84. PERFORMANCE DECREASE DURING A GRAND TOUR: THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOVERY CAPACITY

Photo by Stefan Scheepmaker on Unsplash

“His/her performance has decreased a lot compared to the first week.”

“In the third week he/her can overcome his/her opponents because he/her has a better recovery capacity.”

How many times did we hear journalists, sport directors, coaches and TV commentators speaking in this terms about a cyclist during a three-weeks grand tour (Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana)?

At the Giro d’Italia 2025, the canadian Derek Gee (who finished 4th in the final general classification), during stage 20 climbed the decisive Colle delle Finestre (18.5 km at 9.2%) in 1h02’08’’ pushing 407 Watt average (source: Strava), that considering his weight on procyclingstats.com (72kg) means 5.7 W/Kg . However, in a previous KisW Research Note, where we reported the magic W and W/Kg numbers to excel in male professional road cycling, we saw that 5.9 W/Kg are needed to be among the best 10% climber for a 1 hour duration effort. While Gee is now surely among the best 10% climbers of pro cycling peloton (and it was also on that specific performance on Finestre), this benchmark is higher than his performance (5.9 vs 5.7 W/Kg). How to explain such a difference? Quite simple: the published magic data to be in the top 10% were taken from a retrospective analysis which considered the maximal mean power outputs recorded over different duration and so, it is very likely that the magic numbers reported were recorded in a fresh and rested state. On the other hand, Gee’s performance on Finestre was recorded after 3 weeks of hard racing. It is quite intuitive that physical performance is going decrease during a stage race. But how much? Does the decrease differ between different athletes?

How much physical performance decrease during a 3 weeks grand tour?

How much is the variability in this performance decrease between different athletes?

A study published by Rodriguez-Marroyo and Colleagues (University of León, Spain) on International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance in 2017 tried to answer these questions. (1)

This can help to understand how much recovery capacity impact performance during a 3 weeks stage race.

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WHAT DID THEY DO?

• 7 Professional male cyclists (Professional Team) were tested with a laboratory incremental test two times:

  1. One week before starting the Vuelta a España,

  2. One day after finishing the Vuelta a España.

  The goal was to to see the physiological and performance changes induced by a 3 weeks grand tour (i.e. differences between first and third week).