Former South African president Nelson Mandela’s 94th birthday will be celebrated before the start of the Tour de France’s 16th stage in Pau, organisers said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
France-South Africa Seasons 2012\/2013 organisers have joined forces with Mandela’s family and Tour de France race officials to honour the anti-apartheid icon and a large banner reading “Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela” will be held up by local children before Wednesday’s stage.<\/p>\n
Laurent Clavel, Commissioner General of France-South Africa Seasons on the French side, said the event will be witnessed by millions of people across the world.<\/p>\n
“While thousands line the route in France, millions follow it on TV,” he added.<\/p>\n
“It is an honour to be able to salute Nelson Mandela. The event … will generate a lot of interest in South Africa and will contribute to further cementing the relations between France and South Africa.” – AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former South African president Nelson Mandela’s 94th birthday will be celebrated before the start of the Tour de France’s 16th stage in Pau, organisers said on Tuesday. France-South Africa Seasons 2012\/2013 organisers have joined forces with Mandela’s family and Tour de France race officials to honour the anti-apartheid icon and a large banner reading “Happy … Continue reading “Cycling: Tour de France to honour Mandela”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[534,559,327,12250,558],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-france","tag-laurent-clavel","tag-mandela","tag-south-africa","tag-tour-de-france"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":739,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}