A new battery of tests is carried out this Sunday evening. After a few withdrawals due to Covid, the condition of the runners raises doubts, within a group of Flemish doctors, about the smooth running of those carried out last week.
Each week has its problems on the Tour de France. If last Sunday, in Morzine, omicron and its variants were on everyone’s mind, now it’s the heat wave that worries the peloton and the organizers. However, the disease is still there: it lurks. In recent days, Frenchman Warren Barguil and two stage winners, Simon Clarke and Magnus Cort Nielsen, tested positive and had to retire. Regularly, we also learn that such and such a member of a staff is no longer there, and, in the press room, some who were present the day before are no longer there the next day.
This Sunday evening, there is again a general series of tests, the results of which will be known on Monday morning. Not, a priori, what to worry about. Seven days ago everyone tested negative. It must be said, this surprised more than one. The Cofidis runner Guillaume Martin thus estimated, in the Team, after his abandonment for Covid, that other cyclists must have contracted it and preferred to hide it. Amaury Capiot (Arkéa – Samsic) told him of his astonishment at sporza. Victor Lafay, of Cofidis, who dragged out his sentence for several days, finally withdrew on his own, surprised that he had never tested positive. He had not “no strength, and then impossible to breathehe explained to Parisian. I talked about it in the peloton, there are many who have it. Castroviejo (Ineos), he told me it was the same, Pierre Rolland (B & B Hôtels KTM) too, Naesen (AG2R Citroën) who gave up told me about it too. […] In any case, we all have the lungs screwed up.
Doubts about the tests
Several Belgian and Dutch media have relayed the doubts of the SKA, an association of Flemish sports doctors, who claim that, “according to three sources”the tests would not be performed correctly. “The swab is often not inserted far enough into the nose,” affirms the SKA, which, contacted for more details, did not react. Since the departure from Denmark, all abandonments for Covid have taken place after internal checks in the teams.
To these criticisms, on the side of ASO, the organizer of the Tour, we respond politely with a “no comments”. The different teams we contacted all declined or opted for radio silence. “We have no complaints about testing and we prefer to focus our efforts on racing”, we explain on the side of the DSM, in unison with the others. Pedal, there is nothing to see.