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Performance<\/a><\/p>\n The Tour has never been faster. New research explores why and whether the sport is nearing its limits.<\/p>\n Cor Vos, Kramon<\/p>\n If, like me, you enjoy trawling through the numbers around the Tour de France, you don\u2019t have to dig very deep to spot one very clear trend: the race has always been trending faster.<\/p>\n The last four editions have produced three of the fastest Tours in history, peaking last year when Tadej Poga\u010dar averaged 42.85 km\/h across the full three weeks. That alone represented an increase of more than 1 km\/h over 2024\u2019s edition, itself the second-fastest Tour in history.<\/p>\n Even rewinding back a decade to the Team Sky\/Chris Froome era<\/a>, race-winning averages regularly dropped below 40 km\/h. Unlike in other sports, like motor racing, where progress can be more easily pinpointed, cycling performance is a messy cocktail of physiology, technology, tactics, and psychology.<\/p>\n And while in recent years aerodynamics has often been framed as the main driving force behind higher speeds, you need only go back beyond the mid-2010s to see that the upward trend still remains. Long before aero socks, integrated cockpits, oversized pulley wheels, and carbohydrate intakes beyond 100 grams\/hour<\/a> became normalised, Tour speeds were already increasing.<\/p>\n A recent study<\/a> by Patrick Wilson, associate professor in exercise science at Old Dominion University, attempted to explain exactly what is driving this trend and where we might expect it to go next.<\/p>\n It can\u2019t just be boiled down to different routes<\/p>\n One claim the study aimed to address was the suggestion that the Tour de France\u2019s increasing speeds are largely the result of easier route design. While mammoth 240+ kilometre transitional stages have largely disappeared from modern editions, and mountain stages now frequently dip below 150 km, claiming the race has become \u2018easier\u2019 feels like a step too far \u2013 especially considering the volume of climbing packed into modern Tours.<\/p>\n The 2023 and 2025 Tour routes contained more than 53,000 metres of elevation gain, while the 2026 route contains just shy of 55,000 metres. Compare that with 46,000-50,000 vertical metres during the late 1990s, and any argument that the Tour is becoming less demanding begins to look shaky.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2026 Tour de France route preview: Your full stage-by-stage guide<\/p>\n A preview of all 21 Tour de France stages, from the Grand D\u00e9part in Barcelona to the grand finale in Paris.<\/p>\n This post is for subscribers only Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n \n \ud83d\udc4dYep![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Alex-Hunt-150x150.png\")
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