Under the bonnet of
the Tour de France
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Sophie Smith goes behind the scenes to meet the people who make world cycling’s premier event happen – from the top riders and their physios to directeurs sportifs and head chefs. People without whom the Tour could not happen. People who have dedicated their careers to cycling and are now working at the pinnacle, on the Tour de France 2021
Cherie Pridham set her sights on the Tour de France following a “textbook” start to her historic appointment as the first female directeur sportif, or sports director, to work in cycling’s top tier. Pridham, based in Derby, joined Israel Start-Up Nation this year and had to develop a website to manage media requests, such was the interest in her appointment.
The directeur sportif
CHERIE PRIDHAM
‘Every race I go to I grow in confidence. You still have the nerves, the apprehension, you give yourself a stern talking to and get on with the job you know you’re good at’
ŠKODA AUTO is supporting the Tour de France this year for the 17th time in a row as the official main partner. The company is providing up to 250 vehicles for the organisation and race management of the cycling event, including the command vehicle ('Red Car') for Christian Prudhomme
The 49-year-old made an immediate impression, celebrating her first victory directing at Tirreno-Adriatico in March, before guiding four-time Tour champion Chris Froome at the Tour of the Alps in April. “I can say I had a dream to be at WorldTour [The UCI WorldTour is the premier men's elite road cycling tour] and then I’m here, so I’ve got to readjust [my goals], but as a sports director, it’s your ultimate dream to direct at the Tour de France. And, as a woman, that would be...” Pridham trails off. “I just don’t want to make numbers up,” she continues. “I want to be very much a part of one day maybe winning the Tour de France.”Pridham has an innate knowledge of cycling.
She’s a retired racer and previously owned and managed her own second-tier team.
She has made a point of wanting to be recognised as a sports director, and not for being a female sports director, but so rare is her appointment that she often sees that fans are surprised to see a woman driving a team car in the convoy as she rolls out of stage starts behind the peloton.
“I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it’s very much a male-dominated sport. You’re talking about a men’s department really, aren’t you? I’ve known nothing different, but I also know, from my point of view, that you have to have balls. You have to be someone who wants to do it.”
Pridham describes her transition to the team as seamless.
“Every race I go to, I grow in confidence. You still have the nerves, the apprehension, but you give yourself a stern talking-to and get on with the job you know you’re good at.”
Sports directors are charged with many tasks, from meetings to logistics, as well as devising and agreeing on strategies that could make or break a rider’s career, all the while travelling hundreds of kilometres a day, following the peloton and race moves as they unfold.
“If I’m team car two then I’m the one who will move forward with the breakaway,” she says. “Or if it’s a hilly stage, I’ll look after the sprinters, give them details, give them information, and time cuts if we’re following the grupetto.”
TOUR LINGO
Peloton
The peloton is the entire field competing, and also the term used to describe the biggest bunch on the road during a stage.
Breakaway
A group of riders that attack the main field to lead the race during a stage, either to try and win from a smaller bunch or promote their team and sponsors.
Grupetto
Cyclists that are distanced from the peloton and form a group at the back of the race, riding to make the time cut during stages. The grupetto typically consists of sprinters, who fall behind on mountain stages that don’t suit their physical characteristics.
“But if I’m in the front and we’re in a breakaway and it looks like it’s going to the finish then all the gadgets come into fruition. We have VeloViewers, we have every corner highlighted, every descent, every climb, we’ve got TV going, we’ve got messages coming in from DS one, we've got race radio coming in on one ear and the commissaires coming in the other, riders talking to each other on radio. There’s a lot going on in the background."
Pridham describes sports directors as people persons. They have to get to know and understand their riders in order to support, motivate and draw the best out of them.
“When you make a decision, you make a decision. If it’s not the right one and it doesn’t work... You know, we’re not mathematicians, we’re not geniuses, we make mistakes and if I make a wrong call or whatever, we discuss, we move on, and the same goes for the riders.”
Veloviewer
VeloViewer is a multifaceted sports app that has become an invaluable tool for professional cycling teams. The live app, developed by Sheffield’s Ben Lowe, connects to Strava, an online GPS tracking and data collection tool, and uses information from it to create in-depth analyses of physical activities, efforts, segments and routes. Sports directors access VeloViewer via tablets in their team cars and rely on its detailed 2D and 3D imagery, maps and stats to inform their race strategies before, during and after stages.
