“I just want to lie down in the grass and go to sleep,” Charly Gaul said on the scorching, flat second stage of the 1957 Tour de France in Normandy. “Get me a beer.”
The beer didn’t help and he promptly threw up. He poured water over his head, sucked on orange slices, stuck ice down the back of his jersey and munched amphetamines; other riders put cabbage leaves under their caps to keep their heads cool. But it was to no avail. The Angel of the Mountains could win in the snow atop Monte Bondone at the Giro d’Italia in 1956, but he hated it when it was hot.
It was clear that Gaul was suffering from heat exhaustion and yet he pedalled on for a further 20km until eventually he pulled over to the side of the road. “It’s over,” he said, and he climbed off his bike, got in the broom wagon and ended his race.
Vingegaard gulps down water at the end of a punishing stage of the 2023 Tour de France
ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Fast-forward to 2023. Another great rider and another heatwave. This time it’s Tadej Pogacar, then the two-times Tour de France winner, seeking to take revenge on his great rival, Jonas Vingegaard, who had won the 2022 edition.
However, Pogacar’s downfall came not on the flat roads of Normandy, but rather high up in the Alps on Col de la Loze on stage 17 after a hot day. Vingegaard attacked and Pogacar dropped back. With about 8km left to go on the climb the Slovenian came on the team radio, his jersey unzipped and flapping in the wind, sweat dripping from his face. “I’m gone,” he said. “I’m dead.” Despite the climb being cooler than the valley, the heat and fatigue were too much.
While riding a grand tour during a heatwave is nothing new, it is becoming increasingly common and intense in a warming world. This year Spain has endured its hottest August since records began, with Madrid regularly reaching above 40C as wildfires burned in the countryside. These temperatures show little sign of abating before La Vuelta kicks off on August 23 — a race that was so hot last year that the Italian rider Antonio Tiberi, of Bahrain Victorious, had to abandon it because of heatstroke.
“The riders in a grand tour have to cover many hours and their performance is directly impaired by the heat,” says Puck Alkemade, a physiologist at GreenTEG AG. “So for the same power output you’ll probably have a higher heart rate, but also it’s likely you’re starting to feel the heat more and more in the race, so you will fatigue earlier. If it’s very humid, for example, and you cannot evaporate the sweat effectively, this is a more dangerous situation, because you need to be able to evaporate the sweat.”
Home and hosed: Spectators spray cyclists with water to help them cool down during the 1957 Tour de France
UNIVERSAL/CORBIS/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES
“The early signs [of heatstroke] are feeling thirsty, getting a headache, feeling a bit dizzy and excessive sweating,” says Dr Rory Nolan, head of medicine for the Uno-X team, “which then can turn into not sweating at all and, in extreme cases, it can lead to people going into a coma if their core body temperature isn’t maintained.”
Last year the UCI, the sport’s governing body, introduced its high-temperature protocol, an amendment to the 2015 extreme weather protocol to help to protect riders. The new guidance enables a panel to take action when temperatures exceed certain zones as measured by the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), which takes into consideration humidity, radiant heat and ambient air temperature.
A red zone is considered to be above a WBGT temperature of 28C and comes with the advice of adapting the start location to increase shade, authorising more neutral service motorbikes carrying water for riders, removing limitations on drinking and feed zones and — in the extreme — adjusting the start time of the stage, neutralising sections and eventually cancelling the stage or race.
“In view of the climate changes that the world has been facing in recent years, the UCI wishes to better define the optimal conditions for organising road races in hot climates,” the UCI said in a statement. However, putting these protocols into practice is often easier said than done.
“There’s the extreme weather committee on every race, which should include a team doctor,” Nolan says. “But it’s not usually well communicated who that person is. So it can become a challenge. As a protocol, I think it’s good. We just need to get better at actually making sure that everything discussed in it is put in place.”
Italian rider Arrigo Padovan finds a novel way to combat the searing heat in 1957
KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES
This is something that Adam Hansen, a former professional rider and now president of the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés, agrees with. He says that it isn’t always clear how to invoke the extreme heat protocol and who is responsible for measuring the WBGT. At the Tour de France this year, a WBGT device was attached to an ambulance in the convoy by the organisers — but more communication is needed.
