The men’s Tour de France is looming once again and, as media and fans wait impatiently for actual racing to begin, pre-race interviews, new kit releases, new bike drops and all kinds of rumours are ramping the hype up to a fever pitch
One quieter story line is Remco Evenepoel’s <a href="https://healthylife7.com/3-dietitians-agree-the-best-breakfast-for-weight-loss-is-a-spinach-egg-scramble/" title="3 Dietitians Agree: The Best Breakfast for Weight Loss is a Spinach-Egg Scramble”>weight loss. The Belgian told a pre-race press conference that he lost 8.8 pounds (4 kilos for you strict metric types) between his Classics campaign and Friday’s Tour start
Media is fawning. “Looking lean,” is the go-to comment across outlets for the last day or so as reporters compliment him on his “transformation” into Grand Tour form. Sure, one reporter did question whether or not the Belgian’s weight loss went too far. But even that was a performance focused question
“Of course,” you’re probably thinking. Power-to-weight, Watt/kg, etc. All the GC favourites drop some measure of weight leading into the Grand Tours, right? Tadej Pogačar’s talked about how he’s carrying more muscle into this year’s Tour. Jonas Vingegaard, already three weeks into Grand Tour season following his Giro victory, looks so skinny you start to wonder if Visma-Lease A Bike’s black kit isn’t partially designed to hide his figure. Even Mathieu van der Poel, who has little by way of GC ambitions beyond stage hunting, looks leaner than in the spring.
All of this is normal. Or as normal as an already lean athlete dropping eight pounds can be. (Whether that’s really normal is up for debate. There is a serious issue of disordered eating in the peloton, men’s and women’s, that deserves its own very serious analysis. For this story, we are focusing only on the differences in when that issue is brought up and when it is allowed to stay in the background)
The same 4 kg: Two very different responses
But that number, 4 kg, has a more complicated history at the Tour de France. One year ago, Anne-Marije Rook labelled 4 kg “the weight of a double standard.” Rook’s story, still worth reading a year later, was detailing the backlash to Pauline Ferrand-Prevot’s victory at the Tour de France
Back then, Ferrand-Prevot’s weight loss didn’t face performance questions. It was labelled dangerous. A bad example for girls. Media, fans, even fellow cyclists didn’t hold back in their criticism of one of the most decorated cyclists, of either gender, even after she’d won the 2025 women’s Tour
Marlen Reusser admitted, publicly, that the team “secretly” hoped PFP wouldn’t win the Tour citing her weight loss as the main reason
“What does an 18-year-old take from that, or a 17-year-old without a nutritionist?”
Demi Vollering was a little less direct, telling cameras after the race “I am not built to be the lightest rider in the peloton, and I won’t force my body into something it isn’t.”
Ferrand-Prevot was steadfast in defending her appearance
“It’s my job to be the best possible. We know this is an endurance sport, and to climb you need to have a [high] watts per kilogram. I made the choice. I worked hard for it.”
The fact that Ferrand-Prevot was strong enough to resoundingly defeat her competition didn’t seem to factor in
“I don’t want to stay like this. But we also had a good plan with the team’s nutritionist and everything is in control. I didn’t do anything extreme and I still had power left after nine days of racing.”
None of that seemed to make a difference in how Ferrand-Prevot was covered in the press
So, Evenepoel?
Ferrand-Prevot faced such intense scrutiny that The Cyclists Alliance felt it had to intervene. Point out the glaring hypocrisy, TCA issued a statement saying:
“We are disappointed that women in sport receive a disproportionate amount of scrutiny about their bodies compared their male counterparts. We encourage all of the voices in cycling to be leaders rather than followers, and to help change the dialogue in elite sport when it comes to weight and women’s bodies.”
So, where is the outcry over Evenepoel proudly sharing he lost 4 kg before this year’s men’s Tour? Where are voices calling the Belgian out as a poor role model for his young funs?
Two athletes making the exact same performance-based changes in training. Two very different responses
