tour de france rider body fat

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Body Size of Cyclists in the Tour de France

There are many physiological factors which are important for success in cycling , particularly leg power and aerobic endurance. Body size also plays a part, as it is the muscular power and aerobic endurance capacity proportional to body weight (power to weight ratio) that is important.

Successful cyclists are generally exceedingly lean, with skinny arms and big muscular thighs. Elite cyclists have also been found to have proportionally longer femurs, which gives them extra leverage when they push the pedals. Among the road racers, the climbers tend to be lighter and smaller than the sprinters and time trialists. The Tour de France is almost always won or lost on mountain climbs, so successful riders in this event will need to fit the mold somewhere between the great climbers and time trialists.

As cyclists have become more professional over the years and training and diet more fine-tuned to maximize performance, has this been reflected in the body size of the elite cyclist? Here we look at historical anthropometrical data of the participants of the Tour de France, the premier tour event which attracts the greatest of riders from around the world, and look for trends in changes in these parameters and relate them to the performance of the cyclists.

Tour de France Cyclists Stats

There is limited historical anthropometrical data of Tour de France cyclists available, though the height and weight of all participants in recent years have been collated by the procyclingstats website, and the height and weight of many of the winners can be found online going back to at least the 1940s.

We have analyzed the age, height and weight data of all participants in the Tour de France since 1990, and the age, height and weight of the winners going back to the 1940s (up to 2019). Using these height and weight measures, we have calculated the average BMI measurement , which is a general (though somewhat flawed) measure of leanness.

Riders are Getting Older and Thinner

The general findings of our anaylysis is that the participants in the Tour de France on average have been getting older, however riders can still win at any age - case in point the 2019 winner was only 22 years old, well below the average winner's age of 28. Again in 2020 there was a young winner, Tadej Pogačar also 22 years old. The average height of riders has not varied much, though riders are much leaner than they were once, reflected in a lower weight and body mass index.

We discuss each of these parameters below in more detail. See also the original data tables .

Age of Tour de France Cyclists

The average age of all cyclists from each tour has gradually increased since it was first recorded, rising from an average of about 28 years to nearly 30 years now, shown clearly in the graph below. Such an increase in age may be due to advances in medicine, diet and training keeping the riders in top condition, but also due to the increasing monetary rewards providing the incentive for them to keep competing for longer.

We have data about the age of the winners for all tours. This data does not show such a clear increase as does the average data, it more so demonstrates the wide variation in ages. The average age of the tour winner is 28 years, ranging from the youngest Henri Cornet winning in 1904 at only 20 years of age, the oldest Firmin Lambot winning in 1922 aged 36.

In recent years, the winners were generally above the average age, being experienced riders in their early thirties. However, the winner of the 2019 tour was only 22 years old, the youngest winner of the Tour de France since World War II. Also the 2020 and 2021 winner Tadej Pogačar was 21 and 22 years old respectively.

Height of Tour de France Cyclists

The average height of all cyclists from each tour since 1990 is mostly between 1.80m and 1.82m. The anomalous average height of 1.86m in 1993 skews the data, which shows otherwise a fairly consistent average height. This data was taken from that published by procyclingstats, and their database from the 1990s may not have included all the riders, so may not be as representative of the whole group as more recent averages.

The tallest rider on record is Marcel Sieberg at 1.98 meters (6' 6"), who rode in the Tour de France nine times between 2007 and 2018. The winner of the first-ever race in 1903, Maurice Garin, was only 1.62 m (5' 4"), though the shortest may be Samuel Dumoulin at 1.59 meters (5' 3") who rode in the Tour de France 12 times between 2003 and 2016.

A professional cyclist who literally stands out among his peers is Irishman Conor Dunne, who races for Aquablue. He is yet to ride in the Tour de France, but if he does you will notice his 2.04m tall frame which absolutely towers over his fellow riders.

The graph below of the winner's height for each tour since 1947 shows a general trend of increasing height. The winners in the last decade have been particularly taller, above the average of the peloton - except in 2019! Egan Bernal, who was the youngest winner of the Tour de France since World War II, bucked the trend in height as well and was only 175m tall. The tallest Tour de France winner was Bradley Wiggins at 1.90m (6'3"), and there are also a few tall recent winners at 1.86m (6'1") - Chris Froome, Andy Schleck and Miguel Induráin.

Weight of Tour de France Cyclists

Since 1990, the average weight of all cyclists in the Tour de France has decreased, though seeming to plateau in the last 10 years. There has been a drop in the average weight of about 5 kg (11lbs) over that time, with no significant difference in height - which would indicate that the riders are getting slimmer.

The heaviest rider on record is Magnus Backstedt at 95 kg (209.5 lbs). The lightest, Leonardo Piepoli at 57 kg (125.7lbs).

Below is the graph of the winner's body weight for each tour. Since 1945, there is great variation, though there is no trend of significant changes (unlike the decrease in average rider weight shown in the last 30 years).

The 1973 winner, Luis Ocaña, was just 52 kg (115 lbs). At the other end of the scale, Miguel Induráin was recorded at 80kg (176 lb).

BMI of Tour de France Cyclists

As mentioned above, it is the power to weight ratio that is very important for cyclists, which is maximized by having low body fat levels. The body mass index (BMI), which relates weight to height, is a general indication of body fat levels. The graph of the average BMI of all cyclists from each tour since 1990 shows a clear decrease, a reflection of the decreasing average body weight while the height has not changed - therefore the riders are getting thinner.

The BMI of the winners since 1947 also shows a tendency to get lower over time. The 2012 winner Bradley Wiggins had a BMI of only 19.1, as did Luis Ocaña, the winner from 1973 winner. The heights of these two riders were very different (1.90 m v 1.65 m) but obviously they both carried very little bodyfat.

Olympic Cycling

At the 2012 Olympic Games, the averages of the road cyclists were 180.5cm and 70.8 kg, with an average BMI of 21.7.

Selected References

Foley, J. P., Bird, S. R., & White, J. A. (1989). Anthropometric comparison of cyclists from different events. British journal of sports medicine, 23(1), 30–33.

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Britain's Chris Froome, wearing the overall leader's yellow jersey, right, Colombia's Rigoberto Uran, left, and France's Romain Bardet cross the finish line during the eighteenth stage of the 2017 Tour de France.

This Is What Happens to Your Body During the Tour de France

It's the most grueling competition in the world, and it takes a massive toll on riders' bodies

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Despite its long history of controversy and scandal, politics and hard-nosed business, the one thing that has always been true about the annual Tour de France is that it’s one of the toughest physical tests in all of sports. This year, the peleton will travel 3,360 kilometers, or about 2,087 miles, over three weeks in temperatures that push 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As the race winds down to its mostly ceremonial cruise through Paris, we wondered what exactly happens to Tour riders’ bodies during their push to the cork-popping.

Grand tour competitors weigh roughly between 155 and 165 pounds, according to a 2012 review of all riders , with time trial specialists typically weighing a bit more than climbers. Surprisingly, during the three weeks, racers actually retain most, if not all, of that weight. This is to their advantage, as losing weight could mean losing muscle, which means losing power. Modern teams stuff riders with calories—about 6,000 per day, according to the 2012 study. Specifically, they eat about 840 grams of carbohydrates, 200 grams of protein, and 158 grams of fat.

“Looking at the group we have at the moment, nobody has lost or gained any weight in nearly three weeks,” writes Nigel Mitchell, head of nutrition for Slipstream, which owns the Cannondale-Drapac team, via email from France. “Everybody is within a kilo and a half of how they started the race.”

In fact, some riders even gain weight early on in a tour “because of the total stressing nature of that kind of racing,” says Neal Henderson, who coaches Australian rider Rohan Dennis . Henderson explained that stress and anxiety can release stress hormones like cortisol and cause inflammation, which can lead to fluid accumulation and weight gain.

The Immune System

On Tuesday, George Bennett of New Zealand and Philippe Gilbert of Belgium both pulled out of the race due to illness, which is surprisingly common among riders. By the time they get to Paris, “I would say 30 or 40 percent of racers are sick with some type of upper respiratory tract infection,” says Allen Lim, an exercise physiologist, former consultant to Team Garmin, and founder of Skratch Labs .

While it’s well known that moderate levels of exercise can strengthen the immune system , intense exercise over periods of several weeks drives down the blood’s germ-killing lymphocyte population, depressing the immune system . The resulting state has been called “the open window” to infection.

Now throw in up to six hours of deep breathing while riding on crowded French streets (where racers inhale bits of diesel exhaust, dust, and cow dung particles), post-race handshakes, and living in close quarters with the team, and it’s almost a recipe for illness. “During the Tour,” Henderson recalled, “we used to say guys were only as strong as their guts.”

Since cycling is a non-weight-bearing exercise, racing a grand tour is a little like living in space: Riders are working incredibly hard, but their bones are under very minimal stress. In the mid-1990s, a German team of researchers tested the bone densities of weight lifters, boxers, and Tour de France riders and compared them with age-matched controls. They found that the weight lifters and boxers had overall higher bone densities than the controls, while the cyclists’ spines were 10 percent less dense, their hips 14 percent less dense, and their Ward’s triangle, at the neck of the femur, was 17 percent less dense.

During training, riders lift weights and run to build bone mineral density. But during the Tour, they are only riding, while sweating out enormous amounts of fluids that contain bone-building minerals like potassium and calcium.

