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New York Times
9 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Matteo Jorgenson interview: ‘We don't have regrets with how we've raced'
In the weeks before the 2025 Tour de France, Matteo Jorgenson's partner made him a leather journal. It has lived in his rucksack throughout July. On the eve of the race, the American rider shared two of its pages, listing each of his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates in turn. 'A leader by example,' reads the entry for Jonas Vingegaard. 'Beautiful pedal stroke and one of the strongest people I know. Can suffer more than anyone else. A father and partner before bike rider.' Advertisement Next comes Victor Campenaerts. 'The most committed rider in the sport. Will win any corner and any drag race. A man of the people. Wears his helmet in the shower and leaves his (sun)glasses in the case.' On it goes, with eight entries in all — a paragraph for each of his seven teammates, plus directeur sportif Grischa Niermann. Edoardo Affini: 'A man of few words but many watts.' Fellow American Sepp Kuss: 'As long as his cleats and saddle heights are adjusted, I couldn't find a more stable guy.' Belgian superstar Wout van Aert: 'Irreplaceable and brings every teammate up with him.' Elite sport is often an arena where its practitioners are forced to put up barriers. In the hours ahead of the biggest race of the season, this felt refreshingly vulnerable. 'I make notes before every race of all the key points I need to be at and what the parcours (race route) looks like,' he tells The Athletic on the Tour's second rest day. 'But this year, I wanted to do it specifically for the Tour, so it had its own journal, and also so I could look back at it and think: 'Wow, this is what I did.' If I ever want to look back at a specific day, I know what I wrote down before. 'Before the race, I was just reflecting, taking a minute to sit with where I was at. In a way, I think it's possible that I'll never race with a stronger team than the one I'm racing with here. The guys that I'm with every day are the best riders in the world, and that may never happen again in my whole career. So I wanted to take a minute and appreciate that.' Remaining grounded is important. Jorgenson is a key part of Visma's strengths — Vingegaard's key lieutenant in the mountains, one of the race's strongest climbers, and entering as a possible general classification contender himself. With six stages left, however, Vingegaard trails Tadej Pogačar by four minutes and 12 seconds. Jorgenson sits 15th. Advertisement 'In terms of executing our plan, it's been really good,' he says. 'We've been really strong as a collective team — it's been enjoyable being at the front of the race, and every day having an objective. 'But then, results-wise, it hasn't been what we've wanted. We don't have regrets with how we've raced; we've so far tried our best to get the upper hand. I think only winning one stage, and then being beaten by Pogačar at every turn has been hard to accept.' It is in moments like this that levity proves its worth. Alongside Campenaerts, Jorgenson has recorded videos on the team bus every day, previewing the stage and joking with their teammates. Jorgenson provides a fact about each place they are riding. The previous day's? Start town Muret was the birthplace of Jean Gauban, who participated in the first ever edition of the Tour in 1903. In 1906, he was one of the riders who cheated by jumping on a train, midway through the stage. 'It's a pretty legendary move,' Jorgenson laughs, adjusting his cleats. This year, Jorgenson is making a conscious effort to engage with his surroundings. Is it a performance factor — does being relaxed lead to better riding? 'In previous years, I've gone through the Tour de France, and also other races, and when you get done with it, you try to think back to the memories and it's almost hard to remember what happened. It's so stressful, and if you really allow the race to take over your brain, then it's everything you think about every second. 'As silly as it sounds, I want to know where I'm at, to understand where we're actually going, and to embrace the fact that we're doing one of the world's biggest sporting events. That's really cool. I want memories from this race other than: 'This climb is really painful' or 'I got dropped here'. I wanted to have a really good month with my friends, and I think I can do that while also performing at my absolute best. I think they're complementary in a way. If I'm enjoying it, I also perform better.' Advertisement Another part of his process is planning. Some riders prefer to lessen their mental load by entering stages blind, but for their DS' instructions. Jorgenson is not one of those — for him, the preparation itself is calming. 