I've always wished there were more one-day races between the Tour and Vuelta, so I would put these Italian races there, but I can understand if riders and promoters don't think that's such a great idea. Plus all the hotel rooms in Tuscany would already be booked by tourists.
- May 11, 2013
- 13,995
- 5,289
- 28,180
Ineos pulls out of:
- Strade Bianche
- Paris-Nice
- Tirreno-Adriatico
- Milan-San Remo
- Nokere Koerse
- Bredene Koksijde Classic
As things now stand some teams likely wouldn't go to Italy regardless. In addition, if the domino effect will happen, like teams canceling participation at Paris-Nice, or the race potentially getting canceled altogether, as it now looks like that is going to happen. In that case it will be hard to find a justification to race anywhere at all, until coronavirus situation calms down. Including racing in Flanders.
This is by no means an in-depth scientific prediction, but i can imagine we can expect for that to happen sometimes around the end of the flu season. Statistics (flu season), says we should now be at the peak and the situation should calm down around April or May.
This is by no means an in-depth scientific prediction, but i can imagine we can expect for that to happen sometimes around the end of the flu season. Statistics (flu season), says we should now be at the peak and the situation should calm down around April or May.
- May 25, 2018
- 2,419
- 2,607
- 17,180
Assuming everything clears up by September/October how would people feel about picking a week or 2 at the end of season and have as many of these cancelled races run at the same time.
It would lead to weaker peletons than normal but for me would be better than a year with no winner
It would lead to weaker peletons than normal but for me would be better than a year with no winner
I really wish King County (where Seattle is located and I live) and RCS had coordinated their efforts. The county just announced that "high-risk" people (which includes me at over 60) should stay home from work and avoid crowds. That will be much more onerous if there isn't bike racing to watch!! 
(BTW, I'll still go to work).
(BTW, I'll still go to work).
- Feb 20, 2012
- 53,881
- 44,267
- 28,180
Yes, but the paranoia is here and not much we can do about it. The beginning of the pro cycling season is likely completely lost this year.
P.S. Was really anticipating Paris-Nice race this year, Team INEOS pulling out already did substantial damage. If the race by any chance does start and if some people do get coronavirus, what i do imagine is the teams likely just don't want to take on such pressure.
P.S. Was really anticipating Paris-Nice race this year, Team INEOS pulling out already did substantial damage. If the race by any chance does start and if some people do get coronavirus, what i do imagine is the teams likely just don't want to take on such pressure.
- May 11, 2013
- 13,995
- 5,289
- 28,180
You're probably right that the teams are under pressure to avoid being the "cause" of their riders or staff picking up the virus at a race. But the teams won't get blamed if a rider picks up the virus from the pub or from their kids while they are at home because the team pulled out of a race.
- May 26, 2009
- 10,230
- 579
- 24,080
7 positive cases found in Wevelgem today. Didn't hear about any in Belgium before..
https://kw.be/nieuws/samenleving/ze...-besmet-na-skireis/article-normal-423937.html
https://kw.be/nieuws/samenleving/ze...-besmet-na-skireis/article-normal-423937.html
- Jun 7, 2011
- 20,975
- 20,308
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There is a school across the street from where i live. Literally 20 meters away. First cases popping up there as well.
In a couple of flu seasons we will likely all get coronavirus. And likely next year, if one of the cyclist will get it during the race, the race will continue as usual.
As for this (cycling/flu) season, indeed the numbers can only go up and the list of countries affected will only grow. Hence until the numbers start to go down i don't expect we will see much racing.
As for this (cycling/flu) season, indeed the numbers can only go up and the list of countries affected will only grow. Hence until the numbers start to go down i don't expect we will see much racing.
With those new cases in Wevelgem, there are 30+ in Belgium now. So not really the first ones. Pretty much all of them came back from a holiday to Northern Italy though.
- Jul 28, 2015
- 3,123
- 447
- 9,580
In Belgium there was an isolated case at the beginning of February (imported from China) then a case on sunday, 6 on monday (imported from Italy), 6 yesterday and ten today.
