The 1984 Tour de France had 191km of time trialling, while the 2026 Tour de France includes just 46km. That is a 76% reduction of time trial distance in just over 40 years. Of course, not all changes are bad – Tour riders used to smoke and race without helmets, for example – but this shift caught my eye.
We've seen a dramatic shift in the focus and importance of time trialling in professional cycling, and in this piece, I set out to explore why. The further back you go, the crazier things get. So let's start as far back as the 1930s when Gino Bartali won his first Tour de France.
