Tarbes (AFP)
The departure of the 14th stage of the Tour de France was delayed by a quarter of an hour Saturday near Tarbes, because of a demonstration on the public road, noted an AFP journalist.
This situation led the organizers to push back more than 6 km from the actual starting point of the stage that arrives at the top of the Col du Tourmalet.
In Ossun (Hautes-Pyrénées), four kilometers after the kilometer zero of the stage, dozens of opponents to a controversial project to open an industrial pigsty near this village have invaded the road for several minutes, before be gradually controlled by a major gendarmerie.
This prompted the organization of the Tour de France to delay initially the fictitious departure of the stage, originally scheduled for 13:30, then to shift the actual start of 6.4 kilometers, judging it at 14:00 instead 13:45 local, at the exit of Ossun, once the place of this event exceeded.
© 2019 AFP