The 2026 Tour de France starts in Barcelona on July 4, but the battle for the yellow jersey began several weeks ago, high up in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains, at altitude training camps.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) all spent three weeks atop the Spanish mountain, training and naturally boosting their oxygen-carrying capacity for their Tour de France showdown.
Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) headed to Sierra Nevada in late May and revealed that he had counted 14 WorldTour teams staying in Sierra Nevada. When the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ended, Giro d’Italia winner Jonas Vingegaard joined his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates in Tignes, in the French Alps, for a final pre-Tour de France altitude camp. Pogačar and his UAE teammates will do something similar after the Tour de Suisse.
In recent years, altitude training camps have become a vital part of professional cyclists’ lives. Most riders buy into the isolated mountain lifestyle, and most teams now cover the costs and send coaches, soigneur, mechanics and even nutritionists and performance chefs to help their riders train in the best way possible for their major goals.
“Altitude gives you something extra, but you have to be motivated to do it,” a WorldTour rider, who preferred not to be identified, told Cyclingnews.
“I know a few riders who would prefer to avoid doing long altitude camps because they have young families, but most don’t tell their teams; they just accept it’s part of the job. But are the current demands on riders sustainable and healthy? I’m not so sure.
“I raced some of the cobbled Classics, had three days at home and then did a three-week altitude camp block for the Giro d’Italia. I travelled home on the Saturday and then left for the Giro on the Tuesday, spending another four weeks away riding a Grand Tour.”
Altitude camps and the demands of modern pro cycling create bigger problems for the sport than a rider’s time at home. The full impact is complex and often multi-layered, with key stakeholders such as teams and race organisers showing little interest in the stress it puts on riders and the sport as a whole.
Paul Seixas training at the High Altitude Performance Centre in Sierra Nevada in February (Image credit: Thomas COEX / AFP/Getty Images)
The speciality coffee shops of Granada, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, may have enjoyed a boom in consumption in recent weeks as riders stopped during training rides. Still, globally, fans, team sponsors, and the sport have paid a price for riders hiding away at altitude. The only people to see the biggest riders in the sport are Alfonso Sánchez, the manager of the Sierra Nevada High Performance Center and the few local riders who try to stay with riders on the climbs and capture a moment to share on their social media accounts.
Instagram posts from an altitude camp are not the same as seeing big-name riders at races and on television, though, where teams and sponsors capture their media value and repay their ever-bigger investments.
It is widely accepted that professional cycling lacks frequent big-rider showdowns, with the biggest riders in the sport only racing each other at the Tour de France. Tuttobiciweb have recently analysed the ‘Startlist Quality’ rating calculated by ProCyclingStats and confirmed that major WorldTour races like Paris-Nice, E3 Saxo Classic, UAE Tour, Ronde Van Brugge and the Amstel Gold Race have all seen a fall in the quality of their start lists as riders race less and prefer to train more, often at altitude.
The sport is becoming more polarised with each passing year. Science and training techniques have raised the level of performance and competition to an extreme that reduces the time riders can compete for victory. Peaks of fitness are harder to reach and last far less. Riders train more and race less.
Former Soudal-QuickStep team manager Patrick Lefevere raised a similar point in a recent column for Nieuwsblad.
“Which riders still like racing?” Lefevere asked. “I know that altitude camps work, but sometimes races now seem like [an] intermezzo between two of those camps.”
Our headline calling for a ban on altitude training is a provocation that Lefevere would perhaps use for one of his columns to capture attention. Yet it also poses several questions. Would pro cycling be better, more equal and more entertaining if altitude camps and altitude training were banned to help rider welfare?
Should a pool of big-name riders be contractually obliged to race the same Classics calendar and then the same stage races, and in turn limit the time they spend training at altitude? Would more big-name clashes and a more balanced race schedule, instead of riders spending long spells living like hermits at the top of a mountain, make the sport more attractive to sponsors and global fans? Would riders be happier and healthier if they could spend more time at home?
Why go to altitude camps? The pursuit of peak haemoglobin mass
Elite athletes, especially professional cyclists, have always looked for ways to boost their performance. The 1968 Mexico Olympic Games were a turning point for altitude training, forcing athletes to find ways to prepare for the thin air of Mexico City.
In the 1990s and beyond, EPO was the drug of choice to raise a rider’s haematocrit and so increase their performance to stratospheric but illegal levels. Anti-doping blood tests and the Biological Passport have hopefully limited illegal blood-boosting techniques, but in recent years, performance has improved thanks to better training methods, better energy consumption and altitude training.
