It all happened so quickly.
The first word of it reached the media late one evening, as we drove through the September sunset somewhere north of Bordeaux, heading towards the rest day stopover in the Charente Maritime. A concierge in a hotel near Montelimar, a pretty auberge, somewhere out in the hills overlooking the Rhone vineyards, had been taken into intensive care with breathing difficulties, six days after two teams competing in the 2020 Tour de France had stayed there.
By ten pm, the two teams, all staff and all riders, were in isolation in their latest hotel and had been forced to withdraw from the race. As word spread, so did panic. The next morning’s stage was now in doubt. Riders began tweeting their anxieties. By midnight, the Tour convoy was in lockdown.
Standing by his hotel lift, Romain Bardet spoke to French TV. The riders were scared for their health, he said, and wanted the Tour abandoned. Team Ineos, despite leading the race overall, issued a statement calling for all three thousand in the race caravan to be tested before the Tour even considered continuing.
At nine the next morning, Christian Prudhomme announced that, after a brief conversation with the Elysees Palace, the 2020 Tour had to be halted. He paid tribute to the mayors of France and the thousands of fans who had demonstrated their loyalty by lining the roadside. Stirringly, he insisted that the Tour would survive the pandemic and would be back stronger and more resolute, in 2021.
At midday, news broke that the concierge had died. There had also been a spike in cases of Covid-19 in Nice.
Now, that hasn’t happened. It’s a hypothesis, a fantasy, a possible scenario, of course. Let’s hope it remains that way, but if the 2020 Tour de France does hit the road in Nice on August 29, who knows? It all depends on how big a risk ASO, the Tour’s promoters, and the French government, are prepared to take.
The reality might be very different and yes, the Tour might escape the reach of the virus. With pre-race quarantines and testing, social distancing, strict hygiene measures, face masks, restricted media access and stringent crowd control, the 2020 Tour de France might get through unscathed, from Nice on August 29, to Paris on September 20. Maybe.
But of all sports, as global health expert and adviser to the Scottish government Devi Sridhar told me in the spring, cycling’s travelling circus could prove one of the most perfect delivery methods for contagion — even if staged behind closed doors.
“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. “There’s definitely a risk that the Tour de France moving around and unwittingly spreading the virus could kick start a new lockdown.”
Even the riders themselves do not sound convinced. “If a rider is ill, there will be many more, because in a peloton, you breathe heavily, you end up with a lot of phlegm on your face, a lot of riders are coughing,” Thibaut Pinot said, “so if one is affected, the spread of the virus will be very quick. That could be worrying, though at the UAE Tour, they came out of it quite well, and there weren’t too many ill people.”
But the UAE Tour, Paris-Nice, one-day races, do not compare to the Tour de France, in terms of duration, intensity or physical demands. With an already depleted immune system, the riders will be at risk, both of contracting Covid-19 and of transmitting it. And if there’s Covid-19 in the peloton, how quickly will it spread through the convoy and beyond?
While there are still no hard and fast rules, our understanding of Covid-19 grows every day, as do the number of global fatalities. It is believed to be less virulent outdoors than indoors, but again that understanding is not comprehensively proven. The stats tell us that it is more deadly to older men than it is to women: look at the demographic for roadside fans watching cycling — middle aged or older men make up the largest share of that audience.
Infection and exhaustion go hand in hand with endurance sport. World Tour cycling however, like all professional sport, is also about business. There will be an acceptable level of risk attached to staging any races this autumn, but there will also be a deep-seated paranoia within cycling that a continuingly fragile business model will collapse if there are no races — and particularly no Tour de France — in 2020.
Without any racing, it is almost inevitable, yes, that some teams will slip away and some riders will struggle for contracts, yet much of this is doom-mongering from those who want the gravy train to continue, whatever the risks. Ironically, some of those demanding the Tour goes ahead are also those who frequently moan of too many races, and too many teams.
For all its foibles, cycling is a durable sport. It has survived two world wars, civil unrest, multiple doping scandals — and Lance Armstrong. It is too deeply woven into the cultural fabric of Europe to vanish almost overnight. A year out will not destroy it, although it might reduce the size of the cake and cause a short-lived downturn.
Worse, far worse, would be to ignore the risks, spread infection and then have to abandon the Tour. That would be irresponsible and might also be deemed unforgivable.