The Times
If true, the Tour will follow suit with its fellow Grand Tour the Vuelta a Espana in ending the practice of having podium girls greet the stage winners. In 2017, the Vuelta replaced the podium girls a selection of men and women to assist with podium duties.
The Tour Down Under also replaced podium girls with young children and local cyclists earlier this year with the Flanders Classics announcing that the podium hostesses would no longer be used at the Tour of Flanders.
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Cyclist,
As for for the Giro d'Italia, they seem to be standing firm on the use of podium girls with Giro race director Mauro Vegni commenting that he saw this call for their removal as a 'temporary trend'.
SBS,
The use of podium girls has received a wind of change in professional sport in the past 12 months. In January, the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) announced it would no longer have walk-on girls while Formula 1 also confirmed they would be scrapping the use of grid girls.
The use of podium girls has been a contentious issue within the sport of cycling with arguments falling down on both sides of the issue and previous incidents stoking the argument.
At the 2013 Tour of Flanders, Peter Sagan (Bora-Hasngrohe) groped podium girl Maja Leye on live television. While this sparked outrage, Sagan’s apology was enough to see the issue not progress any further.
