Tour de France teams await results of first mid-race coronavirus tests on rest day

[ASFN Admin]

The Tour de France held its collective breath on Monday night as around 650 riders and team staff anxiously awaited the results of the latest round of Covid-19 tests. After nine days of breathless action, cycling’s marquee race has decamped from the Pyrenees to the west coast of France for its first rest day. However, the mood was not all that restful with around 650 people inside the ‘race bubble’ having undergone their first coronavirus tests since the grand depart in Nice, a Covid ‘red zone’, on Aug 29. Tests were carried out in a mobile laboratory provided by organisers, with the samples being sent for analysis. Any teams found to have two positives in their ranks - either riders or staff - in the space of a week will be expelled from the race. Teams anxious about ‘false positives’ had negotiated with the Tour’s organisers, prior to the race start in Nice, that they should only be sent home if two riders tested positive. But an 11th-hour intervention from the French government, which is trying to stem rising infection rates, means any team member testing positive counts towards the ‘two strikes’ policy. Teams were due to be informed of the test results on Monday night and their doctors have until 9am BST on Tuesday morning to upload those results onto a dedicated platform. According to an email sent to teams, should there be positive tests, the UCI’s medical director will then contact the team doctor to discuss the “next steps”. Positive results for anyone not exhibiting symptoms will be retested, together with an antibody test, to try to eliminate the possibility of any false positives. “The results of these tests, which will have been carried out on around 650 people within the teams, and all decisions that may or may not be taken in response, will be the subject of an ASO-UCI joint press release on Tuesday morning, before the start of the 10th stage between Île d'Oléron and Île de Ré,” read a statement from the Tour’s organisers. It remains to be seen whether any teams or individual riders are sent home, but it would be a huge shame if the race was compromised in any way given the state of play. Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic [Jumbo-Visma] currently leads defending champion Egan Bernal [Ineos Grenadiers] by 21 seconds, having wrested the yellow jersey from the shoulders of Britain’s Adam Yates [Mitchelton-Scott] in the Pyrenees on Sunday. There are a total of 11 riders - including two Frenchman - within two minutes of Roglic, with the hardest stages of the race still to come in the Alps next week. “I’m really happy and proud to be wearing the yellow jersey,” Roglic said. “But it’s still just the start of the Tour. More things will happen, especially with the start of this week and then we’ll finalise the whole picture in the third week after the time trial at La Planche des Belles Filles.”

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