'Cycling has so many uncertainties that my brain doesn't do super well with that,' he explains. 'Sometimes you might have 200km, and you have no idea of any of it, other than that there is a mountain towards the end. For me, that doesn't work. I guess I have higher anxiety about things I can't control. 'So every race, I at least go through the process of looking through the race, especially VeloViewer (a website that provides 3D map information along with ride analysis). 'I'll try to chunk it out, into break formation in the first part of the race, a middle part where it's more calm, which some days we won't have, and then the final key points, often with actual kilometers where I need to be at the front, or where others might attack.' On Tuesday, the first stage after the rest day, the peloton will take on Mont Ventoux. Alongside Alpe d'Huez, it is arguably the most famous climb to regularly feature at the Tour de France. 'Tomorrow, there will probably be a long period of break formation because a lot of people will want to be in the break,' Jorgenson explains. 'So I'd look at the first 50km of the race, and see if there are any villages where it narrows, or little kickers which might split the group up, or where a break might go. 'Then I want to look at the approach running into it, to see at what point I actually need to be at the front. It might be 10km before the climb that you already need to be at the front, because after that it's all small roads, for example. 'On the climb itself, I already know it quite well, but I'd know that the first 10km or so are in the forest and quite steep. And then the last part is exposed, so I'd check that too. Then, on a typical stage, I'd look at the final five kilometers pretty closely to make sure I know about all the corners, and I know in my head how they flow, so in the race it's automatic. You don't want to be looking down at your Garmin and thinking, 'Is there a corner coming up?', with one kilometer to go.' Advertisement Listening to Jorgenson, it is clear how WorldTour cycling can be all-consuming. The days are long, a decent condition must be retained throughout the off-season, tactics spiral, equipment can always be optimised — the sport exposes itself to obsession, both its benefits and its drawbacks. 'It is,' Jorgenson agrees. 'It's becoming, in my view, even more so as the years go by, because we all constantly figure out new ways that you can improve your performance and those ways are basically all now off the bike, things you can be doing at home. 'The demands get higher on the rider and I think it's up to you as a rider to set your own boundaries of how far that's going to go. In the past, I've been quite bad about that — I haven't done a good job of having any balance between a normal life and cycling life. 'I have lived literally 24-7 with performance in mind — from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, every decision I make is has has my performance in mind all year round. That can get super exhausting. So it's been a process of learning what things are really important, that I want to maintain doing, and also what parts of a performance lifestyle I can make automatic and not feel like an effort. 'Really strong routines of sleep and eating, I've been trying to make those low cost to me. Then all these extras like altitude and heat training, these things that cost me a lot of energy, I think I can pick and choose when I use them — when I want to really invest and be at a super high level, or when I can be OK with being a few percentage points down.' Over the past two years, writing has become one way to deal with the stresses of the professional lifestyle — 'When my hand is moving, my brain is too — I write down things which I didn't even know I was thinking, which says a lot about how my brain works.' It is important to separate identity from results, but there is space to be analytical about results too. This Tour has not gone perfectly for Visma, finding themselves longshots for overall victory — but team leader Vingegaard is still punchy about his chances of success. 'I still think I can win,' he told reporters on Monday. Advertisement But to win, Visma must put time into current yellow jersey Pogačar, who has been in irrepressible form this race. 