Will the Tour de France resist the coronavirus?

On the podium of the Tour de France 2019, the Slovak green jersey Peter Sagan, Egan Bernal who combines yellow jersey and white jersey, and the Frenchman Romain Bardet who wins the polka dot jersey. REUTERS / Gonzalo Fuentes

Text by: Farid Achache Follow

The next Tour de France, which should in principle take place from June 27 to July 19, is the only major sporting event currently held. But with the evolution of the health crisis in France, it may not be organized on these dates.

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Since 1903, we have been massing on the edge of French roads to watch the runners pass in the middle of summer. And only the two World Wars stopped the Tour de France, which even survived the doping scandals in the late 90s.

Will the coronavirus affect the only last major sporting event in the coming months still scheduled? The Tokyo Olympics and the Euro football championship are skipped and are reprogrammed for 2021. But the Tour is every year ...

" Other hypotheses " under study

Last week, Tour Director Christian Prudhomme announced the postponement of the Dauphiné, the preparatory race for the Tour de France which was due to start on May 31. To date, the dates of the Tour de France have been maintained. But it would be a lie to say that we are not studying other hypotheses, ”said the head of the event without announcing a plan B.

The only indication provided by Christian Prudhomme remains the need to leave at least two months of preparation to the runners before kick-off. For the moment, like a large part of the world's population, the latter are confined. However, so that the Tour can start on the fixed dates, they would have to start training on the roads at the end of April.

An offbeat Tour?

Could the Tour be postponed by a few weeks? And how to organize the cycling year in case of postponement? The International Cycling Union and the teams know that the Great Loop remains the priority for the cycling economy and seem to agree.

" Without the Tour de France, cycling would be a very big problem ", recently insisted in the daily Die Welt the boss of the German team Bora, Ralph Denk. In Belgium, the boss of the Deceuninck-Quick Step team, Patrick Lefevere, faced with the reduction in investment that his main partner intends to make, says nothing else in the columns of Het Nieuwsblad : " If the Tour came not to be contested, it would be a big blow that ASO [Amaury Sport Organization, note] could probably cash but not the teams. This could collapse the whole model on which our sport is built. "

The Tour, a necessity for certain teams

If the Tour de France is canceled, I see a lot of teams stopping at the end of the season because their sponsors will drop them. A cancellation of the Grande Boucle would be a catastrophe for cycling, ”says Belgian Thomas De Gendt, who won the Saint-Etienne stage last summer. He is one of the runners who accepted a reduction in salary.

The Tour is the keystone of our economy. If the Tour is canceled, we run for disaster. The economic model of my team is also based on hospitality and I rely heavily on the Tour to raise funds, pamper my sponsors, organize stage recognitions , "Jérôme Pineau, who created the French team, told France Info Vital-Concept in 2108 and who is invited to participate in the Tour de France for the first time. I cannot do without this sounding board. It's the Tour that is attractive, not the cycling. "

Ten to twelve million spectators on the side of the roads

The Great Loop attracts between 10 and 12 million spectators on the side of the roads. Will the French health authorities be ready to accept the end of social distancing which could relaunch the epidemic? And what with an audience from several European countries? For me, it's impossible to organize. We are not going to put the police on the road when they will certainly have something else to do. It's already pretty tense for them. There is a public health problem ”, estimates for journalist Jean-Louis Le Touzet, who followed eighteen editions.

If the Ministry of Sports had considered a closed-door race for a while, the organizer has brushed aside this idea. But ASO, which organizes the event, could lose a lot of money if canceled. An unprecedented situation for the largest cycling race in the world.

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