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UCI World Tour: A real street sweeper (neue-deutschland.de)

Strade Bianche is usually a street sweeper. For the race on the white gravel roads of Tuscany, thousands of fans flock to the track, proudly presenting the dust that lies on their faces and that was whirled up by the tires of the kicking millionaires.

A lot is different in Corona times. And so the Strade Bianche saw the opposite of the sweeper image. The starting area inside the medieval fortress of the city was swept empty by people. Piazza del Campo, the square that descends like an amphitheater in the center of the old town, is also swept empty. Spectators and racing drivers should be separated. This is what the Corona rules provide. They also make sense. Health protection comes first.

But it also leads to paradoxical situations. The day before the race, the fortress was still well filled as part of an open-air cinema show. People flocked to the Piazza del Campo after the end of the race, shortly after the barriers were removed. And there were also absurd situations in the race. »We put on masks to register, then we are without masks in the race, but masks are put on again for the award ceremony. I’m not a virologist, but it doesn’t make sense to me, «said Ralf Denk, racing team manager at Bora-hansgrohe.

Denk does not want to give the top loosener in the cycling business. He also knows how narrow the line on which cycling is currently moving is. Higher numbers of infections in society in general or infection hotspots in cycling – and the hopeful start would have quickly come to an end. “I realize that every race can be the last,” said Annemiek van Vleuten, the winner of the women’s race, at the finish. »We have a saying in the Netherlands: Take what you get. Because you don’t know what will be next week in these times, ”she explained.

How it goes with cycling is also a question. There have been positive tests at some racing teams in the past few days. The Israel Start-Up Nation team pulled some drivers off races in Spain as a precautionary measure because of contact with an infected person. Some teams didn’t even compete in women’s races in Spain because test results came too late. And at Strade Bianche, the Swiss professional cyclist Sylvan Dillier was shortly removed from the start list, he had a positive test. “But his test afterwards was negative,” said Maximilian Schachmann. The Berliner came third on the “White Roads”. It was only in the final of a real heat and dust battle that he had to defeat the Belgian Wout van Aert and the Italian Davide Formolo. With his performance, however, Schachmann finally established himself among the classics specialists.

He sees the danger of falling victim to a test lottery like his colleague Dillier relatively calmly. “Of course that can happen. The tests are not 100 percent reliable. It can happen that you miss a race. That’s part of the situation, ‘he said to’ The Day ‘.

His team boss Ralph Denk is more concerned about that. »What happens if a star or even the wearer of the yellow jersey is pulled out because of a positive PCR test? And that turns out to be false positive in retrospect? «, Unkte Denk. He admitted to knowing no solution himself. After all, he suggested that the doping control practice be used as a guide. “There’s also a B sample to confirm the A sample,” he said.

It is unclear how quickly this can be done, especially in the stage races, which take place day after day. »We have had good experiences with laboratories in Austria and Germany in our tests so far. But no one can guarantee that the results will always come quickly, «he said.

For the tests, which the teams largely finance themselves, he estimates a cost of 50,000 to 100,000 euros by the end of the season – a burden for a professional racing team. If the media reach then also decreases because journalists are not allowed to the drivers – all encounters between teams and journalists are to be prohibited in the Tour de France – then the economic basis of cycling also suffers. »We have to find a balance between health requirements and the advertising area. If this doesn’t work, the whole system will only work for a short time, «says Denk.

The breaking points of the Corona construct in cycling were already visible in Siena. The atmosphere at the start and finish was rather ghostly. Short conversations at a safe distance were only possible for the few journalists who traveled to the event with the first three of the race. Some spectators gathered on the lonely gravel roads alone. There they got so close to the drivers that it seemed as if everyone was relying on the dust being raised to act as an aerosol barrier. There is still a lot to work on on the post-corona concept of free and outdoor sports.

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