The latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has already disrupted professional cyclists, forcing three Lotto Soudal athletes to switch from high-altitude Rwandan air to tent-based simulations.

Victor Kampenaerts has made several trips to Africa in recent years for high-altitude training, most notably to Namibia for a successful UCI Hour Record attempt in 2019.

For the 2022 season, he was scheduled to travel to Rwanda with teammates Florian Vermeersch and Brent Van Moore as an addition to Lot Soudal's training camp in Spain in January.

However, travel restrictions and quarantine requirements made this trip impossible.

"Now that we are in Wave 26, we don't want to take any risks," Kampenaerts told Sporza (opens in new tab).

"Now, even when we arrive in Rwanda, we have to be quarantined for three days. If that continues, we will be far away from our homeland."

"We are not going to be able to go back to Rwanda.

Instead, Campenaerts, Fermesch, and Van More will leave the training camp in Lot Soudal on January 19 for another hotel in southeastern Spain.

They will sleep and eat in a hypoxic tent to simulate the effects of high-altitude training. Also known as hyperbaric chambers, these tents simulate the atmospheric pressure of high altitude, where the body has to make more red blood cells due to reduced oxygen saturation.

"We can spend time there in a pseudo-high altitude. We have all reserved a fourth room that we can use as our own room and living room," Kampenaerts explained.

"We also eat in that living room to live at maximum height."

Kampenaerts is no stranger to hypoxic tents; two years ago, his winter regime consisted of sleeping at a virtual altitude of 4,700 meters and spending an hour a day at 10,000 meters, more than a kilometer higher than the top of Mount Everest.

The use of high altitude tents is permitted by WADA, but has caused concern in the past and WADA was considering banning the tents in 2006. The organization's ethics committee determined that it was "probably against the spirit of the sport," but no action was taken. They are also banned in certain countries.

Campenaerts himself caused controversy two years ago when he suggested that the practice "makes you feel like an athlete who has taken EPO."