Covid chaos hits Tour de Suisse with Ineos' Tom Pidcock among riders to withdraw

With just two weeks to go until this year’s Tour de France begins in Copenhagen, professional cycling is once again reeling from an outbreak of Covid-19. British squad Ineos Grenadiers have been directly affected with Tom Pidcock the latest rider forced to pull out of the Tour de Suisse.

Pidcock’s positive test came just 24 hours after Adam Yates, earmarked to be one of Ineos Grenadiers’ co-leaders at this year’s Tour de France, alongside Colombian Dani Martinez, also tested positive for the virus.

In total, 29 riders did not start the sixth stage of the Swiss race, including race leader Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe). That was after 16 riders pulled out on Thursday, with some teams opting to withdraw en masse with the Tour de France so close.

UAE Team Emirates – the team of Tour favourite Tadej Pogacar – Alpecin-Fenix and Bahrain-Victorious all quit the race in Switzerland following positive cases in their teams, while EF Education-EasyPost have so far withdrawn four riders including Rigoberto Uran and Briton Hugh Carthy.

Despite the mounting cases, race organisers took the decision to continue. Welshman Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) finished safely in the group of favourites on stage six to retain his second place overall, one second behind Danish rider Jakob Fuglsang  (Israel-Premier Tech).

Race director Olivier Senn said he would take things on a day-by-day basis as the race nears its conclusion on Sunday.

"We’ve assessed and discussed the situation. It’s obviously not nice and we’re very sad that corona is spreading so far within the teams," Senn told Velo Pro Net at the start of Friday’s stage following a meeting with teams, the CPA rider association and the UCI medical officer Professor Xavier Bigard.    

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