‘I do the whole Tour in the Red Car. I have a big responsibility because I’m not allowed to mess up. If I say something wrong, it will have repercussions’
Radio tour speaker
Seb Piquet
Seb Piquet rides shotgun in a red ŠKODA at the Tour de France, charged with the great responsibility of calling real-time race updates that are relayed to everyone involved.
For just shy of 20 years Piquet has followed the Tour in “race direction car No 2” with the same people: his long-time and trusted driver Pascal Lance, the race director and the president of the jury of commissaries. “My official role is Radio Tour Speaker,” he says.
“I do the whole Tour in the Red Car. It’s just behind the peloton and that peloton becomes the favourites group once we hit the mountains, so we end up being behind the group of the favourites, or the group of the yellow jersey. We’re not behind the breakaways.”
Piquet makes detailed, colour-coded notes on the features of every stage – standings, intermediate primes, climbs – and from the Radio Tour channel relays all this to sports directors, who follow in team cars, and to the convoy of media and commentators.
He employs three “info motorbikes” to provide him with information on what he can’t see happening at the front of the race.
“They are often former riders who have done the Tour, who are on bikes and have several stopwatches around their necks and who tell me what’s going on at the front – who the guys in the breakaway are, what the [time] gaps are, who is attacking, who is riding at the front of the peloton and who is chasing,” he says.
Seb Piquet has the privilege of riding in the lead red ŠKODA for the duration of the Tour de France
Piquet trusts only his own eyes when it comes to calling updates from the back of the race on Radio Tour, or on one of the other three channels he manages, speaking in French and then in English.
“That’s a rider lifting his arm up in the air because he is asking for his car, so I call the car, lifting a bottle because he wants a bottle, showing his front wheel or rear wheel because he has a puncture, so I’ll then call ‘Deceuninck-Quick-Step for a puncture’, or ‘EF for clothing,’” Piquet says.
He may also read out the race bib numbers of riders in a move, those who have attacked, been dropped or even crashed.
“Often when you’re watching your TV, you see what the camera wants to show you and the camera is often at the front of the race. I’m at the back and I can see the guys struggling, I can see who is dropped, so that’s also information I try to give as much as possible,” he says.
“I know the TV director listens to Radio Tour and often follows what I say. If I say, ‘Chris Froome has been dropped’ and he doesn’t have a camera on Froome he’ll send a camera immediately because he heard it on Radio Tour.”
Piquet, even when following the peloton down a descent in the Pyrenees or Alps at close to 100km/h, has to be focused and set the tone for everyone relying on his updates and listening.
“I have a big responsibility because I’m not allowed to mess up. If I say something wrong, it will have repercussions. I’d rather not say anything than say something wrong,” he says.
The Frenchman’s unique view of the race extends to many other roles, and he is sometimes the first person to interview riders in the immediate aftermath of a career-defining stage win.
“The most important aspect is being focused and organised. You have to be concentrated on what goes on all the time, and I mean all the time, because something can happen at any moment.”
‘Your whole season is based around the Tour and if you don’t win there it’s a failure. To be a top sprinter in professional cycling, when you get selected for the Tour you have to win’
The rider
Sam Bennett
Sam Bennett rose from self-proclaimed underdog to benchmark sprinter and leader of the “Wolf Pack” in a superb campaign at the Tour de France last year – one which the Irishman is readying to repeat this summer.
Bennett, in his first season with the Deceuninck-Quick-Step team, won two stages and broke former teammate Peter Sagan’s stranglehold on the points classification, taking the green jersey.
The green jersey is to sprinters what the maillot jaune is to overall contenders at the Tour, but prior to last year was a prize that cycling’s fast men had virtually given up on, due to Sagan’s dominance and rule changes over the years.
Sam Bennett won two stages in his first season with the Deceuninck-Quick-Step team and claimed the green jersey
The jerseys
The yellow jersey, or maillot jaune, is the ultimate prize at the Tour de France. It’s awarded to the rider with the lowest cumulative finishing time at the end of the three-week race. Climbers and all-rounders – who are climbers who can also time-trial – contest this.
Yellow Jersey
Green jersey
Known in France as the maillot vert, the points classification is an overarching competition for sprinters and puncheurs (who specialise in rolling terrain). Riders are awarded points according to their placing on a stage, and on intermediate sprint primes that feature during some stages. The cyclist with the most points upon arrival in Paris wins the green jersey.