A ramping up of cases is unavoidable almost everywhere, we are already seeing it in France (73 new cases today), Germany (56 new cases yesterday, i haven't found today data) and Spain (59 new cases today). If they accomodate the paranoid teams now cancelling races even in areas without infection in a couple of weeks when the cases will likely be counted in thousands we'll see a total stop of the season for an indeterminate period of time.
Thinking further and as we have seen it at the UAE Tour, basically only one person needs to get sick and the whole race is put under quarantine. From an individual point of view this can look like too much, but once you are a manager, responsible for your team, you just don't have a luxury to not give in to paranoia. At minimum, some other authorities do need to set some rules or guidelines first. As if the team doctors are writing letters, to cancel the races, not much you can do about changing that.
- Jul 28, 2015
- 3,123
- 447
- 9,580
But the guidelines are that everywhere, even if you send your riders training on the Teide and there is a case there you have your riders locked in the hotel there and anyway is a non sense trying to avoid being quaratined and risk losing race days by cancelling every race, basically they self impose a (probably) very long quarantine out of racing for everyone.
On a side note IMHO is ridiculous locking everyone in an hotel for a single case, we've seen already in multiple cases (not to mention the ship in Japan that can be considered like a giant hotel) that this approach only leads to infecting more and more people with the passing of days and increasing the duration of the quarantine in a loop because new cases > increased the duration of the quarantine > infection spread further > infinite quarantine.
The hope is that there will be a vaccine by spring 2021, by 2022 at the latest.
The problem is that the virus can have an incubation period of up to 2 weeks (or possibly more) during which time the suggestion is that you can spread it to other people. So by the time a case is detected someone else they've been in contact with probably already has it, so in this quarantined hotel this someone is going round spreading it until they get a positive test result. Unless you can properly isolate everyone from each other the quarantine is only effective in stopping the infection leaving the hotel/ship rather than preventing it spreading in the hotel/ship.
It seems likely that if everyone had been allowed to leave the UAE when the first two cases were discovered someone would have travelled with the virus, potentially spreading it on the plane even if they then went into isolation at home. If they'd gone to Belgium half of professional cycling might have it by now.
- Oct 14, 2017
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It appears there is finally some answers for the quarantined teams at UAE.
demarrajeweb.com
Cofidis deberá estar en cuarentena en Abu Dhabi
El equipo Cofidis ha comunicado que deberán mantener una cuarentena en Abu Dhabi hasta el próximo día 14 de marzo. El conjunto francés ha terminado, al menos hasta el momento, con parte de la incer…
demarrajeweb.com
- Jul 24, 2016
- 2,267
- 457
- 6,580
With the Tokyo marathon run recently, the organizers reduced the field to only the elite world-class runners and asked that spectators not attend/view street-side (rather, view from home on TV). So the crowd was much more sparse than usual. That seemed to be an interesting compromise.
I am disappointed to possibly lose my spring (and more?) cycling races. And I think it's true that this is a low risk virus for the vast majority of people, in terms of dying. But I have a different perspective than some on this thread about the way to interpret statistics of risk, and of how to handle epidemiology.
It's true to say that more people die of the flu in a year than have currently died from this strain, but that is very different from saying therefore we shouldn't be taking extraordinary precautions around this virus. First, the common flu is... common. It's understood, there are treatments for it, and lots of people have it every year. Those who die are almost always those who have multiple other health risks. This seems to be analagous on the surface for covid-19 in terms of hurting those with related risks, but evidence so far points to it casting a much, much bigger net. I think it's as meaningful to make the argument that cars kill more people and we don't worry about cars, so we shouldn't worry about this as a society. If that's your take, that's fine. I disagree.
