The Sports Section: The Watch Lovers Guide To The Tour De France

July 10, 2021

While most of us in the States are breaking in our flip-flops, stocking the fridge with hot dogs, and belly-flopping our way down a backyard Slip N Slide, the worlds 180 best cyclists have hit the roads in France to traverse more than 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) of brutal terrain. And yes, some of them are wearing watches. In fact, Le Tour is?loaded with watch- and time-related drama. Consider this your backyard-barbecue conversation guide to the Tour de France, from a horological perspective.But first, a quick explainer on the Tour. The first Tour de France was in 1903. It is the oldest of the grand tours in Europe, including the Giro dItalia and Vuelta a Espana; its roughly three weeks long, ridden in 21 stages, and includes a couple of rest days. Bicycle races follow a circuit, not unlike horse racing,?that the same athletes compete in, and though no one has won all three in the same year C the Triple Crown C they have held the titles all at once, and youll hear the name Eddy The Cannibal Merckx thrown around as one of them. (He is not racing in this years Tour. He is 76 years old.) Anyway, like pretty much all racing events, this one is about time, which in the Tour is kept in a complicated math having to do with stages, team wins, and rest days. Everyone takes a break and does not actually ride the 2,000 miles straight through from start to the Champs-Elyses in Paris. If you want to follow this years winners so far, heres a nice guide. Despite the rest days, the massage tents, support vans, crashes and pileups, and parades and throngs of fans and all the other stuff that makes it seem like no one is really trying to get to Paris before anyone else, time is absolutely of the essence. Over the years, Tour riders who were once sleeping under the stars, eating at roadside cafes (maybe getting a little too drunk on wine), and required to fix their own bikes, have become aerodynamic machines of little more than lycra and sinew, reliant on a vast network of time-keepers, coaches, and support. All of which is to say that any cyclist wearing a hefty timepiece while riding in this race is making a statement. It happens that two of this years key players are those kind of statement-makers. Stage 1: Who is racing in a noteworthy watch? While we cant possibly check the wrists of all 180-plus starting cyclists, we can tell you about a few heavy-hitters. (Note that these are watches worn while racing, as opposed to those spotted on the wrists of cyclists while living their civilian lives.) Mark Cavendish: One of the bigger watch stories out there is that Cavendish C who has won more stages in the Tour de France than anyone except Merckx C loves Richard Mille watches. As the story goes, in 2016 Cavendish met Mille and he cried with joy. Mille removed his own watch from his own wrist C the RM-011 Felipe Massa 10th Anniversary Limited Edition, worth north of $250k C and strapped it on Cavendishs. Heres a cute pic of the rider in his finery. Julian Alaphilippe: Another Richard Mille fan, Alaphilippe, current world champion and fan favorite, wears an RM 67-02 that costs about $120k. What does it do, you ask? Tells time! Writes Iaian Treloar for CyclingTips: Despite a spec list including a white gold rotor, titanium cogs, and Calibre CRMA7 skeletonizsd automatic-winding movement, its just a very fancy analog watch. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mark Cavendish (@markcavendish) Stage 2: But, okay, who has won a previous Tour wearing a noteworthy watch? Probably our favorite watch-and-Tour lore is this: Back in the 1980s, before aerodynamics were the cyclists obsession, frames were steel and helmets werent required, legendary American champ Greg LeMond (yes, the maker of the LeMond bicycle), began racing in cool watches and pioneering speed-reducing tactics. Now, LeMond was known for being a bit of a bad boy then, supposedly eating ice cream and drinking sodas instead of following a strict salad diet meant to keep him as thin as his bike frame, and (shock!) he brought his wife, Kathy, to watch him race. After winning the 1986 Tour C and beating five-time winner, Bernard Hinault C to become the first American ever to wear the winning Maillot Jaune jersey, LeMond was accidentally shot while hunting during the off-season. Recovery was slow. After a rough start to 1989, Lemond returned to his winning ways with one of (if not the most famous) Tour victories in history (cue a clip of the emotional finish here, where LeMond wears some kind of