Saddle Sores

The idea that a rider could be done in by a sore butt might seem ridiculous—but it happens. When Henderson was coaching Taylor Phinney during the 2013 Giro, Phinney had such a bad sore that he had to drop out . He even contemplated surgery. While most riders have built up a tough bottom, there’s just no way to replicate the Tour. Riders put greater loads, and for much longer durations, onto the saddle and their rear ends than they do at any other point. Any slight variation—say, adjusting posture to relieve a sore back—can alter the riding position just enough to wear a sore.

Hair follicles can also become infected, which is called folliculitis. A little pimple on a bum wouldn't bother most of us, Lim said, but for a rider, “it could be devastating.”

All races are stressful, especially for riders who make a living off the sport. But the Tour is often considered the most mentally and emotionally exhausting event in cycling because of the increased media coverage and the crowds, as well as the intensity of the race. “You have 160 people riding at 30 miles an hour, and with one touch of the brakes, bad things can happen,” says Henderson. “People can go down. Bones can break. And that level of anxiety is sustained through the entire race.”

After stage six this year, British rider Simon Yates said , “A day like this for me is not so difficult on the body. It’s more the head, the stress of fighting for position, to avoid crashes or splits in the bunch…We’re going so fast, and everything happens much quicker than you can imagine. It’s very stressful for everybody.”

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Fueling the tour de france: inside a grand tour rider’s gut-buster diet, we speak to worldtour chefs and nutritionists to reveal the mega-carb menus that power the race for the yellow jersey..

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What does it take to fuel three weeks of racing the Tour de France ?

Mountains of rice, fistfuls of energy gels, and plates pitifully short of vegetables, that’s what it takes.

The 21 stages of this year’s Tour de France could see riders like Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard pedal through up 80,000 calories-worth of work.

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Add to that the metabolic demands of breathing, digesting, and the rest of the body’s basic functions, and riders are constantly chasing for a break-even level of energy.

The only way to keep on keel?

Mammoth menus and a fast-flowing stream of carbs.

“These guys look skinny, and they’re tiny when you see them for real. But they sure know how to eat. They have huge appetites,” EF Education-EasyPost nutritionist Will Girling told Velo .

‘Riders eat a lot of rice … like, kilos of it’

When they’re not pedaling or sleeping, riders are probably eating – and it’s most likely to be carbohydrates on their plate.

Carbs are the endurance kings of macronutrients, with basic staples like rice, pasta, potatoes, and bread the jewels in their crown.

They’re the energy-giving fuels that power bunch sprints and drive mountaintop victories.

And in the modern pro peloton, rice is increasingly becoming the carbohydrate of choice.

“Riders eat a lot of rice … like, kilos of it. It’s sort of boring, but it works,” Trek-Segafredo chef Bram Lippens told Velo . “We add sauces like tomato or pesto to keep it interesting, but it is essentially still just rice!”

A rider is never far from their next meal when at a grand tour.

Around three hours before a stage, riders will scarf down a breakfast banquet of rice, eggs, oatmeal, pancakes, and toast.

When riding through stages that can burn as many as 5,000 calories, legs are kept turning via carb-laden drinks, energy gels, bars, and team-made rice cakes. The demands of modern racing require riders to eat as often as three to four times per hour in what is an open pipeline of fuel.

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And once a stage is done, a carb-based snack and recovery shake act as a mere stopover before another gut-busting meal in the evening.

The nighttime feast makes for a starchy double-serve that both boosts recovery from the day’s stage and refuels for the rigors to come.

“The night before a big race or stage we keep it simple with maybe chicken and rice, or salmon and rice,” Girling said. “It’s nearly always white rice we serve, because it’s so easy to consume and it’s low fiber.”

The rice-rich diet of the modern Tour de France rider defies the belief that the peloton pedals on pasta.

“Rice is more energy dense than pasta. So for the same volume, you got more carbohydrate from rice. Plus it’s gluten-free. So theoretically it’s more digestible than pasta,” Jayco-AlUla nutritionist Laura Martinelli told Velo .

“Pasta is OK if it’s the correct type and cooked properly, and we don’t stop riders from eating it. But if I had to recommend one or the other I’d 100 percent always say rice.”

High energy, locally sourced

The entourage of any pro team has expanded exponentially in recent decades.

In-house nutritionists and chefs like Martinelli, Girling, and Lippens are now as common as the soigneurs, mechanics, and masseuses that have long had their seats in a grand tour team bus.

Jayco-AlUla staffer Martinelli oversees the diets of Tour-bound riders like Simon Yates, Dylan Groenegen, and U.S. all-rounder Lawson Craddock.

One of Martinelli’s daily on-race functions is to plan out what each individual needs to eat, based on the demands of the stage to come. Bodyweights and expected expenditures make part of a series of calculations that ensure riders match the huge energy output of the Tour de France with a similarly staggering caloric input.

For a relatively straightforward sprint stage like this year’s seventh stage into Bordeaux, Martinelli’s riders would be tasked with taking down around five grams of carbohydrate per kilo of bodyweight.

For the kingmaker mountain stages through the Pyrénées and the Alps, that multiplies up to almost beyond-belief bucketloads of carb. On the Tour’s toughest days, a rider like Craddock might force down up to 18 grams of carbs per kilo of his mass.

At around 69 kilograms (152 pounds), the Texan would be facing more than 1,200 grams of carbohydrate over the course of a day’s meals, shakes, and on-bike nutrition.

For context, that’s the equivalent of around four kilos of prepared white rice or a similar amount of white pasta.

“Toward the final week when there are more big days in the mountains and riders are getting more tired, eating so much can become more difficult,” Martinelli said.

“We try to make things easier by preparing energy-dense food and minimizing the total volume. So we choose the most carb-rich sources we have and use carb drinks and smoothies. When a rider is fatigued, they typically find it easier to drink than to eat.”

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Professional chefs like Trek-Segafredo’s Lippens work out of kitchen trucks or hotel facilities to prepare menus that would be worthy of a five-star restaurant.

Meat, fish, and vegetables freshly sourced from local shops and markets come together with a deep traveling storecupboard to create meals that are about a lot more than just fuel.

“When they’re eating so much, we need to maximize the flavors we serve and keep it quite varied. But it needs to be simple at the same time,” Lippens said. “Some things like the carbs, we have to serve. But we try to change the sauces, chicken, salmon, whatever as much as we can or riders will lose interest.”

The question of ‘watts per kilo’

A healthy racer who’s following an appropriate meal plan should have both the fuel to recover from the past stages, and the energy to power the days to come, all the while keeping a steady bodyweight.

Riders check their weight on a daily basis and report back to staffers to ensure they’re on a level.

Although the watts-per-kilo equation is crucial for climbing speed, lost mass comes at the risk of muscle wastage or hormonal malfunction.

As with sports like running and gymnastics, body mass is a big metric in the pro peloton. And in an environment where disordered behaviors could easily become commonplace, teams use weigh-ins to ensure riders aren’t toying with long-term health problems.

“We always would prefer they eat a little more than a little less, within reason,” Martinelli said.

Intriguingly, some riders finish a three-week race like the Tour de France heavier than they started.

Younger riders or grand tour rookies might mistakenly over-fuel for fear of getting dropped. Others report water retention resulting from long days of travel or the impact of glycogen storage.

“A bigger rider can gain two to three kilos in water weight, very quickly,” Martinelli said. “We can manage that by changing the distribution of when in the day they eat carbohydrates. That should manage their insulin response and prevent more fluids. But it’s difficult to get perfect.”

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Carbohydrate isn’t the only thing carefully monitored in the Tour de France diet.

Protein intake is supercharged to help maintain muscle mass and to speed post-race recovery; healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, and nuts are a must-have due to their contribution to hormonal health and vitamin absorption.

There is one food group that does take a hit however.

Fiber is drastically reduced on hard mountain stages or days expected to be particularly intense, such as this Tour’s climb-filled grand départ .

The so-called “low G.I. protocol” ensures riders take the next day’s start line with empty stomachs and low water weight.

“Before all hard and heavy races, they skip salads and almost all the raw fruits and vegetables,” chef Lippens said. “I may put out a few veggies, like just one or two pieces of broccoli. They basically eat like teenagers.”

The booze, burgers, and brownies of balance

However, the daily diet of a Tour de France racer isn’t all carefully calculated carbohydrate quantities and the leanest cuts of meat.

Staffers appreciate the need for balance.

Desserts like brownies, cheesecakes, and fruit tarts are served daily, and the night before a rest day will see teams allow riders to let off some nutritional steam. Barbecues, or homemade pizzas, burgers, or lasagna are cited as the most-frequent pre-rest-day treats served to the multinational peloton.

And, of course, victories are celebrated with something a little more appetizing than another carb drink or high-vitamin shake.

“We’re lucky at Jayco-AlUla,” Martinelli said. “Our owner [Jerry Ryan] owns amazing wineries in Australia, so we always have good wine with us.

“We mainly have red, but sometimes white. The guys only get one glass, but it’s better to have one very good glass rather than a whole bottle of a bad one. The occasional glass – that’s recovery for the mind!”

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After out-climbing his rivals on stage 10 of the Tour de France to La Pierre-Saint-Martin in a spectacular fashion, Froome came under intense suspicion by critics who found his performance unnatural.

In an attempt to silence the doubters, Froome underwent strenuous physiological tests several weeks after the Tour, and recently released the data to the public. But the information published in Esquire magazine only served to raise more questions about the missing pieces.

