Tour de France organisers are working feverishly in the shadows to find a new start date for cycling's biggest stage race after public gatherings were banned until mid-July in the latest extension of the French cornavirus lockdown.
Originally slated to start from Nice with a caravan of around 4,500 people on June 27 and arrive in Paris July 19, there is no chance the event can go ahead as planned and organisers face a mammoth logistical task of rescheduling.
So far organisers Amoury Sports Organisation (ASO) have remained silent publicly, but several mayors of the French towns along the planned route say they have been consulted on the matter of the new date.
French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address Monday that a strict lockdown in France would continue until at least May 11 and public gatherings were banned until mid July.
Tour director Christian Prudhomme has said previously that riders would need two clear months after the lockdown ended to get ready for the race, which is no longer possible given the May 11 extension.
France's Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner spelled out on Tuesday that ASO had to reschedule or cancel.
"It is up to the organiser to analyse their ability to organise it and reschedule it," Castaner said on French radio.
Speculations surrounds a possible late July start, or mid-August, or even a September race.
ASO's reorganisation task is massive for an event with 21 start towns, 21 finish lines and over 3,000km of route and 500,000 roadside fans per day.
Suggestions the tour could be held behind closed doors have been ruled out. Fans are a key element of the Tour which is synonymous with the holidays in France, with the party atmosphere popping as the caravan winds its way through the prettiest parts of the country.
"The Tour de France is 3,000km of smiles," Prudhomme has said in reference to the holiday roadside gatherings. "We won't run a Tour de France without the fans."
Macron's announcement may have caught the organisers short and many people in France were surprised when the mid-July ban was announced.
A late July start for the Tour could be considered too close to that ban on public gatherings while also running up against another problem. To be able to race 21 tough stages, the athletes need to be in peak condition, and would ideally need a one-week preparation race before it.
ASO own the Criterium du Dauphine eight-day race and had been hoping to use that jaunt through the Alps in late June or early July. But that event has been postponed.
A second obstacle would be hotels, which would normally expect to be fully booked in the first two weeks in August.
A mid-August start would see the finish in September, meaning a clash with the Vuelta a Espana.
The Tour could be staged in September, but would lose its own sense of identity by moving out of the holiday period.
There are only 176 riders on a Tour, but the whole event involves around 4,500 people with team staff, logistics, police and media all moving every day in a minor miracle of organisation.
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
Gothia Cup 2025
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Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
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Founders: Michele Ferrario, Nino Ulsamer and Freddy Lim
Started: established in 2016 and launched in July 2017
Based: Singapore, with offices in the UAE, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand
Sector: FinTech, wealth management
Initial investment: $500,000 in seed round 1 in 2016; $2.2m in seed round 2 in 2017; $5m in series A round in 2018; $12m in series B round in 2019; $16m in series C round in 2020 and $25m in series D round in 2021
Current staff: more than 160 employees
Stage: series D
Investors: EightRoads Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Sequoia Capital India
Profile
Co-founders of the company: Vilhelm Hedberg and Ravi Bhusari
Launch year: In 2016 ekar launched and signed an agreement with Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. In January 2017 ekar launched in Dubai in a partnership with the RTA.
Number of employees: Over 50
Financing stage: Series B currently being finalised
Investors: Series A - Audacia Capital
Sector of operation: Transport
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Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
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Call the hotline on 0502955999 or send "thenational" to the following numbers:
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Tomato and walnut salad
A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.
Badrijani nigvzit
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Something of a fashion anomaly, normcore is essentially a celebration of the unremarkable. The term was first popularised by an article in New York magazine in 2014 and has been dubbed “ugly”, “bland’ and "anti-style" by fashion writers. It’s hallmarks are comfort, a lack of pretentiousness and neutrality – it is a trend for those who would rather not stand out from the crowd. For the most part, the style is unisex, favouring loose silhouettes, thrift-shop threads, baseball caps and boyish trainers. It is important to note that normcore is not synonymous with cheapness or low quality; there are high-fashion brands, including Parisian label Vetements, that specialise in this style. Embraced by fashion-forward street-style stars around the globe, it’s uptake in the UAE has been relatively slow.
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Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
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match info
Chelsea 2
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What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the most popular virtual currency in the world. It was created in 2009 as a new way of paying for things that would not be subject to central banks that are capable of devaluing currency. A Bitcoin itself is essentially a line of computer code. It's signed digitally when it goes from one owner to another. There are sustainability concerns around the cryptocurrency, which stem from the process of "mining" that is central to its existence.
The "miners" use computers to make complex calculations that verify transactions in Bitcoin. This uses a tremendous amount of energy via computers and server farms all over the world, which has given rise to concerns about the amount of fossil fuel-dependent electricity used to power the computers.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
