The Tour director tests positive, but no rider is infected and the race continues

Accustomed to being the people whose future depended on the difference between two words, positive and negative, the cyclists were able to joke about the matter on Tuesday morning, when it was announced that although the 165 who still survive had all tested negative in the PCR to which they had undergone on Monday morning, there had been six positives among the 841 that were made in total corresponding to the so-called race bubble: one corresponds to a member of the Tour technical service, four to assistants from four teams different (Ineos, Mitchelton, Cofidis and Ag2r) and the sixth, to Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour, no less.

If another member of one of the four teams already played tests positive in the next test session, on the next Monday rest, his entire team should withdraw from the Tour.

The tenth stage of the Tour started, thus, with absolute normality from the Isle of Oléron, and with only one novelty, that of François Lemarchand assuming the director's pennant in the red car number one, since Prudhomme abandoned the race for a quarantine of one week, secluded in the hotel in La Rochelle where he spent the rest day.

"I will watch the Tour again on TV, like in my days as a television commentator," said Prudhomme, who declared himself "totally asymptomatic."

As the cynics immediately underlined, the Tour Director is the Tour's first full name and surname positive since cyclist Luca Paolini's cocaine in 2015. And some teams were concerned that Prudhomme, not yet officially part of their bubble, used to dine at team hotels.

The Tour has not reported whether those Tour executives, such as Bernard Thévenet, who have spent the longest time with Prudhomme, or whether VIPs, including the French Prime Minister, who regularly spend time with his company sharing a car, have been subjected to preventive quarantine .

Needle stuck in vein, nose probed with a swab, urine in vial.

In front of the 165 cyclists on Monday morning, a queue of analysts who wanted to know some of their secrets spread out, and to lighten the procedures, some had to get up even earlier than usual.

They have been used to blood and urine for years, to prior hematocrit control, to searching their hemoglobin for signs of blood manipulation.

Not so much about the nose, although the development of the cycling season has made almost all of them experts in PCR analysis, to which they had to submit six and three days before the Tour, three days before any other race and on the rest day of the Tour.

And it was not customary for Tour assistants, directors and organizers and workers to sleep one night pending to know if the tests were positive.

And the reflections of the media have changed according to how the pandemic progresses.

Nobody cares about the hematocrit anymore, the parameter that made journalists sleepless long ago.

"Nobody cares about us anymore, we live in absolute indifference", almost lamented one of those responsible for anti-doping control on the Tour.

"And we are collecting more samples than ever: we have to make up for lost time, the months of confinement in which we did not do controls and the anti-doping agencies and the UCI have to fatten their statistics."