FDJ performance director Frederic Grappe told Cyclingnews that Froome shows the exceptional physiology of a Grand Tour winner, and that his VO2max was comparable between 2007 and this year.

Cyclingnews spoke to Dr Andrew Coggan, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine and co-author of Training and Racing with a Power Meter, who took a deeper look at the data and what it shows about Froome's physiology.

A strong heart

The body needs to be able to get oxygen to the exercising muscles to keep them putting out power. That oxygen is carried by hemoglobin molecules on red blood cells, which are pumped by the heart through the arteries to the legs. Once there, the oxygen is used to create energy for the muscles to use to pedal the bike. So there are several factors at play: the amount of hemoglobin, heart rate and the amount of blood that moves with each beat of the heart, or stroke volume.

Froome has a rather low heart rate. In his test at GSK, his heart rate at the top effort level tested - 425 watts - was only 138bpm. Froome's maximum heart rate has been reported to be 174, although the researchers did not note the maximum in their report. Froome's hemoglobin was reported to be 15.3g/100mL in samples taken on July 13 during the 2015 Tour de France and on August 20, the day after his physiological test at GSK.

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With that in mind, Coggan noted that Froome's heart rate was on the low side "both during submaximal exercise and (reportedly) at maximal exercise", and that means he must have a high stroke volume.

"Even with a hemoglobin of 15.3 g/100 mL at rest ... this implies that he has a very high stroke volume. Specifically, assuming a maximal heart of 174 beats/min ... I estimate his maximal cardiac to be 32.8-36.9 L/min, making his stroke volume at maximal exercise to be 188-212 mL/beat. This is quite high, but not beyond the upper limit of what might be considered normal," Coggan wrote.

Coggan, an accomplished masters cyclist, said his stroke volume at maximum effort was 175mL/beat at Froome's age.

"I don't find the difference in heart rate at particular power between these test results and his actual race data surprising, due to the lag in heart rate during an incremental exercise test, cardiac drift in competition, day-to-day variability, etc."

Power to weight

Froome's scrawny arms and sinewy legs during the Tour de France are a good indication that he has very little body fat, and there is no question that losing a lot of body fat and maintaining or even gaining a little lean mass would be good for performance.

When going uphill, it is power to weight ratio that is important, and since Froome's power outputs have stayed relatively consistent, decreasing his weight has been the key to improving performance.

Plenty of riders have tried to shed weight only to find they can't maintain the same kind of power, but Coggan noted, "while it can be difficult to lose only fat and not lean tissue when reducing body mass, it is certainly not impossible, especially when the weight loss is gradual and dieting is combined with strenuous exercise."

Readers may be surprised at the body fat percentage given for Froome in August - 9.8%. But Coggan explained that the researchers used "the gold standard" for measuring body composition, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA)

"The accuracy depends in part upon the precise algorithms used to convert the raw data to body composition, which can differ from one brand to another, and even from one version of the software to another when using the same brand of scanner," Coggan said. "Still, that 9.8% means he was almost certainly somewhere between 8 and 12% at the time of the tests."

His 2007 value was given at 16.7%, but comparing it with this year's data is apples and oranges, Coggan said, because we do not know how they measured his body fat. Regardless, "His lean body mass didn't appear to change much, which is somewhat reassuring."

Missing information

A rider's performance is the combination of VO2Max and efficiency, but the GSK study did not include the measure of oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange or respiratory exchange ratio (RER), which gives an indication of efficiency.

Grappe had the same criticism of the study, noting that this "impacts upon the level of effort on climbs; you don’t produce the same number of watts with 23% efficiency as with 21%."

Coggan agreed. The study gave Froome's VO2Max, it gave its power. But when Froome is cruising along below his maximum effort, Coggan said he'd need to know the RER to understand how much of Froome's maximal aerobic capacity he was using at a given power output.

"That would have made it possible to estimate his what percentage of VO2max he sustained on certain climbs when racing. As it stands, we don't know he achieved the reported power outputs (which comport with climbing speeds) due to a high fractional utilization of VO2max, a high efficiency, or some combination thereof."

In other words, is Froome really efficient, very good at riding at his maximum, or both?

Lactate threshold

Coggan noted that the GSK lab stopped its measurements short of pushing Froome to total fatigue, which resulted in underestimating his lactate threshold. The highest wattage in the test, 425W, was a perceived effort level of 17 out of 20 for Froome, and his heart rate had only reached 138bpm.

Had Froome kept going at higher watts, his heart rate would have caught up with his effort level and his body would have begun producing more lactate than it could get rid of, leading to fatigue. In Coggan's opinion, that would have connected the dots and given a more accurate result in their calculation using the Dmax method.

"The GSK lab terminated the test at 425W, rather than continuing it all the way to fatigue. The highest lactate value of 4.37 mmol/L is therefore lower than if they had done so. I don't consider it a major issue. It is possible that they only applied the Dmax method retrospectively, i.e., to try to show by using multiple methods that they aren't "spinning" the data," he said.

Incomplete information from 2007

The testing done on Froome in Lausanne in July 2007 only showed his peak power and VO2Max, so Coggan says comparing the data to 2015 is difficult.

"It is unfortunate that the UCI tests in 2007 apparently didn't entail any sort of submaximal assessment, just measurement of VO2max and peak power. That makes it impossible to say how much, if any, of the improvement in Froome's performance over the intervening period is due to an increase in threshold relative to VO2max and/or an improvement in efficiency," in addition to his weight loss.

"Assuming the data presented is correct, I would say that his performance (at least uphill) definitely improved due to simply losing weight, and might have also improved due to an improvement in lactate threshold and possibly also efficiency. The former is more likely than the latter but since his threshold apparently wasn't measured in 2007 and his efficiency has never been measured, it's also possible that they didn't improve at all."

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Laura Weislo has been with Cyclingnews since 2006 after making a switch from a career in science. As Managing Editor, she coordinates coverage for North American events and global news. As former elite-level road racer who dabbled in cyclo-cross and track, Laura has a passion for all three disciplines. When not working she likes to go camping and explore lesser traveled roads, paths and gravel tracks. Laura specialises in covering doping, anti-doping, UCI governance and performing data analysis.

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Metabolomics: The Science Behind a Tour de France Winner

Cu research team’s platform measures how the body adapts during competition; has implications for treatments of cancer, diabetes, alzheimer’s.

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For the second year in a row, Iñigo San Millán , an assistant professor in the CU School of Medicine, coached Slovenian rider Tadej Pogacar to the top of the podium in the Tour de France. Pogacar dominated the 2021 Tour after winning the world's ultimate stage race as a rookie in 2020. Millan leads a CU Anschutz research team, experts in athletes' baseline metabolic profiles and how these physiologies change during competition, that is helping guide some of the world's elite athletes to their best performances. Their understanding of the metabolic underpinnings of top athletes has implications for improved treatments of disease, including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's.

The following story was posted after Pogacar's 2020 Tour de France victory.

To say cycling enthusiasts were stunned by the Tour de France performance of rookie rider Tadej Pogačar might be an understatement. Jaws dropped as the 21-year-old Slovenian, the second-youngest rider to ever win the Tour, ascended the final 5.9-kilometer final climb of the time trial and secured the yellow jersey.

Iñigo San Millán performs an incremental lactate test on Tadej Pogačar, who won this year's Tour de France as a rookie rider. San Millán, an assistant professor at the CU School of Medicine, is Pogačar's coach.

Pogačar ’s victory, however, did not surprise Iñigo San Millán , PhD , an assistant professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (SOM). His team at the SOM had already employed science – specifically the measurement of hundreds of thousands of metabolites in Pogačar ’s blood ( see recent paper ) – and knew the young cyclist was on another level.

Their understanding of the metabolic underpinnings in top athletes has implications for improved treatments of disease, including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

Podium as the goal

“Last year he was third in the Tour of Spain and won three stages there,” said San Millán, who is director of performance for Team United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Pogačar ’s coach. “He was the youngest guy ever doing that, and this year he was stronger. For sure, he was a contender for the Tour (de France), and that’s what we had in mind.”

Going into the stage-20 time trial, the penultimate day of the three-week Tour de France, Pogačar trailed his compatriot, Primoz Roglic, by 57 seconds. Pogačar ’s blazing time trial vaulted him past Roglic by 59 seconds.

In interviews following the time trial, which included grades of 8.5%, Pogačar told the media, “I guess my genetics are really good. I have to thank my parents, probably.”

San Millán may agree, but he also knows that being able to investigate Pogačar’s whole blood responses to elite-level exercise pays big dividends. San Millán, a former competitive cyclist, knew from Pogačar’s physiological measurements that the cyclist would benefit from staying off his bike for a week in May as he was already too fit and the Tour was still three months away.

Such insight is important because the Tour de France is considered the world’s most physically demanding race. “We’re talking about 5,000 to 9,000 calories of expenditure a day for 21 days,” San Millán said. “That’s like playing three soccer games each day for 21 days in a row. That’s why you need to have a very good recovery capacity.”

Metabolomics as difference-makers

A new study performed by San Millán’s team , including Angelo D’Alessandro , PhD, an associate professor and director of the Metabolomics Core of the SOM, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics , and CU Cancer Center member, and Travis Nemkov, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry and molecular genetics and senior author on the study, examined the metabolomics of endurance capacity in 20 elite professional cyclists.

