The ICU has carried out a last-minute update of its COVID-19 medical protocol to avoid the threat of false positives and the imaginable expulsion of runners and groups during the Tour de France and other Grand Tours.
A series of obvious false positives forced several runners and groups to miss races and the groups became involved by a Tour de France rule that required an entire team to drop out of the race if two of their 30 runners were positive.
A special survey conducted through Laura Weislo for Cyclingnews has highlighted how false positives can occur and why follow-up tests are important to them.
After a series of meetings between the ICU, the groups and the organizer of the Tour de France ASO, the two-shot team-based rule has been replaced and is now applied if two runners (non-staff members) test positive in seven days. . .
If the race is positive, as happened with two Lotto Soudal on Wednesday, the team can stay in the Tour de France.
The last-minute update of medical protocol will allay fears that several teams, including the race leader or general classification contenders, may be expelled from the Tour de France based on false positive cases of COVID-19 exclusive testing.
The ICU has made it clear that positive cases must be shown through additional controls before the race organiser can announce the withdrawal of an entire team.
The ICU has ordered the organizers of the grand tour to do “as much as possible” for further checks and serological research before the next day’s level begins as soon as positive monitoring appears.
However, if the subsequent checks cannot be carried out in time before the next day’s stage, the rider or member will still have to abandon the race, even if the result appears to be a false positive.
The organizer of the Tour de France, ASO, has created a cellular control unit during the race, which will likely have to work overnight to perform additional checks and prevent false positives from being kicked out of the race.
“The effects of the tests will occur within a maximum of two hours, even an hour. In any case, it’s not the next day that we’ll have the effects, we’ll have them very quickly,” said race director Christian Prudhomme. said at a press conference. .
“Today’s changes to the ICU protocol have allowed us to strike the right balance between the valid considerations of groups facing the threat of exclusion and the important preservation of the physical form of the platoon,” said ICU President David Lappartient.
I call on all cycling families, in specific runners and teams, to continue to act with the same sense of duty and solidarity as they have shown since the resumption of racing. All protective measures in compliance with regulations such as dressing in masks in hotels and buses must be strictly followed.
“We will have to give the Tour de France and the 2020 cycling season the chance to continue to the end, and give our sport, which has been severely affected by the fitness crisis, the possibility of moving forward. “
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