'The hard part is, he's not only the strongest rider in the world, but also he's really, really smart and races super well,' explains Jorgenson. 'I think he's grown a lot as a rider so it's proven very difficult to beat him.' At times this Tour, the pair have butted heads. Pogačar criticised Visma's tactics in the first week, while Jorgenson and Pogačar had an altercation at a feed station during stage seven. Pogačar appeared to manhandle Jorgenson out of his way, later accusing the American of blocking his path to a bottle. On stage 15, Pogačar marked Jorgenson's attacks in a manner that felt personal — a rider who was 32 minutes down on GC would usually be allowed to join a break. Pogačar later claimed he was frustrated that Visma's riders weren't waiting for Vingegaard to return to the bunch after a crash, with the race leader having slowed the peloton. But does this unease stem from tight, competitive racing, or some other enmity? 'I've been trying to figure it out myself,' says Jorgenson. 'Two days before this race, I ran into him on the roads around Nice. We chatted for a long time, and I felt like we were totally fine. But since the race has started, I've felt intensity from him. 'I can't point to any incident in particular — it's confused me. I tried to talk with him yesterday on the bike, and didn't really get anything back other than what he said in the press conference. I think in the first 10 days of the race, he probably felt threatened and annoyed that we were trying to beat him, in a way. I understand that, when he thinks of himself as the strongest rider, but I also hope he can see that we are just trying our best to beat them and win the race, and it's nothing against him personally. 'But it's a Tour de France — if he's not going to be challenged then it would be a really boring event.' Heading into the race, Jorgenson was tipped by some as a possible podium contender. Now 32 minutes down after cracking on stage 12 to Hautacam, the GC was never his primary goal — but the 26-year-old has also been open about his aspirations to one day lead Visma at a Grand Tour. 'This time around, it was really about doing GC in terms of being close enough to Pogačar that he has to chase me down (if I attack),' he explains. 'If we could use that somewhere as a tactical advantage it would be really, really helpful, so that was what my goal was. Advertisement 'We spoke after stage 11 about making that decision, whether to hold on to the position or disconnect and go for stage wins — but on stage 12 I had such a bad day that it was quite clear I was not going to fight for the podium on GC. 'For sure, I could have held on and kept fighting for a top 10, but last year I was eighth here, and I wasn't really passionate about fighting every day for another result like that, especially if it comes at the cost of stage wins. Nowadays, if you're racing in the group with Pogačar, there is a 0.01 per cent chance you'll win a stage — so I decided after Hautacam to lose time and try to go for stages. Tomorrow (on Ventoux) is another good opportunity for a breakaway.' Jorgenson has won two editions of Paris-Nice, but never a Grand Tour stage before. It would be one of the crowing achievements of a cycling career that began in Boise, Idaho, with the BYRDS cycling squad. His parents were not cyclists themselves; instead, Jorgenson began riding aged six with his brother. 'It's always been part of my life,' he explains. As he speaks, fellow American Kuss is sat just 15 meters away — between the pair, they are two-fifths of the U.S. riders at the race and, along with Lidl-Trek's Quinn Simmons and EF Education-EasyPost's Neilson Powless, are the country's most high-profile riders in the peloton. But this is still a relatively low number. How can the pathway improve? 'In my view, the challenge right now is that there's no professional road races in the U.S.,' Jorgenson says. 'Taking away the other disciplines — mountain biking is growing really well — road cycling has been on the decline. 'The rise of gravel has created a way safer alternative, because road cycling in the U.S. is inherently dangerous — there's big roads and not much road density, so you can't find quiet places to ride across much of the country. And so that's definitely drawing people to gravel, which for me is a shame, because it's also caused some of the disappearance of the big races. 