Start Drinking: Paris-Roubaix Likely to be Canceled

The Prefect of the Hauts-de-France region has spoken: Paris-Roubaix is… well, not exactly postponed, but… Covid-19 has… sapped his optimism for the running of the race. Can someone ship us some Gauloises so we can get into the right mindset to read this quote?

Here’s what Michel Lalande, the aforementioned prefect, has actually said on running the race in light of the latest Covid-19 breakout in the region: “I’ll give you an answer when the time is right, but right now you can guess. The sky now looks less blue.”

You know the sky will literally look less blue too. It only rains when they postpone the race.

Like it or not, postponing the race for the second year in a row is probably the correct decision. Sixteen departments went into month-long lockdown in France over the weekend due to surging Covid-19 rates across the country. ICU beds in the Hauts-de-France department are at an occupancy rate of 120%, which. Uh. Is not good.

Last year’s race was postponed until October and then, tragically, canceled entirely in light of a new outbreak. Moving this year’s race to October, however, would likely mean it goes ahead given the pace of vaccinations.

Paris-Nice did successfully go ahead this month, but not without changing its final two stages to swerve some particularly sticky patches of Covid-19 on the race route. It looks as though we’re heading toward yet another period of mass race cancelations. ASO has yet to comment on this issue, so stay tuned.