What Can Bike Racing Teach Us (About Group Riding with Covid): Part 1
Cycling enthusiasts eagerly watch the Tour de France, some even fork-over extra to watch more than short recaps. This year, during the depths of the pandemic, major international cycling races can provide more than edge-of-the-chair excitement. The Tour de France can suggest answers for cycling clubs.
For many cyclists, especially those in clubs, a hotly debated topic has been, “Are group rides safe?” “What happens when a group cycles without masks?” Those in the medical field seeking an evidenced-based answer may be even more excited than bike racing wannabe’s because real-life events can yield data. While clubs are left to extrapolate from public health authorities, here we have a controlled experiment to test some common dictum’s about masking during riding and the risk of drafting. (Drafting is a common practice of riding a short distance behind the bike in front.)
Bike racers competing in the Tour de France are drawn from an international crowd, pedal on consecutive days, and within six feet of each other. With no desire to handicap their oxygen intake, these maskless riders breathlessly expelled their lung contents out into the surrounding air. Those wishing to decrease their wind resistance keep their following distances to within inches. In fact, race teams specifically train in Blue Angel-like tight formations (called peletons) to maximize collective speed.
In this environment, no distinction between airborne or droplet aerosol viral transmission can be made — riders from the same team, and even those from other teams whose burning drive to remain in the race must be inside the same air ‘resistance’ bubble. Riders often jockey for downstream positions, behind and inside mixed groupings to conserve their individual energy.
Tension was high coming into August’s already postponed Tour. Cyclingtips.com asked the question foremost on everyone’s mind, “The Tour De France Starts Next Week, But Should It?” In mid-April, more than 2,000 new cases a day ravaged France, the Tour de France’s organizers planning for July, hit the Pause button. The Republic had scarcely caught her breath after suffering the third-highest Covid death rate on the Continent that spring. Many decried even this postponement, in their mind’s only hitting the Stop button for the Tour was responsible.
Strict protocols requiring each rider to wear face masks before and after each race stage extended to the support staff who rode in the same support vehicles after each race. Would 22 international teams converging on Nice, caravaning 2000 miles over 23 days through the heart of France, leave a trail of disease and death?
On entry, with all riders and team members testing negative, the first Covid-positive case almost seemed to come from the top. Tour de France’s chief organizer, Christian Prudhomme tested positive for Covid-19 ten days into the race, even though he had tested negative for coronavirus three times prior. Perhaps the personal cost of cajoling local mayors to allow the 600+ outsiders through might have been the personal cost.
Four more positive cases quickly followed. Four staff members each representing a different race team turned positive. When would a racer become positive?
With half of the race remaining the inevitable seemed to loom. Yet, a few days later, on September 13th, at Stage 15, all riders, staff members and race officials remained negative after hundreds of tests.
Even more miraculously, one week later by the end of the race, no more positives turned up. Impossible. Living in the same hotels, eating the same meals, draft riding in competing peletons did not leave a trail of Covid devastation. The website Cyclist seemed to understate the lack of an outbreak in their title: How the Tour de France 2020 went ahead despite Covid-19. Somehow, the lack of positive Covid tests seemed to be lost in the news amid the jubilant finish.
Here is a large group of riders who had multiple close Covid-positive contacts, rode daily for many hours in close proximity without masks. While these fit athletes probably weren’t at risk for Covid complications, repeat testing failed to show transmission of disease between riders.
Let me re-emphasize this point: It’s not that the racers didn’t get sick, they repeatedly tested negative from beginning to end. Their uber athletic body does not equal a superior immune system. Covid can equally infect everyone. All the hand wringing over riding with a handful of friends pales in comparison with a potential superspreading herd of hundreds of cyclists. In this case, a dull Covid nonevent.
The support staff who became infected, in this instance, did not give their infection to team riders. The clearer and more present danger of infection to the support staff came from a more familiar pedestrian source, the equivalent of our “household’ contacts.” Household contacts represent the most common source of Covid transmission.
If Tour de France riders didn’t find fellow maskless riders risky, then the higher Covid risk might be closer than the bike ahead of you — off the bike. Appreciating the relative ranking of risk is helpful, something I will have more to say about.
One is left to wonder, what would have happened, if one of the riders had Covid? Then, what would be the result when riders don’t maintain six-foot distancing nor wear masks when riding? How often do streaming Covid viruses infect trailing cyclists? For that, we have to look at a somewhat less known race which took place after the Tour de France, when we continue with Part 2 of this series.
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