“We saw last year in the Vuelta, many stages went past the temperature that it states,” Hansen says. “But because we couldn’t get a readout on the index, because there was just none of this testing equipment there, we couldn’t invoke the extreme weather protocol. We’re not happy about that.”
So, in a warming world, what can be done to combat the heat? “You have this idea where the races must finish for TV time,” Hansen says. “It’s 2025, everyone streams when they want. You could have the race finish at 14.30 instead of 17.00, and start earlier in the day. There’s no reason why they can’t start the stage at 10 or 11am, just to get a few hours not exposed to the extremity.
“What you’re doing is you’re essentially reducing the heat by 33 per cent of the time spent there, just by changing the start time. For some reason, the organisers are really fixed on the finish time and to me it just makes no sense. When I mention maybe adjusting the days, they look at me like I’m crazy.”
In the Volta a Portugal in mid-August, wildfires forced a neutralised section (the race was stopped and then restarted) and a route deviation. More feed zones are likely to be allowed in La Vuelta this year and water may well be sprayed over the riders when the temperatures reach the extremes, but for now the majority of the adaptation and safety measures come from the riders and teams themselves.
Pogacar struggled in the Alps because of the heat during the 2023 Tour de France but coped well in this year’s race
REUTERS/ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT
We are now far removed from cabbage leaves on the head, beers in the hand and amphetamines on the tongue — although bags of ice are still routinely put down the back of the riders’ jerseys. And while there are things competitors can do on the road (staying properly hydrated and fuelled, pouring water over themselves, using sun protection) there has been one key change to how riders train over the past few years to deal with high temperatures: heat training.
“The warmer the body gets, the more it will start to prioritise cooling to protect you,” says Olav Aleksander Bu, the Norwegian sports scientist, head coach of Uno-X and heat-training pioneer. “The body is like a plumbing system, and typically more of your blood is directed towards the skin. More blood towards the skin means less blood into the muscles, less blood in the muscles means less oxygen in the muscles.”
As many as two thirds of the peloton are now wearing a Core device on their chest strap. This sensor uses heart rate, skin temperature and an algorithm to calculate core temperature accurately. Pogacar has been spotted wearing one, as has Remco Evenepoel. This device not only allows riders to monitor their temperature for safety reasons, but also to train for heat by deliberately increasing their temperature.
“When you do heat training you increase your blood volume and the benefit of this is you’re better at sustaining cooling and also supplying more oxygen to your muscles,” Aleksander Bu says. “You also develop heat proteins, so you get more resilient toward thermal shock than if you don’t do heat training.”
Riders are increasingly using core sensors during training and racing to gain performance insights
“Heat training done right is not only safe, but absolutely essential,” Nolan says. “By actually doing that training and being heat acclimatised, it massively reduces the risk when they are racing in significant temperatures.”
If the “normal” body temperature is 36.5C, for example, a rider will deliberately target 39C or above and maintain that temperature for a period of time just like they might target a heart-rate zone, allowing the body to adapt in a controlled manner.
Some of the top teams will use dedicated heat chambers (such as those at Precision Fuel & Hydration in Highcliffe in Dorset) to control conditions. But others have to get inventive: Marcel Camprubì, of Q36.5, is known to have put his turbo trainer in the bathroom, surround it with shower curtains, and turn on the shower to simulate humidity as well as heat.
“Heat training has become a big thing in cycling, especially this year,” Pogacar said in January on The Drive podcast. “We try to overheat the body in training sessions or on the home trainer because it is a big factor, especially for me because I always struggle when it is super hot. If you train [like] this, you can be better.”
And he is better. This year Pogacar seemed unaffected by the heat in the Tour de France as he romped to his fourth overall victory.
Yet there is another question: at what point is it simply too dangerous to ride in extreme heat? When do race organisers need to step up and adjust to a heating world?
“All the riders are in favour of adjusting the calendar with global warming,” Hansen says. “This makes complete sense. And this is difficult for the organisers to get their head around. If you just delay the calendar a couple of weeks or a month, it’s almost ideal for everyone.”
La Vuelta
Starts Saturday, August 23
Stage one, Turin to Novara
TV 11.45am, TNT Sports 3