Is covid the only threat to Pogacar? "You can throw it all away"

• Jungels Prevents the long-awaited Spanish victory

Almost as much as that

who clings to the wheel with every violent blow, like on Sunday at Les Portes du Soleil,

is concerned with the uncontrollable.

The great ones built their empires as much on their superiority as on their ability to avoid doom.

Sometimes luck, sometimes wisdom.

The alpine slopes that have been coming since Tuesday or the rivals that are increasingly looking at him with more respect, with less encouragement to attack him, are elements that the power of the Slovenian seems to be able to dominate in this proclamation of his third consecutive victory in the

that It seemed like this first week.

But the Covid is something else, a strange and threatening element, also for the Tour in the summer of 2022.

On Sunday it was

, perhaps France's most real hope to break the evil fate that has haunted him since

won the last local Tour in 1985, who had to pack his bags.

The philosopher woke up with a sore throat on Saturday, but the first antigen test was negative.

For safety, his team, Cofidis, performed another one, which, now, was positive.

The French team contacted ASO, the organizer, and according to the UCI doctor, they did a PCR that confirmed the previous results.

His contagion rate was high, he represented a danger to the rest of the runners, and he had to leave.

Martin was 14th overall and in Lausanne he had finished with a good feeling, close to the top.

The protocol indicates that a runner can continue the race - with the agreement of the UCI expert commission - as long as he is asymptomatic.

himself

, winner on Sunday, left Copenhagen like this: with a low viral load.

But in the Frenchman's case he had the honesty to break his own streak of 362 days of competition without quitting.

What would happen to a rider who tests positive and is about to win the Tour?

"Thousands of fans"

Geoffrey Bouchard

, from the Ag2r, was the first to withdraw from the race for this reason.

And on Saturday, it was

who said goodbye due to the coronavirus.

And Pogacar not only lost one of his fittest teammates, but also injected a point of uncontrolled nervousness into his pleasant control of the race.

"It's starting to get worrying.

He is not a rival, but he can throw everything away », confessed the Slovenian, who mentioned, like a shadow, the« thousands of fans cheering in the ditches every day ».

Perhaps it was the first time that he kept his eternal smile so far in his career.

Two days after starting, the UAE Emirates had already lost

to the virus;

he replaced a

he doesn't look like he's at his best.

The weakness of

's team , now with only seven pieces, when the moment of truth arrives, that Pogacar could be left isolated, is one of the few questions surrounding the race.

Perhaps the only loophole so that squads as apparently powerful as the Jumbo Visma and the Ineos Grenadier can devise a common tactic against the great favorite.

Perhaps he is the one with the most to lose, but the threat is not just for Pogacar.

The Tour trembles after two years of nightmare due to a virus that seemed already behind.

The measures are exhaustive.

The teams, which carry out a test every two days on their runners, maintain unprecedented regulations.

On Sunday night were the last controls, all of them with negative results.

The cyclists sleep in individual rooms, have a personalized masseur - the one from Laegen, although he did not test positive, also abandoned the race - and wear the mask at every step.

Closed buses.

And technology also tries to help.

"We have our own machines like those in hospitals, runners sleep in individual rooms, we sanitize everyone's rooms every day," Matxin told MARCA.

“The Covid is starting to be worrying.

Unfortunately, the pandemic is there and we are not saved from it.

We cannot risk running sick, we have to take it seriously », summed up the leader before the stage that started the Aigle and in which his team, despite setbacks, controlled without too many problems.

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