Things are hotting up at the Four de France. It’s going to be a warm day but there’s the trend of rising temperatures to consider.
Hot days are the Tour aren’t new but there are more of them. The Tour organisers keep a log of the temperatures each day on the course and they’ve been rising, this century their measured air temperature is up 1.7°C and the road temperature is up 10°C. A wealth of research and public data only backs this up of course.
The sport is trying to adapt. The UCI governing body now has a dedicated High Temperature protocol to build on its Extreme Weather protocol that uses a wet bulb measurement to account for temperature, humidity, windspeed and solar radiation, they also factor in rider acclimation. Once the threshold of 28°C (again wet bulb, not the air temperature) is surpassed then officials can meet to discuss a range of options from allowing more feed zones all the way to cancelling the race. Today’s stage to Pau won’t be as hot in terms of absolute temperature but elevated humidity raises the wet bulb measurement.
Teams also have their own procedures to mitigate. Heat training has become standard, it helps with adaptation but also elevates blood levels, a boost to Vo2Max. In recent years riders have been trying hot baths, saunas and indoor training sessions with their winter kit on to provoke a controlled form of heat stress (don’t try this at home).
Teams have a lot of work on hot days with the logistics of ice packs to chilled energy gels. Each squad can get through 150-200 bidons a stage, most of which is water for pouring rather than drinking, and more is handed up from the neutral service and the moto fraicheur. The TotalEnergies team doctor says his team can use 80-100kg of ice a day at the moment, an industrial ice maker has become essential kit for pro teams. Behind the scenes there are calls to have an extra car per team so that they can cover their riders better.
France had a moderate heatwave in May, a severe one in June and is now facing a third episode as the graphic from Météo-France above shows. Which brings us from weather to climate. Warming is a process, not an event. What is hot today could well be hotter in the future.
Faced with this infernal problem, what to do? One suggestion is to move the race to a cooler month. Only a huge factor behind the race’s success is it coincides with summer holidays in France, it’s a bike race for some but a socio-cultural phenomenon for millions too. If the Tour ever moves dates it’ll be because schools and factories have changed their patterns too. Besides climatologists say May or September won’t be immune from heatwaves either.
Rather than change month, how the hour? The race could start and finish earlier rather than taking place during the hottest hours of day. But an hour or two won’t make a big difference, we’re talking about starting at 8.00am to be done by lunchtime. But the Tour is cherished for its massive audiences and the further away goes from prime time, the lower and less valuable the audience, something the organisers and the teams probably don’t want; Visma boss Richard Plugge said words to this effect this week.
There are other potential measures, more stages could be held in Brittany which is cooler; but the spectacle would not be as good on the flatter roads. The organisers now rate climbs for their shade but this is marginal. The race is caught in its own commercial trap and these trade-offs won’t be confronted yet.
The wider issue here is a society trying to adapt to climate change and the Tour is just a tiny reflection of this. At the Tour and beyond there are arguments over what to do but few decisions. The problem is known but seems unable to be confronted.
Teams driving dedicated ice trucks around France to deal with the heat is not without irony. The Tour is a polluter, but possibly not in the way you think. There are 2,400 vehicles including helicopters and publicity caravan vehicles that are anything but fuel efficient. In an audit from 2021 the race produced 22,000 tons of CO2 for the whole race from team cars to publicity caravan, equivalent to 80 flights from Paris to Tokyo.
However that’s only a fraction of the Tour’s wider CO2 footprint. 94% of the event’s total emissions (Scope 3 in the jargon) come not from the caravan or team car convoy but spectators. Past estimates of the crowd vary from 10-12 million, now there’s talk of 15 million. Less impactful but still measurable is watching an internet stream as this requires electricity. It’s an example of big numbers: millions of people doing something small can have a greater effect than one organisation doing something big.
