Relief on the Tour de France. All of the Covid tests carried out on Sunday evening on the runners are negative, announced Monday morning the International Cycling Union (UCI). The fear of a spread within the peloton was becoming more and more acute after the forced abandonment of several infected participants, such as Guillaume Martin, Geoffrey Bouchard or Vegard Stake Laengen, teammate of the yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar.
This year, the Covid protocol has been lightened by the organization of the Tour. Being positive for Covid-19 is no longer synonymous with automatic exclusion. The decision to maintain or not a rider tested positive, but asymptomatic, is taken collectively by the race doctor, the UCI doctor and the team doctor. It depends on the viral load measured during the test.
A decision that is not unanimous within the Grande Boucle. The recent memory of the Tour de Suisse last month was the scene of a massacre of Covid-19. Only 76 elements had finished the test, when they were 152 at the start. It was moreover following this cascade of abandonments that the anti-Covid protocol had been updated by the UCI.
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