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Cycling News
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Stephen Farrand

Should cycling ban altitude training? How an obsession with peak performance is ruining racing

Cyclists on a road cycling during a blue sky summer day around the volcanic landscape of El Teide Volcano and National Park (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images).

The 2026 Tour de France starts in Barcelona on July 4, but the battle for the yellow jersey began several weeks ago, high up in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains, at altitude training camps.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) all spent three weeks atop the Spanish mountain, training and naturally boosting their oxygen-carrying capacity for their Tour de France showdown.

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