It was its director, Christian Prudhomme, who announced it at the turn of a sentence in which he presented the health instructions for the departure of the Grande Boucle in Nice, on 29 August.
“You used to see the champion surrounded by two hostesses, with five elected on one side and five representatives of the partners on the other. There, it will be different with only one elected and one representative of the partner of the yellow jersey , as well as a hostess and a host for the first time, ”he said at a press conference.
“We had already been doing it in other races for 20 years such as Liège-Bastogne-Liège”, organized like the Tour de France by Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), added Christian Prudhomme.
In 2018, another world class race organized by ASO, the Flèche Wallonne, had opted for a mixed podium, a man to reward the winner and a woman for the winner.
Mr. Prudhomme did not specify if they also put an end to the tradition of “kissing” the winner, but the health context seems to have got the better of this other decried practice anyway.
For several years, voices have been raised regularly to demand the end of podium hostesses. A petition in 2019 even collected nearly 38,000 signatures, believing that women “are not objects, not rewards”.
Formula 1 had it put an end in 2018 to the “grid girls”, these young women, chosen for their plastic, who indicate the location of the single-seaters.
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