House rules

There were three months between the last WorldTour race of the 2019 season and the first of the 2020 season – 91 days, to be precise. The season began at the Tour Down Under in Australia in late January with the usual sense of a sport emerging from hibernation, in shiny new kit, on sparkling new bikes.

But the off-season was dwarfed by the 143 days between Paris-Nice – the last race before Covid-19 halted sport – and Strade Bianche, the first race since the restart. What’s more, they were not ordinary off-season days but days characterised by uncertainty, anxiety and fear. Days that saw some stuck inside their homes for weeks on end.

For cyclists, who thrive on routine and competition, this period posed particular problems. It also created interesting opportunities and threw up surprising discoveries. Take Team Sunweb, the Dutch team sponsored by a holiday company. If the nature of the sponsor’s industry, as hard hit as any by coronavirus, created uncertainty in the team’s future, you wouldn’t have known it. Sunweb extended contracts, their women’s team signed the world’s top-ranked rider, Lorena Wiebes, and launched a new kit for summer. They’ve largely presented a positive, business-as-usual face to the outside world