The mass exodus includes the sport’s top riders.
UAE Team Emirates were hit by two cases of Covid-19 within 24-hours through Marc Hirschi in Tour de Suisse and Mikkel Bjerg at the Tour of Slovenia. Both riders have therefore been withdrawn from competition.
Around 30 riders abandoned the Tour de Suisse on Friday alone, including race leader Aleksandr Vlasov who was coming off of winning Thursday’s stage and Anton Palzer of the Bora-Hansgrohe team — Several teams withdrew their entire squads.
In addition to Vlasov, the departures include some of cycling’s most well-known names, such as Adam Yates, Rui Costa, Marc Hirschi, Rigoberto Urán and Tom Pidcock.
Bahrain Victorious withdrew from the Tour de Suisse after being notified of positive COVID-19 results from a round of tests conducted on Friday, the team said.
EF Education-EasyPost and BORA-hansgrohe have withdrawn from Tour of Slovenia.
Jumbo Visma withdrew to be safe.
Team manager of EF Education-EasyPost Jonathan Vaughters took to social media to state that four riders had tested positive and would be sent home. Includes Bissegger, Uran, Carthy and Bettiol.
Alpecin-Fenix had two positive tests so all pulled out.
Israel’s Sebastian Berwick is positive and his roommate Hollenstein are out.
Quickstep’s Vervaeke, TrekSegafredo’s Brambilla, Movistar’s Aranburu and Intermarche-Wanty-Gobert’s Petilli. Andersen, Pedersen and Bol from DSM are also positive and Joey Rosskopf from Human Powered Health.
Following is the list from Stage 6:
Stefano Oldani (Alpecin-Fenix)
Jimmy Janssens (Alpecin-Fenix)
Silvan Dillier (Alpecin-Fenix)
Xandro Meurisse (Alpecin-Fenix)
Sjoerd Bax (Alpecin-Fenix)
Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates)
Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates)
Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates)
Alessandro Covi (UAE Team Emirates)
Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates)
Joel Suter (UAE Team Emirates)
Matteo Trentin (UAE Team Emirates)
Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe)
Anton Palzer (Bora-Hansgrohe)
Reto Hollenstein (Israel-Premier Tech)
Sebastian Berwick (Israel-Premier Tech)
Filip Maciejuk (Bahrain Victorious)
Edoardo Zambanini (Bahrain Victorious)
Johan Price-Pejtersen (Bahrain Victorious)
Stephen Williams (Bahrain Victorious)
Yukiya Arashiro (Bahrain Victorious)
Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-EasyPost)
Rigoberto Urán (EF Education-EasyPost)
Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost)
Alberto Bettiol (EF Education-EasyPost)
Louis Vervaeke (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl)
Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers)
Gianluca Brambilla (Trek-Sgafredo)
Simone Petilli (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert)
Alex Araburu (Movistar)
