The steady drip of recent COVID-19 cases in the peloton continued on Friday with Warren Barguil (Arkéa-Samsic) the latest rider to return a positive test, throwing his imminent Giro d’Italia participation in doubt.
Two cases emerged at Liège-Bastogne-Liège for Jumbo-Visma, forcing the Dutch squad to ground support riders Sam Oomen and Tosh van der Sande at the last minute from their roster for La Doyenne.
Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan) and Henri Vandenabeele (DSM) have all tested positive recently, with Arkea-Samsic’s Warren Barguil also added to the list by his squad on Friday morning.
At lunchtime on Friday there were two more, with the Cofidis due of Ion Izaguirre and Anthony Perez both having to pull out of the Tour de Romandie.
After the UCI eased on obligations, testing in the first half of the season for COVID-19 was far patchier in the WorldTour even compared with the December training camps.
Some WorldTour squads continued but one top team staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Cyclingnews at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana that they had stopped altogether for management and riders.
In Barguil’s case, Arkéa-Samsic said on their website that, after his abandon in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Barguil did some extra tests which showed he had tested positive.
"Regarding his participation in the Giro d’Italia, a decision will be taken depending on how his health evolves."
Trek-Segafredo team doctor Nino Daniele told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that although "we’ll never know how the virus spread", he had his suspicions about a specific team hotel during the Ardennes Classics where he said "the majority of riders involved" had stayed.
"It’s a large hotel, with many rooms and only two lifts," he pointed out.
Daniele underlined that the virus had evolved and its symptoms were now much more similar to a "classic flu" bug. The fact that a significant number of people had had three COVID-19 vaccines also helped this, he argued.
"The virus can no longer be compared to the aggressive and dangerous variant that we had to deal with at the height of the pandemic," Daniele told Het Nieuwsblad.
"The test method has also become much more efficient. The classic rapid test has now been replaced by a test that allows us to check for several viruses at the same time."
He added that at Trek-Segafredo, riders or staff with symptoms were kept as isolated as possible and that: "A sick rider will be advised by me not to start anyway, regardless of which virus is causing it."
However, he insisted that a return to the scenario of entire teams pulling out of races - to cite an example from one recent event, when UAE Team Emirates quit the 2021 Flèche Wallonne en masse because of positive tests - was no longer possible to envisage.
Prior to the most recent cases, Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo), Michael Matthews (Jayco-AIUIa) and Simon Clark (Israel-Premier Tech) are amongst those who have tested positive for COVID-19 this spring.
Illnesses are blighting the peloton in general. Simon Yates (Jayco-AIUIa) and Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan) were two recent high-profile cases, both of whom abandoned the Tour de Romandie. Yates is targeting the Tour de France, while Cavendish is set to return to the Giro d’Italia for a second straight year and his seventh participation in his career.
This February the UCI significantly reduced the COVID-19 restrictions at road events, eliminating the need for tests, vaccinations and health passes.
Regarding the teams with the two top names for the Giro d’Italia, Het Nieuwsblad report that Jumbo-Visma "check only in case of symptoms" and that Soudal-QuickStep would test both before leaving for Italy and again once the team is there.