Iñigo San Millán

The study offers insight into the exceptional ability of team UAE riders – the team of Pogačar, now age 22 – to efficiently burn fuel and recover. The team collected blood samples from the cyclists and measured their metabolic parameters relevant to mitochondrial function, as well as use of carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

While in the current study they established the athletes’ baseline metabolic profiles and measured how these physiologies changed during a short, intense cycling test, CU researchers are also wrapping up a similar study on these cyclists’ physiology during the course of a multi-stage world tour. “From this information, we try to define what the upper limits of human physiology are – what’s the gold standard?” Nemkov said.

When the team compared the metabolic measurements of the various cyclists, the signature of a champion in the making stood out. “As the stages (in a race) become harder and harder, racers accumulate a specific subset of metabolites,” D’Alessandro said. “Elite riders have a metabolic signature, a unique phenotype, that makes their recovery much faster.”

Through the methodologies created by D’Alessandro and Nemkov, the researchers also could assess athletes’ capacity to burn fat, which allows them to preserve an all-important fuel – glycogen.

Angelo D’Alessandro

“The goal of the study was trying to understand, with more resolution, what is specifically different about the metabolism as your lactate-clearance capacity improves,” Nemkov said.

Cycling toward better disease treatments

If researchers can better define the metabolic traits of fatigue, for example, they can more accurately measure athletes’ pre-race physiology as well as predict their susceptibility to injury.

The research is helping to inform personalized approaches to “exercise-as-medicine” interventions for other diseases and conditions, including cardiovascular and neurological disorders, and inflammation.

“Through the medication of exercise, we want to try to elicit changes at the metabolic and cellular level,” San Millán said. “Right now, there are very limited ways to quantify that. It’s why metabolomics has a tremendous future – it has a huge space. We should be able to see the metabolic signatures and what’s happening at the cellular level, and how a person with diabetes or cancer or a metabolic syndrome (e.g. obesity) is responding to exercise. And we can see how changes and personalized intensities (of exercise) and durations could help them.”

The use of metabolite profiles in the blood to monitor fitness and prescribe exercise regimens that can counteract specific diseases could be the “sabermetrics of the 21 st century,” Nemkov said. Sabermetics is the analysis of baseball statistics to drive improved team performance.

Mysteries of the mind

An area requiring more study is the changes to metabolites that occur when a football player suffers a concussion. Blood markers are released in waves post-concussion, and the researchers can quantify the changes through metabolomics to improve monitoring of injury severity and recovery – either in the military setting or in popular contact sports such as football.

Travis Nemkov

Also mostly uncharted territory is understanding how an athlete’s mental makeup – grit and calm when their body is being pushed to the limits – plays out on a cellular level.

“One thing we’ve found with riders who could ride longer with higher output and have better lactate clearance capacity is they appeared to potentially have some metabolic differences in neurotransmitter synthesis and recycling,” Nemkov said. “That goes back to the theme of what can we learn from molecules in the blood and how they associate not only with performance and endurance, fatigue and injury, but also potentially to your mental state.”

CU and Colorado: hotspot for human performance

San Millán is well-connected worldwide among elite athletes, and his high-altitude training camps in Colorado regularly draw top-tier cyclists. N ow, on the heels of Pogačar’s dramatic Tour victory, the spotlight is shining more brightly upon his team’s groundbreaking research.

The metabolomic platforms they’ve created are high throughput – able to run a large volume of blood samples in a short amount of time – ensuring that their insights will be in strong demand for the foreseeable future.

San Millán said metabolism has “been the poor brother” in medical research but is now becoming the “crown prince.”

“Everybody is stumbling upon metabolism (as an emphasis in disease study),” he said. “We’ve been criticized a few times for using elite athletes as a control group, but humans have evolved over millions of years to become athletes. It’s only in the last two or three centuries that we’ve become more sedentary, and that has been the intervention.”

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What’s Really Happening to the Tour de France Riders’ Legs?

Because it looks crazy.

Expert Debabrata Mukherjee, M.D., says that pro cyclists have twice as much blood flow to their legs, compared to recreational cyclists.
If you train more, you’ll likely notice more visible veins, but it’s unlikely your legs will look like these pros. Leg aesthetics, including carved calves, can also largely depend on genetics.

Back in 2017, Bora-Hansgrohe rider Pawel Poljanski almost broke the Internet after Instagramming a photo of his “tired legs” following stage 16 of the Tour de France . This left everyone wondering what is really going on with the Tour de France riders’ legs.

The sprawl of veins punching through his paper-thin skin looked like a host of spiders throwing a web-weaving rave. Heck, even my mom reposted it asking, “Does this hurt?!” Other slack-jawed observers wondered if such a vascular look was worth aspiring to or whether Poljanski was simply a freak of nature.

And Poljanski isn’t the only one. Team INEOS shared a dramatic photo of four-time Tour de France general classification winner Chris Froome’s legs back in 2014, and Antoine Duchesne also shared a photo of his legs after training for the Tour before missing the selection in 2017.

Almost every year, a similar photo from a pro cyclist on the Tour pops up. And while these photos are jarring, vascular legs don’t actually hurt (though the efforts to get there usually do). As for the rest of the questions, we tapped vascular expert Debabrata Mukherjee, M.D., chair of the department of internal medicine and chief of cardiovascular medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, to find out what’s really going on here.

“These prominent veins are due to a combination of low body fat and significant increase in blood that flows through the legs of high-level cyclists,” Mukherjee says. Tour de France riders have minimal body fat, so there’s no soft layer under the skin to mask the veins, which are essentially sitting closer to the surface.

“High-level cyclists also have double the blood flow to their legs compared to recreational exercisers,” he explains. So while you may have about 20 liters a minute coursing through your pistons as you ride, a pro like Poljanski pumps around 40 liters a minute through his pedal-pushing muscles . “That contributes to bulging prominent veins,” Mukherjee says.

And if those metabolic changes don’t pump you up enough, blood pressure increases during exercise can force plasma fluid out of your thin vessel walls and into compartments surrounding your muscles. This process, known as filtration, causes swelling and hardening of the muscle, which nudges all those bulging veins even further to the skin’s surface.

Should you aim to create your own vascular network to share on your social network? Not necessarily. Though they may get a lot of attention, prominent veins in and of themselves are not particularly beneficial, and like diamond carved calves and second knee cap quads , not every rider is genetically wired to achieve the same aesthetic. That said, Mukherjee says a few more veins rising to the surface is definitely an indicator of improving fitness or decreased body fat.

“Since it reflects lower subcutaneous fat and higher blood volume, the harder a cyclist trains, the more prominent the veins will become,” he says. “It is something that may tell an athlete that he/she is getting to a higher level of performance.”

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How do cyclists physically survive the Tour de France? We asked a physiologist and former pro rider

The Tour de France is the most maniacal major sporting event on Earth. We spoke to a physiologist and former pro cyclist to explain the hell that Tour riders put their bodies through.

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The Tour de France is probably the most physically demanding major sporting event in the world. Over 23 days and 21 stages, riders burn an average of roughly 5,000 calories per day , which is almost twice as much as a pro marathon runner might burn in a single race, and all the while they must maintain a sharp mind, marking their opponents and working with teammates to go fast as efficiently possible before their bodies cave in.

Cycling a grand tour is as much a fight against one’s own body as it is against opponents. Quite literally, cyclist’s bodies begin fighting back after the first week. Riders begin to lose muscle, their immunes systems tank, and they practically have to force feed themselves in order to maintain the baseline system functionality to climb, let’s say, Alpe d’Huez.

Yes, cycling has a doping problem, but it’s hard to blame athletes who are putting their bodies through very real trauma for looking for some kind of shortcut. Humans shouldn’t do their bodies what Tour riders do to theirs. And indeed, it’s hard to believe some riders aren’t aliens, with their bird-like frames and gaunt features.

There are few people on Earth who can possibly comprehend what riders will be going through this July. I found one: Dr. Stacy Sims, an environmental exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Dr. Sims was a pro women’s cyclist who later went on to work with men’s pro cycling teams like Saxo and Dimension Data during the Tour de France, advising team chef Hannah Grant on nutrition.

I spoke with Sims about the hell of Grand Tour riding, how to avoid the dreaded “bonk”, and what’s really happening in those disgusting photos of cyclists’ legs we see every year.

How safe is it to ride a grand tour, really? What are the biggest dangers?

Dr. Stacy Sims: Three weeks of that kind of intensity — first you have to take into account that they have some kind of genetic predisposition that allows them to be selected for that sport. They have some kind of DNA abnormality or anomaly that kind of self selects them to the sport. But that said, it is putting yourself through the ringer for three weeks.

It’s kind of like the first week their body can handle the stress. It’s going to be hard, they’re going to have an elevated metabolism and poor sleep because you have the traveling, you have the racing, you have the poor food that goes with it — because unless you travel with a chef you’re never guaranteed that you’re going to get the food that you really need and want.

But then after the first week you really see the body start to bottom out. And you see people start to drop out, getting sick, more crashes because there’s less reaction time available, because their bodies enter so much stress. And then as you get to the third week you’ll see a little bit of a rebound, because the body is trying to compensate for this continued stress.

You can kind of put into the idea of fight or flight and the famine situation, where the body is all of a sudden like, “OK, I have this increased stress, and I have to deal with it because it’s not going away.” And you’ll see some of the less seasoned riders who don’t have as much training history will drop out earlier, or fall and be off the back a lot earlier, and those who have more training history and can handle the stress can probably stay in the peloton or be off the front.

