The Tour in a Mile

If you were at my house this July, you likely found the Tour de France playing on the television. I remember watching the Tour over many summers as a kid, but it felt completely new to me this year as I appreciated the format, rules, and team strategies in ways I never had before. There are several different mini-competitions within the larger race, with riders vying for spots as the best climber and sprinter, but the coveted yellow jersey goes to the rider who completes all 21 stages of the race in the quickest cumulative time.

With the exception of a few time trial stages, each stage begins with a mass start and the lead a rider has in the race overall may not be apparent. This was often the case in the 2021 edition when Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogačar put on a dominant performance and held his lead throughout much of the race despite often finishing behind others in individual stages. What would this look like as a continuous ride from Brest to Paris? I set out to visualize the race in a way that reflects the cumulative times that drive General Classification rankings.

Riding over 3,400 kilometers isn’t something I can easily comprehend, so I converted the race into four laps on a track (which most of us can equate to a mile). In this simplified contest, you can see Tadej Pogačar take the lead about halfway through the second lap (Stage 8 of the Tour) and maintain it until the end. Pretty impressive!

A total of 228 riders started the 2021 Tour de France, but just the top 25 overall finishers are displayed here to simplify things. While the leader among these 25 is labeled in the visualization, other riders not shown did lead the race in some initial stages. Those riders dropped out of this top group at some point later in the race and some left the race entirely.