(CN) — This year's Tour de France, a hallowed summer centerpiece of sporting heroics and madness in Europe, is starting two months behind schedule and heads across a France plunging back into the throes of a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Saturday, the 107th edition of the Tour – the crown jewel of professional cycling – sets off from the sunny city of Nice on the Mediterranean Sea amid uncertainty as France registers new record numbers of infections each day.
With infections surging, Paris on Friday made masks mandatory for people outside, though it exempted anyone doing exercise and riding bicycles. On Thursday, France recorded 6,111 new infections, the most since the end of a nationwide lockdown in May. More than 30,570 deaths in France have been linked to Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel virus.
Holding the Tour amid a new wave of the pandemic is turning into a wild logistical feat – and potential debacle – for a sporting event that is, by its very nature, already so complex to pull off and where fans and professional athletes come into close contact as riders slowly pedal up grueling ascents and congregate at start and finish areas.
The three-week contest – which always takes place in July, but not this year – will be raced over a course of 21 stages and takes a peloton of 176 riders, and a caravan of vehicles, across France's mountains, villages and cities to finally end on the Champs Elysees in Paris – 2,156 miles later.
But it will be a bizarre Tour – as bizarre as watching Lebron James, Lionel Messi and Serena Williams play in empty stadiums this year.
At start and finish areas, the number of fans will be scaled back and they will be required to wear masks. Along the entire route, fans are being asked to wear masks too and they will be kept away from the racers. They will be forbidden from asking for autographs and taking selfies with the cyclists.
One of the most striking changes likely will be the images from the Tour's famous mountain passes: This year, authorities are planning to restrict crowds on the Tour's beloved narrow steep climbs.
In normal years, the passage of the Tour over the Alps and Pyrenees always features wild scenes where the riders, and most vividly the race leader in the yellow jersey, wend their way through screaming fans, many of them decked out in costumes, face paint, wrapped in flags and often wearing close to nothing as they run alongside the cyclists, shouting encouragements and sometimes even giving them a push up the road – a violation of the rules and a danger.
Most importantly, the racers and teams are under strict safety requirements. Before Saturday's start, the riders were tested twice for the coronavirus. Team personnel were also tested. No riders tested positive, but four staff for a Belgian team, Lotto Soudal, were sent home after positive tests showed up. The stakes are high: Entire teams are facing expulsion from the race if two or more riders test positive.
In addition, team doctors and riders will fill out health questionnaires each day to see if they are feeling any symptoms and riders will be tested twice during the race on rest days. Teams are taking extra precautions to sanitize hotel rooms, equipment and team cars and they are avoiding, as much as possible, contact with the outside world. Even news conferences will take place online.
The circus atmosphere around the Tour is being curtailed too. Each team's support crew – mechanics, masseurs, cooks, coaches – has been reduced and the parade of sponsor cars that precedes each day's racing has been cut. Typically, the Tour is a moving spectacle of about 5,000 people, but this year there will be about 2,000 fewer people attached to the race.