What Can Bike Racing Teach Us (About Group Riding with Covid): Part 2
Maybe I should re-title Part 2 to, “What happens when a Covid-positive cyclist rides in a group, without masks and closer than six feet?”
Skeptical readers of Part 1, the Tour de France blog post, can rightfully point out what I’ll call the Russian Roulette Fallacy. One can make a case similar to this: Sure, staff support team members might have turned positive, but given enough time, riders would have turned positive. In violation of various States’ Covid public health laws, a superspreading event would eventually have followed.
Like a fool who after playing Russian Roulette was lucky enough to brag about it, a critic can reply this fool’s nonfatal error was not pulling the trigger a few more times. Should we call the fool “lucky” who violates public health guidelines? Maybe the six-foot public health distancing guidelines don’t extrapolate to cycling.
Italy, host country for the cycling event, Giro d’Italia, wasn’t as lucky as France in 2020. The Giro may help answer the critic who challenges the cycling “fool” who challenges public policy.
Buoyed by a Covid successful Tour de France, the 23-day-long, Giro d’Italia went forward on October 3rd, 2020. Organizers of both events hadn’t thrown caution to the wind. Absent from both events were popular post-ride celebrations and podium autograph sessions. Riders were required to mask whenever dismounted from two-wheels. While Covid testing protocols varied slightly during the race, all participants were regularly testing prior to beginning and at regular intervals during the race.
Our hypothetical critic wagging his indignant finger got his schadenfreude satisfaction, seven days into the Giro. Team Mitchelton-Scott experienced a positive test result. Prior to the start of Stage 8, on October 10, 2020, team Mitchelton-Scott ‘s leader, Simon Yates tested positive for coronavirus.
“No-one knows how Simon contracted Covid-19,” team boss Matt White told Eurosport. “At the end of the day we are in a bubble but the bubble is very diverse due to changing hotels every day. We are doing our best to wear masks and pay big attention to hygiene.”
Still worse for the entire Mitchelton-Scott team, four staff members tested positive. Mitchelton-Scott’s decision to pull out of the Giro d’Italia was a forgone conclusion. From a researcher’s point of view, having several members of the support team test positive concurrently, but without any other rider from Mitchelton-Scott’s team testing positive, is quite revealing.
The pattern of team spread matches the Tour de France experience. In the Tour de France, support team members, those who fine-tune bikes, drive chase vehicles, massage tired legs and tend to the racers were first to be infected. Not one support member at a time, but several of them at once.
This indicates two features of Covid infection. The first that person-to-person, household-like transmission remains the most likely way of getting Covid. A team must come into contact with a myriad of local workers during the course of traveling from location to location. Interactions with hotel staff, dining staff and others in an indoor environment represent the highest risk for acquiring Covid. We will have more to say about the previously under appreciated role of indoor air in a moment.
The second is that Simon Yates appears to have received the infection from support team members. Four of Mitchelton-Scott’s support team members were identified as positive within a day of his positive test result. Team Mitchelton-Scott in total had five positives, one rider and four support members. His support team members had lingering and more frequent face-to-face interactions with local Italians than the team riders. Mitchelton-Scott support team members set up hotel rooms, arranged meals, allowing riders to focus on turning the cranks.
A cycling race team has more racers than support team members. If household Covid transmission plays a more prominent role, then we should see clustering within teams. Indeed, this is what happened. From the pattern of infection, the evidence points toward Mitchelton-Scott support team members first acquiring Covid and giving it to the rider, Simon Yates.
Most interesting to readers is what did not occur. Covid was not easily transmitted between and among group riders. Simon did not give Covid to fellow cyclists on team Mitchelton-Scott. No other cyclists on his team turned up positive for the remainder of the race. Remember, if group riding was a likely way of transmitting Covid, team racers within the same team become infected first. Teamwork involves close drafting. Drafting decreases team workload and defeats wind resistance, cycling’s traditional enemy.
By October 3rd, cyclists from Mitchelton-Scott had been riding in the Giro d’Italia for seven days. While team riders have been the most cohesive, during the race, individually and in pairs, they have been jockeying with other teams, frequently riding as a loose gaggle. We should have seen other team riders turning up positive after a few more Mitchelton-Scott cyclists turn up positive. Multiple racers from other teams have been in the slipstream surrounding Simon Yates for a week.
Clearly, group riding or drafting is not nearly as risky as team gatherings when not racing. So while we cannot say that being less than six feet from another cyclist will not transmit Covid, we can surmise that it is far less risky versus riding in the same van or sharing a hotel room after a race, even if masked for much of the time.
