L’Étape vs the Tour de France
Six days apart, two races climbed the same mountains. The Étape du Tour ran on 19 July 2026; the Tour de France raced the same Télégraphe, Galibier and Croix de Fer on 25 July. Because they share the exact Strava segments, the two fields land on one all-time leaderboard — and the top amateurs sit right inside the pro peloton.
How to read it yourself. Open a shared segment’s all-time leaderboard and look at the date: efforts from 19/7 are Étape amateurs, efforts from 25/7 are the Tour. The quickest times on each date line up directly — same tarmac, same clock.
Fair-play caveat: the pros ride these cols at tactical stage pace inside a five-hour race, not as flat-out efforts. Read it as a maxed-out amateur next to a pro riding within the bunch — not a head-to-head. It’s remarkable all the same.
Col du Galibier
Strava segment · 18.3 km / 1,245 mThe clearest overlap. The fastest Étape amateurs climbed the Galibier inside the Tour’s top ~60 on the all-time segment — ahead of a real chunk of the peloton.
| Rider | Time | Watts | All-time rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Gobert · fastest Étape (19/7) | 48:32 | 287 W | ~52nd |
| Next two Étape riders | 48:37 / 48:43 | 277 / 257 W | 53rd / 54th |
| Tour pros around them · 25/7 | — | mostly private | Kwiatkowski 54th · Rickaert 54th · Ganna 58th |
So the top handful of Étape amateurs went up the Galibier faster than Michał Kwiatkowski, Jonas Rickaert and Filippo Ganna managed six days later on the identical segment.
Col du Télégraphe
Strava segment · 11.96 km / 844 mThe headline of the week. On the shared segment’s all-time top, the Étape amateurs (19/7) are woven right into the Tour peloton (25/7) — Cavallo and Clément beat Pogačar, Bernal and Evenepoel’s stage-day time. Étape riders often shared power; most pros keep it private.
| Rider | Race | Time | Watts | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tobias Johannessen | Tour · 25/7 | 33:13 | — | 2 |
| Matthew Riccitello | Tour · 25/7 | 33:14 | — | 3 |
| Davide Piganzoli | Tour · 25/7 | 33:14 | — | 3 |
| Ben Healy | Tour · 25/7 | 33:14 | 344 W | 3 |
| Sepp Kuss | Tour · 25/7 | 33:15 | — | 6 |
| Thymen Arensman | Tour · 25/7 | 33:17 | — | 7 |
| Luca Cavallo | Étape · 19/7 | 33:32 | 351 W | 8 |
| Thibaut Clément5.33 W/kg | Étape · 19/7 | 33:33 | 389 W | 9 |
| Nicolas Dricot | Étape · 19/7 | 33:34 | 340 W | 10 |
| Baptiste Lombardi | Étape · 19/7 | 33:34 | 370 W | 10 |
| Damiano Caruso | Tour · 25/7 | 33:53 | — | 12 |
| Lenny Martinez | Tour · 25/7 | 33:53 | — | 12 |
| Anders Johannessen | Tour · 25/7 | 33:56 | — | 14 |
| Paul Seixas | Tour · 25/7 | 33:57 | — | 16 |
| Egan Bernal | Tour · 25/7 | 33:57 | — | 16 |
| Tadej Pogačar | Tour · 25/7 | 33:57 | — | 16 |
| Remco Evenepoel | Tour · 25/7 | 33:58 | — | 20 |
The pros ride tempo in the bunch, not flat-out — but the raw clock is the raw clock. Measured W/kg (real power ÷ the weight the rider shared): Clément 5.33 (389 W / 73 kg), Gautheron 5.00 (315 W / 63 kg, #48), Combes 4.78 (287 W / 60 kg, #52).
Col de la Croix de Fer
Strava segment · 27.6 km / 1,295 mThe long one, and the best-documented for power: 80 Étape riders made their files public. Front-of-race amateurs held ~290 W (219–363 W across the sample) for around 1h18 of climbing. The Tour’s own top-of-leaderboard rows for this segment are still coming — this page updates when they land.
Where do you land?
The Watts Target tool turns any climb time + weight into W/kg and places you against the whole Étape field — and explains why a Strava-segment time and an official race split aren’t the same clock.
Open the Watts Target tool →Étape times, ranks and power are from the public Strava segment leaderboards (efforts dated 19 July 2026) and the official race timing. Tour comparisons use the same segments’ 25 July efforts. Amateur names shown are the top public finishers.