The Tour de France is one of the world’s most challenging sporting events.
This year’s 3,498km route takes in 52,230m of climbing over 21 stages – and it’s raced pretty much flat-out.
So how are the riders fuelling, hydrating and cooling themselves through this epic three-week test?
To find out, we asked Owen Blandy, the EF Education-EasyPost team chef, Nigel Mitchell, former head of nutrition at Team Sky and British Cycling, Andy Blow, CEO of Precision Fuel and Hydration, and Jacob Tipper who coaches Tour de France cyclist Ben Healy.
Mountains of white carbs
A Tour de France rider’s diet during the race is extremely bland and carb-dense.
“During Geraint Thomas’ Tour win [in 2018] he pretty much just ate eggs, chicken breast and rice,” says Owen Blandy, performance chef at EF Education-EasyPost.
During a demanding day, a rider might consume 6,000 calories. If three-quarters of this comes from carbohydrates, that amounts to 1,125g of carbs. For context, a kilo of uncooked white rice contains 700-800g of carbohydrates.
A rider’s ability to consume such vast amounts of carbohydrates, which are essential to restock glycogen stores for the next day’s racing, makes or breaks their result.
“In the Tour de France, usually the best rider, who’s best prepared will win,” says Blandy.
“But often it is a recovery game: who can stomach eating so many carbs and so many calories, and who can deal with the knocks.”
Minimal fat and simple protein
Chefs such as Blandy try to keep fat to a minimum to leave room in riders’ stomachs and calorie budget for the carbs.
“Fat adds calories without providing carbohydrates to contribute to glycogen stores,” he says.
As a result, he adds: “I’m not creating dishes which have added fats in creams or sauces.”
Neither does Blandy allow condiments such as mayonnaise at the EF Education-EasyPost table.
“My goal is to create enough flavour through seasoning that the riders don’t need the sauces,” he says.
In addition, Blandy serves lean protein sources such as chicken breast, white fish and egg whites.
Carnivore for the Tour
EF Education-EasyPost riders who are usually vegan or vegetarian will eat chicken and fish during a Grand Tour, according to Blandy.
“You can live perfectly fine as a vegan athlete, but when you're required to eat so much protein, it’s very difficult to do so with natural foods,” he says.
“Beans, nuts and seeds have a lot of protein, but you’ll consume too much fat and fibre along with them.”
The alternative is to take plant-based protein powders, but Blandy says: “You have to weigh everything and be really precise with what you're eating, which is possibly a waste of [mental] energy.”
The fight against ‘flavour fatigue’
But how does Blandy meet the riders’ nutritional needs while maintaining their appetites?
“My goal as a chef is to provide the riders with exciting meal choices and things they don't see every day because it's a lot of rice and pasta,” he says.
“So if there's a way I can create interesting textures and dishes with the salads, the soups and the dessert, that's when I’m creative.”
He’ll blend fruit and vegetables into juices and soups to provide easy-to-digest nutrients, while baked apples go down well for dessert.
In the team hotel, the soigneurs will set up a ‘food room’, where riders can help themselves to snacks. Yoghurt, cereals and small amounts of dark chocolate number among the ‘treats’ nutritionists sanction.
You might think riders can relax their diet slightly on the Tour’s rest days. But because they’re racing the next day, Blandy serves a more varied menu the day before.
“At dinner, we can make pizza or do red meat and maybe a bit of brown rice or lots more veggies and fruits to give them more micronutrients,” he says.
Riders usually avoid brown rice and red meat because they take longer to digest than white meat and white rice.
Mitchell says riders will also take supplements, such as Omega 3, to help deal with the “systemic stress” of the race, and iron.
“It’s hard for the riders to maintain iron balance through a three-week race,” he says.
Being responsible for muscle function and carrying oxygen, iron is a crucial mineral for endurance athletes. Its levels in the body can drop during periods of prolonged exercise.
Gels from the start
As the Tour de France gets faster, riders are eating more sports nutrition, such as energy gels, than real food.
Mitchell says: “Teams still use rice cakes and paninis, but the faster racing at the start of races means riders switch to gels and drinks earlier on: sometimes from the start if they’re in the breakaway.”