'I obviously watched the Tour de France as a kid, my parents had it on in summer when I was a really small child, but my parents also took me to the Tour of California, because my grandpa lived in Solvang, where they had a time trial. Seeing a bike race in person, seeing the riders, asking for autographs — my parents still have a jersey that was signed by a bunch of people — and that was a pivotal moment. Advertisement 'Somewhere in my brain I went, 'This is something that I want to do', at a young age. And not having that now, not having any way that kids can connect cycling as a realistic thing that exists, and not just something they see on the television in Europe, means something is missing. It's hard to imagine young American kids wanting to be road bikers when there are zero races around them in America.' Jorgenson has to leave by 10am — the Visma squad are all heading out on a short rest day ride. In his journal, there is a paragraph on each of them. What would Jorgenson want them to write about him? He pauses. 'I don't know,' he slowly replies, with less certainty than he speaks of his teammates. 'Just that I'm fully committed to what I'm doing. 'Hopefully they feel like I'm bringing the team up, in some way. To be bringing positive energy — and boosting the guys around me.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
How Americans are doing in the Tour de France so far
The five Americans riding in the Tour de France this year are showing well with a little more than a week to go in the 21-day bike race. While none are contending for the overall title, they continue to work for their teams, often riding at the front of the peloton or among the race leaders as the Tour headed into the Pyrenees this week. The race will end July 27 in Paris. Quinn Simmons, of Durango, Colorado, had some fun Friday in the stage 13 individual time trial, a short but grueling climb between Loudenvielle and Peyragudes in southern France. Simmons, who has ridden at the front of the peloton or in breakaways since the opening stage, held back on the mountain time trial. He slapped hands with spectators along the barricades lining the road as he pedaled uphill to the finish line — not something pro riders ordinarily do. 'I think Quinn's already burned a few books of matches, so I think today the biggest goal would be to not burn too many matches,' his father Scott Simmons told NBC Sport before the stage. Simmons, who rides for Lidl-Trek, sits in 45th place among the 171 riders still in the race, just over an 1 hour, 13 minutes behind overall leader and defending champion Tadej Pogačar. Here's a look at how the other four Americans in the Tour de France are faring: Matteo Jorgenson, of Boise, Idaho, has risen to as high as fifth place in the overall standings as he continues to lead out teammate Jonas Vingegaard, a two-time Tour champion and Pogačar's chief rival. Jorgenson dropped to 10th after what he called a 'really bad day' in the mountains Thursday. 'Personally, I have no excuses. I just had a really bad day, knew from the start already,' the Visma-Lease a Bike rider told reporters. Jorgenson bounced back with a stellar time trial Friday, putting up the the sixth-fastest time, 2 minutes, 3 seconds behind the winner Pogačar. He's still a threat to win a stage in the last week. Jorgenson's teammate, Durango, Colorado, native Sepp Kuss, has struggled some on the Tour but ranks 20th overall as he continues to be a key domestique — a rider who shields the team leader, sets the pace and tempo and provides food and water bottles — for Vingegaard, who is second overall in the race. Neilson Powless, of Roseville, California, set his sights to win a stage in the 2025 Tour de France. That hasn't happened, but his team has enjoyed a successful race so far. His EF Education-Easypost teammate Irishman Ben Healy won stage six and then snagged the yellow jersey as the overall race leader for a couple of days. But Powless, in 50th place overall, did get a win of sorts for helping to free teammate Kasper Asgreen, who was trapped in the bathroom on the team bus after the door became stuck. "@neilsonpowlesswins the stage 2 MVP award for his performance on and off the bike. 🙃 happy you made it to the start Kaspy," the team posted on Instagram. Tour de France rookie Will Barta, of Boise, Idaho, joined a breakaway in one of the early stages and has performed well for his Movistar team. 'Week 1 of the Tour✅Good times and hard times, but I've really enjoyed it🙌🏼Onto the 2nd week and mountains we go🤠," he posted on Instagram after the first week.