It's two months in and there are still significant unknowns about how to treat or stop the virus, how it's spread, and how easily it can go undetected and therefore spread more. Those unknowns alone make it imperative from a conceptual standpoint to take measures to raise awareness and at the very least slow the spread to buy time and lessen the strain on treatment when treatment is just developing. Unfortunately, this raising awareness tends to raise panic, as lots of people don't take a measured approach, so that is an extra wrinkle - I think a lot of the criticism might be less about precautionary measures as it is the effect that those measures has on people panicking. That makes sense. But also, while taking the viewpoint of 'it's probably not as bad as everyone's panic level would imply' may be correct, taking the logical leap from there to say 'so no special precautions should be taken' is something I disagree with. I don't feel like assuming a best-case scenario is really responsible preparation for global pandemics.
From a logistical standpoint in terms of taxing resources, it's already been mentioned, but important to keep in mind that it seems like a far higher percentage people seemingly require hospital treatment for covid-19 than the common flu, so it's not just about death rate. And taxing hospital resources really puts pressure on at both ends, creating conditions where it's harder to stay on top of it and therefore it spreads more, and in individual cases having diluted resources make it more likely someone who could be saved with treatment dies. That puts medical professionals in a huge bind, and will most certainly spread panic farther if it comes to that. So I don't think it's quite as simple as 'a bunch of people will get sick but most people will be fine and get over it so everyone should stop freaking out'.
From the standpoint of regulations, at least in Italy right now, cycling is not a great sport for having people be more than a metre apart. Aside from the crowds (which are called 'crowds' for a reason), cycling as a sport would be nonsensical if riders didn't get close to each other, like just aerodynamically. Unless they run T-A as 7 TT stages. And people travel to see the races, and then go home. That's how this has spread everywhere in the world so far, so encouraging people to do so at this point is not really wise, unless one wants to risk exponentially taxing resources of medical care. Plus teams stay together, eat together, get massages, outside of riding in a pack for hours a day.
And, like, this isn't even theoretical. Riders literally got Coronavirus last week at a race and are locked in a hotel as we speak. If that's not reason enough to think about cancelling races, the completely haphazard way it was handled (sorry, maybe should be using present tense with that) should be - Cofidis riders are saying hotel staff are scared of them and dropping food at their doors and running away, and officials seemed to second guess themselves after testing people and then realized they hadn't been careful enough, and took action/gave information in a haphazard and unclear way. People are panicked, which is unfortunate - I think an ideal solution would be to tell people to wash their hands lots and be careful and trust people will listen, but clearly this isn't the case. People are scared of what they don't know, and this will grow exponentially if the virus spreads and people are hearing hospitals can't deal with it. Do you think riders, soigneurs, and race organizers want to go through that every week, and deal with the stress of being vectors of a pandemic, let alone get real sick themselves?
At the same time, organizers want to make money, and racers want to meet their season goals, and it's always easy to hope nothing goes wrong and try to push through. So, someone has to make a decision. Italian authorities and RCS seem to be vacillating, which is far from comforting, and the UCI can't even govern sock length without controversy, so I wouldn't look there. I'm glad the teams seem to be making the decision, at least the certainty that nothing is happening will be less fraught and panicky than the alternative.
Anyway, blah blah. I think my main point is that I'm cautious of saying that this hasn't killed as many people as the flu so we shouldn't worry about it, because that is exactly the type of thinking that could lead to a situation where it kills many more than the flu. Precautionary measures suck, but it seems like the responsible thing to do, to me.
It's true to say that more people die of the flu in a year than have currently died from this strain, but that is very different from saying therefore we shouldn't be taking extraordinary precautions around this virus. First, the common flu is... common. It's understood, there are treatments for it, and lots of people have it every year. Those who die are almost always those who have multiple other health risks. This seems to be analagous on the surface for covid-19 in terms of hurting those with related risks, but evidence so far points to it casting a much, much bigger net. I think it's as meaningful to make the argument that cars kill more people and we don't worry about cars, so we shouldn't worry about this as a society. If that's your take, that's fine. I disagree.
