GRANDD ÉPART
ON THE EDGE
The Tour de France’s grand départ took place in Brittany and saw the return of large-scale crowds to the race, for better and for worse. Procycling looks back at a chaotic four days in France’s cycling heartland
Writer Edward Pickering /// Image Gruber Images
Alaphilippe’s long-range attack won him the first yellow jersey in ‘21
Image: Tim de Waele/Getty Images.
During the campaign for the 2007 French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate for the incumbent Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party, is reported to have said, “Je m’en fous des Bretons” (I couldn’t give a sh*t about the Bretons), which might explain why his opponent, Ségolène Royal, carried three of the region’s four départements.
It’s easy to imagine that almost all of the GC favourites for the 2021 Tour de France might have expressed similar or even stronger sentiments, if not about the people of Brittany, then about the region, its roads and the all-pervading sense of chaos that permeated the opening four days of the race. The 2021 grand départ was marketed as a homecoming for cycling to one of its heartlands, and after the eerie and discombobulating crowdless atmosphere of the 2020 Tour, was just what the race needed. The Tour without crowds is like a forest without birdsong.
But if the last 18 months have taught us anything it is that a crowd is not a risk-free environment, nor is the line dividing peloton from public a clear-cut one. In the moment that Tony Martin rode into a fan standing in the road on stage 1 and set off a chain reaction of falling bodies, there was just enough time to read the first part of the sign she was holding up to the cameras, her back to the peloton: “Allez opi…” …omigod.
That crash, in which the peloton concertina-ed and folded in over itself at high speed in the extremely constricted space of a narrow road with 45km to go, cost DSM’s Jasha Sütterlin his place in the race and put a dent in Jumbo-Visma’s ambitions. The next big one, with 8km to go, cost Richie Porte and Tao Geoghegan Hart their place in the front group, halving Ineos’s leadership options a few hours into a three-week race. Cyril Lemoine of B&B Hotels-KTM and Groupama- FDJ’s Ignatas Konovalovas made it no further, while Marc Soler finished the stage with two broken arms and pulled out.