Madrid (AFP)
The 2020 Tour of Spain cycling race will not start from Utrecht in the Netherlands as planned due to the pandemic of new coronavirus, organizers announced on Wednesday morning via press release.
"The Vuelta 20 will not leave the Netherlands. Given the exceptional situation caused by the COVID-19 crisis, the organizing committee for + La Vuelta Holanda + was obliged to cancel the official start of the race from the Dutch regions of Utrecht and North Brabant, "the organizing committee announced on Wednesday morning in a statement.
The organizers clarified that "the organizing committee and Unipublic (the organizing group of Vuelta) were forced to take this decision after the reorganization of the 2020 cycling calendar announced by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on April 15 and the measures recently taken by the Dutch government to ban the organization of sporting events until September 1, "the statement said.
The Vuelta was scheduled to start on August 14 from Utrecht and finish on September 6 in Madrid, but the race has been postponed to an unknown date due to the current health crisis.
The organizers specify however that Unipublic and the organizing committee of "La Vuelta Holanda" are already working on the possibility that the Netherlands will host the start of the race in 2022.
The start of the Tour of Spain 2021, for its part, had already been attributed to Burgos, in the north of Spain.
Unipublic general manager Javier Guillen said that offering a start to the Tour of Spain in the Netherlands was "a priority": "We have seen great hope and great involvement. It is a pleasure to The least we can do is explore already the possibilities to organize a departure to the Netherlands in the near future ", he declared, quoted in the press release. .
Martin van Hulsteijn, director of the organizing committee for "La Vuelta Holanda", said that the cancellation is "really a shame for all": "After the UCI press release on the reorganization of the cycling calendar, we entered in contact with all the parties involved to assess the possibility of organizing an event of this importance in the autumn, but we came to the conclusion that it was a mission too complicated ".
© 2020 AFP