August Tour de France 'recipe for disaster', public health expert warns
Devi Sridhar, the chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and also a key adviser to the Scottish government on the Covid-19 pandemic, has described the plan to stage the Tour de France in August as a “recipe for disaster”.
“The wise thing to do is cancel for this year,” Sridhar said. “It’s a painful decision but they have no choice.”
The Tour was moved this week from its original start date in late June to a new Grand Départ in Nice on 29 August, following the banning of any large public events until 11 July by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
“This is a long-term problem, a chronic problem,” Sridhar told cyclingnews.com. “This virus is here to stay and will come back. Even if France gets a handle on it by August, then of course the issue is people coming in from different countries.”
Sridhar pointed to a series of potential risks, that might even lead to the
Tour being halted if there was an outbreak within the race convoy during the race. “There’s definitely a risk that the Tour de France moving around and unwittingly spreading the virus could kick-start a new lockdown.”
While the Tour’s television partners were delighted to hear the race was going ahead – “It’s very good news,” said Laurent Prud’homme, director general of French Eurosport – Sridhar urged the Tour owner ASO to rethink its plan.
“They have to weigh the risks against the benefits. Thousands of people from all over the world, gathered together, moving around, from town to town, this is where a virus could thrive – it could be a recipe for disaster,” Sridhar said.
She also suggested those arriving in Nice for the race from countries outside France should be quarantined. “This [the arrival of the Tour’s international convoy] could set off a new cluster of infections so you’d have to think, at minimum, of a two- to threeweek quarantine before they properly
come into the country.”
Ideally, Sridhar said, while acknowledging the logistics would be “mindboggling”, once the race has started the organisation would test everybody in the convoy every day. “We know 20% to 60% of people are pre-symptomatic, in that they feel fine and exhibit no symptoms but are passing the virus to others.”
While most European riders have reacted positively to the new scheduling, the participation of some, including the defending champion Egan Bernal, who is confined to Colombia, is not yet a given.
“It hasn’t escaped me that the current champion is in Colombia, but Europe is at the heart of cycling and the majority of riders live in Europe,” the Tour director, Christian Prudhomme, said.
The rescheduled dates have also caused a headache for other lesser race promoters, including the Tour of Britain
organiser Sweetspot, as the postponed Tour de France now clashes with its own race on 6-13 September. Another problem for the British race is a clash of live TV coverage as the official race broadcaster ITV also shows each stage of the French race.
“The position we find ourselves in is unprecedented,” Sweetspot said in a statement. “We are closely monitoring each development as it happens and acting accordingly with our partners and stakeholders across Britain to do the right thing, with the health and wellbeing of all of our supporters being of paramount importance.”