The averages are panicking on the Grande Boucle. The peloton will have engulfed this Tour 2022 at breakneck speed. An average speed of over 42 km/h since the start in Copenhagen, Denmark, unheard of. And it is not the 40.7 km time trial between Lacapelle-Marival and Rocamadour on Saturday July 23 or the arrival stage in Paris on Sunday that will bring down the average for this TGV.
After 19 stages, hearing on Radio Tour the figure of 51.8 km devoured in the first hour of the race no longer surprises anyone. At each stage, the same scenario and the melody is repeated for the announcer of the internal Grande Boucle radio broadcast in all the vehicles following the peloton. At each stage, a crazy pace from the start, a battle rages to win the “right” breakaway. The runners themselves can’t believe it. Pierre Latour, from TotalEnergies, recognizes this: “Sometimes it hurts. Over 60 kilometers before the first pass, it doesn’t disconnect, there’s no breakaway and suddenly, you see that it’s going fast, you always tell yourself that the next day it will be better.“
The calm stages, it does not exist on the #TDF2022 ! The peloton drove fast, very fast, towards Cahors, and @LAPORTEChristop surprised the sprinters to give France its first stage victory in this Tour.
⏩ Here is the summary of step 19 pic.twitter.com/vHifDhUOHJ
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 22, 2022
Except what this year, all them days with look alike at and rhythm frantic. That what that is the profile of step. Cyril Lemoine, the rider of the B&B Hôtels-KTM team, the oldest Frenchman on the Tour, will complete his 8th Tour. “Fit’s not because I’m getting older that I’m less well, because physically I feel good. But this year, I found that there, it was going really very fast“, recognizes the Frenchman.
“Never any downtime, it’s really a tough Tour this year”.
Cyril Lemoine, rider of the B&B Hôtels-KTM team
franceinfo
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The leaders of the peloton alone increased the average and in particular the yellow train of the Jumbo-Visma, always ahead. Whether it’s the yellow jersey and future winner Jonas Vingegaard or the green jersey Wout Van Aert, they panicked the counters, on the flat as in the passes.
However, these speeds are linked to many other parameters. “We still had a favorable wind very often“, analyzes the cycling consultant of franceinfo, Jean-François Bernard. “Then the bikes have an incredible improvementhe explains. It feels like it rolls on its own, when you still have to pedal.“The other argument to explain this speed record lies in the “surfacing” of the road and the “configuration of the route”, according to Jean-François Bernard. This set of factors means that we “reaches quite extraordinary speeds“.
So far, only the 2005 Tour had flirted with the 42 km/h mark, with an average of 41.654 km/h for Lance Armstrong, since downgraded for doping.
