Paris (AFP)

An unprecedented date, a permanent threat, a race without benchmarks: postponed for two months due to the pandemic, the Tour de France accumulates questions before its Grand Départ on Saturday in Nice with a trio of favorites, Bernal, Roglic and Pinot.

Masks are essential on the biggest race in the world. In the proper sense in the public, invited to keep this protection adapted to the period, and figuratively in the peloton, so many uncertainties are.

"It's a different Tour, in a very special situation", agrees its director Christian Prudhomme who, since April and the decision to postpone, has increased the number of meetings "with the sporting bodies and the authorities of the country".

The Tour, part of the national heritage, received the green light to be organized at the end of the summer, for the first time so late in its century-old history. Subject to strict health security conditions in the face of the threat of the coronavirus.

A "race bubble", bringing together all 22 teams and some officials, must be put in place. And the associated risk of exclusion from the team if two positive cases of Covid-19 were detected in the same group in seven days.

- The most mountainous route -

The Tour, a major event of the year on which the entire economic balance of cycling depends, is playing big. It multiplies the tests (two for each runner at the approach of the start), the communication campaigns for health gestures, keeps third parties, spectators or the media as far away as possible.

"The public will have access to the Tour de France but there will be areas with filtering at the start and finish of the stages", announces Christian Prudhomme who underlines the consequent drop in the number of people present in the race and around it. .

"We were almost 5,000, we will be a little more than 3,000 accredited", specifies the director of the Tour, satisfied that the broadcast of the race remains high ("190 countries take the images of the Tour, 100 countries broadcast live") , although several national televisions, including France, chose not to send their commentators on the ground.

Field? Attractive, by the general opinion. The route, from the first stage promised to sprinters on the Promenade des Anglais until the arrival of the 21st scheduled for September 20 on the Parisian Champs-Elysées, has it all.

The course, traced to the east of a line linking the Vosges to the Basque Country, adopts an ultra-dynamic rhythm and promises to be the most mountainous in contemporary history.

With visits to the five mountain ranges of France and an unprecedented, atypical, crucial finish at the Loze pass, above Méribel (Savoie), in the last week, before the unique time trial at the Planche des Belles Filles on the eve of the conclusion.

- A winner "like no other"? -

The menu can only seduce climbers, in the first row the Colombian Egan Bernal, outgoing winner under the colors of the powerful Ineos team.

But, if he is rid of the internal competition represented by two other former winners (Froome, Thomas), Bernal must take into account the rise of the impressive Jumbo with, in line-up, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic.

A duel? Not quite given the number of potential candidates especially as neither Bernal, claiming back pain, nor Roglic, victim of a fall, have completed the recent Dauphiné.

Thibaut Pinot, second in this alpine repetition, carries the French hopes of winning the Tour 35 years after Bernard Hinault. Others, starting with the Dutchman Tom Dumoulin and the Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz - former Giro winners, they are better than replacement leaders for Jumbo and Ineos - are in a position to upset the hierarchy.

In this Tour "unlike the others" of a year "like no other", would a winner "like no other" really be a surprise?

© 2020 AFP