To complete the Tour de France, you cannot simply commit to finishing the route, you'll need to do so within the constraints of a time cut on each stage.Īccording to rule 2.6.032 of the UCI rulebook, exactly what that time cut will be is defined as follows: Nic Dlamini rides across the finish line in Tignes alone, more than 90 minutes behind the stage winner (Image credit: Getty Images) The time cut To try and quantify this, we reached out to TrainerRoad – a popular training-based indoor cycling app turned all-around training platform that boasts a dataset of over a million users – to get a sense of the amount of structured training that the 'average' cyclist tackles.
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Sadly, even with that knowledge at our disposal, most of us still couldn't quit the day job, because professional cyclists are also blessed with the right mix of genetic potential that enables them to respond to such a high training stimulus and recover quickly enough to go again the next day.
But wait, before you quit your nine to five job and start cycling all day, know that these riders aren't just riding their bike for fun, they are completing highly tailored structured training programs designed by some of the best physiologists and coaches in the world. The Tour de France is ridden by the world's best road cyclists, all of whom are full-time professionals that ride for around 30 to 40 hours per week. It is hard to begin to imagine the amount of focus this needs and the cognitive load it creates. He clocked this speed whilst descending the Col du Tourmalet on Stage 18, averaging 92km/h for 23 seconds immediately before reaching a duo of hairpin bends. Proof of Matej Mohorič's brazen descending skill (Image credit: Strava)Īs an example of this, according to that same data from Mohorič, the maximum speed he has hit during the Tour de France has been 99km/h (61.5mph), a speed that he has hit on more than one occasion. In addition, while it's easy and obvious to focus on the difficulty of going uphill, there's a level of difficulty involved in coming down the other side too.įor us average Janes and Joes, coming downhill might seem like the easy part – you can often stop pedalling and simply let gravity do the work – but let's not forget these riders are in a race so will be sprinting out of corners and pushing the limits of physics to go as quickly as possible, which in itself takes an enormous amount of mental energy and focus. This year, a double ascent of Mont Ventoux faced riders on stage 11 on a day that saw riders tackle over 4,000 metres of vertical ascent in 199 kilometres of riding.Īccording to data published to Strava by two-time stage winner, Matej Mohorič ( Bahrain Victorious), as of stage 19 he has ascended a total of 43,526m or almost five times the height of Mount Everest. Throughout this distance, riders face a whole host of climbs, from small hills to enormous mountain passes. If you were to get onto a plane in London, you could get to Paris and back again five times and if you were in Australia you'd make it from Melbourne right over to Perth on the coast of Western Australia. Put plainly, if you were to get in a car in New York and head west, that'd get you as far as Salt Lake City. Stage 11 of the 2021 Tour de France included back to back ascents of Mont Ventoux (Image credit: ASO) The terrainĪt its close, the riders in the 2021 Tour de France will have covered 3,414 kilometres (2,121 miles) – not including the riding they do on the two rest days.
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