Polka dot jersey
Another prize for climbers, the polka dot jersey, or King of the Mountain (KOM) classification, is awarded to the rider who accumulates the most points from KOM primes positioned on categorised climbs throughout the stages. Points awarded at each KOM depend on the severity of the climb. Crest the mountain first and you take the maximum on offer.
White jersey
The award given to the winner of the best young rider classification. It operates the same as the yellow jersey competition but only riders under 26 are eligible.
“My team role at the Tour de France is to be the sprinter, to try and win as many stages as possible and hopefully go for the green jersey again" Bennett says. My biggest strengths are I’m a pretty versatile sprinter. I can go from long out in a sprint and come very late as well. And I can survive pretty hard races for a sprinter.
"Weaknesses? I’ll keep them to myself, so my competitors don’t know how to use them against me!”
On the flat or undulating stages the 30-year-old has the full support of his star team, from riders who control the race early to a specialised lead-out train, comprising the riders who guide and help bring him up to speed in the frenetic bunch sprint to the line.
“Teamwork is really important because right from the start of the race we’re trying to make it a bunch sprint, we’re trying to get the team in position, we’re trying to get the lead-out there as fresh as possible, and then we’re trying to nail the lead-out,” he says.
“If your whole season is based around the Tour, and you don’t win there, it’s a failure. To be a top sprinter in professional cycling, when you get selected for the Tour you have to win.”
Bennett undergoes a lot of work to be physically and mentally ready for cycling’s most renowned race.
“Having the training done, being the right weight, having a bit of racing in the legs, having race speed, making sure the equipment is right – I think the main thing is being mentally prepared for what is coming ahead,” Bennett says. “Even the first few days before the race is tiring because the occasion is so big, so being sure that you’re mentally there and mentally ready [is important].
”Bennett reacted with disbelief when he won his career-first Tour stage last year, but was then confident when he arrived in Paris on the last day and claimed victory on the Champs Élysées, which serves as an unofficial world championship for sprinters.
Bennett has carried that confidence into 2021 and chalked up regular wins.
“With Deceuninck-Quick-Step and myself, we aim pretty high, so I suppose we’d like multiple stage wins and we would like the green jersey,” he says.
“I remember watching [the Tour] in the summer [as a kid]; I remember my dad turning on the TV and saying, ‘This is the Tour de France, it’s the biggest bike race in the world’. I remember being taken aback by the crowds. When you’re a cyclist coming up, the Tour de France is the biggest thing and then, when you’re a professional, the first thing people ask is, ‘Have you done the Tour de France?’ Being able to say you rode it and won stages is pretty nice.
“In my own experience compared to what I saw [as a kid], the hype is real and it’s everything that you expect.”
Roles in the peloton
Sprinter
Riders skilled at producing a very fast acceleration at the end of a flat or undulating stage to win.
Puncheur
A mix between a sprinter and a climber, puncheurs are versatile cyclists able to get over short and punchy ascents and still produce a fast sprint at the end of the race.
Climber
Climbers are able to traverse and vie for victory on major mountain passes. They compete for the yellow jersey.
Super domestique
Super domestiques and domestiques are selfless workhorses and race in support of team leaders. They might assist them in a finale or work during the stage to keep tempo.
Time trialist
Riders who specialise in time trials where cyclists individually compete along a course and race against the clock. The one who completes the stage in the fastest time wins.
The head chef
James Forsyth
‘In week three the biggest request is probably chocolate – some Nutella on the table or a guilty dessert. They can ask but they’re not going to get it!’
What riders eat during the Tour de France can make the difference between winning and losing the yellow jersey, cycling’s most prestigious prize. Which means the role of team chefs in creating calorie-balanced meals for weight-conscious competitors is a great responsibility.
And no one knows that better than Ineos Grenadiers chef James Forsyth.
Forsyth is responsible for feeding the squad, previously known as Team Sky, which has set the benchmark at the Tour since Bradley Wiggins’ victory in 2012.
“The biggest pressure is that everything is on me,” he says. “In a restaurant the responsibility is dispersed throughout the kitchen. One dish could come from four or five different chefs, one component from each, whereas here it’s me taking care of the whole team. If you don’t prepare something properly that’s not safe to eat, it has massive consequences. There’s that pressure of making sure everything is on point, every single mealtime.”
Forsyth worked at leading restaurants worldwide before he joined the British team in 2015.