NBC Sports
5 days ago
- Climate
- NBC Sports
Jorgenson has 'no excuses' for Stage 12 showing
American Matteo Jorgenson talks through his "really bad day" during Stage 12, explaining how heat impacted things during the first mountain stage of the 2025 Tour de France.
NBC Sports
6 days ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
PEACOCK'S EXCLUSIVE LIVE START-TO-FINISH COVERAGE OF EVERY STAGE OF THE 112TH TOUR DE FRANCE CONTINUES WITH STAGE 12 TOMORROW, THURSDAY, JULY 17 AT 6:30 A.M. ET
American Matteo Jorgenson (Team Visma | Lease a Bike) Enters Stage 12 in Fifth Place in General Classification; Defending and Three-Time Champion Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) Sits 29 Seconds Behind Ben Healy (EF Education – EasyPost) for Yellow Jersey NBC Presents Encore Coverage of Stage 15 this Sunday, July 20 at 2 p.m. ET Following Live Coverage on Peacock (6:30 a.m. ET) All 21 Stages of Tour de France Live Across Peacock with Select Coverage on NBC; Final Stage Exclusively on Peacock on Sunday, July 27, at 9:30 a.m. ET Peacock to Stream Daily Tour de France Pre-Race Shows STAMFORD, Conn. – July 16, 2025 – NBC Sports' live coverage of the 112th Tour de France continues exclusively on Peacock this week as the Tour enters Stage 12 tomorrow, Thursday, July 17 at 6:30 a.m. ET. Defending and three-time champion Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) of Slovenia is in second place after Stage 11, sitting 29 seconds behind Ireland's Ben Healy (EF Education – EasyPost) for the yellow jersey and the general classification lead. American Matteo Jorgenson (Team Visma | Lease a Bike) enters Stage 12 in fifth place, two minutes and six seconds behind Healy. Daily live coverage of the Tour de France, featuring all 21 stages, concludes in the French capital in Paris' Champs-Élysées with the final stage on Sunday, July 27 at 9:30 a.m. ET on Peacock. This Sun., July 20, NBC will present encore coverage of Stage 15 at 2 p.m. ET (following live Stage 15 coverage on Peacock at 6:30 a.m. ET). NBC will present live coverage of Stage 20 (Saturday, July 26) at 8 a.m. ET, as well as encore coverage of Stage 15 (Sunday, July 20), the penultimate Stage 20 (Saturday, July 26), and the final Stage 21 (Sunday, July 27) at 2 p.m. ET. Coverage throughout each day of the 21-stage event begins with the Tour de France Pre-Race Show on Peacock, followed by live race coverage. Peacock will stream live start-to-finish coverage of every stage of the 2025 Tour de France, as well as full-stage replays, highlights, stage recaps, rider interviews, and more. Following each stage, NBC Sports NOW will stream one-hour Daily Recaps, featuring highlights and daily special episodes of Tour de France: Beyond the Podium, providing analysis of the day's stage and looking ahead to the next day's live coverage on Peacock. To sign-up and watch every minute of live action from the 2025 Tour de France, click here. Peacock's expansive sports programming features live coverage including Sunday Night Football, Olympic and Paralympic Games, Big Ten Football and Basketball, Notre Dame Football, BIG EAST basketball, Premier League, NASCAR, golf, the NBA beginning in 2025-26, the WNBA beginning in 2026, La Copa Mundial de la FIFA 2026, and much more. Peacock also offers daily sports programming on the NBC Sports channel. COMMENTATORS NBC Sports' cycling play-by-play caller Phil Liggett, universally known as the 'voice of cycling,' covers his 53rd Tour de France alongside analyst Bob Roll. Liggett and Roll will be on-site at each stage, along with reporters Steve Porino and former professional cyclist Christian Vande Velde. Paul Burmeister hosts daily pre-race and post-race studio coverage alongside analysts Brent Bookwalter and Tejay van Garderen. NBC SPORTS CYCLING SOCIAL MEDIA Fans can keep up with the Tour de France through NBC Sports' social media platforms throughout the race, including, interviews, video clips, up-to-date news reports and stories from around the cycling world via @NBCSCycling on X and the NBC Sports Cycling Facebook page. In addition, fans can visit for a live stream schedule, stage maps, results, routes and more. NBC SPORTS' 2025 TOUR DE FRANCE SCHEDULE (subject to change, all times ET)***All live coverage on NBC is also available on the NBC Sports app: For full event coverage preview, click here. - NBC SPORTS -
New York Times
14-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Power versus weight: Are the Tour de France's top climbers getting heavier?
