Tour de France: How Professional Cycling Teams Eat and Cook on the Road

A few weeks before the last Tour de France, amid the busy schedule of eight riders and more than a dozen support vehicles travelling across the country, Owen Blandy, the Tour’s executive chef, received word of a problem at one of the hotels.

For some inexplicable reason, Blandy was told he was not allowed to use the hotel kitchen or even cook in his own food truck on the premises.

If he wished, he could supervise the hotel chef as he prepared the dishes, but he was not allowed to do so from the kitchen.

For a man charged with nurturing a professional cycling team during the most important race on the sport’s calendar, it wasn’t ideal news. But he wasn’t fazed at all.

“It was fine,” Blandy shrugs. “I just had a few challenging days before I moved into my own kitchen.”

Blandy’s personal experience of more than a year on the road at major races has taught him to go with the flow.

“In cycling there are never perfect working conditions, so you always have to adapt and be flexible,” he says.

If a hotel forbids the chef to cook, then so be it.

Not long ago, professional cycling’s approach to fuel supply was remarkably simple.

The options available to the riders hardly extended beyond a monotonous menu of pasta, rice or whatever the hotel kitchen was serving that evening.

Today it’s a different story altogether, with vast sums of money being spent on purpose-built food trucks, personalised nutrition apps and precisely planned meal regimes, all in the name of improving performance.

For the nutritionists and chefs tasked with providing their team’s riders with sufficient energy during the 3,500-kilometer journey in the coming weeks, they face two dilemmas: what food to prepare and how to do it in an environment that is constantly changing.

The answers are obtained through a year-round process that begins as early as December, during the preparation for the season.

As riders shape their bodies and prepare for the many races ahead, number crunchers eagerly collect data to better understand their nutritional needs.

“We know their individual bodies, their metabolism, how many calories they burn at rest and exactly what they do during training, how intensively, for how long and how many calories they burn,” says Martijn Redegeld, head of nutrition at Visma-Lease a Bike.

“Heart rate plays a role. We measure that after every training ride. And at certain times during the season we test lactate measurements and respiration measurements in the lab to develop a good profile of each rider.”

Visma-Lease a Bike is one of three teams (alongside UAE Team Emirates and Ineos Grenadiers) with a budget that dwarfs all others. The company aims to be at the forefront of nutritional advancements.

Collaborations with universities should ensure that they are well informed about developments in the field, “in order to maintain an advantage over other teams,” says Redegeld.

Cyclists burn an average of 6,000 calories per day during the Tour (about three times more than an adult at rest). Visma-Lease a Bike has even started using artificial intelligence to determine exactly how much and what kind of food each individual cyclist should consume.

Personalization has become increasingly important and the team has developed its own app, which uses various algorithms to generate individualized nutrition plans.

When a cyclist returns from a day on the bike, he or she simply opens the app and is told exactly how many grams of each food component (carbs, proteins, fats, etc.) to put on their plate. No brain power is wasted, except by using the ubiquitous buffet table scales.

While the methods used to determine exact nutritional needs vary from team to team, they all work with a general daily plan of five meals: breakfast, a pre-race snack, on-bike nutrition, a recovery meal, and dinner.

The basic principles of nutrition remain the same for the entire peloton, although they are adapted depending on the demands of the day ahead and whether the rider in question is a climber or a sprinter, a domestique or a contender for the general classification.

Carbohydrates, usually in the form of rice or pasta, serve as fuel and require painfully high consumption.

Proteins (especially fish or chicken) are always unprocessed and the fiber content is low to minimize intestinal irritation and aid digestion. Fruits and vegetables are often consumed in juice form.

Vegetarians often take protein shakes to supplement plant-based proteins such as tofu and seitan.

Riders may be allowed to eat more vegetables and fiber-rich foods on flat race days, as the body can digest them better. Red meat is also saved as a snack for the evening before rest days.

The fuel you get along the way is assisted by roadside attendants. They fill musette bags with various carbohydrate-rich forms. You can select or leave out these forms according to your preference.

Energy bars, gels, drinks and gummies provide a quick boost on tough days. More traditional sources of energy include wet rice cakes, brioches, jam rolls, flapjacks, sweet breads and cakes for lighter days.

