Lappartient on cycling's reponse to Covid-19: "The impossible turned out to be possible"

David Lappartient considers that cycling's response to the Covid-19 pandemic was positive, and that there was an appropriate response within the sport to react as best as possible with the possible conditions.

In a long, segmented interview with Wielerflits, another topic that was approached was that of how the sport dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic, to which Lappartient answered: “When I look back, I think that we as cycling can be proud of how quickly and well we were able to present a new calendar in 2020 after the outbreak of Corona. We were the first sports association to present a new plan in the lockdown from 1 August. We managed to finish a fairly complete season in three months.”

“But everyone was willing to contribute ideas in order to find a solution. Organisers, teams, but also riders... I think that all stakeholders in cycling in 2020 have discovered that there should be much more flexibility towards each other. Suddenly the impossible turned out to be possible," he added.

With the creation of race-specific bubbles, the exclusion of fans throughout much of the 2020 and 2021 seasons, and specific sanitary regulation for races have helped contain outbreaks - for the most part - and keep races possible. Although early 2022, with the growth of the Omicron variant, saw many pros infected, and outbreaks in some races specifically in the early-season Spanish stage-races, the consequences seemed to have been limited.

He tells how that has came as an effect of the work developed throughout the pandemic. “Due to the outbreak of corona, our priority was to draw up a new calendar and create a situation in which as many competitions as possible could be held. Furthermore, we were still fighting for the European Commission with Velon, which represents a large number of teams."

"Our intention with this working group was to create more trust between all parties in cycling. I think that in those two sessions everyone put clear points on the table that made the general interest visible," he mentioned.