The 2020 edition of the Tour de France, under the sign of the Covid-19.

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Christophe Ena / AP / Sipa

  • The results of the PCR tests passed Sunday and Monday by the riders of the Tour de France and their supervision will be known on Tuesday morning.

    Two positive cases within a team will result in the exclusion of the whole team.

  • The 2020 edition has learned to live with the threat of Covid-19.

From our special correspondent in Laruns,

It's a scene that says a lot about this funny Tour de France.

Interviewed by videoconference just after his conquest of the yellow jersey, Sunday in Laruns, Primoz Roglic coughs three times in his mask during his speech.

A phenomenon that could not be more banal, but which this year triggers an exchange of glances between journalists gathered in the sports complex of the pleasant city of Bearn, 800 meters from the finish line and the Slovenian cador.

The amazing spectacle of this Pyrenean weekend obviously did not dispel the threat of Covid-19 which hangs over the peloton.

The virus has already driven the Grande Boucle from its usual July slot, only to push it back into September.

He remembers again at the huge sports-logistics machine on Monday, a day of rest in Charente-Maritime, with the end of the wave of PCR tests that began on Sunday before the start of the ninth stage, in Pau.

The "race bubble" must "start again healthy" Tuesday

Director of the event, Christian Prudhomme delivered a proactive speech on Sunday evening on France Info: “At the start of Nice, there were two tests, there is a new one this weekend, there will be a new one. week after so that the bubble race is healthy and leaves healthy regardless of the results Tuesday, for the maritime breakaway between the island of Oléron and the island of Ré.

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The first week of the Tour de France in pictures via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/8nTq1uhuvN

- 20 Minutes Sport (@ 20minutesSport) September 4, 2020

650 runners and team members, which form the famous “race bubble”, were tested.

If two riders or two people from the same team are positive, the entire team will simply be excluded.

If there is only one case, it will be placed in fourteen.

ASO, organizer of the Tour, and the International Cycling Union (UCI) will communicate the results on Tuesday morning, which add yet another element of uncertainty to this 2020 edition, which is already undecided.

"Obviously, everyone is freaking out a bit," a member of ASO confided on Sunday.

Even if, as Prudhomme indicates, “everything has been done to ensure that the Tour de France race bubble is healthy”.

Audience gauges established in agreement with the prefectures, keeping spectators and journalists at a distance, all obliged to be masked, with for the media part, the advent of video communication, via WhatsApp, Zoom or Telegram.

The riders a little irritated by the behavior of the Tour spectators via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/b377zBDIY9

- 20 Minutes Sport (@ 20minutesSport) September 6, 2020

This weekend, from what we have seen, the health instructions issued via posters, audio messages and video clips with Thibaut Pinot were massively respected in Loudenvielle then in Laruns, at the finishings of stages.

But teams and runners were moved by the behavior of some fans in the mountains, especially on Saturday in the Peyresourde pass.

"We hope to finish the Tour, so we can't have people screaming without a mask," thundered the Dutchman Tom Dumoulin, Roglic's luxury lieutenant at Jumbo-Visma on Sunday morning.

If the coronavirus is willing, the race must arrive on September 21 on the Champs-Elysées.

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