Tour de France spoked by coronavirus

The 107th edition of the Tour was set to begin in Nice on June 27 and conclude in Paris on July 19, but President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement means it will not be able to do so.

Organisers ASO have already ruled out the idea of attempting to stage the race ‘behind closed doors’, and have been speaking to local authorities due to host stages about alternative dates.

ASO have yet to comment.

Cancellation of the race must also be considered a possibility, but would be a last resort given the Tour’s importance to cycling’s economy – attracting audience numbers far in excess of any other race.

Cycling’s WorldTour has been on hiatus since Paris-Nice finished a day early on March 14, with all subsequent races either postponed or cancelled.

The Tour is the next race left on the schedule. World governing body the UCI has said it is working with stakeholders to draw up a new road racing calendar for 2020, giving priority to the Grand Tours and one-day Monuments.

The Giro d’Italia, due to begin in Budapest on May 9, has already been postponed.

Team Ineos’s Egan Bernal won last year’s Tour and the British team, winners of seven of the past eight editions, were expected to take a squad including three former winners to the start line in Nice. Geraint Thomas, winner in 2018, was targeting the race, while four-time winner Chris Froome was making it the focal point of his comeback from career-threatening injuries suffered in last year’s Criterium du Dauphine.

Froome has revealed his recovery from his horror crash in France in August is “pretty much complete” as he steps up his training despite the coronavirus lockdown.

Froome said: “The recovery is going really well – I’d go as far as saying it’s pretty much complete.

“I am still doing some exercises off the bike to strengthen the right side which was injured, but I’m back in normal training again and that’s going really well.”

Froome sustained a catalogue of injuries in the crash during a training run at last year’s Criterium du Dauphine, including fractures to his sternum, cervical vertebrae and elbow, and a broken hip.

He made a low-key comeback in the UAE Tour in February, which was abridged due to the spread of coronavirus, and is in lockdown in the south of France.