Sports

How has the Tour de France changed in the last 100 years?

Cycling's premier event has become shorter, hillier and faster paced since it began more than a century ago.

The peloton during the third stage of the Tour de France between Vejle and Sonderborg, Denmark.

The peloton during the third stage of the Tour de France between Vejle and Sonderborg, Denmark. (A.S.O. / Charly Lopez)

By Andrew Nguyen

July 10, 2022

One of the most significant changes to the Tour de France occured in the 1990s when the world’s governing body on cycling, Union Cycliste Internationale, set limits on the length of races and individual stages.

This led the design of courses to be formulaic and flat. But as other premiere cycling events began experimenting with how to break the mold and make their races less predictable and more exciting, organizers of the Tour de France took note.

The answer: Hills.

Changing terrain

Originally a publicity stunt in 1903 by Henri Desgrange to garner attention for the newspaper, L'Auto, the modern-era Tour de France is now a 2,200-mile race spread across 23 days.

This year's Tour de France includes: six flat stages, seven hilly stages, six mountain stages, two time trial stages, as well as two days for rest and one transfer day.

Creating the final route is a yearlong endeavor that involves choosing between scenic stages and relatively unexplored areas of France with creating moments of action and suspense.

This has led modern versions of the race to feature more hilly or mountainous stages and fewer flat stages. In fact, the number of hilly or mountainous portions of the race has grown more than 40 percent since the Tour first began.

This year’s Tour de France will see the return of the cobblestones in Paris-Roubaix, the hairpin bends of the Alpe d'Huez and a climb up La Planche des Belles Filles.

Inside the peloton

The average speed of winning riders in the Tour has increased by nearly 60 percent. To keep up with today’s peloton, a rider would need to average roughly 24 miles per hour.

A line chart showing the increase in the average winning speed of riders in the Tour de France by decade. In the 1990s, when the race first began, the speed of a rider was roughly 15.83 miles per hour. By the 2010s, that number had grown to 24.94 miles per hour. Below the line chart is a horizontal bar chart displayed as a pictogram with each decade displayed as a cyclist in the peloton and the gap that has been created due to the nearly 60 percent increase in speed over the last century.

The increase in the speed of the peloton is in part due to improvements in technology from aerodynamic bike designs and carbon fiber frames to derailleurs and disc brakes.

In contrast, bikes used in the first Tour de France had a single fixed gear and weighed as much as 40 lbs.

The riders in the Tour are also younger and leaner than their predecessors. Tadej Pogacar, of Slovenia, was only 21 years old when he captured his first Tour de France win in 2020.