From a physiology point of view, you’re going to be in this continuous state of catabolism: losing muscle mass, losing fat mass. They’ll start off a little bit heavier than they should for the Tour, because they need that weight to lose.

And then when you start adding in all the environmental considerations, if they’re not acclimatized to the heat, that increases dehydration status and inflammation, poor abilities to recover. And then when they get into the cold and the altitude, they have that compensation they have to worry about, less oxygen available, and the fitter you are, the more you suffer at altitude.

The cold as well, getting hypothermic and not being able to control the gears because your hands are frozen. These have some consideration into crashing and attenuating your immune response to exercise.

Illness seems to be something that take a lot of rider out, especially around that first rest day. Why is that? What causes that bottoming out?

SS: So for each successive stress day, you have an increase in cortisol, you have increased inflammation, you have your protein breakdown, which is your catabolism. You’re depleting your fuel stores. And your immune system is very reliant on having glutamine available, which is a key amino acid which is also in the gut. Also having some protein available for white blood cell regeneration and stimulation.

You also have the need for a reduction in inflammation in order for the immune system to do what it needs to do, because the response to inflammation, again, is an immune response. So if your body is dealing with body and muscle inflammation, it can’t necessarily deal with virus or bacterial infections that come into play.

So as you are continuing to put your body under this stress, after about seven days you’re at this tipping point, so that’s usually when the rest day occurs.

But then in my experience working with a lot of the pro riders, all they want is sugar — sugar, sugar, sugar — because they’re in such a depleted state, they’re craving carbohydrates. So instead of trying to help repair, they’re just looking for that quick hit of carbohydrate and quick hit of sugar, and the more they have of the sugar aspect, the worse it is on their gut microbiome, which is also tied to the immune system.

Because if they’re eating high sugar diet, then it’s going to reduce the growth of the bacteria that protects from fatigue and inflammation, and helps your immune system, and the more it’s going to grow the bacteria that relies on simple sugar and the metabolites of stress. So it’s a multi-tier effect of why they bottom out.

So diet is critical then. How do you tailor nutrition for cyclists, and how varied does that get from rider to rider?

SS: When I was working with Team Dimension Data, and my partner Hannah Grant, we had the ability to actually get in and change what they were eating. Working with her, she’s a professional chef, and I would take the science and we would actually time the food and make it so that their body was able to get what it needed when it needed it.

When you start taking a look at overall recovery, it’s more than that 30 minutes post stage. It’s how are you going to facilitate that recovery five hours later, after the transfer, or on the transfer. So we looked at having a higher protein with some complex carbohydrate, because we wanted to really get in and get that catabolic state down, and we wanted to reduce sugar cravings, and you can do that with protein and complex carbs.

Also bringing cortisol down, helping bring your metabolism down, your core temperature down to baseline. Because the faster you get down to baseline, the better it is for your immune system and your gut. The other aspect that people don’t really think about, is when you are exercising at high intensity, your intestines are under this severe heat and hypoxic stress, and when it’s under this heat and low oxygen stress, then you’re also going to have a perturbation in the gut microbiome.

So we’re also looking at having them eat really good prebiotic based foods, leafy greens and stuff. And then cultured foods as well — so sauerkraut, some of the guys liked kombucha, having them eat a lot of non-fat greek yogurt, just for the higher probiotic aspects.

We didn’t have any upper respiratory tract infections, we had better joint elasticity according to the massage therapist, less muscle soreness, less DOMS [delayed onset muscle soreness] . So overall the guys felt the difference, and so they were able to adhere, because they could see the difference and feel the difference.

So did everyone eat the same thing, or did you tailor the nutrition plan to specific riders?

SS: The older riders are very set in what they do over the years, but the younger riders buy into it. And we were pretty specific to position as well, because if you’re sitting in the peloton and you’re not doing much, your output isn’t as high, and your stress response isn’t as high. But if you’re at the front, then it’s a completely different ride. So we would look and see what was happening, when the mountain stages were coming up, if it was going to be hot or not, and really looking at tailoring position and terrain to what they needed.

So does diet change with type of rider, too? Say it’s a sprint stage and you you’re going to have a rider who will need to be effective in the last 200 meters of a stage.

SS: Overall diet not so much of a change, but on the bike, what are they using on the bike? Making sure they are really well fueled, and doing — say there’s a critical sprint, or it’s the bottom of the hill where they have to get their hill climber up to the front, so they have to go full gas at the bottom. So then you’re looking at what’s in their bottle, maybe some beet juice and beta alanine for vasodilation. So we look at some of the legal ergogenic aids to put in their bottle to give them that extra bit when they need it right when they need it.

Every year during the Tour de France you see the “bonk.” Can you explain what the bonk is?

SS: That comes from poor recovery or inadequate glucose regeneration and glycogen. We technically say it’s “low energy availability,” but what happens is that they’re not taking in enough to put everything back in their muscle and their liver, partially because they’re in this breakdown state — their body is using more in the immediate rather than storing it. So as you get further and further into the race, and you have less and less storage, they have toe eat more and more, and physically they just don’t have the appetite. Like after your gut has been under this extreme stress for seven to eight days, your appetite is completely gone. So it’s more force feeding both on the bike and off the bike.

So as you get more and more into this depleted state, it becomes this fine balance of getting riders to take in enough to be able to perform, but also knowing that they have no appetite, and they’re dehydrated and you have this repercussion aspect. They’re going to hit the wall, they’re going to bonk, and then it’s all over. [Laughs] I didn’t do my job properly.

What are the steps you take as a rider to recover? And I mean after the Tour is over, you’ve ridden all 21 stages successfully. What is your body like at the very end?

SS: This is a little bit more individualistic. It depends on training history, what the work output was during the Tour — were you a domestique , or were you the GC contender, the sprinter.

But absolutely stopping off the bike is not a great idea, because your body has been so used to training for so many months and months, and racing.

So recovery is just real easy facilitation of blood movement and muscle contractile strength. And if you want to, you can do some swimming or some walking, but not just completely stopping, otherwise it’s a too much of a shock to the body, where your body’s like, “Woah what’s going on, all of a sudden I have no input of muscle contraction, I have no increased blood flow.”

What would be the consequence of stopping riding altogether after a grand tour?

SS: This is when all the injuries and niggles come out. It’s as if someone had an injury and becomes bedridden. Your joints and tendons and everything will start to get a little bit tight from the fact that you’re not having increased blood flow and that range of motion every day. So some of the scar tissue will start to really adhere, trying to repair some of the micro-trauma and inflammation factors that have happened.

You lose a lot of your plasma volume, the watery part of your blood, because you need some stimulus to keep that, so your overall blood volume shrinks. You have a decrease in your red cell count as well, you have a decrease in your immune factors as well. So when your body is used to having some increased blood flow, and increased heart rate, and increased blood circulation through everything, and then it stops, the repercussions are as if you are bedridden.

You mentioned that third week bounce back. What is exactly is happening then? Is it that your body chemistry has changed?

SS: It’s not so much the chemistry, it’s just that you get to a point and it becomes about survival. So you are getting a little bit fitter as you’re riding, so that extra fitness comes into play as well, and you’ll have less of a stress response because your body has kind of learned that stress response.

And what I mean by that is, let’s take it out of the cycling context. Say you have a final exam, or you have a big presentation, and you’re nervous and you get that big adrenaline rush. And your heart rate goes up, and your pupils dilate, and you’re ready to go. And you have that same response every time you have something major to do. But over time, if you were to have that every day, you don’t have as big a response because your body has learned what that is.

It’s the same thing with riding for those two weeks. Your body is starting to attune to that stress and understand what that is, so when you get into that third week, it’s not as strong of a response to that stress.

That is what the bounce back is, because you don’t have as much cortisone being released, not as much adrenaline being released. The body is more efficient in carbohydrate utilization, more efficient in fat utilization. The inflammation response isn’t as great, so everything has kind been attenuated and habituated to that response.

If there were to be a four-week grand tour, who knows what would happen. You would probably see some guys really take off in that last week because of the residual fitness and the ability of the body to learn what that stress is. It’d be pretty interesting actually.

If you ride all three grand tours, and the 10-day races, and Classics — you put your body through a cycle of stressing and relaxing — what is the cumulative damage of that, say, 20 years after you’re done? Or 40 years?

SS: That’s a research question that has been around, and people are doing a little bit of longitudinal research, but the confounding factor there is the fact that the sport isn’t clean. If the sport was clean, then we’d have some really good data to say yes or no. Like if you look at runners who have been racing competitively and don’t have the same drug induced aspect that cycling does, then there’s some really good research to show that the hardcore racing is protective — so your cartilage is protected, your heart is protected — so you’re aging at a slower rate. But with the earlier aspects of all the drugs that were involved in cycling, the data for the grand tour and the longitudinal effects on the health, it’s not there, until we can clean up the sport really well.

For some of the younger riders, some of the results are coming out really well except for bone density. So the long term effect on bone density is horrendous for riders because it’s such a strong stress and there isn’t any kind of gravitational pull or bone stress from all the riding, that even in the short span of a season, they can go from normal bone density to osteopenic, which is right before osteoporotic. So they have to build bone off the bike. And the consequence of that — seasonal, seasonal, seasonal — is a high incidence of osteoporosis and risk of fracture.

With a high sweat rate and a high work output, riders lose a lot of calcium, because you lose calcium in sweat, and if you don’t have enough dietary calcium, then the body starts building on the bone. And every six months, your bone remodels, so if you think about the season being six or seven months, you have six or seven months of high calcium output and drawing off the bone, in that six or seven months you’re going to get really low bone density.

