Protesting farmers have forced the cancellation of today's planned opening stage at Étoile de Bessèges. The event, which had been due to run over five stages, is now reduced to four days.
The stage was intended as a 160km flat run, starting and finishing in Bellegarde, before the final 800m kicked up to the line, averaging 7 per cent but with some pitches of 12 per cent which may sting a few legs.
Both Ben Healy and Darren Rafferty of EF Education-EasyPost are due to line out, as is Dillon Corkery for his new UCI Continental French team St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93.
But instead of racing today, the riders will train and will instead start racing tomorrow, protests allowing, on stage 2. It features two climbs in the mid part of the stage before a 900m incline of 9 per cent to the finish in Rousson after 164km of racing.
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The farmers are protesting over a variety of issues, including EU rules stating four per cent of farmland be left fallow to encourage biodiversity to recover. They are also angry at what they see are cheaper imports into France which undercut domestic farming.
They place to stage a tractor blockade around Paris, though the protests are also taking place across larger regions throughout the country.
"The worry is not at all the same for the other days of racing. In the Gard department, this area around Bellegarde is more impacted than the other roads that we will take from Thursday," race organiser Claudine Fangille told French cycling news site DirectVelo.
"We will then go back towards the north of the department and there will certainly be fewer problems with blockages. This is a less hot zone than. Ditto for Saturday's stage and the Bessèges stage.
"It was the prefecture that decided not to take any risks. We told them that there was a 99 per cent chance that the first stage would not take place, even if it was not yet certain. This is now the case, but we will meet everyone on Thursday."
