{"id":240264,"date":"2025-07-05T14:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T14:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/240264\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T14:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T14:07:12","slug":"cycling-without-fans-is-boring-pogacar-and-van-der-poel-react-to-28000-police-officers-at-tour-de-france-grand-depart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/240264\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCycling without fans is boring\u201d \u2013 Pogacar and Van der Poel react to 28,000 police officers at Tour de France Grand Depart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tour-de-france\" title=\"Tour de France\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tour de France<\/a> begins today in Lille under<br \/>\nunprecedented security, with 28,000 police officers deployed for the Grand<br \/>\nD\u00e9part. The visible presence reflects the heightened alert status surrounding<br \/>\nthe opening stages of the race, where there will be tension both within the<br \/>\nbunch and in the crowds too.&#8221;It&#8217;s a big event, so you know that there&#8217;s a lot of<br \/>\nattention on it,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/mathieu-van-der-poel\" title=\"Mathieu van der Poel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mathieu van der Poel<\/a> told De Telegraaf. &#8220;Do I feel<br \/>\nunsafe? To be honest, I don&#8217;t think about it. That&#8217;s not really handy when you<br \/>\nhave to ride a Tour de France. You want to keep your focus on the race.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 Tour de France begins today in Lille under unprecedented security, with 28,000 police officers deployed for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-240264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114801019783082929","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}