Coaches and riders can now prepare for their biggest goals away from competition. The science is now so good that riding races as a form of training is considered a waste of time and can lead to ‘de-training’. Evenepoel’s decision not to race between Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour de France sparked debate but makes scientific sense.
“Cycling has actually become a different sport compared to when I started racing,” former domestique Tim Declercq, who has a master’s degree in sports science and works as a coach for Soudal-QuickStep, told Nieuwsblad.
“In the past, there was the idea that you couldn’t be good if you hadn’t raced. That is no longer the case. I think there are several reasons why riders race much less now than they used to.”
These include training at a calorie deficit to help lose weight, working at specific thresholds and completing specific workouts for the biggest objectives.
Riders go to altitude camps several times a year based on their season goals and fitness.
Mount Teide on the Spanish island of Tenerife is especially popular for pre-season altitude camps as it avoids the risk of snowstorms that disrupted Uno-X Mobility’s and Visma-Lease a Bike’s early-season camps at Sierra Nevada. The limited availability of hotels and apartments on Mount Teide is why Pidcock and Pinarello-Q36.5 travelled all the way to Chile in February.
In the spring and summer, riders and teams head to Teide, Sierra Nevada or Mount Etna in Sicily to prepare for the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, then to Tignes or Isola 2000 in the Alps, or Livigno near the border between Italy and Switzerland, for summer camps. Riders are convinced of the need for altitude camps, even if the benefits are shown to be personal to each rider.
Ineos Grenadiers, and formerly Team Sky, have long used Mount Teide as a pre-Grand Tour altitude training location (Image credit: Shutterstock)
Matej Mohoric recently trained with his Bahrain Victorious in Tenerife but preferred to train and sleep low, while his teammates were at altitude. Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) revealed during the Giro d’Italia that he combined three different altitude camps with early-season racing at the UAE Tour and the Volta a Catalunya to peak for the Corsa Rosa. He was hardly at home between late January and early June, but the plan paid off, giving him the fitness to finish second in the Giro. Adam Yates and his UAE teammates were not so fortunate. They also spent three weeks at altitude, but their Giro ended with a nasty crash on stage two.
Recent scientific research has proven that altitude training camps give pro cyclists a boost in performance.
Swedish-based Italian researcher Daniele Cardinale hit the headlines for his research into the use of now-banned carbon monoxide supplementation, but he is one of the leading experts in altitude training.
“It’s not easy to quantify the benefits of altitude training due to the many variables, but several controlled research studies have confirmed the improvements we’ve seen with athletes. Elite athletes improve less than others, but even an improvement of between 1-2% is huge and worthwhile for an elite athlete,” Cardinale told Cyclingnews, as he travelled to Livigno for a summer altitude camp.
“We know that haemoglobin mass – the key for transporting oxygen to the muscles – has an up-regulation of between two and eight per cent after three to four weeks of altitude.
“That increases the maximum oxygen carrying capacity, but it also improves the lactate buffer system, which also helps performance. We’re also studying likely improvements to the cardio-respiratory system, the neuromuscular system, the increase in mitochondrial function and other environmental physiological improvements. There are muscular benefits as well as haematological benefits; it’s now proven that sprint training in hypoxia increases performance.”
Ways to avoid altitude camps and make a level playing field
The science and race results have shown that altitude training camps are currently vital for success in pro cycling, especially for the demands of the Tour de France. The concern is whether the modern training regimes are sustainable and so beneficial for the sport.
Are there perhaps better alternatives?
“I did a camp on Mount Tiede in late April, and I lived like a monk for three weeks. A rider can perhaps handle that once or twice a year for a big goal, but it’s very demanding,” our unnamed WorldTour rider admitted.
“It worked out for me, I had a good Giro and so it was worth the sacrifice, but that was perhaps not the case for a lot of other riders, who crashed out or struggled mentally. I don’t know how long the new generation of riders will be able to handle this lifestyle and the intensity of it all. That is why ‘burnout’ is one of the biggest concerns amongst riders at the moment.”
Adam Hansen, the president of the CPA riders’ association, is well aware of the problems pro riders face and works to resolve them with the UCI, race organisers and the teams that employ the riders. Hansen has hiked in the Himalayas and completed numerous altitude camps during his own racing career.
“Riders have short contracts and know that their careers can be relatively short, so most are willing to attend camps and make the extra sacrifice to enjoy the benefits of altitude,” Hansen told Cyclingnews.
