Athletes participating in The Tour de France this summer had to deal with record-breaking temperatures. The Tour de France is a 3 week long cycling competition held in July. Competitors race over 2,000 miles across France and participate in 21 different stages, which take them across some of France’s most stunning landscapes.
Temperatures across France were much higher than the average July high. As the cyclists closed in on the finish line on Sunday, July 24th, they were forced to battle soaring temperatures well past the 90’s.
Surfaces that are made from asphalt or concrete can be quickly affected by heat. Roads and runways, which are typically made of those materials, begin to soften when exposed to heat. Due to the extremely high temperatures, organizers had to spray water on the roads to keep them from “melting.”
French cyclist Romain Bardet who was riding in his 10th Tour de France told reporters that this year’s heat was unlike anything he’d experienced. “Sometimes you could really feel it on the tarmac. At the start I said, yeah, it’s warm, it’s pretty okay,” he said to French television network Eurosport. “But when we reached downhill it was like, whoa! Crazy hot!”
A historic heat wave with temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit was the cause for the extreme heat. France has seen three times more heat waves in the past 30 years compared to the forty years before that, which is mostly due to climate change and global warming.
Stephen S. Cheung is a competitive cyclist and professor of kinesiology at Brock University, where he researches the effects of environmental stress. He said that when the air temperature is higher than your body temperature, “there is no capacity to lose heat to the environment through blood flow going out to your skin.” Although the body can cool itself through sweating, he said, when the weather is both hot and humid, “it becomes a challenge.”
Due to the intense heat, teams in the Tour de France borrowed strategies from competitions in other hot areas. Cyclists spent as much time in the shade as possible and wore ice pack vests to cool them down before racing. During the race, athletes maximized the cooling power of the wind by wearing jerseys and helmets that allowed the air flow freely. Teams often used ice baths to bring their body temperatures down after a race.
Although cyclists and their teams are doing everything they can to stay primed for competition, eventually the heat will become too extreme and dangerous to race in.
Matthieu Sorel, a climate change expert at France’s meteorological service who was among the spectators watching the race in the Pyrenees this week said “we’re going to have to change the way the Tour de France is designed in the next few years. It won’t be possible to ride with such temperatures during the afternoon.”
Sources:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1658688416418x581202027002294000/Climate%20change%20is%20making%20the%20Tour%20de%20France%20more%20extreme%20-%20The%20Washington%20Post.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/62167559
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/18769169#:~:text=The%20Tour%20de%20France%20is,starts%20in%20a%20foreign%20country.
Temperatures across France were much higher than the average July high. As the cyclists closed in on the finish line on Sunday, July 24th, they were forced to battle soaring temperatures well past the 90’s.
Surfaces that are made from asphalt or concrete can be quickly affected by heat. Roads and runways, which are typically made of those materials, begin to soften when exposed to heat. Due to the extremely high temperatures, organizers had to spray water on the roads to keep them from “melting.”
French cyclist Romain Bardet who was riding in his 10th Tour de France told reporters that this year’s heat was unlike anything he’d experienced. “Sometimes you could really feel it on the tarmac. At the start I said, yeah, it’s warm, it’s pretty okay,” he said to French television network Eurosport. “But when we reached downhill it was like, whoa! Crazy hot!”
A historic heat wave with temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit was the cause for the extreme heat. France has seen three times more heat waves in the past 30 years compared to the forty years before that, which is mostly due to climate change and global warming.
Stephen S. Cheung is a competitive cyclist and professor of kinesiology at Brock University, where he researches the effects of environmental stress. He said that when the air temperature is higher than your body temperature, “there is no capacity to lose heat to the environment through blood flow going out to your skin.” Although the body can cool itself through sweating, he said, when the weather is both hot and humid, “it becomes a challenge.”
Due to the intense heat, teams in the Tour de France borrowed strategies from competitions in other hot areas. Cyclists spent as much time in the shade as possible and wore ice pack vests to cool them down before racing. During the race, athletes maximized the cooling power of the wind by wearing jerseys and helmets that allowed the air flow freely. Teams often used ice baths to bring their body temperatures down after a race.
Although cyclists and their teams are doing everything they can to stay primed for competition, eventually the heat will become too extreme and dangerous to race in.
Matthieu Sorel, a climate change expert at France’s meteorological service who was among the spectators watching the race in the Pyrenees this week said “we’re going to have to change the way the Tour de France is designed in the next few years. It won’t be possible to ride with such temperatures during the afternoon.”
Sources:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1658688416418x581202027002294000/Climate%20change%20is%20making%20the%20Tour%20de%20France%20more%20extreme%20-%20The%20Washington%20Post.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/62167559
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/18769169#:~:text=The%20Tour%20de%20France%20is,starts%20in%20a%20foreign%20country.