You see those pictures Tour riders’ legs, and they have knotted veins and it looks like knives are coming out of their legs. It looks alien. What’s happening there?

After sixteen stages I think my legs look little tired #tourdefrance A post shared by Paweł Poljański (@p.poljanskiofficial) on Jul 18, 2017 at 10:04am PDT

SS: They’re very vasodilated, so all their blood is in their legs and their muscles, and they’re super, super lean, and you have these surface veins and you have these deep veins, and the surface veins have kind of popped out because they’re so dilated. And with not very much body fat — or almost none — over the legs, it’s just really apparent. So it’s kind of like a body builder being super pumped before they come out on the stage.

What is the effect of altitude? When you’re riding in the Alps, what sort of changes does that bring on the body?

SS: Yeah, altitude is awful. [Laughs]

I say that because when you’re working at a high output at altitude, and you’re super fit, your body relies heavily on oxygen, and with a low oxygen availability and partial pressure of oxygen in that environment, the fitter you are, the more you suffer. Your body also uses a lot more carbohydrate and your respiration rate and heart rate are also elevated. So if they’re going to altitude without any pre-acclimatization, or even heat stress to increase total blood volume and your red blood cell production, then they’re going to suffer.

This is the way I watch the Tour: I look at teams that are based primarily in the heat or those who are based in the mountains, and then I can say, “OK, those teams are going to do really well when we get to the Alps.” And then those that are based in Belgium, or they’re not in any kind of environmental extreme, you can pretty much guarantee that they’re going to suffer when you get to the Alps. They might be OK in the cold, but because of the altitude, their body just can’t perform at that top percent that it needs to.

These guys are working at a very high level of aerobic capacity. We always talk about your lactate threshold, or your VO2 max. Say two people have a VO2 max of 85, and one can work at 90 percent and one can work at 80 percent, then the percent who works at 90 percent is going to suffer more than the one who works at 80 percent, because they’re relying so heavily on that oxygen intake.

How hard is it — say, for someone who likes to bike — how hard would it be for someone to get to a place where they could even just ride a grand tour course. Not race or anything else, but be physically able to ride, compared to how long it would take to train for, say, a marathon?

SS: It depends on your baseline fitness.

Most people take about six to eight months of continuous coached training to get there. If you’re not looking to go fast and race it, it’s very doable because you have the long slow plod, right? And anyone could accomplish that distance if they have enough motivation and enough food.

As to race it? That’s a different story, because that comes into years of base training and getting that top end speed, and knowing the food and recovery aspects that you need.

But it’s doable. You should do it!

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Imagine you begin pedaling from the start of Stage 12 of this year’s Tour de France . Your very first task would be to bike approximately 20.6 miles (33.2 km) up to the peak of Col du Galibier in the French Alps while gaining around 4,281 feet (1,305 m) of elevation. But this is only the first of three big climbs in your day. Next you face the peak of Col de la Croix de Fer and then end the 102.6-mile (165.1-km) stage by taking on the famous Alpe d'Huez climb with its 21 serpentine turns.

On the fittest day of my life, I might not even be able to finish Stage 12 – much less do it in anything remotely close to the five hours or so the winner will take to finish the ride. And Stage 12 is just one of 21 stages that must be completed in the 24 days of the tour.

You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here .

I am a sports physicist , and I’ve modeled the Tour de France for nearly two decades using terrain data – like what I described for Stage 12 – and the laws of physics. But I still cannot fathom the physical capabilities needed to complete the world’s most famous bike race. Only an elite few humans are capable of completing a Tour de France stage in a time that’s measured in hours instead of days. The reason they’re able to do what the rest of us can only dream of is that these athletes can produce enormous amounts of power. Power is the rate at which cyclists burn energy and the energy they burn comes from the food they eat. And over the course of the Tour de France, the winning cyclist will burn the equivalent of roughly 210 Big Macs.

Cycling is a game of watts

To make a bicycle move, a Tour de France rider transfers energy from his muscles, through the bicycle and to the wheels that push back on the ground. The faster a rider can put out energy, the greater the power. This rate of energy transfer is often measured in watts. Tour de France cyclists are capable of generating enormous amounts of power for incredibly long periods of time compared to most people.

For about 20 minutes, a fit recreational cyclist can consistently put out 250 watts to 300 watts . Tour de France cyclists can produce over 400 watts for the same time period . These pros are even capable of hitting 1,000 watts for short bursts of time on a steep uphill – roughly enough power to run a microwave oven .

But not all of the energy a Tour de France cyclist puts into his bike gets turned into forward motion. Cyclists battle air resistance and frictional losses between their wheels and the road. They get help from gravity on downhills but they have to fight gravity while climbing.

I incorporate all of the physics associated with cyclist power output as well as the effects of gravity, air resistance and friction into my model . Using all that, I estimate that a typical Tour de France winner needs to put out an average of about 325 watts over the roughly 80 hours of the race. Recall that most recreational cyclists would be happy if they could produce 300 watts for just 20 minutes!

Turning food into miles

So where do these cyclists get all this energy from? Food, of course!

But your muscles, like any machine, can’t convert 100% of food energy directly into energy output – muscles can be anywhere between 2% efficient when used for activities like swimming and 40% efficient in the heart . In my model, I use an average efficiency of 20%. Knowing this efficiency as well as the energy output needed to win the Tour de France, I can then estimate how much food the winning cyclist needs.

Top Tour de France cyclists who complete all 21 stages burn about 120,000 calories during the race – or an average of nearly 6,000 calories per stage. On some of the more difficult mountain stages – like this year’s Stage 12 – racers will burn close to 8,000 calories. To make up for these huge energy losses, riders eat delectable treats such as jam rolls, energy bars and mouthwatering “jels” so they don’t waste energy chewing .

Tadej Pogačar won both the 2021 and 2020 Tour de France and weighs only 146 pounds (66 kilograms). Tour de France cyclists don’t have much fat to burn for energy. They have to keep putting food energy into their bodies so they can put out energy at what seems like a superhuman rate. So this year, while watching a stage of the Tour de France, note how many times the cyclists eat – now you know the reason for all that snacking.

[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter .]

This is an updated version of a story originally published on June 24, 2021.

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Tour de Fat bike parade in Fort Collins proves to be colorful and festive

A man in a blonde wig and a Modelo shirt rides a bike

Tour de Fat is an annual event in Fort Collins, usually staged around Labor Day by the New Belgium Brewing Company. The brewery, which helped put Fort Collins on the map as a hub for craft beer, has a number of beers and events with bike themes. Riders pedal through a roughly three-mile-long loop on Mountain Avenue. The event has raised nearly $6 million for local bike nonprofits across the country.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in costumes ranging from fantastical to topical to just plain colorful. Emma Hayek, a paradegoer dressed as a mermaid, said the creativity on display was her favorite part.

"The people are amazing," she said. "Perfect weather. Tour de Fat is the best. It’s like Halloween in the summer."

The parade ended at New Belgium brewing where bikers enjoyed food, music and beer abound.

This is what you have to eat to compete in the Tour de France

Three weeks, 21 stages, 3,351km, 176 cyclists and a combined burn of 25 million calories — so what exactly goes into fuelling the riders of the Tour de France?

Described as one of the most gruelling endurance events on earth, the Tour de France is as nutritionally challenging as it is physical. With riders spending up to six hours a day on the bike with minimal time for recovery and just two rest days over the entire event, feeding the world’s greatest riders during a Grand Tour is no mean feat.

“To fuel the journey riders need to consume an average of 5,000-plus calories per stage. Maintaining such a huge energy intake is challenging,” says Corinne Mäder, senior sports nutritionist at PowerBar.

But it’s not just the calories. “Suppression of appetite and meal fatigue due to eating the same food every day for weeks must also be managed,” adds Mäder.

“Gastro-intestinal problems can also occur, especially during the latter part of the race, and sports nutrition products and food must therefore be selected carefully and tailored to the individual rider.”

Couple this with eating on the bike, ensuring adequate hydration and recovery, moving between hotels and the sheer length of the Tour de France and you’ve got a mammoth task on your hands. So how exactly is it done?

Diet of a tour rider

09:00: Breakfast

Riders will have breakfast around three and a half hours before the race, with carbohydrate-rich foods such as bread, muesli, cereal, pancakes, rice pudding, smoothies, orange juice - and even noodles - to help top up glycogen stores. An accompanying strong cup of coffee almost goes without saying.

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Cycling is a team sport but there’s also individual needs during the race, with the riders playing different roles on each stage.

“We adapt the food to the needs, not just for the stage and also for the individual rider,” Trek-Segafredo ’s nutritionist Stephanie Scheirlynck says. “And it’s not just day by day, it’s also about looking at the demands of the next block of stages.”

This means that the breakfast is adapted to the stage and the role that the rider has that day (or as part of an upcoming block).

“At breakfast we focus on the fuel for the stage that is coming,” Scheirlynck explains. “If it’s a mountain stage, we will go rich in carbohydrates because that’s your fuel for climbing, but we also make sure the food is low in fibre because you don’t want the food to cause any fluid retention.”

“Then, if it’s a flat stage, only the riders who are going for the breakaway will have more carbs and low fibre at breakfast.

“For the sprinter, who needs to stay in the peloton the whole day and only in the last 200 metres goes all out, energy expenditure is not comparable to a hilly stage or a mountain stage and this is reflected in the food they have at breakfast.”

