Victor Lafay, the French puncher for Cofidis, had to leave the Tour route this Saturday. Suffering for many days, he was never able to shine on his first big loop.
“I am not the only patient in the peloton”he dropped in the interview after his retirement. “Castroviejo came to see me at the start of the stage: ‘Are you sick too, can’t you breathe?’ and he told me that he had the same symptoms. Me, it is since the sixth stage that I lack oxygen, that I lack strength and that I hurt everywhere. I hoped that it would eventually pass but it’s not. Today I tried to hang on but it didn’t work.”
The French rider, who was nevertheless in good shape like his successful Dauphiné, cannot explain these symptoms: “All the runners who suffer are negative for Covid. It may be something else. In any case, it’s pulmonary. And when the muscles are not oxygenated, it cannot work.”