The Tour de France, also possible for mortals? A comparison of a recreational and a World Tour cyclist.

Cycling Grand Tours are arguably the epitome of strenuous endurance exercise, and they have been reported to represent the ceiling of sustained energy expenditure for humans. It remains unknown, however, if an average recreational athlete could endure such an event. Through the analysis of power output (PO), we compared data from the 2023 Tour de France (21 stages, total distance=3,405 km, elevation gain=51,815 m) in a recreational (male, age=58 years; height=191 cm; body mass=96.1 kg; estimated maximum oxygen uptake=45.4 ml∙kg