In those three weeks, riders also need vegetables and fruit, fibre and healthy fats, and it’s on the easier stages that Trek-Segafredo gives the riders this healthier food. “I call them the green days and these are days when we know these sorts of foods are going to be digested,” Scheirlynck says.

10:30: Pre-race snack

Transfers from hotels to stage starts can be long, offering an opportunity to top up carbohydrates and calories in the team bus - typically, rice cakes with honey, raisin bread, sports bars or bananas are consumed with fluid.

Studies show Tour riders are consuming less on the bike (possibly due to more aggressive racing), meaning greater reliance on pre- and post-race nutrition.

12:00: During the race

Different stages at the Tour require different fuelling strategies, according to duration, intensity and temperature, and also on your role for the stage.

Fat metabolism can be utilised during mid-stage low intensity periods when a rider can shelter in the bunch and get towed along. In contrast, tougher stages will see the body rely on carbohydrates, which means more gels and energy drinks.

Solid foods consumed on the bike include small rolls with jam, rice cakes and energy bars, and most riders will opt for this on the easier days.

Quick-to-consume gels - especially caffeinated ones - will provide the majority of calories as the pace increases as riders will struggle to chew and swallow solids. Trek Segafredo also ups the concentration of its energy drinks for these tougher stages.

Fuelling on the bike also depends on personal preferences and what the rider is used to.

Scheirlynck gives Jasper Stuyven and Giulio Ciccone as examples of riders within Trek-Segafredo who fuel very differently.

“Stuvyn likes it simple, with everything in his bottle and he only takes on extra gels,” Scheirlynck says. “He trains at altitude training camps like that and so we know we can give him lots of fluid food and he’ll still be okay after seven hours.”

Then, other riders prefer to eat something solid. “Guillo Ciccone never wants his drinks to be overdosed because he prefers to eat something with it,” Scheirlynck shares. “Even if it’s a mountain stage, he wants solid food.”

17:00: Post-race recovery

As soon as the stage ends, recovery begins. “Recovery drinks with 0.3 to 0.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, up to a maximum of 40 grams, are given to riders as soon as they finish a stage,” says Scheirlynck.

“We give this to riders in a shake because it’s easy to drink and it helps with rehydration too.”

They’re also freshly made. “We have a blender so we put in some fresh fruit, and some ice cubes too if it’s hot,” Scheirlynck adds.

Trek-Segafredo gives all its riders the same quantity for their recovery shake to drink while they’re cooling down, it’s the size of the recovery snack that riders also have that varies.

Depending on how long the transfer is (which could be up to a few hours), riders shower and change in the bus before eating a snack or small meal prepared by the team chef — pasta salad, a wrap or sandwiches, something with cooked rice are all standard. “It’s around half of what we give them at dinner,” Scheirlynck says.

20:00 or later: Evening meal

“Dinner depends on the next day, not the day they have just had,” Scheirlynck says.

Post-massage evening meals start with salad, soup or juice for a nutrient boost, followed by meat or fish and carbohydrate-rich foods — but gone are the days of overcooked pasta.

With long transfers this evening meal can end up being even later than 8pm.

“The good thing is that the riders are used to eating late because it’s also the case for other races,” Scheirlynck notes.“It seems as though they can digest everything a little bit faster than we would be able to.

Eating so late could reduce sleep quality though, which is not what you want during a Grand Tour. "If the riders are arriving at the hotel so late, then the team will give more to the riders in the bus so they can have a slightly lighter dinner," Scheirlynck adds.

The calories

The most important nutritional consideration for riders is getting enough calories to meet the extreme demands of the race. This can be anything from 4,000 calories a day on a flat stage to 9,000 calories on a hilly stage.

Guzzling around 6,000 calories a day might sound blissful, but the reality of consuming such huge quantities of food day in, day out for three weeks presents one of the biggest challenges for the riders.

“Nutrient-dense foods are needed to remove the bulk of large volumes of food, to make it easier for riders to maintain energy balance and get enough nutrients,” says Mäder.

So bulky salads and vegetables are swapped for fresh fruit and vegetable juices, and carbohydrate powders are stirred into food and drink to increase calories.

The amount of food needed is close to the body’s maximum capacity for digestion, so failure to keep up with the enormous calorie intake can spell disaster, because playing catch-up is near impossible. And ending up in calorie deficit is a no-no because riders risk losing precious muscle.

Carbohydrate consumption must begin as soon as the stage does.

As the body relies on glucose for energy during hard exercise, a high proportion of the calories consumed by riders come from carbohydrate — around 70 per cent, or 1,100g a day for a 70kg rider, according to Emma Barraclough, senior sports nutritionist at SiS.

“Carbohydrate is needed for high-intensity efforts, such as breakaways and tough climbs,” explains Barraclough.

Swallowed in energy bars , gels and energy drinks , riders consume around 250 calories or 60g of carbohydrate per hour. “Riders take in energy little and often — 36g of carbohydrate from their drink every hour with a gel or bar every 30 minutes as well,” says Barraclough.

During the longest stages, carbohydrate intake can jump to 80 or 90g per hour — but the key is to start early. “If riders don’t fuel and drink properly, they will not be in contention when it comes to the critical part and finale of a stage,” says Pete Slater, co-founder of OTE Sports.

“Riders start taking drink, food and gels on board as soon as they get going.”

Food logistics

Race food must be easy to eat, but variety is necessary too.

Food consumed during the race needs to be portable and easy to consume on the bike. Riders start with food and gels in their jerseys, picking up additional supplies from musettes around halfway through the stage, packed by soigneurs at the start of each day.

Teams will label bottles so riders know what’s inside and can calculate what they need based on their role within the team for the day’s stage.

“In the musettes we put everything so the riders can choose what they like themselves,” Scheirlynck explains. “You can’t have bottles or musettes with names on because you never know who is going to come first.”

A typical musette bag may contain two 500ml bottles, one of water and one sports drink for hydration and fuel, an energy bar to eat when the pace is less intense, and isotonic gels with caffeine for that extra lift when needed.

There’s homemade rice cakes or fruit cakes to prevent hunger, and help with variety on long stages. This solid food is all low in fibre and rich in carbs.

There’s also always one small can of coke in the musettes Trek-Segafredo gives its riders. “From a nutritional point of view, it doesn’t make any sense to put a coke in there, but if taking a few sips helps the riders morale then that effect is more important than the disadvantage that doesn’t exist,” Scheirlynck explains, “and that’s why we leave it in there.”

Bars and sandwiches are kept for the flat stages, with gels and drinks used on climbs as it’s more difficult to take on food then. Bottles with a sports drink and three gels taped on are picked up from team cars, with sandwiches and gels available from support teams on the side of the road.

Food consumed off the bike is just as important. Most teams travel with their own nutritionist and chef, a practice that has helped improve the quality of food and prevents one of the biggest blights of the high calorie regime — food fatigue. The chef and nutritionist work together to plan menus, taking into account rider preferences, with some requiring gluten or lactose-free meals.

Providing food that the riders like helps ensure that they eat enough for the efforts they have coming up and this is why the teams put effort into making functional food into a package that looks good, such as pizza.

“Food is also more than just functional,” Scheirlynck notes. “It gives you the energy to do the race but if you’ve had a bad day, or you crashed, it can make you feel better.”

Avoiding dehydration in hot weather is another challenge — sweat losses can be in excess of three litres during hard stages, and riders may need to consume up to 10 litres a day to maintain fluid balance.

Fluid is lost through sweat and breath, and losses are exacerbated in hot weather. But it’s not just fluid — electrolytes such as sodium and potassium also need to be replaced to avoid the risk of hyponatremia, or low sodium levels, a potentially fatal condition that can be caused by overdrinking plain water.

“The sodium content in an electrolyte drink is crucial in helping the riders keep fluid balance in their body. Up to a litre an hour can be lost in the heat at altitude in the mountains,” explains Barraclough.

“Pre-hydrating starts in the morning by putting extra electrolytes in the rider's drinks,” Scheirlynck says. Taking on fluids then becomes an all-day task whether the riders are on their bikes or not.

On particularly hot days, Trek-Segafredo also freezes the gels to help riders cool from the inside.

After each stage recovery takes precedence, with the priority on replenishing glycogen stores and helping muscles recover as quickly as possible.

Most teams drum into their riders the importance of the nutritional 20-minute ‘golden window’, which starts as soon as exercise stops.

Recovery involves three parts: carbohydrate, protein and fluid. A cyclist’s body needs carbohydrates to replenish depleted glycogen stores, high-quality protein for repairing the damaged muscle tissue and fluid plus electrolytes for effective rehydration.

A recovery drink is ready to go so riders can consume while cooling down.

As training techniques and bike design advance, so do the nutritional products that support the riders. “Research findings are translated into practical application — not just the ingredients but also factors such as mouth feel, taste, packaging and application — for example, how easy a product is to open and consume during a ride,” says Mäder.

Many transportable carb-based products contain multiple forms of sugars (glucose plus fructose) which help riders absorb and use more carbohydrate per hour than conventional nutrition products, maximising delivery to the working muscles.

Multi-day racing batters immune function, but probiotics can bolster the body’s defences. “Probiotic drinks are also used to aid immune function, as the rider’s body will naturally be under a lot of stress,” explains Slater.

While the team nutritionist helps the riders judge how much carbohydrate and protein they should take to recover and fuel for the next day, Scheirlynck notes that some things aren’t easy to calculate and that the riders have control here.

