{"id":705024,"date":"2026-07-22T10:01:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T10:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/705024\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T10:01:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T10:01:20","slug":"the-mascots-dont-want-to-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/705024\/","title":{"rendered":"The mascots don\u2019t want to talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, an honest journalist could interview a Tour de France banana. Now, you need a brand manager’s sign-off.<\/p>\n

\"Iain<\/p>\n

\u00c9VIAN-LES-BAINS \u2013\u00a0There\u2019s a higher than usual count of people in silly costumes this Tour de France, and I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t want to talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s 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\u00a0\u2013\u00a0I\u2019d occasionally get an interview here and there, like that time with the Skoda bobcat or whatever it was \u2013\u00a0but we can no longer assume that is the case, mostly because the reason they won\u2019t talk is because they are specifically telling me that they are neither authorised nor able to do so.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The liquid life of a sweaty Tour de France mascot<\/p>\n

Life is simply too short to be a Skoda mascot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

\n \ud83d\udc4dYep
\n \ud83d\udc4eNope\n <\/p>\n

\n Tour de France<\/a>
\n Culture<\/a>
\n marketing<\/a>
\n ASO<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France Once upon a time, an honest journalist could interview a Tour de France banana. Now,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-705024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}