A runner slaloming between pink smoke bombs. Breakaways and a peloton stopped by a cluster of nine protesters chained to the ground on the road. And a race stopped 12 minutes less than forty kilometers from the finish in Megève. The rather rare situation which took place this Tuesday on the 10th stage of the Tour de France, was taken with detachment by the riders.
“We took it as a joke, we took a little break, we took the opportunity to fill up the cans and have a bite to eat, it’s an anecdote now”, indicates Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis), member of the breakaway of the day stopped just behind the leading man Alberto Bettiol (EF Eduaction-Easypost). In the peloton, stopped a few minutes later, the yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar admits “not knowing what happened”, but found this little break “rather amusing in the end”.
“It was well managed”
Aurélien Paret-Peintre (AG2R Citroën) was a little more surprised. ” I did not understand everything. We stopped tails, but we didn’t follow too much. It’s weird 35 km from the finish! But it was handled well. ” ” At first, I thought it was a train but I was surprised by ASO, adds Romain Bardet (DSM). Then we understood. It was quite unprecedented, to thwart the safety of the Tour in this way…”
“It was an unexpected and untimely stop, recognized Christian Prudhomme, the boss of the Tour, at the microphone of FranceTV. We know that the Tour de France route is a big sounding board, it happens sometimes. We were blocked for a few minutes, the situation was clear. It has already happened at Roland Garros, at Silverstone (Formula 1 Grand Prix), in football…”
The demonstration was claimed by the environmental movement Last Renovation, which wanted by this act to denounce “the mad race towards the annihilation of our society”. An activist from the same group chained herself to the Roland Garros net a few weeks ago.