Presumably it’s not on Eurosport and other broadcasters outside of France but watch FranceTV’s coverage and the ad breaks feature clips encouraging people to travel to the Tour by bike – “if I lived in France, I’d definitely go bikepacking” says Matteo Jorgenson to camera – and the race has secure bike parks at the start and finish. There are sometimes special train services and discount rail tickets. French fans are given advice and encouragement to car share too. It’s worthy to try and move this 94% figure but largely beyond the race’s sphere.
Conclusion
France is heating up and the Tour’s own temperature logs show this. If trends continue the race will go from dealing with a challenge to facing a threat. But there are no easy answers, the Tour is a victim of its success. July remains sacred for now given school calendars and working patterns. The race seems unlikely to change if wider society doesn’t. The Tour is a microcosm. There’s big problem coming and nobody can work out what to do.
A funny topic for someone who wants to avoid too much politics on the blog! 😉
Anyway, I’ll try to avoid saying anything too incendiary. My guess is that for the foreseeable future we will see more adaptation rather than radical behavioral changes, so route and time changes instead of mandatory electric vehicles etc. The first thing I thought of was this year’s avoidance of the northwest, which would tend to make higher average temperatures more likely. Sadly for the area we’ve just been discussing (Carcassone-adjacent), this doesn’t bode well, as evidenced by the heat map shown above.
The map of the temperatures today shows the heat reaching a long way north; tomorrow’s map has just been published and the heat covers even more of the north. Still, on average Brittany should be cooler than the south but it’s likely to be a persistent issue and not just along for transition stages between the Alps and Pyrenees.
It’s not ‘political’ – the climate catastrophe is scientific fact.
+1. Isn’t it infuriating how science gets politicised? Once an issue becomes a matter of tribal identity, any objectivity goes out the window.
I’m in the Loire now. The 38C temperatures aren’t so bad given the lack of humidity, and I enjoyed a cool ride this morning (albeit starting at 7am, and on very flat roads!).
I’ve read elsewhere that French schools may have to start closing for summer earlier in the year, which might help any rescheduling for the TdF
I wouldn’t worry about emissions from spectators, if they weren’t having a day out at the Tour they’d be having a day out somewhere else. Fortunately 2003 isn’t repeating as often as feared: heatwaves seem to be at least as intense but less prolonged.
Anyway, back to agentic coding on my 128GB RAM computer.
Dear Anonymous, your statement abou heatwaves being less prolonged is just not scientific fact. The long-term trend is clear: as the climate warms, heatwaves in France are becoming more frequent, hotter, longer-lasting. Your suggestion that 2003 not repeating as often us also not correct. https://meteofrance.com/actualites-et-dossiers/actualites/canicule-de-juin-2026-un-episode-historique
Not disputing the warming theme, but 2003 was a remarkable omega block.
I see you’re back Larry
I’m a regular visitor to the Tour and specifically the Pyrenees. For the first time I pulled the plug half way up Hautacam today. In the words of Sean Kelly it was “infernal” and being the wrong side of 50 it wasn’t worth the risk.
Gorgous climb, i did it in the cool morning fog
An easy solution would be, Giro in April, Le Tour in June and the Vuelta in September,
The Tour is a mass event, not having the crowds is huge thing and it’s linked to tourism, family holidays etc. Breaking this link really isn’t easy.
Giro in April sadly wont work as practically no mountain passes open, its often touch and go as it is. Might have to move more races to the autumn, Giro in September?
It’s really not an easy solution at all, or even a solution – many Italian mountain roads are closed due to snow in April and as Mr Ring has already pointed out the Tour is closely connected to school holidays and work patterns. The Vuelta already goes into mid September.
The Giro wants to start one or two weeks later. Put the Tour on a spot at the end of august and the Vuelta as the end of the world tour at the end of October. You can even establish a new 14 stages race in July in Scandinavia or Canada for classic riders. Would be good to have a bigger stage race not for the climbers, but with a lot of crosswinds and hilly stages. Scandinavia and Canada would allow good times for live broadcast in the evening.
Riding through the hottest part of the day sounds like the accountant’s solution.
He/she should also take a look at the convoy where tuk tuks might be the answer.
Just move it all back to gravel roads, in the woods. Much cooler.
