Effects of coronavirus on professional races

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Outdoor sport events are still banned in Lombardia until the 8th of March. The situation wil be re-evaluated in one week, so Milan-Sanremo is obviously still in danger.

I'm relatively confident Strade Bianche and TA will take place.
 
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Strade Bianche and T-A are outside the quarantined zone, so unless something happens they should take place (however, some teams aren't sure if they are going or not). Milan-San Remo however still has sections that are in quarantined areas and still could get cancelled.

Strade Bianche and T-A also could still get cancelled if things change drastically.
 
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Strade Bianche and T-A are outside the quarantined zone, so unless something happens they should take place (however, some teams aren't sure if they are going or not). Milan-San Remo however still has sections that are in quarantined areas and still could get cancelled.

Strade Bianche and T-A also could still get cancelled if things change drastically.
Only 10 towns near Lodi are really locked, in Lombardia there is the ban of sport events and the schools closed but everything else has been reopened despite the sharp increase of cases because they can't sustain economically a lockdown.
 
As I understand it, all of them (at least at Cofidis) had texted negative. But the problem is that it takes several days to get the test results, and by that time several riders had suspicious symptoms, so they had to start all over again. They had to retest not only the sick riders, but everyone else, since if one or more of the riders had the virus,it's possible others did, too, even without showing symptoms. But if the quarantine was tight, and everyone was originally negative, no one should have subsequently tested positive. It's possible there was a false negative, but it seems more likely to me that either someone picked up the virus from someone or something at the hotel, or that the sick riders are not in fact suffering from COVID-19.

In theory, this could go on indefinitely, because if one or more riders is positive, it's possible that he exposed the virus to someone else during the period in which the latest tests were being carried out. Short of quarantining everyone separately, you can never rule out this possibility. The people on the Diamond Princess were in effect quarantined, tried to avoid each other as much as possible,and and look how that turned out.

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On Sky they just said that in France the bigger cluster is in Compiegne with more than 50 people hospitalized, two deaths and the intensive care of the local hospital at the limit, you can wonder what came to my mind hearing Compiegne.

Anyway looks like in countries like France but also Germany and Spain are starting to pop up cases not related to anything known like happened a couple of weeks ago in Italy, if a similar sharp increase is to come in the next week or two I fear the problem won't be a race or two but the whole calendar. Especially in France they look really proactive in taking measures and they already blocked events with more than 5000 in the whole nation.
 
It will still be done on a case by case basis and with strict rules around team presentation, spectators at the start and finish lines and along the route - I posted a few days ago that the UCI should be testing everyone in the peleton a few days before races.
 
But then they shouldn't have been allowed to roam the hotel at first.
And - from what I understand - they don't really get any information either.

I guess they've been staying there for weeks now?

Of course the situation is far from perfect, but it's the same for thousands of people around the world, and I can't see why any exceptions should be made for them. The Cofidis DS for example said that they should be allowed to leave because he doesn't see any increased risk to get infected just because someone positive was staying on the same floor - which shows quite well that they just don't care.

Edit: the first results of the counter analysis for those teams came in last night by the way, and they were all negative. Not all tests are completed yet though, and personally I think it's fairly obvious (and correct) that they stay quarantined until then
 
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I guess they've been staying there for weeks now?

Of course the situation is far from perfect, but it's the same for thousands of people around the world, and I can't see why any exceptions should be made for them. The Cofidis DS for example said that they should be allowed to leave because he doesn't see any increased risk to get infected just because someone positive was staying on the same floor - which shows quite well that they just don't care.

Do we even know that there was indeed someone positive staying on the same floor? And if there was, surely they'd have been instantly quarantined in their room so to avoid contact with others, even those on the same floor.
Besides, that doesn't change the fact that initially they were allowed to roam the hotel, and mingle with the other guests - whether related to the race or not - guests who have now left.
 
It will still be done on a case by case basis and with strict rules around team presentation, spectators at the start and finish lines and along the route - I posted a few days ago that the UCI should be testing everyone in the peleton a few days before races.
It's impossible to block spectators along a road for a race that covers 150/200 kms, for example Paris-Nice is allowed only because there aren't cases in the area and they think there won't be more than 3000 with the limit set at the moment as 5000.