{"id":826782,"date":"2026-11-07T05:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/826782\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T05:24:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:24:20","slug":"one-wild-day-at-the-tour-de-france-with-tudor-pro-cycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/826782\/","title":{"rendered":"One Wild Day at the Tour de France With Tudor Pro Cycling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think you probably need to be quite insane to do this\u201d, I say to Fabian Cancellara, two-time Olympic gold medallist and head honcho of Tudor Pro Cycling, at the end of a wild and long day on the Tour de France. Is \u2018insane\u2019 the right word? Probably not\u2026 Fanatical? Obsessive? Compulsive?<\/p>\n

\u201cA screw loose,\u201d he offers up.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t know quite how bonkers the Tour de France is, here are some numbers. 3,245km over 21 daily stages. That\u2019s approximately 155km of racing per day for almost the whole of July, day in, day out. You\u2019d probably be exhausted just driving it, let alone saddling up every day and competing tooth and nail in the third most watched sporting event on the planet.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

SWP-3109<\/p>\n

It’s also difficult to explain quite how fast these guys are going all the time. Well, technically it\u2019s not that difficult: the average speed was 43km\/h across the whole Tour, with speeds regularly exceeding 100km\/h (62mph) on the downhills. But the actual feeling of the peloton coming past you in a blur of carbon fibre and whirring Lycra-clad limbs is basically just \u201cWHOOSH!\u201d and goodbye. Even when they\u2019re riding uphill.<\/p>\n

Esquire has been invited along to witness the exploits of the Tudor Pro Cycling Team, which is now in its second season on le Tour, so I\u2019ve found myself here on the leg from Chamb\u00e9ry to Voiron. It\u2019s a not-so-breezy 175km, with gruelling climbs taking the riders 2,000m up into the foothills of the Alps in 33-degree Celsius heat.<\/p>\n

\"Cyclists<\/p>\n

SWP-3109<\/p>\n

My front-row seat is in one of the support cars that follow the riders on the race, but which also zoom off the course to make shortcuts and get ahead of the peloton for whatever is needed. The TV footage is beamed into the car live via its own Starlink device, so you can have the uncanny experience of watching yourself being tailed by a news helicopter, OJ style.<\/p>\n

The real experience is on the roadside though. Life truly shuts down when le Tour is in your town or petit village. If you live anywhere along the route, on the day that the race rolls through you probably aren\u2019t going to make it to work, and you\u2019ll join the throngs of people lining the roads as they\u2019re closed off to all but cyclists and team cars. It\u2019s like the carnival has come, quite literally \u2013 before the riders whip through, a caravan of sponsored trucks drives the race route, throwing gifts to the kids. And then, everyone waits around for the WHOOSH! moment.<\/p>\n

Trying to make it home ahead of the leaders, we race off to the finish line, joining the Formula 1-style paddock of race team buses. Tudor\u2019s is pretty palatial, black leather and a faint whiff of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll \u2013 Spinal Tap except with energy gels and onboard massage chairs.<\/p>\n

And my Lord do these guys deserve a little pampering. By the time they arrive in Voiron, most of the Tour\u2019s riders look like skinned rabbits in Rapha \u2013 nothing much left of them but leg muscle, bone and twitching tendon. They move gingerly (or are helped to move) from their steeds to spin bikes to work off any excess lactate in the limbs, while the day\u2019s prize winners and podium placers somehow find the endorphins and energy to bounce around in celebration.<\/p>\n

\"Blackrs.solutions<\/p>\n

Tudor Pelagos FXD Chrono “Cycling Edition”<\/p>\n

Finish-line duties done, Fabian Cancellara has just taken himself on a ride for an hour, flat out, on one of the team\u2019s carbon race bikes to decompress from the stresses and strains of the day. \u201cI call myself an ADHD kid, full hyperactive,\u201d he says when we catch up in the hotel bar after his \u201cme time\u201d. That unstoppable energy has been the driving force behind the team\u2019s origins, which started with one initial 90-minute chat between Cancellara and Tudor that extended to a five-hour meeting.<\/p>\n

It all snowballed pretty rapidly from there, and next year\u2019s launch of a full headquarters will be something of a first. A bespoke facility for the team\u2019s training, yes, but also something of a brand and fan experience. \u201cIt’s not only a place for our equipment,\u201d he explains, \u201cit’s also a place we want people to explore. We want people to come over. We want people to learn from us and get the feeling of what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commitment to this sort of rounded, sustainable success is all underpinned by Tudor, which is currently celebrating its first century in business. Established in 1926 by Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf, less as a sub-brand and more a rough-and-tumble younger brother, Tudor initially made its name with diving watches for the French armed forces and the US Navy SEALs.<\/p>\n