“In restaurants it’s all about flavour, something being luxurious and delicious, whereas in a cycling team it’s all about functionality. The food has to serve a purpose. Sometimes you do have to sacrifice how good something could be for it to be as nutritionally beneficial as possible.
“We could be making something which, if I was working in a restaurant, I know it would need a few tablespoons of butter to make it perfect. We obviously have to bypass that and figure out something else, or just leave it out completely.”
James Forsyth in action preparing meals for Team Ineos at the Tour de France
Forsyth liaises with team nutritionists charged with determining what and how much riders should eat during the Tour, where carbs, protein, vegetables and fruits are a staple.
“They lay out the foundation of what we need to do and then we use our creativity to develop a menu around that,” he says.
“We’re super, super low on fats. Eggs are fine but some guys take the egg yolk out of their omelettes. We’re really minimal on cheese, just a little bit of parmesan on the pasta is allowed, and no butter or cream anywhere.
“In week three, the biggest request is probably chocolate, some Nutella on the table or some sort of guilty dessert, a tiramisu or something. They can ask for it but they’re not going to get it!”Forsyth works through four consecutive weeks during the Tour from a kitchen truck.
“On a race day we cook breakfast for the riders and then they leave on the bus. We pack up the kitchen truck and drive to the next hotel, which is normally within half-an-hour or an hour of where the finish is. On that drive I do my shopping for the evening meal. Then we arrive, set the truck up, and I get cooking straight away, ready for the guys around 7.30pm for dinner. They’re pretty full-on days.
“We try to get the freshest and the best produce we can. Breakfast is a high-carb meal, so there will be rice and pasta available,” Forsyth continues.
“We do eggs cooked to order and then we have three different types of oats, so it’ll be a hot porridge, an overnight oats soaked with milk and yoghurt and some apples and fruits, and we’ll do a baked oat dish as well. Basically, carbs everywhere. And then we’ll supplement that with cured meats and salmon, fresh berries and a couple of different purées for extra micro-nutrients and fibre.”
Typical day's food for a cyclist on the tour
Tour de France competitors typically eat 7 meals a day and can consume and burn off up to an estimated 9,000 calories on a stage. Riders usually have breakfast, a snack on the way to the start, then eat and drink during the race. They have two recovery meals after the finish, dinner at the team hotel and then a late-night snack. Nutritionists study the power data of riders, and their actual and perceived efforts, to determine what their individual calorie intake should be.
The Physio
Matt Rabin
‘Changing pain, improving function, make riders feel more comfortable on the bike – that’s the bare minimum.’
British chiropractor Matt Rabin has worked in cycling for more than a decade.
He is head of physical therapy at EF Education-Nippo and has been with the team since 2008, ensuring some of the biggest names in the sport are in their best condition to compete.
He draws on his medical expertise to address the common and individual complaints of riders, and on any given day at the Tour, he may see one person or attend to the entire eight-man team.
“I work on the road as one of the chiropractors and run the physical therapy side of the team, which consists of about five chiropractors at different races… Looking at injury management across the team over the course of the season is the best way to look at that,” he says.
“It’s making sure that between races and on races, the guys are in as best nick as they can be.
“I don’t want to pigeonhole myself and say they’re coming in and I’m just cracking their backs because yes, I do some manipulation, but you might do some soft tissue work, such as active release, some peripheral manipulation, some work on the foot, some exercises. It sounds vague because it’s quite non-specific and very rider-centered.”
Knee and achilles pain, problems descending, feeling twisted or as if they’re pedaling squares (floundering), are some of the common complaints Rabin will treat in a race where riders arrive in peak condition and for 21 consecutive days must keep their best shape to succeed, and if not succeed then survive.
Matt Rabin at work in his role as head of physical therapy for EF Education-Nippo
No task is too big or small for the medical expert. During the stage, when he can’t physically treat his patients, he may help the team in another way, such as by handing bottles and food to riders in designated feed zones.
At breakfast, a rider might yell out for a treatment ahead of the stage, on the team bus, or back at the hotel after the race has finished, which is where Rabin’s work really starts. During evening treatments, Rabin is also somewhat of a confidante.
“For me, your hands-on skills as a chiropractor trying to change pain, improve function, make them feel more comfortable on the bike – it’s an absolute bare minimum requirement to be able to do that,” Rabin says.
