There are always sunshine and smiles on the French Riviera but the 2020 Tour de France will roll out from here on Saturday under a cloud of Covid-19 gloom, with doubts the 21-day jaunt across the peaks and plains will be end with its usual dash up the Champs Elysees in Paris.
Leaving the well heeled Riviera resort the 22 teams will race 3,484km through some of the prettiest vistas in France in a globally popular event broadcast in 190 countries.
The organisers of the Grand Boucle, as it is known, also hope to provide a new blueprint for sports in the time of Covid-19.
Defending champion Colombian Egan Bernal is again a good bet for the overall leader’s fabled yellow jersey, along with Slovenian strongman Primoz Roglic and emotional French climber Thibaut Pinot chief among his rivals on a course that crosses all five of France’s mountain ranges.
Bernal’s Ineos team boss, Dave Brailsford, told on Friday that he had stuck with his 21-day masterplan for an eighth victory in nine years because he felt the Tour would indeed make it all the way to the cobbles of the Champs Elysees.
The real action is likely to be the war of attrition between the two strongest teams Ineos and Jumbo. Both squads will be concerned that limited warm-up time could make the race less predictable and wary of outliers capable of summoning a massive climb performance.
Whoever emerges from the sunflowers and the chateaux, wearing the yellow jersey atop the popular culminating climb of La Planche des Belles Filles, will have won one of the most hotly anticipated Tours in its 107 year history.
