At the top level of bike racing, fuelling properly and at the right time is vital.
Riders at top-level races such as the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, and the Giro d’Italia take on an endless number of water bottles, energy drinks, snacks, and energy bars day after day in order to perform at their best and keep energy levels up for brutal mountain ascents and fast finishes.
Countless hours go into the science and preparation behind keeping the pro peloton fully fuelled during the WorldTour season. Success in this field is easily overlooked – as when riders fuel properly everything simply seems to go to plan and we don’t dwell on when and how they took their final gel. But sometimes even the best laid plans can go awry, and nutrition is no exception.
Perhaps the best proof of how critical proper fuelling is to a race strategy is when teams and riders fall foul of regulations on feeding – usually in place to prevent team cars from mingling with the peloton late on in races and to ensure finales are all about the racing. Remarkably, some teams will risk time penalties to ensure that riders get that critical gel or food on board at the right moment.
But as damaging as those penalties may be, they can pale in comparison with the time losses when a rider or team completely miscalculate fuelling strategies or simply forget to eat during a hectic, fast-paced race.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a short list of some of the most famous fuelling mishaps of recent years. It’s not comprehensive, of course, and there are plenty of occasions of hunger knocks striking the best of the best littering cycling history
In recent years, we’ve witnessed riders fall out of contention at vital moments after hitting the wall due to hunger and riders even losing stage races, or the Tour de France yellow jersey thanks to missed meals or illegal late feeds.
Read on for our list of five times fuelling changed the race.
Tom Pidcock at the 2022 Tour of Flanders
The most recent rider to suffer a high-profile hunger knock during a race was Tom Pidcock in the Tour of Flanders just last month.
The Ineos Grenadiers leader was among the top favourites at the race heading into the cobbled Monument, even if he lay behind the ‘big three’ of Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, and Wout van Aert in the pecking order.
However, he wasn’t able to have any effect in the final…
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