The Tour de France is not a comfortable place for a sick rider. Heck, it’s not a comfortable place for a healthy rider: for three weeks and 3,300 kilometres, it demands everything of the body and a little bit more, and teams carefully manage their riders’ form to get them to the start line in the best shape possible. Every breath, gram of food, pillow, and item of clothing is optimised. The riders’ body fat is low, their immune systems are fragile, a tenuous tightrope between riding the best they can and falling completely in a heap.
Spare a thought, then, for Arnaud De Lie – the Belgian sprinter from Lotto-Intermarché who was barely able to start the race at all, afflicted by stomach issues.
That’s not new to De Lie; he picked up a nasty case of gastroenteritis on the eve of the Giro d’Italia, likely caused by cow manure on rainy roads at the Lotto Famenne Ardeche Classic in the days beforehand. The Ardeche classic gave with one hand and took with the other; De Lie won it, his first victory of the season, only to fall ill on the plane to the Giro start. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this bad,” he said at the time.
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