The terrain might have been innocuous, and the action limited, but stage twelve ended up being the most deadly of the 2024 Tour de France so far. The stage ended with six riders less than it started with, a higher rate of abandonments than any other stage up until now.
In the morning, it was announced that Michael Mørkøv’s (Astana Qazaqstan) Tour de France swansong was to come to a premature end, as he withdrew from the race having contracted Covid-19. During the stage, Fabio Jakobsen (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) was first, then Pello Bilbao (Bahrain-Victorious) climbed off and pulled out, each having struggled visibly, presumably with illness. And then three riders, Yevgeniy Fedorov (Astana Qazaqstan), Jonas Rickaert and Søren Kragh Andersen (both Alpecin-Deceuninck), all came home after the time limit, having been victims of crashes earlier in the stage. Even many of the riders who did manage to make it through the day were battered and bruised — most notably Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), his dreams of the yellow jersey dashed after losing 2:27 in the aftermath of a late crash.
Up until yesterday, this Tour de France had been notable for how few casualties there had been. The whole opening week came and went with just three riders withdrawing and no serious crashes of the kind we have grown sadly familiar with. Looking back over the last ten years, the average number of riders who failed to complete the Tour has been 32, the lowest number being 21 at the 2019 edition. So, to have reached that point of the race with just the three abandons made for a refreshing change.
It was all smiles for Primož Roglič before the start of stage 12 (Image by James Startt)
The UCI will have been especially pleased with this, given that they have used this Tour to introduce new safety measures. Rider safety has been a hot topic all year in the context of the serious incidents that have affected many of the sport’s biggest names, from Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) at Itzulia Basque Country to Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) at Dwars door Vlaanderen. In response, the UCI have, for some stages, extended the three-kilometre rule, determining from what point riders involved in crashes are allocated the same time on GC, as well as extending how big a gap there needs to be between riders in a bunch finish for them to be considered as being in different groups, and therefore assigned different finishing times.
The idea behind these changes was to try to make bunch sprints less hectic by lessening the need for the GC rider to get involved with the sprinters. It is too early to tell and too small a sample size to determine whether there is any direct correlation between these changes and the lack of crashes during the first week, though. Another factor might also have been how this Tour started with such a hard stage in Italy. With so many GC gaps so early in the race and a hierarchy already formed, the usual jostling for position among riders harbouring overall ambitions in the following flat stages was less intense than usual and as a result, produced fewer crashes.
Despite this relatively serene start, things have taken a turn for the worse these past couple of days. Ten of the race’s fourteen withdrawals have occurred in this time, and suddenly we’re on course again for a similar total number of finishers as in recent Tours. For all the apparent improvement in safety, this is still the Tour, and danger lurks around every corner.
Crashes are, as ever, the cause of much anxiety. Even before the incident that took down Roglič towards the end of the stage, there had been other falls earlier on. Jonas Rickaert (a key part of Jasper Philipsen’s Alpecin-Deceuninck’s lead-out train) went down especially heavily as one of the victims of an earlier crash and was in too much pain to make the time limit. And even Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) in the yellow jersey was held up at one point early in the stage before the break had been formed. We might be beyond the nerves of the first week sprints, but that doesn’t mean the peloton is a safe place.
But perhaps the biggest threat to the riders’ continued participation is the illness that is spreading around the peloton. Given its history and the havoc it's caused at past bike races, there seems to be a reluctance to speak the illness's name: Covid-19. There’s much talk throughout the peloton of a virus that’s doing the rounds, and masks are beginning to be worn by some to counter it, but the specific nature of that virus has been kept vague by most. Team Astana has been more forward addressing it, confirming that it was due to a Covid infection that Michael Mørkøv had left the race. And before the stage today, his leader, Mark Cavendish, said that he “knows there are riders riding with Covid in the peloton,” and that “there’s not much you can do about it.”
Pello Bilbao was the GC for Bahrain-Victorious (Image by SWPix.com)
This being the case, it is highly likely that other riders will fall victim to it. So far, Bahrain-Victorious have been worst struck, with their GC man Pello Bilbao dropping out of the race today with nothing left in the tank, following Fred Wright’s horrible day in the saddle yesterday, which ended with him missing the time limit. They are one of the teams who have started wearing masks, and it’s clear illness is spreading through their ranks. Covid might not be as contagious or deadly as it once was, but contracting it could, and surely will, spell the end of the Tour for some — and it won’t just be contained within the teams affected so far.
Primož Roglič was reminded today how a single moment can seriously compromise your hopes at a Tour de France, even while everything else is going well. With the threat of sickness added to the ever-present danger of crashing, there could be more unfortunate twists in this Tour.
*Cover image by James Startt