Today, that daring spirit underpins its partnerships with Racing Bulls in Formula 1, the All Blacks in rugby, big-wave surfing contests at Portugal\u2019s Nazar\u00e9 and Hawaii\u2019s Jaws, and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, aka the \u2018trail-running Olympics\u2019.<\/p>\n

Fittingly for the partnership, Team Tudor\u2019s on-road captain Marco Haller is a real watch guy, and there\u2019s genuine pride for him in the partnership. Haller\u2019s been into the Tudor workshops. \u201cIn a very digital world where everything is based around computers or whatever, it\u2019s amazing to see how a watch actually works,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Of course, we end up doing a little wrist-off. I\u2019m sporting Tudor\u2019s new Black Bay Chrono 39<\/a>, nicknamed \u201cThe Bumblebee\u201d due to its bold yellow face and inky black dial. Haller is flexing the very fetching Pelagos FXD Chrono \u201cCycling Edition\u201d<\/a>, which fits a self-winding mechanical chronograph into a featherlight 43mm matte-black carbon-composite case. And being road captain has its perks \u2013 it turns out he politely asked Tudor CEO \u00c9ric Pirson, and was able to bag model number 10 of the carbon-fibre Pelagos to celebrate his decade on the Tour.<\/p>\n

Tudor watches are, of course, worn by all the team members, apart from when the riders are actually racing, when truly every gramme counts. You could get envious of the office dress code chez Tudor, but then you are confronted with the insane workload and logistics that keep this show on the road, and you might think again.<\/p>\n

\"Cyclists<\/p>\n

RUSS ELLIS<\/p>\n

Each evening, while the riders are being massaged back to life or fed like two-legged racehorses, a meticulous military-style operation takes place with the rest of the team. Every inch of the bikes is checked over, serviced and washed and buffed. Race uniforms are bagged up for each rider and laundered on the race truck. Even the team cars are fully cleaned inside and out before the next day\u2019s racing. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a point of pride for the teams,\u201d I\u2019m told by one Tudor staffer as he finishes vacuuming the now spotless footwell of one of the Mercedes SUVs.<\/p>\n

Everyone seems to have two jobs, like Clement the team physio, who’s also in charge of the in-race meals for the riders. Yes, such is the calorie requirement for cycling this fast for this long, that the riders chow down on Rice Krispies cakes and energy gels while going full pelt on their bikes, dipping into the chicly named musette bags handed to them on the fly at the less romantic-sounding \u2018feeding stations\u2019. On hot days like today they also get trimmed-down ladies\u2019 stockings stuffed with ice cubes to shove inside their shirts, which is somehow amusingly oh l\u00e0 l\u00e0 for cutting-edge sports science.<\/p>\n

\"Cyclist<\/p>\n

SWP-3109<\/p>\n

Each rider has their specific diet plan all worked out for them by Simon, the South African-born team nutritionist, who cheerily explains things I don\u2019t fully understand about glycogen stores and rice, once all his charges are sat down eating. Every portion is weighed out to make sure they get exactly what they need and after a brief congratulations for the day\u2019s efforts, I leave everyone in peace to chow their way slowly through a small mountain range of piled-up pasta.<\/p>\n

The only part of the perfectly ticking mechanism of the team I haven\u2019t been able to explore until I make my way onto the mechanics\u2019 truck at sundown is the bikes themselves. They are, as expected, gorgeous wafer-weight things made by BMC in custom carbon. I am, as expected, not allowed to ride one around. The frames alone will set you back the best part of \u00a310,000, before you get anywhere near the Bluetooth gear shifters (the only wires still used now are for the brakes) and other tech.<\/p>\n

As the operation winds down ahead of the next day\u2019s racing, you could almost say it all went like clockwork. Fanatical? Obsessive? Compulsive? Or a little bit of a screw loose? Either way, Tudor Pro Cycling will be back next summer on le Tour and, as always, one to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think you probably need to be quite insane to do this\u201d, I say to Fabian Cancellara, two-time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[379,271480,4985,381,190731,1156,271479,223205,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-826782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-2860ce84-f2b4-4519-ad69-1a4788267aad","tag-cycling","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-gb","tag-shorttitle-inside-the-tour-de-france-with-tudor-pro-cycling","tag-sponsored-false","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}