'Insane heat': Durbridge calls for earlier Tour de France starts

Australian cyclist Luke Durbridge joined a growing chorus of riders urging Tour de France organisers to consider bringing forward stage start times to avoid the hottest part of the day in a country sweltering through a heatwave.

Organisers ASO announced the day before that Sunday's ninth stage from Malemort to Ussel in the central Correze region would be around 30km shorter due to a "red alert" weather warning from Meteo France authorities.

And while several riders welcomed the news, Durbridge -- one of the Tour's elder statesmen who is riding in the Grande Boucle for the 12th time this year -- wants ASO and cycling authorities to go further.

"It's pretty insanely hot," the 35-year-old Australian told AFP before the start of the stage, on a day when temperatures were again expected to reach close to 40C.

"It does make a difference, we appreciate the change.

"Going forward, if the way global warming is going, we probably need to start changing these start times."

On Sunday morning the CPA association that represents professional cyclists issued a statement saying that it had been in discussions with ASO about making heat-related changes.

"Given the increasing frequency of extreme heat waves, the CPA reaffirms that summer race start times must evolve in order to protect athletes' health," the association said.

It called for "urgent discussions" to be held between stakeholders this winter to make changes ahead of next year's Tour.

"In the future, if we do have something like this predicted, (then) 9.30 am, 10 o'clock would be a nice start and we'd all be done and we'd be back home before it gets too hot," added Durbridge from the Jayco AlUla team.

Sunday's stage was due to start at 1:45 pm and finish at around 5:30 pm –- at pretty much the hottest part of the day.

Shaving 30km off the stage length, which was reduced to 155km, was welcomed, though.

"It means 45 minutes less in the oven," said French rider Benjamin Thomas before the start of the stage.

"That will relieve our organisms a little bit."

However, he warned that shortening a stage can have an adverse effect.

"Sometimes, shortening a course makes it more wild and intense," he added.

"Because we think that we can start riding full gas from the first 20km and if we get ahead in the right breakaway we have a chance."

That was certainly the case on Sunday with a rapid start in which the riders covered almost 47km in the first hour despite the hilly course.

- 'Keep a cool head' -

Bringing forward Tour stage start times is no straightforward matter, though.

"It's easy for us to say, why don't we start at X o'clock in the morning?" EF Education-Easy Post's head sporting director Charly Wegelius told AFP.

"But I can well imagine that reorganising 190 TV channels and schedules and permits for closing roads and so on -- I don't think it just happens in five minutes.

"I think we all need to keep a cool head and try to understand that everybody's trying to do their best. Every stakeholder has their own limitations."

On the slopes of the Suc au May climb 70km into the stage, fans were armed with ice buckets and plenty of liquids to try to manage the heat.

At the top of the hill is an area of open land without the shade of trees known locally as "the furnace".

"We have been here for a week, so now after a week... we know the temperature," Henrik Nielsen, 50, from Saeby in northern Denmark told AFP.

"It's tough for (the cyclists). I don't think I could do the same as they did, but a very big respect to them," added his son Jonas, 24.

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© Agence France-Presse