Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has talked about today's incident, in which activists blocked the roads of the Tour de France and caused the race to come to a halt for around 10 minutes as the issue was fixed and the race safe to resume.
“It was unexpected. We know that on the route of the Tour de France, which carries great reasonance, it happens occasionally," he said after the race. "We were there for a few minutes, then happily the stage carried on as normal. The race situation was very clear with the breakaway a long way ahead... These things happen, it’s the price of success," he explained.
Prudhomme explained that over multiple sports this situation has been occurring, and wasn't completely unexpected: “It happened at Roland Garros, Formula 1 at Silverstone, the Premier League and it happened at the Tour today". Asked how the race deals with such situation, he answered jokingly: “With tact! But no, I was some way away because it happened in front of Bettiol and we were 300 meters behind.”
This was not the first time the Tour de France was stopped due to protests with the 2018 farmers' protests where Chris Froome was famously hit by second-hand tear gas, or the 1985 Paris-Nice where Bernard Hinault was involved in an altercations with protestors.
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