Why Is the Tour de France Getting Faster Each Year?
I have my eyes focused on the Tour de France as intensely as a paparazzo on royal cars. Each year I tell myself I should get out and enjoy the sun instead of getting irritated that it overexposes half of my 40 inch plasma. This year is no exception.
Before the tour began this year I started wondering about the history of the race. I was especially puzzled about the performance of the riders. As you can see in the graph since 1928 the numbers of stages has been set around 20-23 with an average distance about 4300 km.
But why has the speed increased continually though out the history of the race?
Going faster and faster is probably not a special feature in pro cycling considering that all most every other type of sport develops in that direction. However, I found it interesting to look into what reasons was most likely to affect the speed.
Source: http://bikeraceinfo.com/tdf/tdfstats.html
Training – Probably Not
One possibility is that training has become more and more efficient. It sounds plausible that training today is a totally different matter than cruising around the roads of 19th century Europe without the luxury of mechanics to fix your bike and soigneurs to do all the not so glamour’s suff as USA TODAY notes.
When German Sprinter Eric Zabel was on top of his carrier he would go for five long training passes at about 200-260 km and in a week plus two short ones at about 100km. That equals just about 40.000 km per year. However, the amount of training has not increased significantly during the last 20-30 years.
A former pro rider told me that his training diaries from around 1990 do not look all that different from today’s pros. The simple explanation being that bike racing was one of the earliest sports to have a professional environment. Thus biking pros have a tradition of hard training from way back in history.
Salary – Certainly Not
Another tradition is that pro riders pay level is just above professional bowlers. As a newbie on the Pro Tour your minimum income is merely $38,000. Not many debutants in top league football would consider signing a contract that non-lucrative. Especially the number of hours on the road taken into consideration.
As noted by the Wall Street Journal quoting Jonathan Vaughters, the director of the American team Garmin-Chipotle, states the somewhat obvious - being a pro rider “is not the best financial decision you can make with your life”.
Doping – Hard to Say
The question about doping has been an invasive species to bike racing like Vuvuzelas to football. The harm in both cases is not easy to calculate. However, in the case of EPO as one of the main drugs in the spotlight there have been numerous tests that document its effect on performance.
Running 10 km on an EPO cure will increase endurance about 8% roughly cutting 1 minute of the total time. In terms of biking a British experiment concluded that “EPO use improved time to exhaustion by an enormous 54% within 4 weeks”. Facing 4300 kms on the roads of France is 54% increased endurance the kind of science that appeals in the ears of bike riders.
Equipment – Most Probably
In an article from 2009 the magazine ProCycling tried to compare a vintage 1983 Pinarello bike to a modern 2009 Laperre. Maybe not totally surprising the Pinarello wasn’t rated too well when it came to comfort and handling. In fact it did not match up with its modern relative on most parameters.
The weight difference was 2.5 kg., the old Pinarello was difficult to handle and didn’t feel safe on descents. It terms of speed the conclusion was that the difference in equipment would count for an increase in speed in about “3-5 kph”.
The ability to go faster on mountain stages is something that cannot be disregarded as a major improvement. “Having 22 gears going up and down hill instead of 10 – or even less – has a tremendous effect on overall speed in a bike races”, my former pro riding friend told me. Be sure to check out this little experiment from Alpe d'Huez for a more in-depth look at what weight means for getting faster up the hills.
Around 1990 gears and hand brakes were integrated and the technology keeps improving the rider’s equipment. Just have a look at some of the latest innovative features of the gear shifting systems.
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