“If you’ve crashed you need more energy to recover and we can’t really estimate how much, but if the riders listen to their body they can at least take a bit more if they feel like they need a bit more.”

Caffeine is one of the only legal performance-boosting aids available, and riders will often have a coffee with their breakfast or take a caffeine gel before the start of the race.

“It helps lower the perception of effort,” says Barraclough, “so it can be useful on a long hilly day.”

Riders will also take another caffeine gel during the race, around 30 to 45 minutes before they need it.

“The timing depends on your task,” Scheirlynck points out, “because sometimes you need to start working earlier than someone else.”

This is also why many riders start with a caffeine gel in their jersey pocket and keep one reserved for when it really matters.

“If you’re suddenly in a position where you didn’t expect to be, but you have the opportunity to win, you can be flexible,” says Scheirlynck.

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I’ve been hooked on bikes ever since the age of 12 and my first lap of the Hillingdon Cycle Circuit in the bright yellow kit of the Hillingdon Slipstreamers. For a time, my cycling life centred around racing road and track.

But that’s since broadened to include multiday two-wheeled, one-sleeping-bag adventures over whatever terrain I happen to meet - with a two-week bikepacking trip from Budapest into the mountains of Slovakia being just the latest.

I still enjoy lining up on a start line, though, racing the British Gravel Championships and finding myself on the podium at the enduro-style gravel event, Gritfest in 2022.

Height: 177cm

Weight: 60–63kg

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IMAGES

From body fat to power output: anatomy of a Tour de France rider
From body fat to power output: anatomy of a Tour de France rider
What The Tour De France Does To A Rider’s Body
From Body Fat To Power Output: Anatomy Of A Tour De France, 60% OFF
How Skinny Are the Top Tour de France Riders, Really?
Why Riders Gain Weight During The Tour de France

COMMENTS

Body Size Tables of Tour de France Riders
The table below lists all known heights and weights of Tour de France champions. There is a lot of missing data from prior to the 1940s. Weight values are to the nearest kg or lb. Body mass index has been calculated from the height and weight data. The data is being used to get a general view of the riders' body size and changes over time.
FAQs of the Tour de France: How lean? How much power? How do they pee
The riders mentioned start the Tour de France with body fat percentages well below 10 per cent, but nutritionists are careful not to allow 'cutting' to go too far.
From body fat to power output: anatomy of a Tour de France rider
POWER OUTPUT: 300 WATTS. During a normal stage of the Tour de France, pro riders can pump out around 230-250 watts on average, which equates to burning about 900 calories per hour. But on some of the harder stages they can average over 300 watts, or 1,100 calories per hour. Tadej Pogačar has a Functional Threshold Power - an estimate of the ...
Body Size of Tour de France Cyclists Over Time
The tallest rider on record is Marcel Sieberg at 1.98 meters (6' 6"), who rode in the Tour de France nine times between 2007 and 2018. The winner of the first-ever race in 1903, Maurice Garin, was only 1.62 m (5' 4"), though the shortest may be Samuel Dumoulin at 1.59 meters (5' 3") who rode in the Tour de France 12 times between 2003 and 2016.
How Skinny Are the Top Tour de France Riders, Really?
When people drop below three percent body fat, they run a risk of dying. Many of these racers spend the entire season paring their body weight down so that they arrive at the Tour as lean as ...
This Is What Happens to Your Body During the Tour de France
In the mid-1990s, a German team of researchers tested the bone densities of weight lifters, boxers, and Tour de France riders and compared them with age-matched controls. They found that the ...
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From altitude camp to taper, how riders train for the Tour de France; Why running, psychology sessions, and food apps are part of the peloton's Tour de France preparation; Add to that the metabolic demands of breathing, digesting, and the rest of the body's basic functions, and riders are constantly chasing for a break-even level of energy.
Tour de France Weight
No surprise here, Tour riders (though some appear lacking in upper body muscle) have healthier than average body compositions across the board. Climbers, of course, tend to be whippet thin at an ...
Five key points of Chris Froome's physiological data
Froome's hemoglobin was reported to be 15.3g/100mL in samples taken on July 13 during the 2015 Tour de France and on August 20, the day after his physiological test at GSK. Get The Leadout Newsletter
Metabolomics: The Science Behind a Tour de France Winner
For the second year in a row, Iñigo San Millán, an assistant professor in the CU School of Medicine, coached Slovenian rider Tadej Pogacar to the top of the podium in the Tour de France. Pogacar dominated the 2021 Tour after winning the world's ultimate stage race as a rookie in 2020. Millan leads a CU Anschutz research team, experts in athletes' baseline metabolic profiles and how these ...
Pro Cycling and Body Fat
Although De Maeseneer says that each rider is different and that there is no perfect muscle-to-fat ratio, there are certain limits. A Tour de France rider, he says, must be around 6% or under.
Here's the science behind why Tour de France rider's legs are so veiny
When Bora-Hansgrohe rider Paweł Poljański shared pictures of his jaw-dropping legs across social media after stage 16 of the 2017 Tour de France, pundits emerged from all quarters to chip in ...
How much weight do Tour de France riders lose?
"It is possible for a rider to lose weight over a Grand Tour, but not advisable," explains Sunweb team nutritionist Titia van der Stelt. "In the end energy management over three extreme weeks is ...
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Tour de France riders have minimal body fat, so there's no soft layer under the skin to mask the veins, which are essentially sitting closer to the surface. "High-level cyclists also have ...
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Tour de France: How many calories will the winner burn?
Riders in the 2021 Tour de France will ride more than 2,100 miles (3,400 km) over the 21 flat and mountainous stages of the race. And they will burn an incredible amount of energy while doing so.
The fitness secrets of Tour de France pros
Tour de France riders are some of the fittest athletes in the world. ... As a result of their intensive training regimes, elite cyclists typically have just 5-15 per cent body fat - much lower ...
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The aim during these months is to develop aerobic proficiency and train the body to burn fat as fuel. Low-intensity, long-duration rides are the backbone of this phase, enabling riders to substantially enhance their endurance capabilities. ... This block centers on yielding results and preparing for the Tour de France. Riders generally hit at ...
How do you compare to a Tour de France cyclist's fitness levels?
As well as achieving a low overall body weight, pro riders typically start the Tour with just 5pc body fat, according to data released by Team Katusha-Alpecin. That's strikingly lower than the ...
What does it take to be a Tour de France contender?
It's become a cycling press cliche to quantify a Tour de France rider's daily calorie intake by showing the equivalent number of McDonald's Big Macs. Oh go on, then: it's 12 to 18 Big Macs ...
Tour de France: How many calories will the winner burn?
Riders in the 2022 Tour de France will ride more than 2,100 miles (3,400 km) over the 21 flat and mountainous stages of the race. And they will burn an incredible amount of energy while doing so.
Tour de Fat bike parade in Fort Collins proves to be colorful and
Tour de Fat is an annual event in Fort Collins, usually staged around Labor Day by the New Belgium Brewing Company. The brewery, which helped put Fort Collins on the map as a hub for craft beer, has a number of beers and events with bike themes. Riders pedal through a roughly three-mile-long loop on Mountain Avenue.
This is what you have to eat to compete in the Tour de France
Diet of a tour rider. (Image credit: Getty Images / Chris Graythen) 09:00: Breakfast. Riders will have breakfast around three and a half hours before the race, with carbohydrate-rich foods such as ...

Body Size of Cyclists in the Tour de France

Tour de France Cyclists Stats

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How safe is it to ride a grand tour, really? What are the biggest dangers?

Illness seems to be something that take a lot of rider out, especially around that first rest day. Why is that? What causes that bottoming out?

So diet is critical then. How do you tailor nutrition for cyclists, and how varied does that get from rider to rider?

So did everyone eat the same thing, or did you tailor the nutrition plan to specific riders?

So does diet change with type of rider, too? Say it’s a sprint stage and you you’re going to have a rider who will need to be effective in the last 200 meters of a stage.

Every year during the Tour de France you see the “bonk.” Can you explain what the bonk is?

What are the steps you take as a rider to recover? And I mean after the Tour is over, you’ve ridden all 21 stages successfully. What is your body like at the very end?

What would be the consequence of stopping riding altogether after a grand tour?

You mentioned that third week bounce back. What is exactly is happening then? Is it that your body chemistry has changed?

If you ride all three grand tours, and the 10-day races, and Classics — you put your body through a cycle of stressing and relaxing — what is the cumulative damage of that, say, 20 years after you’re done? Or 40 years?

You see those pictures Tour riders’ legs, and they have knotted veins and it looks like knives are coming out of their legs. It looks alien. What’s happening there?

What is the effect of altitude? When you’re riding in the Alps, what sort of changes does that bring on the body?

How hard is it — say, for someone who likes to bike — how hard would it be for someone to get to a place where they could even just ride a grand tour course. Not race or anything else, but be physically able to ride, compared to how long it would take to train for, say, a marathon?

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Tour de France: How many calories will the winner burn?

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Cycling is a game of watts

Turning food into miles

Manager, Regional Training Hub

Head of Evidence to Action

Supply Chain - Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure-Track)

OzGrav Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Casual Facilitator: GERRIC Student Programs - Arts, Design and Architecture

Tour de Fat bike parade in Fort Collins proves to be colorful and festive

This is what you have to eat to compete in the Tour de France

Diet of a tour rider

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The calories