race happening now in Argentina, Belgian pro Iljo Keisse exhibited some extremely unsportsmanlike behavior—and was forced to pay a price.
Police booked Keisse for sexual harassment after he mimed a sexual act with an unsuspecting waitress while posing for a photo, according to Argentinian newspaper Telesol Diario. A misdemeanor court this week fined him 3,000 pesos (about $80), which he reportedly paid, and on Tuesday race organizers kicked him out of the event.
Keisse, 36, has since apologized for his conduct, though he denied ever touching the waitress physically. And now, the manager for his Deceuninck-Quick Step team is threatening to pull the entire team out of the race over Keisse’s expulsion.
Things began during a break from a training ride on Friday, when Keisse and some teammates stopped by a coffee shop in San Juan, a small city in the west of the country. Their waitress, who remains unnamed, asked if she could take a picture with the athletes. But when the photo was snapped, Keisse, standing behind the waitress, pretended to thrust his pelvis into her backside. According to the woman’s statement to police, he also grazed her body with his genitals.
“I asked for a photo and I felt they encouraged me,” the waitress told Telesol Diario. “I thought it was an accident, but later I realized that it wasn’t an accident.”
After seeing the photo, she contacted a lawyer and police to bring a complaint against Keisse. “I am very angry,” she said. “They disrespected me; I was working... I hope that at least they sanction him or call him attention for doing what he did. ”
Despite calls for his expulsion, Keisse—whose teammate Julian Alaphilippe currently leads the Vuelta after multiple stage wins—was still determined to race. He admitted to the press on Tuesday morning that he had made the inappropriate gesture in the photo, and issued a public apology to the waitress, though he denied touching her.
“I would like to apologize, especially to this lady. I made a mistake, I realize that. It will not happen again,” Keisse said. “I also want to apologize to everybody here... It was a really stupid thing to do. I wish I could turn back time, but I can’t.”
Keisse started Stage 3 on Tuesday, but later that night race organizers expelled him for “behavior that damaged the reputation and honor of the Vuelta a San Juan, the UCI, and cycling in general,” Cyclingnews reported.
However, his team—after saying the incident was meant as a “joke” and requesting no further punishment after Keisse’s apology—responded angrily to the expulsion. Deceuninck-Quick Step manager Patrick Lefevere told reporters that he would like to pull the whole team out of the race, despite Alaphilippe’s wins so far.
“If it were up to me, the whole team would leave the Vuelta a San Juan,” Lefevere told Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws. “We are reviewing what the UCI regulations say, and then we will quickly decide whether we will start or not.”
Hailey first got hooked on running news as an intern with Running Times, and now she reports on elite runners and cyclists, feel-good stories, and training pieces for Runner's World and Bicycling magazines.
