The Tour de France, usually a July event, kicks off on Saturday, August 29. Or, in relative terms, TOMORROW. It’s not the Olympics of course, but many of the participants would be hopefuls for the Olympics, so it is tangentially related. And I wanted blog content, so here it is.
The problem is, many people speculate that the race won’t complete all 21 stages.
They will try to contain the crowd, but I’m not sure how they will manage that. Do you keep people off the roadside? I guess managing the mountain stages are probably easy to manage because access is relatively limited. City finishes may be a little harder. I’ve been to multiple stages in the 90s (saw Lance Armstrong when his first stage ever, as I stated before) and there was of course a big “village” at the start and finish. If you don’t set up the village, perhaps people won’t come.
There’s a great article in the Wall Street Journal about the precautions cycling teams have taken in the past regarding team, health. As team EF Education First’s Tejay Van Garderen stated in the article, “We were all germaphobes before. In the Covid era, it’s like that on steroids.” Perhaps a cyclist should have used a statement other than, “on steroids,” but we get his point.
NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley, she with a Southern accent peppered with French, reported as well.
One thing I’m doing this year, as I have in the past, is a Tour Fantasy game. I’m terrible at these things. Here’s my team at the start. I have some opportunities to make changes once the race starts in case of crash, illness, or I want to fire a rider.