Since the Tour began in Barcelona just over 10 days ago, the task facing riders has been even more arduous than they would expect at a Grand Tour.<\/p>\n
As well as dragging themselves more than 3200km over mountain peaks and through buffeting headwinds, their bodies have had to battle with trying to keep cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes an incredible amount of energy to cool the body because when it\u2019s hot and the body temperature rises, it uses 70% of its energy to cool itself,\u201d Pommerie said.<\/p>\n
Heatstroke risk<\/p>\n
During effort, a person\u2019s body temperature can reach 39C, which would be considered a fever.<\/p>\n
It is essential to cool some strategic parts of the body such as the neck, head, extremities and forearms.<\/p>\n
Riders have gone through heat training to help themselves prepare for the extreme conditions of the Grande Boucle, but that can only do so much.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can do all the heat training that you want, but then when you are in the race … you have to face one week with really warm conditions. Every day it\u2019s getting warmer and warmer, for sure. It\u2019s a really difficult condition for the rider,\u201d Mattia Michelusi, the head of performance at the Cofidis team, told AFP.<\/p>\n
The first objective is to manage the fatigue provoked by heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy who is unable to produce his watts, his power, gets to the finish rinsed,\u201d TotalEnergies doctor Samuel Maraffi told AFP.<\/p>\n
The second objective is to avoid getting heatstroke.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really an effort-induced heatstroke… you can get it even when it\u2019s not hot,\u201d Pommerie said.<\/p>\n
Heatstroke can lead to feeling faint, going pale or even fainting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to avoid any kind of heatstroke that happens basically when the temperature is really high and the body is not able to dissipate this heat,\u201d Michelusi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main strategy is to try to cool down the body as much as possible during the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
That involves using ice socks, cold water bottles and ice vests, either before, during or after each stage.<\/p>\n
Some teams even provide special cooling mattresses for their riders to sleep on at night.<\/p>\n
However, heat training sessions of 45 minutes to one hour cannot recreate the impact of riding for four to five hours in scorching heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happens is that they lose a big amount of water, and if you do that for several days in a row, it is almost impossible to replace the water that you lose,\u201d Michelusi said.<\/p>\n
And that increases the risks of getting heatstroke.<\/p>\n
Infections risk<\/p>\n
From Pommerie\u2019s perspective, the teams are on top of the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey wet [the riders] a lot so that it evaporates with the wind, so they\u2019ve largely got that under control,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t change the fact that their bodies have suffered a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the cumulative effect can harm a rider\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
The immense use of energy for cooling purposes can have \u201ca huge impact on their digestive system\u201d meaning they do not absorb what they eat as well as they would otherwise, Maraffi said.<\/p>\n
He said it can also affect their sleep, which can lead to \u201ca huge impact on their recovery\u201d after a stage.<\/p>\n
And just as when riding in cold temperatures, tiredness can make riders more susceptible to viruses.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder normal circumstances the immune system does not completely recover, so there is a susceptibility to infections, and the heat increases that,\u201d Maraffi said.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the Tour began in Barcelona just over 10 days ago, the task facing riders has been even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73986,64570,6757,24828,28796,261271,3553,13989,1221,38117,71,3191,42029,261273,111,139,69,6560,143627,1076,213,5433,4497,261270,208,261272],"class_list":["post-529135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-11th","tag-brief","tag-bringing","tag-de","tag-drops","tag-exacerbates","tag-fatigue","tag-fell","tag-france","tag-frances","tag-from","tag-heat","tag-muchneeded","tag-nevers","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rain","tag-respite","tag-riders","tag-sports","tag-stage","tag-start","tag-suffocating","tag-tour","tag-vichy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}