The Minister of Sports, at the request of Jean Castex, met most of the political and sporting actors to discuss with them the future return of supporters to the stadiums while the Covid-19 epidemic remains tenacious.
A meeting in the Rhône prefecture with the presidents of the three main clubs – OL, ASVEL and LOU – notably allowed the former high-level swimmer to leave “with a file under the arm to be able to carry it in interministerial cell on Tuesday”.
Concretely, Lyon has a good chance of being chosen as a test city to set up experimental protocols and thus promote the return of the public to Groupama Stadium, Matmut Stadium in Gerland and Astroballe.
Fan tracing to understand how the virus behaves in a stadium
It is Jean-Michel Aulas, who led the dance. “What we have proposed is to see how we could anticipate these reopenings with a very precise traceability study of how a certain number of populations intervene in a stage that would be identified, composed in an extremely diverse way and that we can follow in relation to the evolution of the virus “, said the president of OL, who says he has “worked a lot with European clubs and watched what was happening in the NBA”.
The protocol remains unclear today, but concretely, it would be a tracing of some of the supporters who must advance science: “There would be a precise sampling with all types of population. Should we group people by family or separate them? We don’t know yet. But we want monitoring of the typology to better understand what happens in a stadium in terms of propagation, which we do not really know today. How does the virus behave in a stadium or even at the entrances and exits of the latter? Here is the contribution that we are making and which has not, for the moment , no commercial vocation. We provided the documents to the participants, we now need scientific experts “, concluded Jean-Michel Aulas, who wishes “allow the French to live their lives”.
Also present, Gaëtan Muller (ASVEL) felt that there is a “link between indoor sport and culture because we have more or less the same problems. The experimental side is very interesting for Lyon, because we are quite representative, with our three clubs, of French sport”.
For Yann Roubert, president of LOU Rugby, it is necessary “that sport is at the service of the community. We want to offer the testing ground that our stadiums can be to advance the common cause”.
“If things are going well within a month, obviously we will not go through these experiments, noted the Minister of Sports. If the difficulties continue, the experiments will still make sense. And they will make sense anyway because we do not know what the future will bring “.
Beginning of response this Tuesday therefore, with the highly anticipated interministerial meeting.
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