The night-time sleep and autonomic activity of male and female professional road cyclists competing in the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes

Objective The objective of this study was to examine the capacity of male and female professional cyclists to recover between daily race stages while competing in the 109 th edition of the Tour de France (2022) and the 1 st edition of the Tour de France Femmes (2022), respectively. Methods The 17 participating cyclists were 8 males from a single team (aged 28.0 ± 2.5 years [mean ± 95% confidence interval]) and 9 females from two separate teams (aged 26.7 ± 3.1 years). Cyclists wore a fitness tracker (WHOOP 4.0) to capture recovery metrics primarily related to night-time sleep and autonomic activity. Data were collected for the entirety of the events and for 7 days of baseline before the events. The primary analyses tested for a main effect of ‘stage type’ – i.e., rest, flat, hilly, mountain or time trial for males and flat, hilly or mountain for females – on the various recovery metrics. Results During baseline, total sleep time at night was 7.2 ± 0.3 h for male cyclists and 7.7 ± 0.3 h for female cyclists, sleep efficiency (i.e., total sleep time as a percentage of time in bed) was 87.0 ± 4.4 % for males and 88.8 ± 2.6 % for females, resting heart rate was 41.8 ± 4.5 beats·min -1 for males and 45.8 ± 4.9 beats·min -1 for females, and heart rate variability during sleep was 108.7 ± 17.0 ms for males and 119.8 ± 26.4 ms for females. During their respective events, total sleep time at night was 7.2 ± 0.1 h for males and 7.5 ± 0.3 h for females, sleep efficiency was 86.4 ± 1.2 % for males and 89.6 ± 1.2 % for females, resting heart rate was 44.5 ± 1.2 beats·min -1 for males and 50.2 ± 2.0 beats·min -1 for females, and heart rate variability during sleep was 99.1 ± 4.2 ms for males and 114.3 ± 11.2 ms for females. For male cyclists, there was a main effect of ‘stage type’ on recovery, such that heart rate variability during sleep was lowest after mountain stages. For female cyclists, there was also a main effect of ‘stage type’ on recovery, such that the percentage of light sleep in a sleep period (i.e., lower-quality sleep) was highest after mountain stages. Conclusions Some aspects of recovery were compromised in cyclists after the most demanding days of racing, i.e., mountain stages. Overall however, the cyclists obtained a reasonable amount of good-quality sleep while competing in these highly demanding endurance events. This study demonstrates that it is now feasible to assess recovery metrics in professional athletes during multiple-day endurance events using validated fitness trackers.