In Lille, the Tour de France has not yet started but it is already launched. The city departure of the 112ᵉ edition of the Grande Boucle, whose first pedal strokes will take place on Saturday July 5, gradually adorned with yellow in recent days to refine the preparations before a first long stage of 185 kilometers in the North. Thursday, July 3, the atmosphere still mounted a notch with the presentation of the twenty-three teams and 184 runners who will start from the race.
The number of spectators present in the capital of Flanders has not yet reached the affluency peaks identified during the brader weekends, but several thousand people had massaged, at the end of the afternoon, on the Grand-Place (or Place du Général-de-Gaulle) to attend this traditional protocol ceremony. Earlier in the day, it was the Place de la République that swarmed after the opening of the “Fan Park”. For this event day, 1,400 members of the police and security forces had been deployed.
After three major departures abroad in recent years – in Copenhagen (Denmark), Bilbao (Spain) then Florence (Italy) -, the organizers of the Tour de France bet on a departure in France, in a region viscerally attached to cycling. “In the choice of the North, there was this idea of having the popular fervor of the local people, but also that of Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom”exhibited Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour, at Monde A few days before this ceremony.
You have 66.56% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
