There will be a Tour
That is the good news, Le Tour de France 2020 will start in the end of August of this year. But it will not be as we were used to it. ASO, or Amaury Sports Organisation, the organisation behind the Tour has announced its plans for how it will all take effect in August. And it is weird.
- There will be no "Village Départ", which is normally a huge advertising show for the place where the stage starts, but because of the corona virus, ASO will not open the very financially attractive "Village Départ" in not one of the starting places. Bad news for the VIP's.
- The journalists and other people will not be able to have face to face contact with the riders for the full three weeks. The riders will be in a golden cage, completely secluded from the outside world, to prevent infection of one of the riders.
- No podium ceremony after every stage. So bad news for the sponsors, which normally have an extra moment of airtime with their sponsor name on the shirts with a winner on the stage, but no such thing. Which is kind of weird, because I don't see a problem with doing that in a safe way.
- Some climbs will be completely shut down from the bottom, so no fans will be able to support their riders from closeby. On other places a strict filtering system will make sure only very little fans can support from the side of the road...
An image from Paris-Nice which was held without fans at the finish
All very weird, but he, we are already very happy, that there will be racing!
Still, it's a strange world right now!
Sincerely,
Pele23