It may not start and, even if it does, it may not finish - prepare for a Tour de France...

[ASFN Admin]

It promises to be a Tour de France like no other. When the 107th edition of cycling’s biggest race kicks off in Nice next Saturday, it will do so with bubbles and buffer zones, mobile testing labs and minimal media interaction. Pre-race press conferences will be conducted via Zoom. Journalist access to buses and team hotels forbidden. In a blow for fans of plastic keychains and Haribo sweets, there will be no Tour caravan throwing trinkets to crowds this year. What there will be is regular Covid-19 testing for the travelling circus. Tour organisers ASO have confirmed a two-strikes-and-you’re-out policy, raising the possibility of a maillot jaune contender having to abandon the race within sight of the finishing line in Paris despite not actually testing positive for coronavirus himself. Imagine if that contender was Groupama-FDJ’s Thibaut Pinot, about to become the first French winner since Bernard Hinault in 1985. It might trigger another French revolution. All of the above assumes the race reaches Paris, of course. France’s creeping R-rate is being closely monitored. Yet despite all the uncertainty, the Covid restrictions, the almost surreal fact that the world’s biggest annual sporting event is taking place at all, this year’s Tour promises to be a ripper. Cycling fans deprived of live action for months on end have been greedily gobbling up the action since the sport resumed earlier this month post-lockdown. And what the racing has told us is that anything could happen over the next month. Yes, it would have been fascinating watching Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal battle each other for intra-team supremacy in France, had all three former winners been at the peak of their powers. Sadly that was not to be. British fans lamenting the fact that Froome and Thomas have been excluded from the ranks of the newly-renamed Ineos Grenadiers can console themselves with the fact that the Welshman now has a great chance to add the Giro d’Italia title to his palmares, an achievement which, if he could pull it off, would add infinitely more lustre than playing the super-domestique role in another Tour win, which was the best he could have hoped for given his form.

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