Rugby famously advertises itself as a “game for all sizes”, which is fast becoming a desire rather than a reality. A few years ago, the RugbyPass website put together a “World under-85kg XV”, which was notable for two reasons. Firstly, the subtitle indicating that this was the “lightest” team, and thus that 85kg was somewhat featherweight by rugby standards, and secondly that they couldn’t actually fulfill their own brief. Four of their fifteen (that’s over a quarter…) actually weighed in over the 85 kilo mark on the basis it was “tricky” to find forwards under that mark, and so they ended up picking a load of quite tall backs to make it work.
Cycling probably has a more legitimate claim to being a sport for all sizes, thanks not only to its joint-friendly, low-impact nature, but to the variety of its competition. Strapping powerhouses can throw their weight around in sprints and time trials, whilst more diminutive flyweights can flutter up climbs as though caught in a breeze. The difference between the lightest and heaviest riders to have competed in the Pro/WorldTour is a staggering 46kg – 96% of the weight of the lightest rider in the pack (the 48kg Jose Rujano of Giro 2006 Podium fame), and there is 43cm difference between the 159cm (5’3) Samuel Dumoulin and the 202cm (6’8) Movistar man Matthias Norsgaard.
The difference between the lightest and heaviest riders to have competed in the Pro/WorldTour is a staggering 46kg
Clearly then, cycling is quite diverse in its representations of the human form. But has this always been the case? Has it changed over time? Does it have any relation to riders’ success? To find out, I went through all 2,199 riders who have been part of teams who have competed in cycling’s top competition, and found the height and weight of 94.2% of them – 2,071 riders (The missing 128 are mainly stagiaires who didn’t go on to secure a contract.) After some number crunching, it was time for some analysis…
Weight
Now, weight is something that it is necessary to be careful discussing in cycling, given the constant rumble of concern over eating disorders and the repeated push to be as light as possible, even when this risks the health of the athlete. There is no judgement here, although it should be noted that reported weights are, by the nature of weight measurement, a bit iffy. Humans regularly vary in weight depending on various circumstances, such as hydration, whether they’ve eaten recently, salt intake, hormones, and so on, so if a rider is listed as 70kg, they probably vary a kilo or so either side with regularity.
You also have to add some psychological manipulation into the mix. Lance Armstrong has mentioned that he and his team would occasionally put down a false weight a couple of kilos below the reality on published information just to mess with the minds of his competitors, although when your main rival is a man who was once given a bag with 15 kg of books in to ride with at a training camp to show him the difference in his weight from the previous year, you might think they were overdoing it.
Anyway, I plugged all the numbers in and calculated the average weights of each team over the years:
This chart shows the median and 1st and 3rd quartiles for each year’s WorldTour teams, as well as showcasing the variance between each team. Notably, it doesn’t show any strong particular trend toward teams getting any lighter or heavier over time. There are some notable outliers, such as the 2012 Euskaltel Euskadi team’s super light team of climbers weighing in at just 64.1kg on average, whilst Lotto-Soudal’s classics-focused 2020 team was almost 9kg heavier at 73kg on average.
You can’t confidently say that teams are coalescing around a certain weight, nor that the range is reducing. Whilst it seems fair to say that the highest weights are coming down (if Alpecin 2023 and Lotto 2020 are ignored, this becomes clearer), it’s tricker to say the average weights are. Whilst the below suggests this is the case, it’s a matter of 600g between the peak in 2017 and trough in 2023 – a full bidon. Marginal gains it might be (at a 0.9% drop), but that is all.
How about whether there is any variation in success depending on weight? Well…
The best representation is this chart that shows the difference in the percentage of the peloton on average of a certain range in weight, and the percentage of points scored by that group on average. It’s interesting that the most common group of riders in the 66-70kg category have the lowest points totals, whilst it’s the extremes – the 56-60kg riders upgrading 8% of the field into 18% of the points, and the 11% of 76-80kg riders doing the same, who provide the big returns. It seems being special in terms of being super light or super heavy (in cycling terms) stands you in good stead to be special in terms of scoring points as well.
Height
Unlike weight, it’s harder to manipulate your height or mislead others over it – unless you’re Donald Trump of course, who keeps gaining in height whenever he gets measured.