EF Education-EasyPost’s Blandy agrees: “It’s hard to peel open a rice cake when you’re riding at 50kmph.”
Mitchell, who is now a nutrition expert for American Pistachio Growers, says recent improvements in cycling nutrition, such as energy drinks, has helped more teams hit the high-carb intake today’s full-gas racing requires.
“High-carb sports nutrition is more widely available than a few years ago when Maurten and SiS were the only brands to offer drinks containing more than 90g of carbohydrates,” he says.
“So now most teams will be consuming 80-120g of carbohydrates an hour, or even more.”
Personalised hydration and fuelling plans
A recent change is that Tour de France cyclists' race-day hydration and fueling plans have become more bespoke.
Blow, whose company Precision Fuel and Hydration supplies Lotto Dstny, says: “Lotto Dstny and other teams are using stem stickers to highlight the individual hydration and nutrition strategies each rider is using on each stage.
“Because hitting their nutrition numbers becomes increasingly important as the racing is more and more intense, this seems to be a trend.”
During stage 11, which packed in steep climbs in the Massif Central, Lotto Dstny’s Victor Campenaerts planned to consume 124g of carbohydrates and 968ml of fluid per hour (from one bottle of a carb and electrolyte mix per hour and one of plain water).
But when the GC teams upped the pace to catch the breakaway, he increased his intake.
Speaking after the stage to Precision Fuel and Hydration, Campenaerts said: “I smashed 150g of carbs an hour even in the grupetto.
“I eat to the max my gut can handle because it’s a stage race and the more you go into a [calorie] deficit, the harder it is to recover.
“If I could eat 200 [grams of carbohydrates per hour] I would.”
In the first two hours, Campenaerts said he ate two gels and drank two bottles an hour (from one bottle of carb/electrolyte mix per hour and one of plain water).
For the last three and a half hours, he switched to three bottles an hour because it was getting hotter, with an extra gel, making three gels an hour.
Campenaerts is only able to do this because he has trained and tested his gut’s ability to digest carbs while his body is working hard.
Mitchell says teams are increasingly calculating riders’ individual maximum uptake of carbs in a lab.
“The maltodextrin used in energy drinks contains a natural carbon isotope, which isn’t common in food,” he says.
“By taking breath samples, you can measure how much maltodextrin is there, which gives you an idea of how much exogenous carbohydrate is being oxidised.”
A good oxidation rate is “85-90 per cent” according to Mitchell.
Armed with this information, Mitchell says: “You can really dial in [an individual’s fueling].
“I know that some of the teams are doing these individual studies to optimise fueling strategies.
“It’s not new technology, but it’s becoming more widely used.”
Sensors galore (but maybe not in racing)
Mitchell says it’s easier to work out someone’s sweat rate so they know how much to drink.
But more teams are using sweat and hydration sensors, such as the Flowbio S1 Sensor, to estimate sodium losses.
The insight sweat sensors provide into a rider’s level of heat acclimatisation is especially useful, according to Mitchell.
“As you become better heat acclimatised, you sweat more but you lose a lower concentration of sodium,” he says.
“So you can use a sweat sensor to measure this.”
Unlike continuous glucose monitors, sweat and body temperature sensors are allowed in UCI-sanctioned races. Cycling’s governing body classifies them as “physiological sensors” like power meters and heart-rate monitors.
However, Mitchell says: “I've not seen people using them in racing.”
He also warns that the data might not be that useful.
“Hydration can be very important, but because you've got that information doesn't mean you'll get better hydration,” he says.
“There's only so much fluid that you can deliver to the athletes anyway.”
Staying cool
Mitchell does believe teams are monitoring riders' body temperatures in races in a bid to stop them from overheating, though.
A rise in core temperature downregulates enzymes that are responsible for metabolic activity, such as digestion and energy production.
“This is why you feel so bad when you have a fever. As you get too hot, your body will try to stop you from producing the effort that’s causing the temperature,” he says.
“Eventually, you’ll blow up massively when you overheat.”
Usually, cyclists can withstand higher temperatures than other sportspeople due to the cooling effect of the wind.
But Mitchell says: “As you climb a mountain, you ride slower and receive less breeze.