Jonas Vingegaard and Matteo Jorgenson are perhaps both expected to finish in the top five of this year's Tour de France, lofty heights reserved for the sport's climbers, but after stage two of the event last weekend, the pair joked about adopting a very different discipline. 'You're a sprinter now,' laughed Jorgenson, after Vingegaard had almost outsprinted Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel for stage victory in Boulogne-sur-Mer. 'I like it. You'd said you were huge — so you had to back it up now.' Advertisement 'You don't grow this for nothing,' Vingegaard smiled back. The Dane is still a skinny figure but had announced before the Tour began that he had spent his off-season adding muscle mass for increased explosivity. Two days later, on stage four to Rouen, Vingegaard resembled one of the world's best puncheurs, as well as one of its best climbers. Following Pogacar's attack in the closing kilometres, Vingegaard produced the best one-minute power effort of his career, matching the Slovenian's famed acceleration. And what's more, looking at the current top 10 of this year's general classification, Vingegaard is not alone in possessing power. Even ignoring Van der Poel (who will not be a contender come the mountain stages), the general classification (GC) battle also includes Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel, who are both more muscular athletes, as well as the likes of Kevin Vauquelin (third), Jorgenson (fifth), and Florian Lipowitz (eighth). All of the above weigh more than 68kg, while Derek Gee finished fourth in the Giro d'Italia last month while weighing 75kg. Traditionally, elite climbers have focused on shedding weight to increase their watts-per-kilo figure — from 1990 to 2020, the average weight of a Tour rider fell from 72kg to 68kg. Grand Tour champions of the last 20 years such as Chris Froome, Bradley Wiggins, Nairo Quintana, Alberto Contador and Fabio Aru are all noted proponents of this approach. Previously, Vingegaard may have fallen into their camp. But this year, his outlook has changed — attempting to improve his watts-per-kilo by supercharging his power with a modest increase in muscle mass. The race hits the mountains of the Massif Central today (Monday) — the first real test of his new approach. Already a two-time Tour champion, it is an undeniable risk for Vingegaard. Is the 28-year-old in the vanguard of a new trend in cycling — and will his reconditioning pay off? Mathieu Heijboer is head of performance at Vingegaard's Visma Lease-a-Bike team and has worked extensively with the Tour contender in recent months. 'Jonas started doing this as a consequence of his nasty crash (in the Tour of the Basque Country) last year,' he explains. 'When he was in intensive care, not able to ride at all, and just laid in his bed, he lost quite a bit of muscle mass that we had to regain. Advertisement 'Last year, we didn't necessarily have time for that, but this winter we were able to approach it from a longer-term perspective. This is mostly in the legs, but to cope with hard accelerations you have to be strong in your torso and your core — he needed to cope with those high peaks, those high power outputs.' At the 2024 Tour, Vingegaard had noticed he was losing out to Pogacar at high-watts moments, identifying it as a key weakness ahead of this year's race. By following Pogacar in Rouen, he showed the improvements he has made. 'Cycling is an endurance sport, but it's also one where you need to distance yourself from your opponent,' says Heijboer. 'The level is so high now, and in these races, the difference is made solely by explosiveness — which rider still has acceleration in their legs. In the past, maybe some riders were stronger in the aerobic part and could just ride faster. Now that difference is getting smaller and smaller.' But knowing how to add that muscle is part of the challenge. Riders don't want to add muscle in the wrong places — upper-body strength is of limited usefulness to a climber — and, as the Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe team's director of coaching Dan Lorang explains, will often train in very specific ways. 'Riders try to use as many of their muscle fibres as possible,' Lorang says. 'It's sometimes not about adding new fibres, because you need to feed them with more oxygen, but about recruiting all the fibres you already have to become more explosive, and to gain more resilience. But you still need to keep the endurance, so you're not too tired to use those muscles. 'Most of that training takes place on the bike, because it makes no sense to have muscles you can't use on it, but gym work also helps add muscle fibres. You don't want upper-body weight that you just need to carry up the climb.' Advertisement 'There was once a time when the skinny climbers were the top GC contenders,' adds Heijboer. 'But I think when the likes of Primoz Roglic became a top rider, there was an explosion in what you'd call the more muscled climbers. It's because they're able to cope with accelerations, and are less vulnerable to crashes, weather extremes, and the like, so they're just better all-rounders.' While there have been increases in weight during certain eras of the Tour — Miguel Indurain won it five years running from 1991-95 at 80kg, and was nicknamed 'Big Mig' — that era coincided with plenty of time-trialling kilometres, where absolute watts begin to take priority over watts per kilo. But in recent editions of the Tour, time trialling kilometres have dropped to their lowest ever level. Evenepoel, currently second on GC and the world's best time-triallist, is another to have added muscle mass in recent seasons. He added strength a couple of years ago, with his coach Koen Pelgrim describing at the time how: 'He kicks off more absolute power, but because his weight is only slightly higher, his watts per kilo has not increased… we see the explosiveness in his data.' However, speaking in the central French town of Chinon ahead of stage nine beginning there on Sunday, Pelgrim did not feel that the notion of adding weight is a universal trend. 