Height should be seen in the context of the trend, whereby humans have been growing in height for the last century, but plateauing off in recent years. This is where cycling, and perhaps sport, although that maybe needs looking at more closely, is in contrast to the global trend. As the below shows, the trend since the ProTour began in 2005 has been for riders to be taller, albeit with the important caveat that this difference between the maximum and minimum years is just 1.8cm (0.7 inches)
This chart showing the distribution of the average height of teams across the years also suggests a move towards taller riders, with the median creeping up, the lower bound gradually increasing (176cm in 2005, 178.75 in 2023) and the upper bound similarly nudging up. Interestingly the Dutch Jumbo-Visma team have been the tallest on average for five of the last six seasons, buying into the Dutch stereotype of being unusually tall.
It’s important to note that cyclists themselves aren’t getting taller, but that taller cyclists seem to be increasingly represented on teams. We can’t, however, say why this is happening, although we can offer some context. Below, we have the range of riders’ heights represented as percentages and pure numbers:
Firstly, the percentage version shows that the percentage of riders over 180cm in height has been steadily increasing since 2005, but that also the percentage under 165cm have been increasing: it is the squeezing of those between 171 to 175cm from 23% of the total to 12% that has been the biggest change.
When we look at the pure numbers for this group, they have halved from 124 in 2006 to 66 in 2023. We do have a greater and more consistent number of, er, “short kings” as the internet loves to call them these days, of riders between 160-165cm.
It would appear that some heights do better than others in terms of points gathering though, grouped towards the extremes. The ~24 riders in the WorldTour each year between 166 and 170 cm may make up on average only 4.36% of the field, but they come away with 16.3% of the points. When you look at who this group includes, you can see why. Damiano Cunego, Gianluca Brambilla, Sergio Henao, Darwin Atapuma, Tom-Jelte Slagrer, Carlos Betancur, Nairo Quintana, Richard Carapaz, Andrea Vendrame, Caleb Ewan, Eddie Dunbar, Sergio Higuita, Tom Pidcock, Lenny Martinez, Mattias Skjelmose, Juan Pedro Lopez and the late Bjorn Lambrecht all fall into this group of climber/puncheurs (and a pocket rocket sprinter in Caleb Ewan).
Conversely, the highest represented height group of riders between 181 to 185cm (28.95% of the peloton on average) “only” score 14.27% of the points on average. Whilst Peter Sagan, Fabio Jakobsen, Matej Mohoric fall into this group, the fact it’s simply larger (~156 riders a year) may simply mean the average falls back.
Extreme height has its advantages as well – the 5.2% of riders over 190cm capture 16% of the points, and it appears such height sets you up to be a good time trial specialist or classics star. Gustav Laarson, George Hincapie, Magnus Backstedt, Tom Boonen, Johan Vansummeren, Ian Stannard, Taylor Phinney, Guilliaume Van Keirsbrulck, Nils Politt, Stefan Kung, Kasper Asgreen, Filippo Ganna, Edoardo Affini, Joshua Tarling, Jonathan Milan and Mikkel Bjerg all fall into this group of engines. An excess of height, or lack of it, does seem to convey some advantages then.
Body Mass Index (BMI)
Height and Weight are, in themselves, interesting, but the relationship between the two is perhaps more useful in thinking about how cyclists have changed. BMI, or Body Mass Index, divides weight in kilograms (kg) by a person’s height in metres (m) squared to give a rule of thumb value that is frequently used to determine if people are underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. It does of course have limitations in that it has the ability to make it look like very muscular athletes are obese (the inference being that they are then unhealthy), but as a general indicator of how close to “normal” weight people are, it’s quite useful.
As you might expect, 92.7% of cyclists from this period come in the “normal” range”, with 3.7% “Underweight (Mild thinness)” and just one at “Underweight (Moderate thinness)” (no one is at the most severe level.) No riders come in as “Obese”, although 18 are apparently “Overweight.” That one of these is John Degenkolb, who got over the Cappi to win Milan San Remo, won an uphill finish at the Giro, and has four top tens at the monstrously lumpy Tour of Flanders, should suggest that this isn’t much of a barrier to success.
Climber Daniel Arroyave has a BMI of 16.4, somehow only weighing 52 kilos despite being 178cm tall, whilst sprinter Danilo Napolitano’s is 26.8, with 81 muscular kilos compressed into a 174 cm frame.
