How Tour de France riders train, ride to seek glory in Paris
As the Tour de France continues its way toward the grand finish down the Champs Elysees in Paris, the hundred-plus athletes are contending with some of the greatest challenges in sports. From sweltering heat in the lowlands to brutal climbs up the Alps, each cyclist is pushing themselves to the limit of human endurance — not just for one day, but for three weeks almost nonstop.
“One day of this amount of riding would be doable. When you start repeating it over and over again, there’s just so few people who can recover that fast,” said Benjamin Gordon, Ph.D., a professor of applied physiology and kinesiology in the University of Florida’s College of Health and Human Performance.
“It’s almost untrainable.”
Lean, Mean Biking Machines
But train they do.
It takes years to reach the level of fitness required to compete in the Tour de France, and months of intense training aimed at July’s competition. The Tour is preceded by the similarly grueling Giro d'Italia in Italy in June and followed by the Spanish Vuelta a España in August. Each race essentially serves as training for the next one.
“You want to have your body as much in the aerobic condition as possible with as little body fat as possible,” Gordon said. Indeed, the typical Tour winners are lean, mountain-climbing experts. A few stronger, bulkier riders specialize in winning points for sprinting on flat terrain.
Aerobic exercise is fueled by carbohydrates, and the competitors inhale enormous quantities every day. Think sugary colas, sweet gels and sugar-infused sports drinks — all eaten while riding. These simple carbs not only fuel the legs, but are easy to digest, good news for the cyclists who are focused on powering up mountains.
“The problem is blood flow decreases to your digestive tract and your liver and your kidneys,” Gordon said. “You don’t have as many hands on deck in your digestive tract working to digest that food, so you need food that’s a lot easier to process.”
When riding is done, though, the athletes need to make sure to take in enough protein to stave off muscle wasting while loading up on carbs for the next day. Despite eating thousands of extra calories every day, most riders lose weight over the three weeks.
Cooling Down
Riding for hours a day at intense levels, often in suffocating heat and humidity, the cyclists are constantly battling the problem of heat illness. A spectrum from relatively mild heat exhaustion to life-threating heatstroke, heat can dampen performance and even lead to permanent injury.
But the outside temperature is only part of the equation.
“These athletes are generating massive amounts of heat just by contracting their muscles,” said Orlando Laitano, Ph.D., an expert in exertional heat stress and a professor in the College of Health and Human Performance. “Our body is somewhat inefficient. Out of all the energy that is released during muscle contraction, about 70% of the energy ends up staying in the body as heat.”
The solution to heat, of course, is sweat. Trained athletes start sweating faster than non-athletes, and as the sweat evaporates, it pulls heat away from the body. But the more humid the air is, the slower sweat evaporates, making it harder for athletes to cool down. Among the French cornfields in July, humidity can reach 70% or higher. That may be pleasant by the standards of many U.S. states, but it still makes sweating less effective.
The intense demands of the Tour also open up the cyclists to more danger. Weekend warriors may slow down and seek shade when they start to feel dizzy from the heat, but not professionals.
“The issue with these athletes is they keep pushing and pushing. So they ignore the signs and symptoms that would be a warning sign for them to stop,” Laitano said.
At higher body temperatures, they can start to damage their muscles and internal organs. Above a core body temperature of about 104 degrees Fahrenheit, even professional athletes may pass out, a sign of heat stroke and a life-threatening emergency. In hotter years, it’s common for a handful of cyclists to suffer from serious heat illness. But most of them keep going.
To cool off, cyclists douse themselves in water and stuff ice-packed tights down the back of their shirts. And the heat can make the difference for who stands on the final podium in Paris. Last year’s second-place finisher, Jonas Vingegaard, ramped up his heat training to try and best his rival and 2024’s Tour winner, Tadej Pogacar.
The cooldown continues past the finish line, as each rider hops on a stationary bike for a shockingly vigorous wind down despite having just covered upwards of 100 miles. While this cooldown can help promote circulation, it’s not as physiologically important as the pre-race warmup. Its main benefit may be in helping the riders adhere to tradition and bond with their teammates.
“When you’re doing something so intense so many days in a row, you need to have that regimen,” Gordon said. “It's important psychologically.”