Tadej Pogacar, the Slovenian winner of the 2020 Tour de France, and the riders of the UAE Emirates team were all vaccinated against Covid-19 on Friday. The team, which the Swiss Marc Hirschi, winner of a stage in September on the roads of the Grande Boucle, joined this week, is ready to start the season. In preparation course at her home in Abu Dhabi, the UAE Emirates team is a pioneer in terms of vaccination: “We are the first cycling team to receive the vaccine”, she rejoiced in a press release and a nice communication operation. .
The whole group, that is to say 27 runners, and all the support staff, which has 32 people, received the vaccine. This is the Chinese vaccine developed by “Sinopharm” and approved by the Ministry of Health and Prevention of the United Arab Emirates, one of the few countries outside of China to have authorized it with the Egypt. It is currently not approved and distributed in Europe and France.
The team had recorded positive cases
At the start of the pandemic, the team led by Mauro Gianetti had recorded several cases of positivity during the UAE Tour, the first event confronted with Covid-19 in 2020. Its Colombian sprinter Fernando Gaviria had been hospitalized on site before leaving be positive again in October and have to abandon the Giro.
“We are extremely proud of the efforts made at all levels by the country and its leaders both to combat the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and to be a leader in bringing life back to normal,” said Gianetti . Last month, the team director announced that he had personally received the two doses of the vaccine. He added that the Chinese vaccine would be offered to the entire workforce as soon as possible, on a voluntary basis.
The collective vaccination of one of the leading teams of the peloton, in which Tadej Pogacar, the last winner of the Tour de France, is playing, raises questions. What will be the position of the other formations? In France, the vaccination schedule unveiled at the end of the year by the French government initially plans to inoculate a vaccine to all people over 75 years of age by the end of January.