Three days later on October 13, 2020, after the entire team Mitchelton-Scott withdrew from the Giro, two additional riders — one each from Team Jumbo-Visma (Steven Kruijswijk) and Team Sunweb (Michael Matthews) — tested positive. One rider, Australian Michael Matthew’s would later fail to confirm — a false positive. He tested twice negative on subsequent consecutive days.
In addition to the one truly positive remaining rider, Steven Kruijswijk, two positive support team members became positive. These positive support team members from Ineos Grenadiers and Team Ag2r-La Mondiale were not on Steven Kruijswijk’s, Michael Matthew’s or even Simon Yate’s team.
Could rider Steven Kruijswijk have received Covid from Simon Yates? It’s possible since none of Steven Kruijswijk’s team members turned up positive at the time nor up until the race finished. Or did Mr. Kruijswijk receive his viral gift from another source? No one can know for sure. However, one can reasonably conclude that group riding has a far smaller chance of transmitting Covid compared to other activities associated with traveling as part of a bike race caravan. More support members became positive than riders, and only one rider from another became positive out of 175 participating cyclists.
Add another data point. Two days following on October 15th, 17 police officers working on the Giro-E, an e-bike racing event that follows the Giro, tested positive for the virus.
The more famous Giro d’Italia concluded with only one additional isolated Covid positive case — a very curious test positive. UAE Team Emirates sprinter, Fernando Gaviria tested positive for coronavirus. Strangely enough, this was the second time he had tested positive for Covid-19. The first time had taken place at the UAE Tour earlier in March. This second positive came about on October 19th, six days after the withdraw of Steven Kruijswijk, the last preceding positive rider.
Repeatedly positive individual results can have many causes, related to the biological nature of the test, person, or virus. While I can spend another page or two speculating, I will simply say that Gaviria’s isolated positive result has a small likelihood of being related to Simon Yates nor Steven Kruijswijk as evidenced by the time delay to a positive test result. Seven days is a short time between contact and testing positive, not to mention that none of Gaviria’s team had tested positive.
The risk of acquiring Covid from other riders in a large group of 175 panting racers as evidenced by the Giro d’Italia, is astonishingly small if not nonexistent. Your smaller circle of riding companions in all likelihood do not draw from as diverse as an international pool as the Giro, nor are you spending as much time in your friend’s slipstream. The Covid transmission risk from group riding is less than the risk from a large group, such as a cycling team of twenty traveling across Italy during a Covid pandemic.
Recent clarification from public health experts can shed more light. (Long overdue from my standpoint.) A highly communicable disease like Covid requires airborne transmission. Doctors have seen this with tuberculosis and chickenpox. Air dilution plays a tremendous role in decreasing infectivity. The corollary is that a single virus cannot cause an infection. Infections result from a sufficient viral dose over a long enough period of time, enough to overcome your innate ability to clear Covid.
Most of the time, we purge viruses without being immune to them by our nose. The nose constantly defeats infections for which we have no antibodies or immunity to. The coronavirus needs to run the gauntlet of turbinates and sinuses after passing through nose. These nasal passageways create airflow eddies trapping most particulate matter like pollen or viruses in mucus. They get trapped, defeated and swept out the nose as mucousy snot. That runny nose outdoors serves a purpose!
Covid infections typically take place indoors, following an extended, cumulative period of exposure. Based on this understanding, six-foot distancing is not as important as motionless air. Recently, public health authorities admitted they had overstated the benefits of wiping down surfaces, six-foot distancing and not given sufficient emphasis on indoor airflow and exchange.
A recent case of Covid exposure in a gym where no one became infected highlights an open door/window defense. Gyms with high ceiling, circulation and filtering systems are safer than rooms with the same number of people. Cubic feet, not square feet matter. Even better, outside, the sky is the limit to defensive air dilution.
From my personal review this past year, posting on Reddit and asking fellow club riders, I am only aware of one case of Covid transmission which took place as a result of a group ride. The two riders in question sat face-to-face during a rest stop, engaged in conversation. No one else was infected in this group confirmed after testing and quarantine. If you know of any events to the contrary, please post them in the comments below.
I think those asking whether group riding puts cyclists at risk for Covid need to ask a more appropriate question: Is group riding safer overall compared to riding alone? Is the risk of acquiring Covid balanced out from the safety advantages of riding with others?
If you were to become disabled during a solo ride, who would pull you out of the road? Render first aid? Call for help? In my third and last installment, I will do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the added risk of dying from Covid versus riding solo.
