“The performance department is scratching their heads all the time. There is a logic to performance and Covid-19 removes all that logic.” The words of Cédric Vasseur, manager of the professional cycling team Cofidis, are strong and reflect the difficulties encountered by French teams. Indeed, while most of them are training abroad in mid-January to prepare for the start of the season, wear and tear is already being felt even though the calendar has not started.
The season will indeed – again – be marked by the Covid-19 and the constraints linked to it: days punctuated by screening tests, canceled races… All this complicates preparation and weighs on the daily lives of runners, even on their morale. “There is no more fun”, summarizes Cédric Vasseur.
The manager describes the stress that is gaining the management of the teams, with the fear that the virus will infiltrate the team while the period is crucial for the rest of the year. “The program is always changing. We had planned only one internship but we had to create three, because we really want to divide the team and minimize the number of potentially infected people.”
The same concern reigns in the B&B Hotels formation, four riders of which were unable to join the team’s second stage, precisely because they were affected by Covid-19. This could already have consequences for the next Paris-Nice, fears Jérôme Pineau.
“It’s complicated: am I going to see the buddy when in two days I see the runner, and that if the runner is positive he will not start the race? All this plays a lot on the mind. “
Jérôme Pineau, manager of the B&B Hotels teamat franceinfo
To try to protect themselves as well as possible from the virus, the runners multiply the tests during the training courses. They thus carry out a PCR before meeting, then an antigen every three days. This regularly gives comical scenes to go to the laboratories: “It sometimes requires juggling your training”, says the Norman Guillaume Martin, eighth in the last Tour de France. “It happened to me to have to do two hours of training, to go with my bike to the laboratory and to leave again for the last two hours of training.” Corn “no complaining”, he adds, because “It is now part of the life of all French people”.
If he keeps smiling, his teammate Anthony Perez recognizes that this additional constraint is starting to weigh on the morale of some. “We do 20 to 35 hours of training a week, there are [les tests] in addition, the anti-doping platforms to fill, the training platforms… It’s an accumulation of things to do that makes the job of a cyclist difficult”, he says. Faced with the dismay of some colleagues, he alerted the national cycling league, the professional body.
“A lot of runners are starting to burn out with all this. It has to be relaxed! You are asked for your pass 50 times and you say to yourself: ‘But where are we?'”
Anthony Perez, Cofidis team cyclistat franceinfo
The only point that reassures the peloton is that, for the moment, the French racing calendar is holding up well in the face of Covid-19. Many hope to launch their season at the Grand Prix de la Marseillaise on Sunday January 30.
Covid-19: professional cyclists already tired – Report by Fanny Lechevestrier
to listen