“But then it’s having the soft skills to communicate with them, to get them to really open up about what their problem is, and the Tour de France is a long race – I remember many times over the years, you’re literally trying to keep that rider’s head on for three weeks because his head is gone, or he’s annoyed about something … There’s all sorts of stuff that happens. It’s not really chiropractic.”
Rabin has a finger on the pulse of the team, communicating with everyone from cyclists to doctors, sports directors, soigneurs, mechanics and management. He is a team player.“Instances where riders have had issues that you’ve fixed and they’ve won stages or done well, you’ve helped them to keep it together in order to get a result in the end. That’s the rewarding bit,” he says.
The Journalist
Sophie Smith
‘People appear to age 10 years in the space of days, working in an environment of unparalleled stress under the intense gaze of a global audience’
The Covid-19 pandemic may irreversibly change how the international media operates at the Tour de France.
Prior to the global crisis, which has reduced access and physically distanced journalists from riders, there were few limitations in terms of proximity.
The second the peloton crossed the finish line of a stage it was a free-for-all. Governance came down to alliances between colleagues-come-rivals, professional relationships you’d built with riders and team communication officers over the years, sometimes drawing on your nationality or who you worked for.
I’m one of few females in the press pack but “ladies first” does not apply to the Tour. If you haven’t managed to position yourself at the front of a 100-strong moving rugby maul of sweaty and competitive reporters, an ally may let you in.
I’ve had more space on the Tube at peak rush hour than when I’m reporting in the elements from the Tour. Arms hyper-extended to inch the microphone closer to a rider, I’ve balanced not on my feet but precariously on people leaning on and over me.
The glamorous images and inspiring stories you see and read of the Tour don’t always accurately portray what the race is really like. There is a price you pay to experience the pain and privilege of working there, and it elicits the heart-warming best of people from around the world, as well as the worst. If you stay at the Tour for the duration – three consecutive weeks of work and four if you include the media preamble in the lead-up to the Grand Depart – you don’t see it. But you do if you travel in and out. People appear to have physically aged 10 years in the space of days, working in an environment of unparalleled stress under the intense gaze of a global audience, while travelling thousands of kilometres, staying at a different hotel, B&B – and one time a nunnery – virtually every night.
What happens past the finish line in the immediate aftermath of a stage is perhaps the truest representation of the Tour. There is a ridiculous element to it – adult journalists literally chasing after adult riders to get even a 60-second grab that could make headlines.
It’s like being in the perfect storm. Sometimes you’re whirring around and other times you find the eye of it, everything slows, and you truly appreciate the extent to which athletes exert themselves in the race. You see riders hobbling like broken men to their team bus, nursing broken bones, or crimson red road rash that makes you wince. You see them cough and then gasp for air as they try to recover from intense exertion, their jerseys stained with salty perspiration. You see them elated, hugging teammates, even crying after a win. And you can see them snap when a plan doesn’t come together, and the pressure gets too much.
There is no down time. You wake up and read headlines, then travel to the stage start, interview riders and sports directors at the buses on the way to sign on, at sign-on and at the start line. Then you drive to the finish on a designated route and repeat. Print journalists file from boats, basketball stadiums, conference centres and town halls converted into press rooms, from ancient villages and from Paris. TV reporters work from a broadcast compound of makeshift studios, trucks and loose cables, which is assembled and packed up at the finish every day.
I leave Paris bruised and needing to sleep for a week when the Tour finishes, but I’m addicted and hope that, in the wake of the pandemic, it doesn’t change for good.
The tour in numbers
The Tour consists of 21 stages, two rest days and is held over 23 days. It’s like competing and being at 21 consecutive football grand finals. The route changes every year, but the riders from the 22 eight-man teams are estimated to cycle a total of about 3,500km in front of, pre-pandemic, 10-12 million roadside spectators, monitored by thousands of security and law enforcement officials.
The odometer readings of team bus drivers, sports directors, media and staff who follow the race in accredited vehicles, can figure around 5,500km. According to race organiser ASO, 4,500 people were involved in the 2018 edition and the company booked more than 500 hotels. If lucky, those at the race will sleep in the same hotel or Airbnb for two or maybe three nights in a row, but it’s not uncommon to change hotels every day. Accommodation can vary in quality from five star to Formule 1. Figures show that in 2017, 2,000 journalists and photographers from 600 different media outlets reported on the race that was broadcast in 190 countries.
Photo credits: Noa Arnon, Wout Beel, Getty Images, EF Education/Nippo, Gruber Images