• Prosecutor’s office launch preliminary investigation
• Police searched riders’ rooms and requested training files

French prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into doping allegations against Tour de France cycling team Bahrain Victorious after police searched the outfit’s accommodation and bus on Wednesday following the 17th stage of the race.

The prosecutor’s office in the port city of Marseille said the investigation was into “acquisition, transport, possession, import of a prohibited substance or prohibited method for use by an athlete without medical justification”.

• Woman who held up large sign had been in police custody
• ‘This story has been blown out of proportion,’ says Tour director

Tour de France officials have withdrawn a lawsuit against a spectator who caused a mass crash during the opening stage of the race.

The spectator, a 30-year-old French woman, was in custody at a police station in Landerneau, Brittany, the northwest French region where the world’s biggest cycling event held its first four stages. She was holding a cardboard sign and facing away from the cyclists towards a television camera as they passed. German Tony Martin, from the Jumbo–Visma team, was sent tumbling when he rode straight into the sign, and a large number of other riders also fell.

• Roxana Mărăcineanu made the comments to France Television
  
• Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España will overlap in October
  

The French sports minister Roxana Maracineanu has delivered a stark warning to cycling, declaring that there is “no guarantee” that the Tour de France will go ahead this year.

The Tour has already been rescheduled from June to a 29 August start because of the Covid-19 crisis, but the minister could offer little assurance that the race would be given the green light. With crowd-drawing events banned in France until the end of August, special arrangements might have to be made for the start of the Tour in Nice, the sports ministry said last month.