In Bilbao
At 6:35 p.m., the Bahrain Victorious team opened, in the rain, the presentation ceremony of the teams of the Tour de France which will start from Bilbao this Saturday. After a short course, in front of the crowd massed next to the Guggenheim museum, the runners, wearing Basque berets, are lined up on a huge platform.
Mikel Landa, his teammates and the many observed a poignant minute of silence in memory of Gino Mäder, the Swiss rider who died on June 16 on the Tour de Suisse after a terrible fall. The first highlight of the Tour de France. “It was hard to take for everyone, I haven’t seen a single runner take risks in a descent since,” summed up Briton Thomas Pidcock (Ineos) a few hours before the presentation of the teams.
“We know all the risks of this sport, but when we see them so closely, we begin to wonder a little what we are doing with our lives. I would be lying if I said that I was not a little afraid to return to the mountains,” explained American Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek).