The organizers of the Étoile de Bessèges are not varnished. A year after being forced to neutralize the end of the second stage, due to a fall, they announced, yesterday at the end of the day, the outright cancellation of the inaugural Bellegarde-Bellegarde stage, scheduled for this Tuesday , due to protests by farmers in the region. A decision more or less suffered. More than less anyway since the prefectural services, although they have not issued a ban order, have clearly requested via an email from the Alès sub-prefecture to remove the first step.
Contacted, the services of prefect Jérôme Bonet assure that “the organizer took the decision in consultation with the Gard prefecture following a meeting in the afternoon during which we presented three major points to them”. Namely, a demonstration of farmers from Alès planned on the route, routes used by the race which risk being saturated due to closed motorways and the police mobilized in the hottest points of the department.
In summary, the organization could have maintained the start this Wednesday noon but, without the mobile guard (20 motorcyclists from the gendarmerie), no race. An impasse that Romain Le Roux, the organizer, had “no interest” in getting into: “It’s a decision that puts the event in danger. We don’t even know if we’re going to recover. »
Runners on the 2023 edition of the Étoile de Bessèges. (F.Faugère/L’Equipe)
“We support the organizers, we know they have nothing to do with it”
Stéphane Goubert, sports director of Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale
The question of security, and staffing, seems the major axis of this decision rather than a threat of overflow. Especially since the two parties – farmers and organizer – had agreed: “We knew that the stage could be very impacted in several places,” analyzes Patrick Herse, security manager at Étoile de Bessèges. But since yesterday (Monday), we have been in contact with the FDSEA. The president told me they weren’t there to bother us. They were full of goodwill. » Comments confirmed by David Seve, president of the Gard trade union organization: “For us, the event (the race) is not an enemy. I want to be very clear on this. We were ready to set up a procession of tractors, a guard of honor, for the platoon. What we wanted was just to talk about agriculture. »
Still, the cancellation is a hard blow for the event, the budget of which is around a million euros. In the hubbub of permanence in Alès, Romain Le Roux, the former Arkéa-Samsic runner, was already looking for solutions: “It’s already not easy to organize a race… There, we have to manage the TV production, guests, vehicles, canceling more than 200 meals during the day…”
Faced with these difficulties, the teams who have struggled in recent days to repatriate the trucks and coaches, following numerous detours, the good old Michelin maps on their knees, we were hardly surprised by the turn of events: “I lives in Montpellier, it has already taken me an hour to come to Nîmes rather than the usual thirty minutes,” says Stéphane Goubert.
The program of its runners is also turned upside down (“with Benoît Cosnefroy, it was the stage where we had the most ambition”) but the sports director of Decathlon – AG2R La Mondiale preferred to put things into perspective: “There are things more serious. We must preserve the test. We support the organizers, we know that they have nothing to do with it. » The second stage, Thursday, between Marguerittes and Rousson, should be spared, with only the actual start being moved by around ten kilometers, to Cabrières.