Cancellation would be a body blow to cycling
The Tour de France is not only a French monument but also the economic heartbeat of professional cycling, and analysts fear dire consequences if the Covid19 crisis forces its cancellation.
An announcement is expected this week on either a postponement or an outright cancellation of the 21-day extravaganza scheduled to start in Nice on June 27.
The “Grande Boucle”, as the Tour is known in France, is the central economic pillar which supports the 22 professional teams on the roster for 2020.
“Cancellation opens the door to a possible economic meltdown in the cycling sector,” says Jean-Francois Mignot of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Maintaining the original dates looks unlikely with France under lockdown since March 17.
Usually, up to 12-million fans line the roads as the Tour makes its way through the French countryside and towns and cities for three weeks.
“It’s as simple as this. If the Tour does not take place, teams could disappear, riders and staff alike would find themselves unemployed,” said Marc Madiot, the chief of top French outfit Groupama-FDJ.
His team budget is estimated at €20m a year and is bankrolled by the state lottery and an insurance company.
Tour de France organiser Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) paid €2.3m in total prize money on the 2019 edition, won by Ineos’s Colombian rider Egan Bernal, who picked up a cheque for €500,000.
The Tour rakes in revenue but the huge cost of staging the event, featuring logistics that are as spectacular as any mountainside showdown on two wheels, eat into the margins of all road races.
Sponsors are paying hard cash for the daily hours-long television coverage. Even the smallest teams can get involved in a breakaway and hence command screen time.
There are ceremonies every day on the Tour de France for all kinds of prizes — sprinting, climbing, attacking, young riders — where sponsors’ names are prominent.
“Most sponsors are in cycling for this reason alone, the whole thing is centred on the Tour de France,” Mignot said.
It is two decades since the Hansie Cronjé corruption scandal rocked world cricket, but even now the ripples are still being felt.
April marks the 20th anniversary of Cronjé being stripped of the SA captaincy after an extraordinary sequence of events earlier in 2000.
In January, come the last day of a “dead” Test against England (SA had already won the series), a draw seemed inevitable after rain had washed out three days’ play.
Yet Cronjé contrived a positive result by getting England captain Nasser Hussain to agree that both sides would forfeit an innings. England were left with a target of 249 for victory after Cronjé declared and eventually won by two wickets.
Traditionalists were aghast at the interference with the “proper” course of a Test, yet few were prepared for what was to come. In April, Cronjé’s image as a religious sportsman — he wore a bracelet inscribed with the words “What would Jesus do?” — was shattered.
An AFP report, later confirmed by the New Delhi police, said the force had phone recordings of Cronjé and an Indian bookmaker discussing predetermined Proteas’ performances during their tour of India the previous month.
Such was Cronjé’s standing at home and abroad that the initial reaction was one of “shock and disbelief”, according to one of SA’s leading cricket writers.
It was a sentiment shared by Ali Bacher, the MD of the United Cricket Board, forerunner of today’s Cricket SA.
“When AFP broke the story before the official media conference by the Delhi police, I remember the office receiving a call from Dr Bacher blasting the agency for ruining the reputation of one of SA’s most iconic personalities,” recalled Kuldip Lal, the Delhi-based cricket reporter behind the scoop.
“He threatened to sue us. I thought to myself that if the story is incorrect, a few of us may need to look for another job.”
But Cronjé’s partial confession a few days later led to a “feeling of relief” in AFP’s Delhi bureau, with Lal adding: “To his credit, Dr Bacher called the office to apologise for his earlier outburst.”
Cronjé later confessed to several allegations at the SA government-appointed King commission, including attempts to bribe Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams to underperform in a one-day international against India.
He admitted to receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from bookmakers to prearrange certain conditions — cricket’s complexity means gambling coups are possible without “fixing” the result — with his Centurion effort netting him $6,000 and a leather jacket.
Cronjé, who insisted he had never thrown a game, was later given a life ban from cricket, yet his reputation remained high with both his former teammates and the SA public alike.
Batsman Daryll Cullinan, for example, testified that Cronjé, who died in a 2002 plane crash, had offered the team $250,000 to throw a match, but added that he still thought of Cronjé “as a great captain and a great leader”.
Meanwhile, separate national hearings and investigations led to life bans for Pakistan’s Saleem Malik and India’s Mohammad Azharuddin. Yet their suspensions were among several punishments subsequently overturned, though for Malik and Azharuddin the initial sanctions effectively ended the careers of two world-class batsmen.
The International Cricket Council responded by creating a new anticorruption unit led by Paul Condon, the former head of London’s metropolitan police.
But it was desperately understaffed and 10 years ago it was Britain’s now defunct News of the World tabloid that exposed the willingness of Pakistan captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir to engage in spot-fixing.
Since then the beefed-up anticorruption unit, respected for its work in educating players about the dangers of corruption, has had a greater impact, with its investigations leading to New Zealand batsman Lou Vincent receiving a life ban for matchfixing in 2014.
But the rise of Twenty20 franchise leagues and the development of the sport beyond top level men’s cricket have created new targets for fixers.
As has happened in tennis, they can now turn their attention to less high-profile areas of the game, where the financial rewards for players are far less and the temptation to cheat potentially all the greater.