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Keen to impress your friends and colleagues with your detailed knowledge of all things Tour de France? Curious about whether your own height and weight puts you in the ballpark of a Tour de France win for yourself? Ever wondered if more riders track their stats on a Garmin or a Wahoo?
Read on for more useful and not-so-useful-but-intriguing-nonetheless facts and trivia on the men's edition of the 2023 Tour de France.
2023 TDF Basics
Number of teams: 22
Number of riders: 176 (eight per team)
Number of stages: 21
Number of rest days: Two, although they're not really rest days. Most riders will still go for a pedal on these days to keep their bodies feeling fresh and peppy for stages to come
Total kilometres to race: 3,405.6
Total vertical metres to race or grovel up: 56,467 or 6.38 times up Mount Everest
Riders will climb an equivalent of almost six and a half times up Mount Everest in the 2023 Tour de France.
Stages
Longest stage: Stage 15, Les Gets les Portes du Soleil to Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc le Bettex, which includes 53 letters and two hyphens
Stage which covers the most kilometres: Stage 2, 209 kilometres from Vitoria-Gasteiz to San Sébastián in Spain
Shortest stage: Stage 5, Pau - Laruns, which is nine letters and three syllables.
Stage which covers the least kilometres: Stage 16 from Passy to Combloux is 22 kilometres long, but it's an individual time trial, so every one of those kilometres will hurt
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Tour de France 2025: Stage-by-Stage
Most terrifying stage profile: Stage 17 from Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc to Courchevel which includes 5,399 metres of climbing, more than any stage in the 2022 Tour de France. Ouch!
Most satisfying stage to complete: Stage 21 from Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines to Paris, because if you cross the finish line here you have completed the Tour de France!
Teams and equipment
Team with the highest UCI ranking one week before the start of the Tour: UAE Team Emirates hold the number one UCI ranking and have had 39 victories already in 2023
Team with the most wins in 2023: Jumbo Visma have won 42 races (or stages of races) already this year!
Team with the lowest UCI ranking one week before the start of the Tour: TotalEnergies. They are ranked 22nd and will be looking to improve on that in July
Team with the least wins in 2023: Israel-Premier Tech have won five races (or stages of races) in 2023, including two national titles this week. Itamar Einhorn won the Israel men's road race championships and Derek Gee won the Canadian individual time trial championships
Most used bike brand: Specialized. This brand is used by three teams: BORA-hansgrohe, Soudal-QuickStep and TotalEnergies
Next most used bike brand: Canyon. This brand is used by two teams, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Movistar
Most popular brand of sunglasses: 100%. This brand is used by four teams, BORA-hansgrohe, Lidl-Trek, Movistar and TotalEnergies
Most popular data collection and navigation device: Garmin. This brand is used by 11 teams. Wahoo is used by nine
What a rider would look like winning a stage using the most popular equipment in the 2023 Tour de France peloton, according to AI:
We are impressed with the way bicycle manufacturers appear to be extending the capabilities of riders' bodies directly into their bike frames for 2023.
What about the riders?
Youngest rider: Carlos Rodríguez from INEOS Grenadiers will be 22 years and 149 days old when he rolls across the start-line of the 2023 Tour de France
Special mention in the young guns category: Australian Matthew Dinham, riding for DSM, will be 23 years and 83 days old. He starts his debut Tour de France as the fifth-youngest rider in the field
Oldest rider: Maciej Bodnar from TotalEnergies will be 38 years and 116 days old at the start of the 2023 Tour de France
Special mentions in the older and wiser category: 36-year-old Australian Simon Clarke who won Stage 5 last year will be the seventh-oldest rider in the 2023 Tour de France
Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan) will be the fourth-oldest rider in the field and will be doing everything he can to break the record for the most stage wins by one rider.
Reigning cross-country Olympic mountain bike champions: One, Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers). We will certainly be looking forward to watching Pidcock's descending skills again after impressing in 2022!
Number of different winners over the last 10 years: Six. Chris Froome (2013, 2015, 2016, 2017), Vincenzo Nibali (2014), Geraint Thomas (2018), Egan Bernal (2019), Tadej Pogačar (2020, 2021), and Jonas Vingegaard (2022)
Smallest winning margin over the last 10 years: 54 seconds in 2017 when Rigoberto Uran came second to Froome.
Largest winning margin over the last 10 years: Seven minutes and 37 seconds in 2014, when Jean-Christophe Peraud came second to Nibali.
Height difference between the overall winners over the last 10 years: 11cm. Vingegaard and Bernal are both 175cm; Froome is 186cm, the rest are somewhere in between
Weight difference between the overall winners over the last 10 years: 11kg, although we have no way of verifying this or knowing whether weights were taken before or after riding 6.38 times up Everest in the French summer weather.
(SPOILER ALERT) The 2023 Tour de France final podium, according to AI:
