{"id":676706,"date":"2026-07-06T13:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T13:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676706\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T13:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T13:12:15","slug":"arnaud-de-lies-tour-is-a-fight-just-to-stay-in-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676706\/","title":{"rendered":"Arnaud De Lie’s Tour is a fight just to stay in it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Arnaud<\/p>\n

Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe survived another day. We’ll see again tomorrow,\u201d said his sports director of the ill rider\u2019s torrid start to the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Iain<\/p>\n

The Tour de France is not a comfortable place for a sick rider. Heck, it\u2019s 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\u2019 form to get them to the start line in the best shape possible.\u00a0 Every breath, gram of food, pillow, and item of clothing is optimised. The riders\u2019 body fat is low, their immune systems are fragile, a tenuous tightrope between riding the best they can and falling completely in a heap.<\/p>\n

Spare a thought, then, for Arnaud De Lie\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the Belgian sprinter from Lotto-Intermarch\u00e9 who was barely able to start the race at all, afflicted by stomach issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not new to De Lie; he picked up a nasty case of gastroenteritis on the eve of the Giro d\u2019Italia, 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. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever felt this bad,\u201d he said at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"De Lie and teammate Baptiste Veistroffer, the last two riders on the road yesterday.<\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

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\n Tour de France<\/a>
\n Arnaud De Lie<\/a>
\n News & Racing<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France \u201cHe survived another day. We’ll see again tomorrow,\u201d said his sports director of the ill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-676706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}