It's two months in and there are still significant unknowns about how to treat or stop the virus, how it's spread, and how easily it can go undetected and therefore spread more. Those unknowns alone make it imperative from a conceptual standpoint to take measures to raise awareness and at the very least slow the spread to buy time and lessen the strain on treatment when treatment is just developing. Unfortunately, this raising awareness tends to raise panic, as lots of people don't take a measured approach, so that is an extra wrinkle - I think a lot of the criticism might be less about precautionary measures as it is the effect that those measures has on people panicking. That makes sense. But also, while taking the viewpoint of 'it's probably not as bad as everyone's panic level would imply' may be correct, taking the logical leap from there to say 'so no special precautions should be taken' is something I disagree with. I don't feel like assuming a best-case scenario is really responsible preparation for global pandemics.
From a logistical standpoint in terms of taxing resources, it's already been mentioned, but important to keep in mind that it seems like a far higher percentage people seemingly require hospital treatment for covid-19 than the common flu, so it's not just about death rate. And taxing hospital resources really puts pressure on at both ends, creating conditions where it's harder to stay on top of it and therefore it spreads more, and in individual cases having diluted resources make it more likely someone who could be saved with treatment dies. That puts medical professionals in a huge bind, and will most certainly spread panic farther if it comes to that. So I don't think it's quite as simple as 'a bunch of people will get sick but most people will be fine and get over it so everyone should stop freaking out'.
From the standpoint of regulations, at least in Italy right now, cycling is not a great sport for having people be more than a metre apart. Aside from the crowds (which are called 'crowds' for a reason), cycling as a sport would be nonsensical if riders didn't get close to each other, like just aerodynamically. Unless they run T-A as 7 TT stages. And people travel to see the races, and then go home. That's how this has spread everywhere in the world so far, so encouraging people to do so at this point is not really wise, unless one wants to risk exponentially taxing resources of medical care. Plus teams stay together, eat together, get massages, outside of riding in a pack for hours a day.
And, like, this isn't even theoretical. Riders literally got Coronavirus last week at a race and are locked in a hotel as we speak. If that's not reason enough to think about cancelling races, the completely haphazard way it was handled (sorry, maybe should be using present tense with that) should be - Cofidis riders are saying hotel staff are scared of them and dropping food at their doors and running away, and officials seemed to second guess themselves after testing people and then realized they hadn't been careful enough, and took action/gave information in a haphazard and unclear way. People are panicked, which is unfortunate - I think an ideal solution would be to tell people to wash their hands lots and be careful and trust people will listen, but clearly this isn't the case. People are scared of what they don't know, and this will grow exponentially if the virus spreads and people are hearing hospitals can't deal with it. Do you think riders, soigneurs, and race organizers want to go through that every week, and deal with the stress of being vectors of a pandemic, let alone get real sick themselves?
At the same time, organizers want to make money, and racers want to meet their season goals, and it's always easy to hope nothing goes wrong and try to push through. So, someone has to make a decision. Italian authorities and RCS seem to be vacillating, which is far from comforting, and the UCI can't even govern sock length without controversy, so I wouldn't look there. I'm glad the teams seem to be making the decision, at least the certainty that nothing is happening will be less fraught and panicky than the alternative.
Anyway, blah blah. I think my main point is that I'm cautious of saying that this hasn't killed as many people as the flu so we shouldn't worry about it, because that is exactly the type of thinking that could lead to a situation where it kills many more than the flu. Precautionary measures suck, but it seems like the responsible thing to do, to me.
- Oct 14, 2017
- 12,196
- 3,232
- 23,180
According to reports we are 12 to 18 months away from a vaccine for it. Although I did read that the treatment for SARS is apparently working for this. The problem even with that is there isn't massive amounts of that treatment currently. I suspect once we get a vaccine and known treatments it won't be as big of an issue as it currently is.
For now maybe Zwift is the alternative until things get more settled?
Reports are there are 4 riders in the UAE quarantine that have gotten the virus.
For now maybe Zwift is the alternative until things get more settled?
Reports are there are 4 riders in the UAE quarantine that have gotten the virus.
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