When Tour de France boss Christian Prudhomme was received in the Danish capital in November 2015, it was almost like a state visit. It all ended with a nice dinner with about 15 guests in Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s prime minister’s residence Marienborg.
Crown Prince Frederik is probably used to being the most prominent guest at dinner parties, but this evening he found himself in the spotlight on the Frenchman Prudhomme. The cycling-crazy Denmark had now invested everything to arrange the start and a total of three stages of the world’s largest cycling competition Tour de France.
– From my perspective, it was a very crucial evening. It was the official Denmark that stood up and said: “Christian, we would like to have your cycling competition to our country”, says the dinner guest Alex Pedersen, one of the Danish initiators of the event, to Politics.
The newspaper has through public documents and interviews mapped how the classic stage competition ended up on Danish soil. The lobbying work was already started in 2012 by Alex Pedersen, who together with a colleague was also behind Denmark arranging the first three stages of the Giro d’Italia the same year.
Although Denmark got the nob as co-organizer of the competition in 2019, the then Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Venstre) regained hope when French President Emmanuel Macron paid a state visit in August 2018. After a bike ride in Copenhagen, the president handed over a classic yellow Tour de France leader ‘s shirt to the Liberal Party’s party leader.
– Then I thought, now it’s in port, says Lars Løkke Rasmussen to the news agency Ritzau.
In the end, it was also clapped and finished with a “grand départ” – as the start is traditionally called – in Copenhagen. On Friday, this year’s competition begins with an individual pace race over 13 kilometers in the Danish capital and then it continues with the stages Roskilde – Nyborg and Vejle – Sønderborg.
However, everything has a price. According to Politiken’s survey, Danish taxpayers must pay at least SEK 258 million for the circus’ visit. That bill includes, for example, flights to France for all cyclists after the three stages in Denmark.
– It seems like a completely unreal world when Danish tax money is used to finance private cycling teams and a French stage competition’s travel activities, says Rasmus Grøntved Nielsen, researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Law, to the newspaper.
What the agreement looks like between the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) – the owner of the cycling competition – and the Danish company formed for the event is secret. The company is privately owned and also arranges, for example, the Dakar Rally and the Paris Marathon. Turnover is around SEK 2.3 billion annually.
According to Copenhagen’s Lord Mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen (S), it was a requirement from ASO that the agreement should not be public. Something that is problematic, says Rasmus Grøntved Nielsen.
– This is an extraordinary event that the public and politicians have a clear interest in gaining insight into. Instead, they put mouths on politicians and limit their ability to raise a public debate about whether to use the money in the right way, says the legal researcher to Ritzau.