Because the Tour de France is not only on a bicycle, the runners are entitled each morning and each evening to long hours of bus to make the transfers between the stages. A data that weighs on recovery and forces the teams to adapt.
This is called behind the scenes “the other Tour de France”. The one that the general public does not see and barely suspects. Whoever is not done by bike but is counted in dozens of bus hours. Whoever uses organisms a little more wrung out by the July washing machine. Each morning and each evening, runners must dial with endless transfers. These long mileage journeys to swallow to reach the cities of departure and arrival of the stages.
More than 3,000km of transfers
In this little game, the 2025 cuvée explodes all records. An example: the journey between Châteauroux, where the peloton will arrive this Sunday evening, and Ennezat, where he will leave the next day, will flirt with the 200km. Better still, 350 terminals will be on the program between Mont-Dore, land of arrival of the 10th stage in Auvergne on Monday, and Toulouse, where the tour will take over on Wednesday after a day of rest. In total, more than 3,000 km of transfers are expected. Almost as much as the size of the layout offered to the Lille runners at the Champs-Élysées: 3,338.8km.
“This is also what makes all the difficulty of the Tour,” observes Cédric Vasseur, manager of the Cofidis team, at the microphone of RMC Sport. “Beyond the stages that are intense, all these transfers weigh between departures and arrivals, between hotels. But it allows you to make a natural elimination. When we start on the Tour, we know the number of kilometers of transfers that there is to do. It obliges runners not to be trapped by all the stresses and to remain concentrated. We must not know.
A longer transfer in the evening is a routine possibly turned upside down. Between cold recovery baths, massages, care and dinner, everything must enter a limited time. A choreography not always easy to master while no city arrived is a city departure the next day on this tower. And if the highest lotis can sometimes be entitled to a quick tour by plane to avoid an organizational puzzle, the Pullman remains the essential of the summer. A real itinerant dressing room.
“The one who wins the tour is also the one who perfectly manages his recovery”
“We have to really optimize recovery on the bus this year. If we win a few minutes every day, it can represent a day at the end of the Tour. It is super important. Over three weeks, the one who wins, it is the one who, in addition to being strong, manages his recovery perfectly. We know that it is complicated for the organizers of large towers to reduce transfers, all cities are not set up to welcome this kind of race, so you have to adapt, testifies Stéphane Goubert, sports director of Groupama-FDJ.
At Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, too, the time is for adaptation. “It changes a lot, it feels like it’s always more every year,” notes Nicolas Guillé, sports director of Savoyard training. “When you arrive at the hotel at 8:30 p.m., the evenings are short and you have to be ultra efficient. The idea is already that runners can recover as much as possible on the bus. The timings are tight. It’s the same thing for everyone, but it becomes complicated. Fortunately, you have provided.” A cloud of assistants, physiotherapists and osteos very caring for runners who, at least publicly, do not intend to complain.
“It is sure that it plays on recovery. It is not ideal but it is the same for everyone,” relativizes the Norman and current 3rd in the general classification, Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B & B Hotels). “Having big transfers every day every day means arriving at the hotel later, finishing the massage later, and so on. But you have to do with it. We are lucky to have a lot of comfort in the buses and what it takes to recover. We have good armchairs, it looks almost like an apartment!”, Smiles Bruno Armirail (Decathlon Ag2r La Mondiale), fourth in the time.
“It’s part of our job”
Passed professional in 2012, Arnaud Démare (Arkéa-B & B Hotels) also begins “to be used” to these trips that do not end and from these shortened nights. “I even knew Giro where we left in the morning at 7 am, because we had three hours of transfer before departure! It is part of our job,” he said, when Anthony Turgis, committed to his eighth round, recognizes that these transfers “ask for a good organization” and a good dose of patience.
“The runners who arrive the first at the end of the stages try to go by car to save time and spin at the hotel,” said the Totalenergies punker, a stage winner last year on the white paths. “But we are also well on the bus, we can do cryotherapy and pressure on the legs to evacuate all the ‘accumulated’ waste ‘. These transfers, it brings even more fatigue, but we are all on the same equal footing.” A principle of equity dear to the organizer of the Tour, ASO, who sticks to a specific specifications with regard in particular the distribution of hotels. No question of promoting one team more than another, everyone is housed in the same brand on the Tour.