Throughout the confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic, cycling has found an escape route through which to reach fans. In the absence of a spring calendar loaded with attractive competitions, professionals have sought alternatives to try to keep the form giving spectacle from their homes. This 2020 has become the year of virtual cycling. The Zwift platform has allowed races such as the Tour of Flanders and many others, and although the return of real cycling with the Vuelta a Burgos on July 26 is already on the horizon, the Tour de France did not want to ignore this possibility of exploit a new way of reaching homes.
That is why the Grande Boucle will organize a virtual six-stage competition for solidarity purposes through the Zwift platform, and which will also will allow fans to go through some of the tracks for which professionals will participate.
It will be the first time that the Tour develops its own virtual edition under the organizing label of L’Étape, the same name given to the bicycle touring marches that the French round drives every year around the world. The virtual edition will be made up of six stages, which will recreate different real routes of the Tour itself, and three ‘walking routes’, to be held on three weekends in July: days 4 and 5, 11 and 12, 18 and 19. Each of them adapts to the different levels of the user, who must register in advance on the Zwift website to participate (now available).
Among the most outstanding stars, Professional riders like Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas, Chris Froome have confirmed their presence -the last dominators of the French round-, Julian Alaphilippe, Richie Porte, Greg Van Avermaet, Mathieu Van der Poel, Nairo Quintana, Mads Pedersen, Warren Barguil or Romain Bardet, among others. The female section includes Chloé Dygert, Anna van der Breggen, Chantal Blaak, Marianne Vos, Coryn Rivera, Marta Bastianelli, Lisa Brennauer, Kirsten Wild, Elisa Balsamo, Tiffany Cromwell, Lizzie Deignan and Audrey Cordon-Rago.
Professional cyclists will compete in six stages, of different difficulties and with distances ranging from 22 to 48 kilometers.
Mont Ventoux included
The different stages, which they will travel on the rollers of their bikes connected to a platform, will have between 22.9 and 48 kilometers. «I could not imagine a month of July without cycling», Assured the director of the test, Christian Prudhomme.
The first of the stages will be held next Saturday and will have as a virtual stage the town of Nice, where the Tour should have started a week before and where he plans to start on August 29.
The last day, which will recreate the Champs Elysées in Paris, the usual scene of the end of the Tour, will take place on July 19, a day after ascending Mont Ventoux.
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