The quantities required are not enviably large. Each cyclist consumes almost 1.5 kg of rice or pasta per day and about 120 g of carbohydrates per hour on the bike – the equivalent of five bananas per hour.

An EF runner once drank four tubs of maple syrup during the three-week race.

Blandy’s laptop contains a wealth of nutritional information that helps him create his menus.

Using a spreadsheet, he can compare the nutritional values ​​of all foods, so he can decide whether to cook with eggplant or parsnips, quinoa or couscous, chicken breast or chicken thighs.

Another document includes the EF Education EasyPost recipe bible, which includes a wide range of soups, salads, carbs, proteins, sides, desserts, post-race snacks and drinks. To prevent palate fatigue, repetition is kept to an absolute minimum during a three-week race.

“The food I make is all transparent,” Blandy says. “There are no rich sauces, it’s all just simple cooking with a light amount of spices, a light amount of oil, fresh herbs and citrus.

“Instead of using cream, salt and butter as flavorings, we add herbs and citrus fruits because they are low in calories and contain antioxidants.”

It doesn’t lend itself to the kind of innovative culinary art you see on TV shows or fancy restaurants.

“When I teach new chefs, I always tell them that they’ll only mess up if they’re too ‘cheffy,’” says Blandy.

“You have to swallow your boss ego and put it in a dessert or play a little at the end of a race. Then go wild, but don’t mess with the simple things: the carbs and the proteins. Give the boys what they want and they will be happy.

“I’ve cooked risottos and they just asked for basmati rice. They’re not there on vacation. They don’t care about fancy food. They’re literally there to refuel.”

Blandy estimates that he has stayed in more than 300 hotels during his time with EF Education-EasyPost—and thus has had the task of cooking. The temporary nature of the job presents numerous logistical headaches.

A chef’s day at the Tour de France starts around 6am. They have to prepare fresh breakfast items (all packaged food is prepared the night before) by 8am before packing up and driving to the next hotel while the race is going on.

In addition to cooking the food, they are also responsible for purchasing it. This task varies per team and, more importantly, per sponsor.

Blandy’s experience in European supermarkets has taught him where to find the best quality food. He does the shopping himself, and he also emails hotels in advance to order perishables.

Since 2014, Visma-Lease a Bike has been sponsored by the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo, which provides all the food for all races, including the Tour de France.

“During a Grand Tour, there are three new deliveries from the Netherlands to stock up on fresh produce,” says Redegeld. “It’s always the same Dutch food and the guys like that, because they know what to expect and we know which products they like, so we can always have that in stock.

“It makes it a lot easier for the chefs who don’t have to go to the local supermarkets and look for things. For me as a nutritionist, we know the nutritional values ​​of all the products, so that makes the calculations a lot easier.”

Upon arrival at the hotel, the chefs begin preparing dinner and breakfast and snacks for the next day.

Professional cycling teams typically follow one of two eating styles.

Most travel in custom kitchen trucks – similar in size to supermarket delivery vans – where food is stored and meals are cooked, then served to the riders and wider team members in a private area at the hotel.

A select number of teams, including Ineos Grenadiers, choose to travel in a much larger truck, which is equipped with a kitchen and dining room.

The camaraderie between rival team bosses is strong. “Sometimes you’re in a hotel with six teams, so the parking lots are packed,” Blandy says.

“It’s hectic. Everyone shares water and electricity. So you have to scratch each other’s backs. Chefs come to me and ask for an ingredient and I go to them. We help each other.”

It’s a world of difference from the three weeks of consecutive pasta and tomato sauce that cyclists were used to eating during their Tour de France just a generation ago.

Redegeld predicts that nutrition development will continue and that within about a decade, teams will use DNA analysis to take personalization of rider fueling to the next level.

But all that analysis is worthless if there is no one to prepare the food.

Earlier this year, Blandy was all set for a quiet week at home when he received an SOS from the team.

He was given half an hour to pack his bags and get a taxi to the airport, because a fellow chef from EF Education-EasyPost had fallen ill before the Paris-Roubaix race.

“I rolled up my knives and threw them in a suitcase,” he says. “I felt like a special forces chef.”

Cooking is serious business in the elite cycling world.