Alberto Bettiol apologized to his EF Education-Easy Post teammates for leading the peloton with Tadej Pogachar (UAE Team Emirates) on the cobbles of stage 5 of the Tour de France, but Robbie McEwen fired back at him for implying that he had knowingly collaborated with the Slovenians.

As a Eurosport analyst, McEwen questioned Alberto Bettiol's tactics. Said McEwen, "We can only assume that he could be going to the UAE next year."

Bettiol rejected the suggestion when he spoke to reporters before the start of stage 6 in Binche. 'MacEwen is no longer a rider, he's a journalist. It's part of his game."

Bettiol took the reins at the front of the chase group on the cobbles with just under 30km to go when teammates Colt and Paules were 1:25 ahead in the day's breakaway. With Pogachar behind him, Pogachar accelerated at the front, helping to cut a few seconds off his advantage, but the Italian conceded shortly thereafter.

Paules then finished fourth, 13 seconds short of Wout Van Aert's (Jumbo Visma) bid for the yellow jersey.

"I work for EF Education First. I have a contract. Just once I tried to split the peloton where I was. I apologized to Nielson. But I'm happy with the team, happy with everything." [I didn't know Nielson was competing for the yellow jersey. Nielson and Magnus were in front of me, so I had a chance to not pull it. Because Nielson and Magnus were in front of me, I had a chance to pull it.

Jonathan Vaughters of EF Education-Easy Post tweeted during Wednesday's stage that the team's post-race debriefing would be "interesting," jokingly hinting that it would make for interesting material for the Tour's Netflix series. He confirmed Thursday morning that Bettiol apologized to his teammates after the race.

"I'm not going to disclose what we talked about in the debriefing because it was a private debriefing, but let's just say it took longer than normal. In the end we came to a good conclusion and came together as a team. It took a long time, but we got there," Vaughters said, suggesting that the sins of Betiol, who has been ill since winning the 2019 Tour de Flanders, were just a matter of having too much enthusiasm.

"He has had to deal with incredibly difficult health issues. He was not at the front of the race for a really long time and had really good legs. He just got into a situation where he got overexcited and lost himself a little bit. He admitted it, apologized to his teammates, and said, 'I got a little overexcited.'"

Vaughters added that Bettiol's acceleration did not negatively affect Paulez's bid for the maillot jaune. Belgian Van Aert then began his chase and won the race with Pogachar, who contributed to his victory and took the yellow jersey 13 seconds ahead of Pauwres.

"Looking at the race, Van Aert was in the third group at the time. 'If Pogachar had been in yellow, yes. But Van Aert was wearing the yellow jersey, he was behind and he came back last. So, statistically and mathematically, we didn't lose the yellow jersey because of Albert."