Born in
Paris, Prudhomme studied at the
ESJ school of journalism in
Lille from 1983 to 1985. He joined
RTL (Radio-Télévision Luxembourg) in 1985 with the encouragement of his tutor, Michel Cellier, who was RTL correspondent in the
Nord region. He joined RTL on trial. RTL did not keep him on and Prudhomme moved to
RFO and then on 3 August 1987 to the television channel,
La Cinq, as a sports reporter under Pierre Cangioni. He reported in particular on his favourite sports:
cycling,
rugby,
athletics, and
skiing. Of those, his favourite was cycling and he reported regularly on the
Midi Libre and
Paris–Nice stage races. In 2002 he said of cycling: :When I was a kid, I listened on average to the last 100 km of a stage. We didn't have the last 120 km of racing on
France Télévisions that we have now. There was a report at 100 km to go on the radio and we were very happy to get the last 15 km live. Then I used to listen on Belgian radio to a man, I don't know if he's dead, called Luc Varenne, an extraordinary man. My father always listened to the radio and regularly to sport. I was nourished on that ever since I was tiny. :Cycling has always made me dream, even if today, alas, it is in a mess. It is an extraordinary sport, a legend of a sport, a sport of legends. It's almost as hard as boxing and combat sports. It takes place in exceptional conditions, obviously the mountains, the cobbles. It's a sport where anything can happen. The weather plays a significant part and the riders have to confront it. It has always made me dream. Prudhomme became head of sport at La Cinq. He occasionally presented sports bulletins at midday. In 1992 that failed through lack of funds and Prudhomme freelanced for a year before joining the news channel,
LCI. He had barely agreed to join when Eugène Saccomano, head of sport at the radio station
Europe1 invited him to replace Jean-René Godart, who was leaving to join the television network,
France 2. In 1998 he was in at the start of a cable channel,
L'Équipe TV, television companion to the daily sports paper and run by
Amaury Group, whose subsidiary,
Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), is the organiser of the Tour de France. He became editor-in-chief. In 2000 he joined France Télévisions to modernise its sports programme, Stade 2. He commentated at the Tour de France for France Télévisions in 2000, alongside the former winner,
Bernard Thévenet. ==Tour de France==