Casio). Then he did it again in 1990, and we have to assume that the choice to race wearing a gold and steel Cartier Santos ref. 119901 was part of his famous rebellious streak. And just last year, our current reigning champ Tadej Poga?ar won the Tour wearing a Breitling Endurance Pro. Poga?ar, at just 21 years old, was the youngest to win the Tour de France in over a century and is again leading the pack this year. Hes also at the center of a teensy sponsorship snafu. Stage 3: Oooh, we love a good snafu. Can you tell us more? So glad you asked. Last year, Richard Mille sponsored team Bahrain-McLaren, whose members included Mille fan Mark Cavendish. But then in a move that lifted not a few eyebrows, Richard Mille signed a four-year deal with team UAE Team Emirates, starting in 2021:As part of the deal, UAE Team Emirates riders will carry Richard Mille branding on their bikes and kits throughout the next four campaigns, the cyclists will also have the chance to sport the Richard Mille RM 67-02 watch. An ergonomic model and a technical tour de force, weighing just 32 grams, thanks to its use of TPT? composite materials and grade 5 titanium. It also features a special strap, which is entirely seamless, non-slip and highly elastic, so that it follows the contours of every individual wearers wrist morphology. All well and good unless you are the UAE Teams super-contender in this years Tour, Poga?ar, and happened to be a brand ambassador for Breitling. Since the sponsorship announcement, Poga?ar has in fact won two Breitling Endurance Pros during the UAE Tour, when the brand gave them out to stage winners. Awkward! And though just last year he won the tour wearing his Breitling, hes been in and out of his team-issue RM, as far as we can tell. (Side note: Breitling has a historic link to cyclists as far back as legends Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali.)Meanwhile, Cavendish is no longer on team Bahrain. After dealing with health issues and threatening to retire, he took over for an injured rider on team DeceuninckCQuick-Step (home to fellow Mille lover, Alaphilippe) and has since powered through this years Tour. Stage 4: Weve got guys wearing watches that cost hundreds of thousands. Are these riders all super rich? Actually, the vast majority earn a modest salary that can range from $20,000 to a quite decent $200,000, and once theyve reached a certain level the salaries jump to the millions. Cavendish is in the reported 3-mil category. You can buy a few Milles with that many mils. Stage 5: What else is fun about this years Tour? I heard something about a sausage truck? The big news in this years tour is Poga?ar C the wunderkind racer C doing what everyone expected and winning, and Cavendishs unlikely comeback and advance on the Merckx record of stage wins (about which hes sick of talking). Weve got some noncyclist dramas, like the truck and official sausage supplier of the Tour de France getting stuck in a mountain pass; and a fan who held up a sign and caused a massive pileup (and landed in jail). The infamous sausage truck. However, its one unlikely story that in my opinion is the best of all, and thats Lachlan Mortons Alt Tour. Morton is riding the length of the Tour solo in an attempt to beat the entire peloton (aka the cluster of racers). That means no rest days and no proper beds or meals; Morton is doing the back-to-basics version of the Tour (though I cant see him rebuilding a frame, but what do I know), sleeping al fresco, and schlepping his own gear. Hes stopping at restaurants and (swoon!) carrying baguettes in his kit. This kind of thing has never been done before. By riding for team EF Pro Cycling (backed by HODINKEEs pals at Rapha) and raising money for World Bicycle Relief, Morton is changing the narrative of time on this years Tour. So far, hes well ahead of the pack, and on course to ride over a thousand miles more than those on the official Tour. It is as someone on Twitter put it, one of the cooler things a pro cyclist has done in awhile. Also maybe the definition of mental, as someone else put it. But is he wearing a watch? you ask. Well, its not on his packing list, and it looks like whats on his wrist is a biometrics tracker, so my bet is hes going by the stars and the angle of the sun. Probably for the best, considering how much longer those extra miles must feel, dipping through mountain passes, all alone in the saddle. Genevieve Walker is a writer in Maine. Click here to read her previous HODINKEE stories, which have covered everything from a Henry-Daniel Capt pocket watch to a certain Bill Murray movie.