Senior Tour de France officials dragged climate change protesters into a ditch during the tenth stage of this year’s race from Morzine to the Megeve plateau.
Despite being chained to their necks, a small group of young protesters were dragged off the race route by tourist officers. About 36 kilometers from the finish, on a stretch of straight road, protesters sat on the route and fired red flares. The stage getaway and platoon stopped until the road was cleared.
Climate activists from the Derniere Renovation movement said: “Since the government does not care about the climate crisis, we must come and take over the Tour de France to refocus on what is important to our “We need to get our government to react as they take us to the slaughterhouse. Nonviolent disruption is our last chance to be heard and avoid the worst consequences of global warming,” the group said.
Tour organizers, ASO, declined to comment on the protest. Commenting on the scene of a race bike, Sir Bradley Wiggins told Eurosport spectators: “It was really happening. It was pretty crazy.
“A lot of people got very angry, some of the sports directors got out of the cars, they put a trunk.”
The Derniere Renovation group was responsible for an interruption at the French Tennis Open, when a protester jumped on the court and tied herself to the net with a T-shirt that said “We have 1,028 days left”. At the Tour protest, they were seen wearing T-shirts that said, “We have 989 days left.”
The Tour has long been the target of protests, but this took place in the context in which race organizers pledged to reduce their carbon footprint. This year’s ‘road book’, the manual given to everyone working in the race, states that the Tour is “resolutely committed to being an increasingly eco-responsible organization”.
In 2020, during the Pandemic Tour, the race was criticized by the newly elected “green” mayors in some of France’s major cities. Lyon Mayor Gregory Doucet described the Tour as “male and polluting” and lacking in environmental awareness, and there have been several calls for the race to further reduce its carbon footprint.
The final result of the race was called into question when the UAE team of race leader Tadej Pogacar was hit by two positive Covid-19 tests, just 48 hours after all the runners in the peloton were tested and declared free of the virus.
George Bennett, one of the defending champion’s key mountain support runners, and teammate Rafal Majka, both tested positive on Tuesday morning in Morzine. Bennett withdrew from the race while Majka was allowed to continue running with the argument that he was asymptomatic. On Saturday, another Pogacar team, Vegard Stake Laengen, also tested positive and retired. The eight-player team with which Pogacar started in Copenhagen is now reduced to six, with the continuation of Majka uncertain.
Yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar expects the race to restart after the protests. Photography: Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters
“According to our internal protocols, Majka has been tested for Covid-19 and has returned a positive result this morning,” the UAE team said in a statement. “He is asymptomatic and is analyzing his PCR, [we] found that he had a very low risk of infection, similar to the case of Bob Jungels (the Citroën AG2R driver who tested positive in Copenhagen) early in the race. “
Australian rider Luke Durbridge (Team BikeExchange) also tested positive and was withdrawn from the race. The ASO restricted media access to team buses, or to the paddock, saying that only UCI representatives (jury, commissioners, anti-doping), team staff and staff will have access to the paddock. ‘organization that oversees the teams.’ Access to the finish lines, for the media, remains unchanged.
Magnus Cort Nielsen (EF Education-EasyPost) won the stage in a photo finish by Nicholas Schultz, a teammate from absent Durbridge. Benn Hansgrohe’s Lennard Kamna, one of the day’s runners, moved 11 seconds behind race leader Pogacar, but is expected to retreat in the next 48 hours, which include the peaks in the Alps of Huez and the Col du Granon.