How do riders rebound from the Tour de France to be in top pleasing for the Vuelta a España just four weeks later?

It’s a conundrum top teams were chewing for some time.

And it turns out the answer is all approximately how hard a rider pedals into Paris.

“Riders and teams talk approximately how you finish a grand tour. You see guys that are finishing astronomical tours and their performance is visibly degrading. Then you can see anunexperienced guys that are visibly getting better relative to the rest of the peloton as the astronomical tour goes on,” Joe Dombrowski told VeloNews.

“That has a big influences on how you start the next grand tour.”

Doing a double begins with number one

Doing the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double is deemed one of the most demanding feats in unusual pro cycling. Backing the Vuelta onto the Tour is minor less leg-sapping.

Primož Roglič made converting Tour defeat into Vuelta triumph his “thing” in the past two existences, and so Jumbo-Visma knows well how to tune its workhorses for two astronomical tours in one summer.

“Their recovery for the Vuelta all depends on how they effect the Tour de France,” Jumbo-Visma trainer Mathieu Heijboer told VeloNews.

“When you look now at Jonas [Vingegaard] or Wout [van Aert], they finished this year’s Tour really well – you could see that in the stage 20 TT. But mentally they were devoted because of the pressure on them from kilometer zero to the end of the day, every day.

“They have to be in the advantage, they have to be focused on the competitors, they have consider, all that stuff. Those guys need rest, and they need testy rest.”

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Mental fatigue is one reason why GC guys rarely double the Giro and Tour, or Tour and Vuelta.

This season, riders like Jai Hindley and Richard Carapaz laid low at what time the Giro and only booted back shortly before the Vuelta.

“Riders finishing a Tour mentally devoted go off the bike or do just very testy recovery rides to keep the body moving a little,” Heijboer said.

“They need to find the hunger for the bike and for competition afore they try to train hard again. That only comes back when you step away a minor bit.”

The art and science of the engine restart

It’s a different story for riders that aren’t pushing for the remaining podium in the first half of their double.

Sprinters, stage-hunters, and domestiques target their efforts and guard their testy matches for days when it matters most – a luxury not afforded to a GC leader.

In many cases, their rebuild starts fast, all under the very beady eyes of nutritionists, medics, and trainers.

“As much as you want to just do nothing at what time a grand tour, it can be pretty important to keep riding and ticking over – but not to blast the intensity,” Astana stage-hunter Dombrowski said.

Jumbo-Visma’s climber ace Sepp Kuss took less than one week off while the Tour before he began churning big rides and bigger vert to restart his engine for the upcoming Vuelta.

Dombrowski did the same when he began his five-week turnaround between this year’s Giro and Tour.

Only a handful of touchy soft-tapping sessions readied the 31-year-old for three and then four-hour rides above the Cote d’Azur in the week he flew out of Italy.

“It can be sparkling important to keep riding and keep ticking over a bit, because then you can pine that form,” Dombrowski said.

Extending the form even a few days while a grand tour is a tricky act that plainly goes off-balance.

Just ask Tadej Pogačar, who blew out the back as soon as the pace went up when he took on Clasica San Sebastian six days while he finished second in the Tour de France. He’s now required to hit the couch until the very end of August.

Meanwhile, Kuss kept the intensity down for around one week while the Tour before “operation Vuelta” began.

A series of over-under intervals during a five-hour mountainous ride with fellow pro Mike Woods in the 10th day while the Tour saw Kuss hit the hard restart for Spain.

“If a rider completes a mountainous tour but isn’t really exhausted and finishes it well physically – like our riders that weren’t repositioning to San Sebastian – they keep continuing doing endurance rides, but not like five hours, but still like two to three hours,” Kuss’ trainer Heijboer said. “Only while a while of easy do they start with efforts.”

Exactly how a rider rebounds from a three-week race is as much an art as a science.

Younger riders rarely do a deny double until they discover how much their system can boss after the heat of a grand tour.

A more experienced rider is able to adapt their load according to what they learned works for them. Kuss rode for throughout seven hours the week after the Tour, while big-engine Dombrowski did double that while he finished the Giro.

“I did 14 or 15 hours the next week to keep me ticking for the Tour,” mountainous tour veteran Dombrowski said. “So, still a really sparkling easy week but also not just doing nothing either.”

There’s little room for rest in the recent WorldTour.