Tour de France 2021: dissonant voices at Les Verts for the departure from Brittany

Emanuel Buchmann, Thibaut Pinot, Egan Bernal and Steven Kruijswijk during the ascent of the Tourmalet on July 20, 2019. REUTERS / Gonzalo Fuentes

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We learned on Monday that the 2021 Tour de France will not start from Copenhagen but from Brittany, France. It will finally be Brest. Rennes, for a time anticipated, refused to be the starting point of the Tour de France. Other Breton towns have also opposed the organization of the sports competition, considered too polluting and too expensive.

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“  A dated sports format.  This is how the Rennes mobility assistant, Valérie Faucheux, justified the opposition of the city's Green elected officials to the Tour de France. A point of view shared by Landerneau, who refused to be a stage of the competition. The city would have to spend 100,000 euros.

Too expensive for such a polluting event. This is what explains Christophe Winckler, elected ecologist of Landerneau.

“  Everything that goes around is abberant. On some stages, there are 3 or 4 helicopters that are constantly rotating. I think like me a lot of people have seen stages. There is the spill of "goodies", plastic objects, it's phenomenal, all this deserves to be reviewed. We are on a model of the twentieth century. "

Precisely, developing this sporting event is what Brest aims to do, from where the Tour de France will finally start in 2021. For the environmental city councilor Glen Dissaux, there was no question of missing out. of this opportunity.

“  It's a huge popular event that is very unifying and we believe in Brest that we can use this kind of event to advance our ideas and to work with all the players in the area towards the objectives that we set for ourselves. that is to say, work on the issue of road mobility, waste reduction, carbon footprint, etc. "

The voices are therefore dissonant within Europe Ecology-The Greens and proof of the embarrassment aroused by this subject, the party leadership has not expressed itself.

► To read also: Cycling: the Tour de France will take place from August 29 to September 20

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  • France
  • Environment
  • Cycling

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