THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Covid 19 couldn’t stop the Tour de France from happening, even if it’s going to look and feel very different. We speak to the riders tasked with putting on a show and the doctors with the job of keeping the show on the road

“The team have taken over the whole hotel for altitude training; no guests are allowed. We’re also divided into bubbles and have had Covid tests. We’ve never had a season like it.” That’s Nicolas Roche of Team Sunweb, who, unless a coronavirus second wave floods Europe, will line up in Nice on 29 August for his 10th Tour de France.

Since its inception in 1903, only the two world wars have caused the cancellation of the race and this year’s two-month postponement, from late June to late August, is a first. There’s been no end to the discussion of the ramifications of this unique situation. How will riders cope with the lack of competition? What measures are in place to identify and then isolate potential Covid carriers? And what will happen if the race leader is showing symptoms just one day before Paris? We trawled the teams and UCI - from a distance of course - to find some answers.

Bubble boys

On 15 June, the first etchings of what the 2020 Tour will look like came in the form of a UCI document entitled ‘Procedures to be followed for the reopening of the road cycling season in the context of the coronavirus pandemic’. This, at least up until the end of 2020, will be every team’s medical roadmap.

Inside you’ll discover such guidelines as a colour-coded matrix to determine the risk of an event going ahead; the optimal conditions for organising an event; and why podium blocks will now be placed 1.5m apart. They’re all of varying importance but one of the key cycling-specific implementations is the idea of bubbles.

“We plan to create a bubble around the riders, another around the race followers [race staff, media], and a final one for the public and guests,” says Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme. “The plan is to prevent these bubbles having any contact with each other. Needless to say, this won’t be the best year to ask for an autograph!”

These invisible shields are divided into ‘team bubbles’ and ‘peloton bubbles’. Tick off the criteria for the former and you’ll have access to the latter. The criteria for both starts before the riders and support staff travel to France, with testing to see whether they have Covid or had it. The RT-PCR antigen test to detect current illness must be carried out at least 72 hours before arrival at the departure site. If it comes up negative, crack on. Positive, no Tour.

If a rider comes up positive in the antibody test, the UCI will issue them with a certificate to race for the rest of the season without further spot-checks. Despite uncertainty about how protected you are from contracting Covid again, the steering group clearly feel there’s enough evidence to give the green light.

“Sadly, [when it comes to the certificate] I haven’t contracted Covid,” says Koen de