Cycling - Tour organisers demand Bakelants apologise for podium girls remark

By Julien Pretot

DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Tour de France organisers will contact Jan Bakelants's AG2R-La Mondiale team to ask him to apologise after the Belgian rider was reported to have made derogatory comments about the race's podium girls.

Bakelants allegedly made the comments in an interview with Belgian paper Het Laatste Nieuws.

"We will contact his team so that he makes an apology," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told Reuters on Wednesday.

Contacted by Reuters, AG2R-La Mondiale said: "We have seen this interview and the answers of Jan Bakelants, who certainly wanted to be humorous, but in the present case it was very bad taste. We apologise to the organisers and to those who may have been offended by this remark."

At the 2013 Tour of Flanders, now world champion Peter Sagan apologised after grabbing a podium girl's bottom.

The Tour de France starts on Saturday.

(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Davis)