“I’m sad to come.” “You must not believe that you have the heart to party.” “It’s a strange feeling. We are afraid that it will stop, but we are also afraid that it will start. We just feel that something is wrong, and that it is serious. “ The Tour is the riders who talk about it the best. About ten of them have agreed to confide their feelings to Release, naturally under anonymity, as a preamble to the departure from Nice this Saturday, which should be held “behind closed doors”. Age, nationality, reputation vary. Their free and sincere speech has become rare, if not nonexistent in public. More and more filtered by their teams for ten years. Even more restricted by the health “bubble” established by the organizers in the face of the Covid. Sometimes they say in interviews the opposite of what they think. What they think of the 2020 Tour is edifying.
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«Chaos»
A foreign rider, who will be in the peloton this Saturday: “It’s a little gross. What image will cycling show? It’s chaos everywhere on Earth, but who cares, the Tour is going to unfold. ” The same gives us a political look at the situation: “I don’t know if France is aware of the spectacle it is going to give. She wants to teach other countries a lesson. We are not organizing the Euro, we are not organizing the Olympic Games, but we are going to do the Tour… It is very arrogant. “ Concerns are emotional and practical. “I don’t know when I’m going to see my wife again”, testifies a competitor who lives outside France, and who closely follows announcements of border closures. This year, relatives and spouses are banned from entering runners’ hotels on rest days. And the situation could go on “If we end up in fourteen when we return from the Tour”. Another cyclist explains: “We should be focused on the race, but we think about too many other things.” A last : “The head is elsewhere.”
Humour
These words are reminiscent of those that the French climber Romain Bardet let slip. It was March 13 in Paris-Nice, an ordeal crossing a France on the verge of being confined: “We may end up with thirty runners. I wonder where the meaning is in this. Especially vis-à-vis the rest of the population. We are doing our little race as if nothing had happened … “
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But, as the peloton cannot be seen as a single unit, some show a little enthusiasm. Mainly those who will be competing for the first or second time. “It’s not completely the Tour, but a bit anyway, says a French runner. Better than nothing. “
A colleague who already has several participations on the clock, comes to shower this little momentum: “I told the young people who come for the first time: ‘What you are going to see is not the Tour.'” Many speak like traditional employees: “We will do our best.” “We will adapt.” “We adapt to everything.” And: “What more can we do?” It is true that we have never seen a union representative or a strike movement in the peloton that is independent of the employers, the federation or the organizers of the Tour de France… Humor saves the day. “I have a plan, promises a teammate who has no theoretical chance of taking the yellow jersey. I will wear a mask at all times during the stage [pas seulement au départ et à l’arrivée, comme le prévoit le protocole, ndlr]. OK, I’m going to die of heat. But I will be the last of the pack not to catch the Covid. Everyone will be eliminated in turn. And I will win the Tour! ”
Pierre Carrey special correspondent in Nice
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