TOUR DE PROTEST

Protecting the Tour's 3,500km route from sabotage is almost impossible, and history reminds us of the race's vulnerability. Patrick Fletcherlooks back on an extraordinary day from 1982

- WORDS PATRICK FLETCHER PHOTOS OFFSIDE, GETTY IMAGES

As the Tour de France peloton arrived safely into Dunkirk on Monday afternoon, the race organisers breathed a huge sigh of relief. Stage three had passed without disruption - an outcome that was by no means guaranteed, given the threat issued by the CGT union two months earlier: “There will be no yellow jersey in Dunkirk.”

More than 700 redundancies had just been announced at the ArcelorMittal and Outinord steelworks. “I respect the Tour de France... but this is an economic and social emergency,” said the CGT's secretary general Jean-Paul Delescaut, adding: “If we have 1,000 to 2,000 comrades, that’s one every 100 metres of the route. [The government] will have to bring in every police unit in France for the stage to take place.”

Thankfully, it didn’t come to that, though tensions were still running high; stage three survived. Nevertheless, the whole affair carries a remarkable sense of déjà-vu. Wind the clock back to 1982, and you'll find the Tour de France stopped in its tracks. The location? Denain, barely 10km from the start of Monday’s stage. The cause? Steelworkers, hundreds of them, blocking the road in protest against the mass cuts that would effectively bring the Usinor plant to its knees.

It was the first and only time that a stage of the Tour de France was cancelled. There have been brief stoppages for various protests, stages curtailed or neutralised in extreme circumstances, and of course entire Tours cancelled during World Wars. But stage five of the 1982 Tour de France remains the only instance, in the 122-year history of the race, of a stage abandoned altogether. That is a remarkable statistic, given the race’s high profile and the French penchant for protest. Taking place over thousands of kilometres of public property, the Tour is almost uniquely vulnerable to sabotage.

Steeled for action