AG2R La Mondiale's Oliver Naessen said he hopes the Tour de France will take place this summer and that team leader Romain Bardet could participate.

"The Tour is still 12 weeks away from starting, but I really hope it does," Naessen told Nieuwsblad.be in an interview on Facebook this week.

"I haven't personally talked to Romain about the Tour yet, but I don't think he doesn't want to ride the Tour and I don't think the team doesn't want him to be part of the Tour," he said. Bardet had originally planned to ride the now-postponed Giro d'Italia in May and forego the Tour in order to rest up for the Olympic road race, which would have been held in July, but the Tokyo event will also be postponed to next summer.

Although he has not been in touch with Bardet about the Tour, Nessen is in a WhatsApp group with the French riders on his team, and he said he is having a hard time during the coronavirus crisis, with stricter rules for going out than Nessen has in Belgium.

"The French players are going crazy. 'They are not allowed to train outside, so all they can do is run for an hour and a half on the trainer at home. If this situation continues much longer, they will lose their minds."

Although he does not know when the Tour will be held, Nessen says he is training for the postponed spring classics.

"All my hopes are focused on the Tour.

While many other teams, including Bahrain McLaren, Astana, Lotto Soudal, and most recently the CCC team, have accepted temporary pay cuts as the coronavirus crisis continues, Nessen said that full-time employees of AG2R La Mondiale will be paid as usual Nessen said that full-time employees of AG2R La Mondial are guaranteed to be paid as usual.

"Everybody gets paid at the end of the month. We're continuing our training, we're not doing nothing."

Het Nieuwsblad noted that Nessen's contract with his French team is only for this season.

"As a Classics rider, I wanted to wait until between the Classics and the Tour de France to discuss a contract. But for me, nothing has changed, and ideally, I would simply renew my contract."