For the Tour de France, one of the last of the summer’s major sports events still standing in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the stop-watch is ticking.

While the Tokyo Olympics, the Euros, tennis and golf majors and the Giro d’Italia have already been postponed or even cancelled, the Tour is still scheduled to start on June 27.

Christian Prudhomme, the Tour director, made clear that before the race he wants “two months of exposure for the riders.”

That means training rides and races and with most prospective competitors confined, the chances of their getting back on the road by late April look slim.

The race also needs France to end its lockdown, not just so the riders can ride but because the Tour attracts 10 to 12 million spectators who stand by the roads to watch.

Last week, when he announced the postponement of the Dauphine, an eight-day Tour warm-up stage race in the southeast of France due to start on May 31, Prudhomme said: “The most important word in Tour de France is France, and health concerns come first.”

The situation across Europe suggests that a postponement is increasingly likely.

Prudhomme is not prepared to discuss alternative plans in public, but said: “As of today, the dates of the Tour de France are maintained. But it would be a lie to say that we are not studying other hypotheses.”

Behind the scenes, it is learnt, the organisers have sounded out cycling teams as well as French politicians and broadcasters about a postponement to August.

Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu talked of banning spectators. But the idea seems to have died.

The Tour is fuelled by its fans and it would be hard to prevent people coming out of their houses when the race passes by.

Welshman Geraint Thomas, the winner in 2018, and Julian Alaphilippe, France’s hero of the 2019 Tour after wearing the leader’s jersey for 14 days, used almost identical words. “Without the fans, it wouldn’t be the Tour de France,” was how Thomas put it.