Hard on the support circus. But you could always make them take their own spares and require them to fix mechanicals themselves.
The support is not the problem. The caravan is. The roads need to be big enough for trucks throwing free goodies at the crowd.
Thank you for the piece which was informative. I suspect that, as in general life, the Tour will do nothing until its 28C wet bulb EVERY day in July and people are literally dropping like flies by the roadside. When the audience is dying it might make the moneymakers take notice.
I have a special interest in this subject because as a teenager I suffered from heatstroke on one particularly fateful day and how it felt has never ever left me. Trust me that you never want to feel like that. Its just about the worst a human being can feel.
I think you’ve blogged on this in the past but as I understand, the crowds come as much for the caravan as the race. So reducing/removing the caravan would impact crowds which would change the atmosphere and tv pictures that are part of the usp? But as temperature rises will the crowds turn out to stand exposed to the heat for hours, if they don’t then moving the race to different hour to month becomes a reason to get spectators back
I remember going to see the Tour and arriving in time for the race many people were walking away from the course. Was the race well ahead of schedule, had I missed an amazing stage? No, many people come primarily for the caravan. Recent market research/polling says it’s one in two which is high. Plenty do stay for the race but if the costs/benefits change then the crowds could be impacted.
Several people required medical help at the Tour yesterday according to the local paper, including one policeman. But with hundreds of thousands of people there’s always a share of incidents etc.
It does depend on the stage ( and where you are on it) how much the caravan and the ‘race’. ( ie the riders) contribute in terms of enjoyment, especially for people who are less committed than most of the readers of this blog. The caravan can take half an hour to pass your station, the peleton can go past in a minute or two. So the caravan makes it more of a ‘day out’. Plus of course, the caravan with its free stuff ( and the excitement of scrambling for it) appeals to a wider demographic than the the people who line the roads in the mountains.
The repeated circuits which seem to be happening more seem to me to be a great idea for lengthening the race observation ( and perhaps making spectator transport and catering at least more concentrated ). We trekked off to an ITT once because you actually saw individual riders over a long period of time .
But I am writing as someone who still uses the cow key ring from 2013 for the garage key……
I noticed in the last 2 days more people sheltering under trees or standing on the shady sides of streets to watch the race.
Starting early in the day is the logical solution for all concerned, competitors, spectators, staff etc. It’s the same at the TDU in Adelaide’s summer. Given the way people consume media nowadays, the prime time TV argument is losing its validity.
People consume alot via on-demand but not live sport, it’s a valuable draw. FranceTV would normally put a dubbed 1990s German detective program on TV on a Tuesday afternoon and get microscopic audiences. But put the Tour on, or the Olympics etc, and it does some of its best ratings all year.
However 5.30pm finishes are the edge of prime time. A 7.45pm finish would generate bigger audiences. So I wonder how much the audience would shrink by going from 5pm to 1pm?
The watching trends are clear and it’s well worth get prepared for the foreseeable future, but at the same time one shouldn’t fall into novelty bias. The full process might develop across some 20 years at least, so when and if you act now, you must be sure to be able to replace or reincorporate the spectators you “sacrifice” through change, or it’s just going to be a net loss. In Italy the shift in management of TV exposure had basketball and rugby falling from very popular sports, despite not being much “traditional” in Italy, to a quite modest relevance; partly as a consequence rather than as a cause (according to timeline of events), they went down to sporting mediocrity from once being closer to the top 7-8 world nations.
Magnifico!
Actually, Italy are in the top 10 nations for both men’s and women’s rugby, having this year beaten England’s men’s team for the first time ever.
I’m probably among those who have disconnected too soon… I remember an era of decent results at the beginning of the 10s and a previous decade of promising progresse, then a series of dark years from 2015 to the whole covid period. I have lost track of the performance in the last 2-3 seasons. Was beating England a lucky one off or are they actually getting competitive again at that scale?
Only marginally cooler, but I could imagine more stages being later, rather than earlier. Riding from 4pm to 8-9pm might give the Tour a little more breathing space for the years ahead.