A lowering over time would however suggest a trend of riders becoming ever more concerned about their power to weight ratios ringing true. And as seen below by tracking this for teams, it would seem to be the case:
Whilst BMIs have steadily dropped from circa 21.4 to around 20.9, weirdly this is not a universal trend, thanks to Lotto-Soudal as they were in recent years. All teams are comfortably ensconced in the “normal” range, albeit perhaps with decreasing quartiles.
Teams are getting leaner then, not necessarily lighter, which makes sense given talks of apps being used to send photos of all food consumed to nutritionists, and Chris Froome’s crazy weight reduction schedule at the 2018 Giro.
How does this apply to races?
Looking at Tour de France stages since 2005, we can look at what the average heights, weights and BMIs were for each type of stage (taking into account they change the name of stage types every so often – “plain” stages are not “flat”, “intermediate” are now “hilly” etc.
| Tour de France Stages 2005-2023 – Winners | Average Height | Average Weight | Average BMI |
| Individual Time Trials | 182.2cm | 71.5kg | 21.5 |
| Flat Stages | 179.7cm | 73.3kg | 22.6 |
| Intermediate Stages (Cobbles, intermediate, hilly) | 179.3cm | 70.2kg | 21.8 |
| Medium Mountains | 181.2cm | 70.2kg | 21.4 |
| Mountains (inc. Mountain Time Trials | 178.9cm | 65.6kg | 20.5 |
Predictably, if we leave the time trials out (and they may be affected by three factors: 1) the relative dearth of them by comparison to other stages creating a small sample, 2) the increased understanding of aerodynamics bringing smaller riders into the fray, and 3) the increased use of hilly time trials rather than pan flat 50km+ stages of yore) , then the table shows that the more mountainous and the more elevation in a stage, the lower the weight of the stage winner and the lower the BMI.
Height doesn’t really follow a trend (especially given that medium mountain stages have been won by taller riders than have won sprints) showing that it is weight and lean-ness that make the difference in the end.
Grand Tour Competition Winners
How about the variation over time of the winners of the three Grand Tours, General Classification (GC), Points and King of the Mountains (KOM) competitions? Again, looking at the ProTour era, there are patterns to be noted.
The first noticeable point is how Lance Armstrong is a bit of an outlier in terms of BMI, being a whole 1.4 higher than the next-highest winner Oscar Pereiro. The GC winner’s BMIs are all pretty tightly packed however, by comparison to the points competition winners, which are a bit wild.
The Vuelta in particular has a huge range, mainly thanks to it’s until recently uniquely weighted scoring system, whereby every stage had the same number of points available, regardless of whether it was a flat sprint stage of a mountain-packed sufferfest. This meant a range of riders had the opportunity to win, and so they did – Alejandro Valverde, Chris Froome, Mark Cavendish, Bauke Mollema, John Degenkolb, Fabio Felline and Primoz Roglic have all been recent winners. it has however now changed to a points classification similar to that of the Giro and Tour, who give higher points to the sprint stages.
Those races still have broad ranges due to the seemingly more varied range of sprinter’s body types, whether they be “pocket rockets” such as McEwen, Ewan or Cavendish, or hulking Behemoths such as Kittel, Milan and Thor Hushovd.
The KOM is more predictable in being low, athough there have been some outliers – Thomas Voeckler’s recorded weight for 2012 is probably inaccurate, but he punched his way to success, and Thomas de Gendt pulled a similar trick at the the 2018 Vuelta.
Weight again shows a similar trend. No one over 73kg has won a King of the Mountains competition since 2005, and 27% of riders who have have been 60kg or under. By contrast, only 12% have won one if 70kg of over – this weight category is much more successful at the points competitions, with 65% of winners being 70 kilos plus. Joaquim Rodriguez, at 58kg, is the only rider under 60kg to have won a points competition, besting the 12kg heavier Mark Cavendish by a single point at the 2012 Giro.
Finally, height, as we’ve found, doesn’t really follow much a pattern. Perhaps being smaller helps lead to KOM success, but GC and points winners tend to all fall into a pretty similar range.
Cyclists, then, are a diverse bunch of bodies, much more so than the self-advertised “sport for all sizes.”
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