Prudhomme responds to the hotel controversy: "At the Tour, all teams are treated equally."

Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has responded forcefully to the criticism raised by Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) regarding the poor quality of the hotels assigned to the teams during the Tour de France. The ASO president explained the accommodation allocation system in detail, emphasizing that each team is treated absolutely equally.

The incident caused quite a stir: Halland Johannessen posted videos on social media showing the appalling conditions of his hotel room, even declaring that he preferred to sleep outside on a terrace due to the complete lack of air conditioning. Furthermore, Alpecin-Premier Tech and Picnic-PostNL , staying at the same ski resort and in nearby apartments, also complained about conditions that fell short of acceptable standards.

Even UAE Team Emirates-XRG would have spent the night without a proper cooling system, although the team can count on the technological support of its sponsor Eight Sleep , which provides riders with special pod systems to attach to the mattress to ensure an optimal temperature while they rest.

Alpecin's sports director, Christoph Roodhooft , commented on the situation with a certain irony: "I wasn't bitten by spiders, but it wasn't pleasant, that's for sure. There has to be a minimum acceptable level in terms of quality, cleanliness, and location. You arrive at a hotel like this and you can't leave. It was below standard, but complaining is pointless."

Prudhomme, speaking on French radio ICI , explained that the ASO reserves as many as 1,850 beds for each stage of the Tour, and that in remote areas like the Massif Central, finding adequate quality accommodation is far from easy. The director then staunchly defended the system adopted by the organization: "If we want the race to pass through the most beautiful areas of France and offer spectacular stages, it means that there aren't always five-star hotels everywhere."

Prudhomme then clarified the rationale behind centralized accommodation management: "We are the only ones capable of guaranteeing equality among the teams. At the end of the Tour, all teams will have stayed in hotels with the same number of stars, will have traveled the same distance between their hotel and the stage start, and in the mountains, all teams will stay at the same altitude. Only the organizer can do this, because the teams will always defend their own interests."

Meanwhile, Johannessen himself tried to defuse the controversy at the start of the tenth stage, scaling back his initial comments: "The Tour is an adventure, and we experienced it even more. We enjoyed a night under the starry sky. The hotel certainly wasn't luxurious, but sleeping outside was even better: fewer insects and mosquitoes than in our rooms."