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The 2023 Tour de France was marked by the duel between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar. Numerous incidents involving fans and support vehicles will also be remembered. The tour is reaching its limits in trying to keep growing.
The Tour winner stood on this large yellow podium with the Arc de Triomphe at his back in the Paris evening light. “It was an amazing Tour de France for me, for us,” said Jonas Vingegaard. “I thank my opponents, it was three great weeks in which we fought against each other.” And that was the final word of the 110th edition of the Tour de France.
It’s been an edition to remember. There was a spectacular duel between Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar that some even called epic. Although the man in the yellow jersey ended up almost seven and a half minutes ahead of the second. There were small and large dramas, and all of that on a route that held a lot of meanness in store for the peloton: the professional cyclists had to cope with 55,460 meters in altitude over the 3,404 kilometers – a brutal climb.
Thumbtacks on the road, escort motorcycles in a traffic jam
The Tour de France remains the most important, largest and probably also the most difficult cycle race in the world with a global attention that no other event in this sport achieves. The spectacle on the French country roads is a crowd puller on TVs and smartphones worldwide and along the route in France.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly where the problem begins. This year the number of incidents in which spectators or escort vehicles endangered the safety of the drivers or affected the race has increased. Perhaps crucial in one instance, when two bikes failed to get through the crowds on the Col de Joux Plane fast enough, blocking the course and thwarting an attack by Tadej Pogacar. There were thumbtacks in the street and falls caused by fans.
The tour director announces measures
The tour director Christian Prudhomme called this the “price of success” in an interview with the French radio station “France Info” at the end of the tour. There were more people walking the streets of the Tour de France than he had ever seen. The audience is “99 percent familiar and super likeable”, but you have to watch out for the rest. “So we will certainly have to take further measures,” explained Prudhomme.
Perhaps the tour director should start rethinking the marketing concept of his own house – the tour operator ASO. The new partners of the tour include the social media platform TikTok, which has traditionally placed a car in the advertising caravan that drives ahead of the peloton.
But the deal is primarily intended to make the supposedly “old” sport of cycling accessible to a new, younger target group. When the partnership was announced just before the tour’s Grand Départ in Bilbao, ASO Marketing Director Julien Goupil gushed that the “fresh content off the street” would create an “even stronger sense of community” around the tour.
Contradiction to own marketing strategy
Perhaps that was also the idea of the spectator who, on the 15th stage, tried to take a selfie in front of a speeding field and caused the American Sepp Kuss to fall, triggering a mass fall. In any case, it is a contradiction in terms if, on the one hand, you want to use content from the side of the track for better marketing, and on the other hand you call for more respect for the drivers in video clips and explicitly demand that you please refrain from taking selfies.
Of course, cycling thrives on the special closeness of the public to its players. On the stage up to the Puy de Dome you could experience what cycling would be like if the spectacle on the route wasn’t framed by enthusiastic fans. There were no spectators allowed on the last four kilometers for reasons of nature conservation and safety. The race up the volcano was exciting, but it also seemed a bit sterile.
Tour director Prudhomme is wrong
The return of the Tour de France to the Puy de Dome after 35 years was a dream of the Tour Director. Christian Prudhomme and route manager Thierry Gouvenou have also repeatedly tried to find new spectacular sections of the route in recent years.
With success. But this is often associated with major logistical challenges. For example, at the Col de la Loze, a narrow cycle lane, on which crowds of fans and support vehicles got in each other’s way this time and stopped the man in the yellow jersey.
The Tour de France does not reach its limits, Christian Prudhomme claimed in an interview with “France Info”. The opposite is true. The biggest bike race in the world walks a fine line and has to be careful not to fall.