Pogačar’s fifth Tour was the fastest ever ridden, in a heatwave

When Tadej Pogačar rolled on to the Champs-Élysées on 26 July, he became the fifth rider in history to win the Tour de France five times, alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin. It was his third consecutive victory.

The bare facts of the 113th Tour are remarkable on their own. Pogačar won by 6 minutes 26 seconds over Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel, at an average speed of 43.227 km/h, the fastest Tour on record. He did it in a race affected by a heatwave, in which two stages were shortened and the rules on feeding were relaxed so riders could stay hydrated.

How the race was won

The decisive move came early. On stage 6, on the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, Pogačar attacked and established a lead over his principal rival, Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard. He extended it with mountain-stage wins in the Massif Central on stage 10, in the Vosges on stage 14 and at Alpe d’Huez on stage 19, where Reuters timed his ascent at 35 minutes 27 seconds and described it as a record, more than a minute faster than Marco Pantani’s previous mark.

Vingegaard’s challenge ended on stage 15, when he crashed and withdrew. That left Evenepoel, riding for Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe, to claim second place. He won his first mountain stage at the Tour at the Plateau de Solaison that day, then won the time trial to Thonon-les-Bains the next.

The race for third produced the most compelling contest of the final week. Two Tour debutants fought for the last podium place and the white jersey of best young rider: Mexico’s Isaac del Toro, Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates XRG teammate, and France’s Paul Seixas of Decathlon CMA CGM. On stage 20, Pogačar rode in support of Del Toro, who held on to finish third overall, 9:42 down, and take the white jersey. Seixas finished fourth.

Mads Pedersen won the green jersey despite winning only one stage, through consistency in the intermediate sprints. Richard Carapaz took the polka-dot jersey with two Alpine stage wins in the final week and was named the race’s most combative rider.

Fast, and hot

The record speed and the heat are the details that interest physiologists. Hot conditions normally slow endurance performance: as described in the 2015 consensus on training and competing in the heat, more blood is diverted to the skin for cooling and sweat losses reduce blood volume, so the heart has to work harder for the same power output.

That a record average speed came in a heatwave tells us something about how professional cycling now prepares. Teams routinely build heat acclimatisation into their programmes, plan individual hydration and carbohydrate intakes to the gram, and use cooling strategies before and during stages. The relaxation of feeding rules during this Tour was an acknowledgement that conditions had moved beyond what those preparations alone could absorb.

The debate over night-time tests

Before stage 15, both Pogačar and Vingegaard were woken during the night for anti-doping tests. The tests generated substantial debate within the sport: about rider welfare and sleep during a three-week race on one side, and the necessity of unannounced testing to maintain credibility on the other.

That debate is unlikely to go away. A sport whose leading riders are going faster than ever, in harder conditions, will continue to face questions about how those performances are achieved, and robust, credible testing is part of the answer, even when it is inconvenient.

What five means

Pogačar turned 28 in September. None of the four men he has joined ever won a sixth Tour. Whether Pogačar can, and whether a generation that includes Del Toro and Seixas will let him, is now the defining question of the sport.

His season ended abruptly a month later. Leading the Vuelta a España, he crashed on stage 8, suffering a concussion, a broken collarbone and a fractured vertebra, and his team announced that he would not race again until 2027. Enric Mas went on to win the Vuelta.