ER Editor: This is indeed a curious one. Why on earth segregate the riders and not permit them to speak to reporters and the public? It’s clear to everyone there’s no longer any health threat, if there ever was one anyway.
This from VOA News citing Reuters:
Tour de France organizers have set up an anti-COVID protocol for this year’s race, with riders and team staff banned from signing autographs and eating out of their hotels, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters Saturday.
Riders and staff members were allowed out of their hotels last year. Access to the paddock at the start of the stages was open to reporters until midway through the race, when organizers decided to close it to “fight against the propagation of COVID-19.”
Access to the paddock will be allowed when the Tour starts in Bilbao, Spain, on June 29, with everyone required to wear a mask. (ER: required theatre)
“For all the team members: Respect a confinement – Limit the interactions outside the race bubble. No eating out. Respect social distancing at the hotel,” the chart, seen by Reuters, said.
See also this from Cycling News —
Face masks to return at Tour de France to limit COVID-19 cases in the peloton
Remember what happened last year?
Tour de France: Cyclists Quit Because Their ‘Lungs Are Screwed Up’
Last year, many cyclists were having troubling breathing, and several dropped out. Cofidis team member Victor Lafay famously pulled out and is the subject of the independent French media report above. This comes via Le Monde:
“No strength, and then impossible to breathe. I talked about it in the peloton, there are many who have it. Castroviejo (Ineos), he told me it was the same, Pierre Rolland (B&B Hôtels KTM) too, Naesen (AG2R Citroën) who retired had also told me about it. We are all negative for Covid tests . So either we’re negative but we still have it, or it’s something else. We talk a lot about the Covid, but there may be something else. In any case, we all have the lungs screwed up. And when the muscles are not oxygenated, after a while it can no longer work.”
You have to have been living under the proverbial rock not to see independent media reports of hundreds of professional players and athletes collapsing on the field or dying in their sleep. We’ve published a few.
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So not only are they destroying the health (and lives, sometimes) of athletes everywhere, now they are insisting the athletes participate in their own demise….
I also see this sort of insanity around sporting events as a way to muzzle the enjoyment and participation of the general population, a method to decrease our communal activities among the rest of humanity: we are being herded deeper and deeper into the abattoir.