After “whatever the cost”, the time has come for “at any cost”. In March, at the start of the epidemic, Emmanuel Macron used the first formula during a televised intervention. The organizers of the Tour de France, with the blessing of the authorities, prefer the second. Despite the health crisis, and in a context of rebound in the circulation of the virus, the Grande Boucle will start well this weekend in Nice. Will she arrive safely in three weeks in Paris? Doubt is allowed. But another question arises: is it the Tour de France that will start? The experience acquired with another great competition, the Football Champions League which has just ended with the victory of Bayern Munich, gives reason to doubt it.
The first concerned say it themselves. After some footballers, some runners, on condition of anonymity, confided their skepticism to Release on the eve of departure. “We are afraid that it will stop, but we are also afraid that it will start”, one of them told us. Even more interesting: “I do not know if France realizes the spectacle it is going to give.” Show… High-level sport obviously did not wait for the coronavirus to become a show. Olympic Games, Football World Cup, Grande Boucle have always been so. With each edition a little more. But what is a show without spectators? The stadiums are empty. The roads of the Tour will be deserted. Difficult to imagine.
Cycling is the popular sport par excellence, and the Tour de France has built its legend on this soil. So, what about the 2020 vintage without a crowd at the top of the passes? Even on TV, while the air conditioning in the office will replace the dampness of the campsite’s common room, the enthusiasm of aficionados may suffer. Of course, the start of the Tour shows that life goes on, despite the virus, and we can be happy about it. But we can also be worried that the Tour de France will mix better with the word spectacle than with the word cycling. And that the virus is, in sport as at work or in our social relations, an accelerator of a virtuality already in motion.
Paul Quinio
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