Paris (AFP)
Everyone at home, in the saddle on a home trainer connected to a tablet, the riders advance their avatar on virtual routes, but provide real efforts.
Already practiced in training by the pros for years, online cycling has experienced a rush of practitioners in recent weeks, confinement requires, and now hopes to continue this craze.
Failing to be able to take place on the road, the Tour of Switzerland has thus migrated to online recently, with Julian Alaphilippe, Vincenzo Nibali or Romain Bardet on the starting line. Greg Van Avermaet became the first virtual Tour of Flanders winner by pedaling in his living room.
In July, the Tour de France is due to set off for a virtual version on the Zwift platform, the main cycling racing simulation application.
If the details of the race have not yet been officially announced, the Cyclingnews website reveals that the race, open to men and women, will include six stages of twenty kilometers spread over three weekends, in a setting of video game passing through Nice, Mont Ventoux and the Champs-Elysées.
At the start of the race, we will find several members of the "Punchers club", one of the first teams of its kind. "With the coronavirus, everyone has turned to online cycling," said Puck Moonen, a 24-year-old Dutch professional cyclist who recently joined the French club, told AFP.
- Identical sensations -
"I have always trained on Zwift, especially in winter because winter in the Netherlands is really not good. Then online races were organized, so it seemed logical to participate", she adds.
Carried by increasingly realistic technologies, the sector, halfway between esport and traditional cycling, is meeting with growing success. The different applications on the market allow you to simulate the routes, including elevation, and faithfully reproduce the course of the races.
"The sensations are the same," says Rod Reynolds, co-founder of the "Punchers club". "Everything is very well reproduced. When you arrive on a hill, the resistance increases. When you cross a paved area, the bike shakes. It's very realistic."
Main limit: the aspiration phenomenon, a key element of road cycling, is not yet fully developed.
"In a peloton, honestly we can be at 40km / h and almost not pedaling. On Zwift, if you don't pedal, you stop," describes Nicolas Fritsch, former FDJ pro rider who has two "real" laps of France to his credit (2003 and 2005). "But ultimately, it's harder," he adds.
- World's Championships -
For the moment, the discipline has nothing official: no recognized circuit or federation, but the different players hope to develop the niche with a new audience by playing on its strengths: short but intense, fun and less dangerous than cycling outdoors.
"We are really at the very beginning of the discipline, it is being structured", analyzes Carine Arasa, also co-founder of the "Punchers club". "The esports world is booming and the virtual world can reach a new generation. Traditional cycling can seem a bit old-fashioned, so it modernizes the image of the bike a bit."
Cycling authorities have understood this since the International Cycling Union announced last fall the creation in 2020 of the first esport cycling world championships, in collaboration with Zwift.
To the point of making home biking a competitive discipline in its own right and not a simple palliative to real races?
"I don't want it to replace the traditional bicycle," says Nicolas Fritsch. "But it's a great addition. I think that in the future, it will be one of the facets of cycling, as there is the road, the track, cyclo-cross, mountain biking or BMX," he says. .
© 2020 AFP