D The men’s Tour de France is the biggest motorsport event of the year. Although it features cyclists who ride there for three weeks, nothing works without cars and motorcycles in the grand tour through France. If you have ever stood at the roadside waiting for the peloton to pass, you will not quickly forget the smell of burnt petrol and diesel.
With the cars that close off the route, the spectacle begins. After all, no unauthorized vehicle should cross the streets when the kilometer-long advertising caravan’s lorries race past the spectators. Then there are the team support cars, the Tour officials who do not walk, and the motorcycles with TV cameras, whose footage is transmitted to the world by the helicopters that fly above the route. Oh yes, the luxury buses and food trucks of the teams must also somehow get through France. The entourage of journalists and technicians from the broadcasting networks also daily seek the fastest route along the streets to be at the finish before the riders.
Nevertheless, there are always cycling fans who, in their love of the race operation, believe that a bicycle race is something like a contribution to an ecological transport transition. In any case, this little shitstorm is understood, into which the Dutch cycling hero Mathieu van der Poel has fallen when he proudly presented his new advertising partner on Instagram: a provider of exclusive private-jet flights. That van der Poel, despite his impressive leg muscles, is not really an eco-conscious rider, the outraged fans could have known. Van der Poel had already been a known fan of the sports-car manufacturer Lamborghini before he was equipped with an advertising contract by them.
Tour winner Tadej Pogačar has acquired a Porsche 991 GT3 Weissach. A childhood dream
Even the tour dominator Tadej Pogačar, who loves to present himself as a modest regular guy living in Monaco, is a fan of overpowered bolides. As a reward for his countless successes, he buys himself sports cars. Online there are pictures showing him beside a Porsche 991 GT3 Weissach, for which he surely had to lay out around 300,000 euros. A childhood dream, his girlfriend Urška Žigart said.
Stories from the Other Ferrari
Hardly anyone will be surprised by that. The fastest cyclists in the world have always had a fondness for fast cars. When Germany’s most popular doping user Jan Ullrich in 2002 caused an accident with plenty of alcohol in his blood, he was in a Porsche.
Of course there were always Ferrari enthusiasts in the peloton. One of them was the Belgian classics specialist Tom Boonen, who had his sports car repainted by an airbrush artist in pastel colors with such kitschy motifs that one could rightly call it a case of bad taste. A Christ figure above the right rear wheel with the speech bubble “Jesus saves my tyres” is not even the worst misstep there.
An Italian pro Pippo Pozzato had a double relationship with Ferrari. He not only liked to pose with his fiery red ride, he also kept close contact with Michele Ferrari, that Italian sports doctor who was so popular with the riders because he prescribed training plans as well as performance-enhancing substances. Which car the Ferrari, repeatedly convicted of sports fraud, was traveling in when he accompanied his riders is unfortunately not known to the author of these lines.
