A real bowling game this start of the Tour de France. This Monday, the third stage between Lorient and Pontivy was in line with the first two days. It was enamelled by quite violent falls, especially in the end. Four new falls occurred in the last ten kilometers. Valentin Madouas was the first to finish on the ground after a collision in the peloton. Primoz Roglic was caught in the second fall and ended up with the entire left side of the body damaged. Arnaud Démare and Jack Haig have fallen into a false flat descending into a new narrow section. Finally, in the middle of the final sprint, Caleb Ewan found himself on the mat hanging on the wheel of Tim Merlier, winner of the stage.
The reactions of former riders were immediate. “It’s still quite a coincidence all these falls in 5-6 km, it is still the proof that it was not suitable for a peloton of the Tour de France in the 3rd stage, remarked the former rider Laurent Jalabert at the microphone of France 2, a channel for which he is a consultant. There we have the balls. The kids go ashore, we play with their lives. Thomas Voeckler, also a former runner and consultant for France 2, had warned Laurent Jalabert by SMS that things were going to be “gameller” on these last hectometers. “It hurts us to see the runners on the ground, regretted Voeckler. The Tour de France, more than 170 runners arrive like starved to death. […] The sprinters were wild, their teams too. These are not the least dangerous roads that one can find on the Tour de France for a finish of a massive sprint. “
Marc Madiot’s incredible stroke of anger
But the palm of the rant is awarded to Marc Madiot, director of Groupama-FDJ. At the microphone of France 2, he did not hide his anger during a projection coming from the heart. “I am the father of a family. A lot of families, kids, mothers watch the Tour on TV… When I see that, I don’t want my kid to be a professional cyclist. So we’ve been talking about it for years, but we have to find solutions. We can’t go on like this, it’s no longer cycling. What condition is Caleb Ewan in? And the others before? Maybe we have to take off the earbuds, maybe we have to do a lot of things… We have to do something, otherwise one day we will have deaths. I don’t feel like calling a runner’s family someday because he’s in the hospital forever. It is not worthy of our sport. “
So who is he pointing at? “It’s not the problem with the course, it’s a whole. It is the fault of the runners, the teams, the organizers, our international bodies which do not regulate enough and which do not take into account the opinions of the old ones! “