Mind games, sacrifice and 'big cojones' - what it takes to win Tour de France

Daily Mirror

5 days ago

The Tour de France resumes on Wednesday at stage 11 with still close to a fortnight left of racing to come and the competition finely poised ahead of the big climbs in the mountains
Over 3,338 kilometres. 21 stages. 23 days. One yellow jersey.
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Few events in the sporting calendar - if any - are as gruelling, as brutal, as unforgiving, as the Tour de France. 184 riders lined up at the start of this year's race - the Grand Depart in Lille. But only one can be crowned king of the mountain.
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And while the fortunes of each and every cyclist will be laid bare out on the road and on our TV screens, there is just as much drama, emotion, pressure and bravado brimming off the tarmac behind the scenes as there is on it - with complex mind games, heart-wrenching sacrifices, and a festering friction between cyclists who are prepared to stare death in the face and risk everything for their ultimate shot at glory.
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One person who has bore close witness to the carnage - from in front of the camera as one of the faces of cycling broadcasting, to the raw and uncut scenes away from it - is TNT presenter Orla Chennaoui, who even as a keen cyclist herself, admits she'd never do it "in a million years".
"It really is survival of the fittest," Chennaoui told Mirror Sport. "It is a test of the absolute best in the world. For anyone who's not used to watching bike racing it's hard to fathom just how dangerous it is, how difficult it is to hold your nerve in the middle of a bike race of 184 riders where everyone is within a whispering distance of each other, one slight touch of the wheel and that is it, game over, race over."
Chennaoui has been at the forefront of elite cycling for over a decade - first as a correspondent for Sky Sports, before her switch to Eurosport (now TNT) as lead presenter in 2019. Aside from the small matter of two Olympic Games and one Commonwealth Games, she has covered every gear change from the Tour de France to the Giro d'Italia, multiple times over. Put simply: she has seen it all.
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So what are her thoughts on the "world cup" of bike racing?
"It's funny," she says. "It looks really simple, like a load of cyclists riding from A to B every day but there are so many subplots and that's what makes the sport so fascinating. As soon as you scratch the surface and realise how many different narratives there are. That's why I fell in love with it.
"The bit that I find the most interesting is all of the work that is done behind the scenes. All the months of sacrifice, all the work from their teams, all the weeks spent at altitude away from their families, the weighing of food portions coming into Tour de France so they can accurately calculate what start weight they will be.
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"When a rider wins we get to hear about those sacrifices, the wives and partners left at home, the babies who have been born in their absence. But that's the same for every rider, for them to even get to the start line it takes that sacrifice, never mind to finish or win a stage. Its phenomenal."
After 10 stages of this year's Tour thus far, the race is currently led by Ireland's Ben Healy, marginally ahead of favourite and defending champion Tadej Pogacar, while Britain's Simon Yates claimed the last stage win in Puy de Sancy. To keep things cosy, Yates is on the same team as Jonas Vingegaard, the main rival to Pogacar, who is team-mates with Yates's brother Adam.
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But life on the road is not all happy families. "Professional cycling has become such a polite sport where everyone looks like they're really good friends but as soon as there's any kind of sledging or mind games, we all jump on it and we're trying just trying to work out how much of it is at the tip of the iceberg," Chennaoui explains.
"We had a professional rider in at the start of this race, Michael Matthews, and we were saying, 'all the riders are such good friends', and he said, 'don't believe that for a second. They're really not.'"
In a sport where every second matters, it's easy to understand why. But Chennoui insists ego is not the overriding characteristic. "It takes an awful lot of confidence and self belief," she says. "Even more than ego necessarily. One stage the first hour of racing was 50km per hour. With no padding, no protective clothing. It's like jumping out of your car in your underwear."
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Speeds can hit 100km/h down the descents and around 70km/h on a sprint finish when rubbing shoulder to shoulder with rivals to the line. "You're really on a knife edge. They have to believe in themselves so much to not question themselves or have doubts because that itself can bring you off your bike. It's terrifying. Cyclists need big cojones."
For every cyclist pushing themselves to the limit, there is a team behind the team, while the methods used in pursuit of marginal gains continue to get more creative. "The amount of testing and tech which goes into it now - scientification is 10 times what it was before," Chennaoui said. "There is one team who have access to an old railway tunnel and that's where they do their wind tunnel testing. So they're riding under this old disused tunnel underground and measuring the wind flow, the aerodynamics of the skin suit, of the bike, of the body position.
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"They'll spend hours doing this, and hours in a lab, as well, working out the exact scientific proportion of everything. If you look at any random stage, certainly a time trial, you will see the most ridiculous helmets that look like they were designed as a joke and they all look different, but that's all because of the aerodynamics and all the money that goes into it."
It's not uncommon for leading cyclists to try their best to avoid wearing the Tour-supplied yellow jersey on early stages during the race, purely because it would mean they wouldn't be able to wear their own specially designed skinsuit. "It's a really pure sport because it's just athlete and bike, but actually there's an awful lot of science that goes into it as well when it comes to nutrition, rest and recovery… every element has been thought of."
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This year's race is perfectly poised as the riders prepare to set off on stage 11 on Wednesday after the first of only two rest days throughout the event. The action will then build towards a "showdown in the mountains" on stages 18 and 19 where the Tour truly separates the best from the rest.
"We have 10,000 metres of climbing within two days which is disgusting. That comes at the very back end of the race when most normal humans are on their knees anyway. The riders are racing for four or five hours every single day, they get two days off in the 23 days, they've got 21 stages to race and so by stages 18 and 19, they've travelled thousands of kilometres, they've had umpteen nights of broken sleep and bad recovery, anyone who has crashed at that stage and had an injury or an illness they're on the limit of their immune system because their levels have become so lean and on a knife-edge with their health that any little infection can really send them off course."
The hilly stages of the course then come to an end in time for the finale - a flat run of 132.3km from Mantes-La-Ville into Paris and the finish line on the Champs-Elysee. It could well be a sprint to the line for those still in contention, but Chennaoui expects whoever reigns coming over the mountain will likely be the man to beat on July 27. "You can only survive those stages anyway if you are an exceptional athlete but to be able to win in those stages, then we're talking your Tour de France winners."
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So who does Chennaoui fancy to take the coveted yellow jersey in less than a fortnights' time? "Still the smart money is on Tadej. But everyone is unbeatable until they're not. We don't know when that moment is going to come.
"The punchy terrain suits Tadej, but Jonas has been right up there with him apart from the time trial and he usually excels in the higher mountains that come later in the race. They have created the greatest rivalry in the 112-year history of the Tour de France. So it's perfectly poised for a showdown in the mountains - and entire races can just flip on their head in one moment.
"A lot of people are rooting for Jonas because they want the tightest possible race until the last moment and even though I say stages 18 and 19 are where this race will be won, we ride into Paris on the last day. If Tadej Pogacar is within a couple of seconds of the lead, I foresee that he'll be racing for general classification all the way to the line in Paris. So this race could literally go right to the wire which hasn't happened very much."
And while the rest of us will be gripped to our seats watching the action unfold, Chennaoui and the TNT team have the tricky task of translating what happens out on the road to all the viewers watching on TV. "For us in the studio, we know that the majority of UK fans are coming to the Tour de France as their only bike race all year so it's our job to make it as entertaining and exciting as possible. So much of sport is taken so seriously and it is serious business for those involved. But if it's not fun to watch, then we're all missing a trick."