“There’s also the heat radiating off the mountain and road.”
Devices such as the Core Body Temperature Sensor can provide a “confirmation to the perception of overheating”, according to Mitchell.
Once alerted to a high core temperature on their bike computer, which can pair with Core’s sensor, a rider could call to the team car for ice or water.
Soigneurs will also spray riders with an ethanol or methanol solution. The alcohol evaporates quickly off the skin, which can have a cooling effect.
But Mitchell says: “I’m not sure how much this provides a real benefit to core body temperature and how much it reduces the perception of heat.
“But this perception is still important.”
Not everyone is convinced by the utility of such sensors for racing, though.
Tipper, from Jacob Tipper Performance Coaching, says: “Sensors can be pretty redundant in racing as there’s not a lot you can do about the sun or the intensity of the race to moderate your core temperature.
“So I think they’re used more in training prior to racing as preparation but I’m not particularly sold on all the hype.”
"Endemic" ketone use?
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With ketones being a controversial topic in pro cycling – they are legal but teams signed up to the Movement for a Credible Cycling do not allow their use – it’s hard to know how many teams use them.
Mitchell says he believes ketones are now “endemic” in the pro peloton, but Tipper is less sure.
“There is ketone hype but not everyone is using them and one brand doesn’t even work,” says the former member of the Huub-WattBike track team.
“But that doesn’t stop the pros from marketing them.”
WorldTour teams Soudal Quick-Step and Visma-Lease a Bike are sponsored by ketone manufacturers. Their riders are often filmed downing a shot immediately after a stage finish.
Mitchell explains the idea is to help get them ready for the next day.
“Ketones are produced by the body in a low-carbohydrate state because they can be used by the brain for energy,” he says.
“Riders may fuel with them before mountain stages or time trials when it’s harder to drink carbs from bottles.
“But they are mainly used for recovery and, while there’s evidence to support this, we don’t yet know why they work.”
With or without a ketone shot, riders will often swig a bottle of cherry or cranberry juice past the finish line.
Blandy says: “The juice contains a lot of antioxidants and sugar, which helps with recovery.
“It works better than coke because the carbonation can cause stomach upset.”
Bicarb every day?
Sodium bicarbonate has been used as a cycling supplement for years. The alkaline substance neutralises acidic hydrogen ions released by the muscles during high-intensity exercise.
Maintenance of pH balance delays fatigue, but for many people the risk of stomach trouble isn’t worth the reward.
However, the Maurten Bicarb System uses a hydrogel to stop stomach acid reacting with the sodium bicarbonate and causing GI issues, before it passes into the small intestine.
As Maurten told us last year, Mitchell says: “I think most teams are using it for some stages, particularly time trials, and buying it in.
“I was told that last year Uno-X [who are sponsored by Maurten] used bicarb almost every stage.”
But since some cyclists report that bicarb reduces their rating of perceived exertion, overreaching is a potential risk.
Tipper says: “This is still a strategy people are playing with because being able to go deeper on a stage in the middle of a three-week tour isn’t always the best option.”
Refinement not revolution
As we’re seeing with Tour de France tech, where significant watt savings are now hard to come by, teams are refining their hydration, nutrition and preparation strategies instead of overhauling them.
Another parallel with equipment is that budgets and sponsors’ generosity will dictate how far teams can finesse these strategies.
Having enough nutritional support to prepare bespoke on- and off-bike fueling plans is costly. Sweat and temperature sensors, ketones and Maurten’s Bicarb System are pricey too.
In future, the way teams prepare for the Tour de France will diverge. This year, UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike’s best riders trained at altitude while other teams raced.
Tipper believes such 'individualisation' will become more common.
“Before, it was a one-size-fits-all approach so you didn’t always get the positive gains you wanted,” he says.
“But now it’s more customised to the individual and teams are more supportive of this.
“I think you will see a greater range of strategies in place.”
Again, financial resources and UCI points standings will dictate which teams can do this.
WorldTour minnows won’t be able to afford the expense of an altitude camp while forgoing UCI points, as their star riders aren’t racing. But for the super teams, it’s a drop in the ocean.
