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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 in the Parisian evening light on this big yellow podium with the Arc de Triomphe in the back. “It was an overwhelming 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 was drama, big and small, and all on a track that contained a lot of meanness for the peloton ready: the professional cyclists had to cope with 55,460 vertical meters over the 3,404 kilometers – a brutal climb.
thumbtacks on the road, escort motorcycles in traffic
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 the TV sets and smart phone worldwide and along the route in France.
Unfortunately, this is 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. In one case it was perhaps even decisive, when two motorbikes couldn’t move fast enough through the dense crowd of spectators on the Col de Joux Plane came, blocked the track and thus slowed down 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 said so in an interview with the French radio station “France Info” at the end of the tour “Price of Success” called. There were more people walking the streets of the Tour de France than he had ever seen. be the audience “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. Among the new partners of the tour is the social media-Platform TikTok, which has placed a car in the advertising caravan that drives ahead of the peloton in a very classic way.
But the deal is primarily intended to make the supposedly “old” sport of cycling accessible to a new, younger target group. As the partnership shortly before Grand Depart the tour in Bilbao was announced, enthused the ASO marketing director Julien Goupilthat the “fresh content off the street” for a “even stronger sense of community” around the tour would take care of.
contradiction to one’s own marketing strategy
Perhaps that was also the idea of the spectator who tried the 15th stage selfie to shoot in front of an approaching field, the Americans Sep kiss brought down and thus triggered a mass fall. In any case, it is a contradiction if you look at the one hand content from the edge of the track for better marketing, on the other hand calls for more respect for the drivers in video clips and explicitly demands that selfies should not be taken.
Of course, cycling thrives on the special closeness of the public to its players. On the stage up to the Puy de Dome experience. 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 the track manager Thierry Gouvenou have also tried again and again in recent years to find new spectacular sections of the route.
With success. But this is often associated with major logistical challenges. around on Col de la Lozea 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.