In February, European Champion Sonny Colbrelli (centre) came second in the Belgian one-day race Het Nieuwsblad. The Tour of Flanders leads partly over the same climbs, but Colbrelli retires after a breakdown.
Photo: imago images / Sirotti
The legendary Tour of Flanders is on Sunday: an annual highlight in the cycling calendar. Rarely before has a field of drivers started so exhausted. Top favorite Wout van Aert might even throw in the towel before the start. Because a violent wave of illness has been plaguing professional cycling since the beginning of March. Van Aert is their latest victim.
Crowds of other stars left the Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico long-distance trips prematurely. Stomach problems and fever attacks, for example, stopped the three-time world champion Peter Sagan’s ambitions to win in Italy. Meanwhile, defending champion Maximilian Schachmann, teammate Nils Politt and Paris-Roubaix winner Sonny Colbrelli dropped out of the race in France with symptoms of a cold. Only a total of 59 of 154 drivers who started arrived. That was two fewer professional cyclists than at the 2020 edition, when the onset of the corona pandemic forced numerous teams to withdraw their riders as a precaution.
»It hit a surprising number of drivers. One can say that infections reduced the field at Paris-Nice, while gastrointestinal problems were the cause at Tirreno Adriatico,” veteran Roger Kluge summarized the situation to “nd”. The driver, who is employed by the Belgian racing team Lotto Soudal, completed the last stage on the Adriatic as planned. But then it hit him too. He dropped out early at the first major spring classic of the season, well before the field was due to finish in San Remo.
Like Kluge, many consider this wave of illness to be unusually large. “I think 85 to 90 percent of the riders were doing badly,” said time trial world champion and track cycling Olympic champion Filippo Ganna, who came from Tirreno with a fever and at Milan-San Remo was so weak that he could no longer hold the rear wheel of his colleagues in the Ineos team. Otherwise it’s actually the other way around because of Ganna’s tempo hardness. His teammate Tom Pidcock, one of the favorites for the Tour of Flanders, was even worse off. First a virus disease prevented his start at the classic sand road Strade Bianche, then he got out at Milan-San Remo with stomach problems. “Blood tests showed that the diseases had two different causes,” explained team manager Rod Ellingworth later. He added resignedly: »It goes through the entire field. Almost everyone gets something.«
The German Bora racing team even had to withdraw all drivers from France prematurely. Instead of trainers and masseurs, team boss Ralph Denk now needs nurses. “19 of our 30 drivers in the squad are not operational due to illness or injury,” he told the “nd” almost two weeks ago on the outskirts of Milan-San Remo. “First of all, it’s an upper respiratory infection, sometimes Covid, sometimes non-Covid,” he added. Based on a similar situation in most other racing teams, he observes “an extreme situation”. “I’ve never experienced anything like this in my time in professional cycling.”
Much is puzzled about the causes. »So far there have been no medical explanations. We have to keep an eye on it,” said Matthias Baumann, medical officer of the Federation of German Cyclists and President of the Medical Commission at the UCI World Association, the “nd”. According to his findings, the high infection rate is currently limited to the professional division. “In all other areas of the BDR, including cross and mountain bike riders, we have no higher infection numbers compared to previous years, apart from Covid, of course,” he said. And even in exchange with doctors from other Olympic disciplines, he saw no signs of a more intensive infection process.
So it seems to be a phenomenon mainly in professional road cycling. Cases like that of Peter Sagan, who suffered from Covid twice, suggest that late effects of Corona could play a role. »Peter used to be healthy and hardly ever had any problems. Since Corona, however, stomach problems and fever attacks have kept throwing him back,” said one of the Slovak’s supervisors. Bora team boss Denk sees at least a statistical connection with Corona: “It’s clear: In previous years we didn’t have Corona, there were no vaccinations and fewer respiratory diseases than now.”
However, it is doubtful whether a causal connection can be established from this. According to the current state of knowledge, BDR association doctor Baumann, who is the chief physician for trauma surgery in the Sigmaringen hospital, excludes the possibility that this could be a result of the vaccinations.
Meanwhile, another explanation is circulating in the peloton, which is at least indirectly related to the pandemic. “We’ve all become extremely isolated over the last two years. As a result, there have been far fewer common infectious diseases. This also means that the body now has fewer defenses,” says professional cyclist Roger Kluge. But the Berliner also says that this is just a guess. “I’m not a doctor.”
The consequences of the high failure rate are clearly visible. Racing teams are increasingly having problems getting complete teams to start each race. However, to omit this altogether to give drivers enough time to recover and recuperate would jeopardize the license. “We’re in patching mode,” says team manager Ralph Denk with concern. »You just send the drivers from one race to the next. And that means that it is no longer possible to build up a real mold. The healthy racers are no longer regenerated because they race more than originally planned. This is fatal because the racing programs no longer mesh optimally,” he explains.
Kluge also sees the danger that the form structure, which has been worked out over weeks, will now start to slip. And although the wave of illness rolled over all teams, there are different effects. »With us, Caleb Ewan, our winning driver, dropped out just at the time of the one-day race. He would certainly have gotten us more points,” explained Kluge. For his team, however, the point classification at the end of this season plays a major role in the renewed award of the new World Tour licenses.
It becomes even more precarious when sick drivers get back on board too early. Italy’s European Champion Sonny Colbrelli got out of Paris-Nice with bronchitis, was back on the bike two weeks later in the Tour of Catalonia and collapsed after crossing the finish line of the first stage. He even had to be resuscitated. In Italy it is now being investigated whether his cardiac arrhythmias will ever allow him to compete in a race again.
As one of very few professionals, the Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar has been spared from everything and already has eight victories this year. Now he wants to try his hand at the cobblestones in Flanders. The toughest competitor is the recently also successful Mathieu van der Poel. The Dutchman benefited in some ways from a back injury that plagued him over the winter. He therefore only started the new season much later than planned – and thus avoided the rolling focus of infection in the driver’s field.
