The Sports Guru
The Tour de France sells itself on the crowd: the roadside wall of noise, the painted tarmac, the fans who run alongside the riders on the hardest climbs. On stage 3 the race asked that crowd to stay at home. Major wildfires in the Pyrenees-Orientales forced organisers ASO into what has been called an exceptional decision, keeping spectators away from the final 40km and the finish at Les Angles. This covers what has been asked, why, the scale of the fires, and what it strips from a stage that marked the race's first arrival on French soil.
Fans were urged not to attend the end of stage 3 of the Tour de France, organisers ASO asking spectators to stay away from the closing 40km and the finish at Les Angles because of major wildfires burning across the Pyrenees-Orientales. The stage, running 196km from Granollers to Les Angles, was allowed to go ahead, but the public was asked not to go near the route or the finish area, with police prepared to fine anyone who remained and camping cars and caravans told to leave immediately. For a race whose entire character is bound up with the crowds that line its roads, asking those crowds to disappear for the decisive part of a mountain stage is about as far from business as usual as the Tour gets.
A fire too close to ignore
The reason was not hard to see. A wildfire had burned across roughly 1,500 hectares of land around 70km from Les Angles, and some 700 firefighters were reported to be tackling the blaze. That is a serious incident in its own right, entirely separate from any bike race, and it is the kind of emergency that does not care about a sporting calendar. With resources stretched and conditions volatile, the last thing the region needed was tens of thousands of spectators driving in, parking up and camping along mountain roads that might be required for evacuation or for the movement of emergency vehicles. The request to stay away was, in that light, less a disruption to the Tour than a basic piece of common sense imposed on it.
What the stage loses
The restrictions applied to the final 40km of the planned 196km route, which meant the crowds would miss the two categorised climbs that were set to shape the finish. The Col du Calvaire, 11.4km averaging 4.1%, and the closing ascent to Les Angles, 1.7km at 6.5%, are exactly the sort of terrain where a Tour stage is usually won and lost in front of a heaving roadside gallery. On stage 3 they were to be raced in something close to silence, the riders climbing past empty verges where there would ordinarily be a corridor of noise. It takes nothing away from the racing itself, but it takes a great deal away from the spectacle, and anyone who has stood on a Tour mountain knows the difference the crowd makes to the feel of the thing.
Enforcement, not just a request
This was not a polite suggestion left to the goodwill of the fans. According to Le Parisien, police would issue fines to any spectators who stayed in the area, and all caravans and camping cars were told to leave without delay. The aim was stated plainly: to reduce the impact on the emergency services and to keep the public safe. It is worth dwelling on how unusual that is at a Tour de France. The race is built on open access, on the idea that anyone can stand at the roadside for free and be part of it, and the sight of that access being withdrawn under threat of a fine is a measure of how seriously the authorities were treating the fire.
A race meeting a hotter world
There is a larger backdrop here that the Tour will not be able to keep ignoring. Stage 3 marked the race's first arrival in France after a Grand Depart in Spain, and it did so with a chunk of the country on fire in high summer. Wildfires of this scale during the Tour are no longer a freak event, and a race that spends three weeks crossing some of the most exposed landscape in Europe, at the hottest time of the year, is going to keep running into them. The organisers handled this one the right way, putting safety and the emergency response ahead of the show, and they deserve credit for it. But the exceptional decision on stage 3 has the look of something that will need to stop being exceptional, because the conditions that forced it are not going anywhere.
For now, the racing goes on, and the general classification will be settled on the road as it always is. What changed on stage 3 was everything around it. The Tour de France asked its own crowd to stay away from its own finish line, and got a glimpse of what the race looks like without the thing that makes it the Tour. It was the right call. It was also a strange and slightly sobering sight, and probably not the last of its kind.
Frequently Asked Questions
Major wildfires were burning across the Pyrenees-Orientales, and Tour organisers ASO asked spectators to stay away from the final 40km and the finish at Les Angles to reduce the impact on emergency services and keep the public safe.
No. The 196km stage from Granollers to Les Angles was allowed to go ahead. Only the spectator access to the closing 40km, including the finish area, was restricted.
The fire had burned across roughly 1,500 hectares of land around 70km from Les Angles, with some 700 firefighters reported to be tackling the blaze.
According to Le Parisien, police would issue fines to spectators who remained in the area, and all caravans and camping cars were told to leave immediately.
Sources: Reporting by the BBC, corroborated by Cyclingnews, BikeRadar and Cycling Weekly.
