ÉVIAN-LES-BAINS – There’s a higher than usual count of people in silly costumes this Tour de France, and I’m not just talking about the bike riders (heyo!). This year, there are fresh new characters to grapple with: the Visma-Lease a Bike bee, a guy dressed as Spiderman, and a person hiding somewhere in the depths of a big inflatable banana.
These are normally a bread and butter interview: I ask them silly questions through the mesh holes in their suits, they tell me things about their experience, and we all get on with our days. But this year, the mascots don’t want to talk.
So what’s going on? In broad strokes, big commercial interests are making the race increasingly stage-managed: everything from the riders to the organisers all the way down to the people sweating inside mascot suits. In past years, it was unclear whether the lack of communication with mascots was merely the result of language barriers – I’d occasionally get an interview here and there, like that time with the Skoda bobcat or whatever it was – but we can no longer assume that is the case, mostly because the reason they won’t talk is because they are specifically telling me that they are neither authorised nor able to do so.
Iain Treloar
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