Why the Entire Tour de France Peloton Disappears Every May

July 09, 2026 | By Stan Pillman

Every spring, something strange happens in professional cycling. Riders who will spend July trying to destroy each other on the road quietly relocate to the same handful of half-empty ski towns — Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, Mount Teide in Tenerife, Livigno in the Italian Alps — and live there together for weeks at a time.

The scene is almost surreal: four-time Tour champion Tadej Pogačar walking the same near-empty streets as teenage neo-pro Paul Seixas, all of them staying in repurposed ski apartments above a resort with its lifts frozen mid-swing and its nightlife shuttered for the season. Rivals in July, neighbors in May.

They're not there for the scenery. As Chris Marshall-Bell reported for The Athletic after spending time inside one of these camps, altitude has become non-negotiable in modern Grand Tour preparation — not a marginal edge, but a baseline requirement.

From Olympic Curiosity to Competitive Requirement

Altitude training's role in endurance sport traces back to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, held at roughly 2,200 meters above sea level. Athletes who'd prepared at elevation dramatically outperformed those who hadn't, and sports science has spent the decades since refining why.

The short version: spend two to three weeks living between 2,000 and 2,500 meters, and the body responds by boosting red blood cell production and natural EPO output — the same oxygen-carrying capacity endurance athletes chase through training, just produced internally. It's not that there's less oxygen up there (the percentage in the air is identical to sea level); it's that there's less oxygen pressure, forcing the body to adapt to extract what it needs.

Cycling was slow to take it seriously. Team Sky changed that in the early 2010s, hauling their entire roster to altitude rather than reserving it for stars. According to the riders and coaches Marshall-Bell interviewed, it's gone from optional edge to baseline expectation — one veteran WorldTour rider summed it up simply: what used to be "something extra" is now just "a basic part of training."

The Unglamorous Reality

What's notable about life at these camps is how little of it resembles the sport's glossy image. No fans, no podiums — just riders climbing the same loop day after day, getting blood-lactate readings taken from their earlobes, and finding whatever they can to fill the hours in between. Table tennis. Model airplanes. One rider reportedly compared it to being locked in a prison.

But the physiological payoff is why nobody skips it anymore. Coaches monitor nearly every metric imaginable — heart rate variability, oxygen saturation, resting heart rate — to fine-tune exactly how much altitude stress a given rider can absorb before it stops helping and starts hurting. Even sprinters, who you'd think have the least to gain from an aerobic boost, have leaned in: one rider's green jersey campaign last year was credited in part to three weeks at altitude beforehand.

The takeaway from inside these camps is blunt: skip it, and you're not just missing an edge — you're giving your competition one.

You Don't Need a Ski Chalet in Southern Spain

Here's the catch: almost nobody reading this has the option of relocating to Sierra Nevada for a month every spring. WorldTour teams do it because they have the staff, the budget, and the season structure to justify it.

That's the entire premise Hypoxico was built on. Our altitude generators and altitude tents exist so that the adaptation pro cyclists are chasing in those empty ski towns — the increased red blood cell production, the improved oxygen efficiency, the aerobic ceiling that translates directly into performance — is available to anyone training seriously, without needing to leave home, take weeks off work, or fly to 2,300 meters.

Not ready to commit to a full setup? Our short-term rental program lets you build in a 4-to-8-week altitude block ahead of a specific race or expedition, the same way these riders time their camps around the Tour. And if you're still deciding what kind of system fits your training, our guide on choosing the right altitude training equipment breaks down which setup makes sense for your goals.

The riders in the peloton aren't doing anything mystical up there. They're giving their bodies a stimulus and letting biology do the rest. That's exactly what altitude tents and generators are designed to reproduce, on your own schedule, at your own address.

You may not be prepping for the Tour de France. But your body adapts to altitude exposure the same way theirs does.

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