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Tour de France: Egan Bernal has arrived in Europe

2020-07-21T05:17:58.704Z


The Colombian, winner of the Tour de France 2019, disembarked this Monday in Madrid with a special flight to start the home stretch of s


The winner of the 2019 Tour de France, Egan Bernal (Ineos), disembarked, as expected, on Monday at Madrid airport (Spain), with several other Colombians. He will start to prepare "the biggest cycling race in the world" (August 29-September 20) to resume the words hammered by the director of the Tour Christian Prudhomme throughout the month of July. “First I want to see what level I am at,” said the 23-year-old champion when he arrived in Madrid on a special flight from Bogota with 110 passengers on board. Among them were Nairo Quintana (Arkea-Samsic), second in the Tour in 2013 and 2016, Rigoberto Urán (EF Pro Cycling) and Miguel Ángel López (Astana Pro Team).

Other Colombian champions were also on board: fencers, judokas, footballers, and double Olympic BMX champion Mariana Pajón. Due to the pandemic still wreaking havoc in Colombia, regular flights between Bogota and Europe remain banned. The best sportsmen of the country, however, were able to have a flight specially chartered by the government to join the Old Continent.

“We will try to do the best possible, to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. For the moment, I want to remain calm, then I will find my team in Andorra and we will start to prepare the races to come, said Bernal again. The best thing to do is go step by step. The priority is to regain concentration. It's been a while since I have been able to ride in competition, like everyone else, so it's a new season that begins. No one could expect such a pandemic to affect the whole world, not just cyclists. "

Colombians did not stay in quarantine

The priority objective of the Colombian obviously remains to register his name for the second time in the list of All of France: "I train for that," he said. The passengers on the flight all tested for Covid-19 before departure, and were therefore not quarantined upon arrival in Madrid.

This departure comes when the health situation in Colombia is becoming more and more critical. In just over a week, the number of deaths from the new coronavirus increased from 5,000 to 6,500, leading to a new containment of the capital Bogota and the big city of Medellin.

International cycling competitions are supposed to resume on July 28 with the Tour de Burgos (Spain). The Tour of Spain will be contested from October 20 to November 8 and will have six days in common with the Giro (October 3 to 25).

Source: leparis

All sports articles on 2020-07-21

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