“Riders are away from their families for long spells during a season, but I think altitude can be a benefit, especially for young riders, because they have the support of team staff, soigneurs, coaches and even nutritionists.
“I also believe that altitude can be a benefit if it means that riders race clean and still perform at a super high level. I’m in favour of riders training at altitude, rather than the temptations of doping.
“Riders tell me that they are more concerned about all the extra days they have to sacrifice around races. They have to travel to races earlier than in the past, sacrificing training and time at home for things that do not benefit their performance. The CPA is in favour of riders racing less in each season and in favour of avoiding lost days for other events. We believe that increasing team sizes could be one way to achieve that.”
Riders literally count the number of days they race, train and stay at home, with the first two far outnumbering their time at home.
To reduce the impact training camps and altitude camps have on their private lives, but to still enjoy a haematalogical boost, some riders use hypoxic tents, despite their drawbacks such as noise and humidity. Bigger-name, wealthier riders have built altitude rooms in their homes. One Classics rider apparently had an altitude room built in his new villa in Spain, and so does not need to attend team altitude camps.
Riders are using other methods to help boost their blood values and so limit the time needed at altitude, including simulated altitude devices or machines, which are also legal under the WADA code.
Cardinale helped develop the heat training protocols that most WorldTour riders have in their training plans. Heat training helps to adapt to racing in the European summer but also boosts or maintains haemoglobin mass.
“Heat training could even extend or also improve on altitude training,” Cardinale told Cyclingnews.
“Altitude training and heat training complement each other, so you can even have a staircase effect and build on the altitude camp work to get better physiologically. In turn, that means you then train at an even higher level at home and adapt better to a higher workload.”
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) prefers to avoid altitude camps when possible but has embraced the pain of heat training.
“It’s terrible but terribly effective,” he admitted.
Cardinale also believes in better individualisation for training, especially altitude training. This could reduce the time athletes need to spend away from home at altitude camps and help develop alternatives.
“Some teams still believe that everyone needs to go to the same altitude work for three weeks and that everyone will respond the same way. That’s not true and far too simplistic,” Cardinale said.
“The aim of precision medicine in health care is to give each individual patient the best medication, with the right dose at the same time. That mentality is finally being applied to sport and to pro cycling. It’s about being as scientific as possible, not going with a gut feeling or sticking to traditions. Sport has to adapt, it has to follow the science, while respecting the athlete’s health and wellness.”
Individualisation for altitude training is key, believes Cardinale (Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)“For things to remain the same, everything must change”
Sport and professional cycling will never be truly equal. Budget caps can balance the spending power across the peloton, but some athletes always have natural advantages. Southern European-born riders can train at home throughout the off-season, while the likes of Jonas Abrahamsen and his Uno-X Mobility teammates have to do long indoor training sessions if they want to stay at home during the Norwegian winter.
Altitude training is considered a far bigger advantage than geography, and is why riders are obliged to attend so many altitude camps each season if they want to compete at WorldTour level.
Yet riders are currently near their physiological and psychological limits and fear burnout. Something has to be done to protect their health and welfare. Could banning altitude camps, as they currently exist, be the answer?
“We have to make sport physically and mentally sustainable,” Cardinale suggested to Cyclingnews.
“It’s up to the UCI and the so-called stakeholders to govern the sport and to create a sustainable sport for the athletes, teams and sponsors,” he added.
The influence of proven sports science in pro cycling is increasing, and that is arguably a good thing. It brings performance and health benefits, but has also intensified the racing and training. The performances of the 2026 Tour de France won’t be comparable to those of even just a decade ago.
The Tour de France traditionally lasts 21 days. In the early pioneer years, stages were 400km long, and riders raced every other day. Stage distances have fallen over the years, with riders given one rest day after a week.
The Classics are still often over 250km long and a real test of endurance and physiology, but is that still relevant and important in modern sport? Women’s races and even the Vuelta a España have proven that longer race distances do not make for better racing.
Sports science has increased the intensity of our sport and changed the way riders train and race. It seems unstoppable and Luddite behaviour to even try. Is it not better to create new race formats and a new calendar that also reflects the change in performance?
If we can’t stop riders from going to altitude, and we can’t stop the science, perhaps we can at least change the sport to protect the riders’ health?
As Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s famous line from his novel The Leopard says: “For things to remain the same, everything must change.”
That is also true for the world of professional cycling.