'I think it's mainly individual cases,' he argued, perched on a car bonnet outside his Soudal-Quickstep team's bus. 'Obviously, in the first 10 days of the race, explosivity is a big part of the racing, but when you get to the big mountains, but for the long efforts, the power-weight ratio is still going to be crucial. It might be the case that more attention is being paid to off-bike strength training, but, especially for GC riders, not all of them are deliberately trying to add muscle mass.' With Vingegaard's specific training aside, it may be the case that riders' increased size just reflects a sport that helps riders who are inherently bigger, rather than necessarily needing to bulk up. 'What has changed is the dynamics of the race,' says Red Bull's Lorang. 'You still see skinny riders, but it's really hard for the 55kg guys to be competitive because they're losing too much energy on the flat. If you look at the flatter stages, you need absolute power, and the larger GC contenders have that. It's harder and harder for light riders to be successful over three weeks.' Advertisement With the average speed of the 2025 Tour — 45.6kph after stage nine — the second-fastest in history, behind only 2005, it is clear how this heft can play a role — crosswinds have already affected two stages. But one rider who says he has not bulked up, but dropped weight, is Lidl-Trek's Mattias Skjelmose, who sits 10th on GC entering the mountains. 'Maybe it wasn't muscle that I lost, but my fat percentage went down,' he says. 'It's a very thin line around gaining muscle without also gaining fat — and you also never know whether the muscle is placed right.' Skjelmose's acceleration this year has appeared impressive as well — in April, he outkicked Pogacar and Evenepoel to win the prestigious Amstel Gold one-day race in the Netherlands. 'My coach's approach is that explosiveness is more genetic than trainable,' he says. 'Of course, you can make some improvements, but in an endurance sport, it's still much more important, for the type of rider I am, to improve my aerobic capacity than short explosivity.' But even if Vingegaard's muscle gain is not ubiquitous across the peloton, one area that has gathered increased attention is the concept of sitting at a healthy weight — not being lighter for the sake of being lighter, but finding the optimal weight for your body. 'When we talk about power-to-weight ratio, I feel we often forget about the power part,' says the EF Education-EasyPost team's nutritionist Anna Carceller. 'You don't just want to be lean, but you want to have that power, to be the best version of yourself. It's not just about the ratio but because of both. 'We need to remember the part of being able to have healthier muscles, a hormonal environment that means your body can adapt to the training — and then try to get as lean as possible in the approach to the race.' Advertisement A good example is Uno-X Mobility rider Jonas Abrahamsen, who put on 20kg before last year's Tour while recording his best ever climbing performance. During this process, his peak power increased from 900 watts to 1500. 'When I started cycling, it was very popular to be skinny,' the Norwegian told The Cycling Podcast. 'All my favourite riders were very skinny and I was looking up to them, hoping to be 60kg. But that was hard, because I was always hungry. 'I felt like I hadn't progressed in my career as I had hoped to, so I needed to do something to be better. I know my muscles do better when they get more fuel, so I started to do that, and felt stronger and stronger every year.' The biggest difference came in his general health — by beginning to fuel, his body went through what he termed a 'delayed puberty', where he got taller and needed to start shaving. 'I think a lot of riders here are at a point where it's not very healthy to be for a long time,' says Skjelmose. 'But we are in a sport where everything matters, and if you can find a small percentage by being a bit lower, then that's where we go. I don't think it's healthy at all. But it's elite sport. We go to the limit.' 'Riding six hours a day, you're just starving (hungry) all the time — starving night and day,' four-time Tour champion Froome said during his career. Pogacar, currently the sport's best rider, has a different perspective. 'I'm getting older, so I'm not so obsessed anymore with going cake on cake, or just eating s**t,' the now 26-year-old told The Peter Attia Drive Podcast last year. 'My diet is the same all year round. I never restrict too much or say to myself, 'I can't eat cake or chocolate.' But (I eat) in measurements, and when the time is right. 'If you restrict too much, one time you will break and go completely crazy. That's not a good relationship with food. You need to have balance.' Advertisement Cycling's elite riders are not necessarily deliberately adding muscle, like Vingegaard. But the sport is beginning to favour larger athletes, reversing a decades-long trend — and is slowly shedding its weight stigma. For more cycling, follow Global Sports on The Athletic app via the Discover tab
