Global Warming: Grassdune Tourmalet Edition

Tadej Pogačar took the Tourmalet KOM. Not exactly breaking news. So instead of looking at watts, VAM or climbing times, I decided to look at something else: temperature.

The 2026 Tour de France has once again reminded us what racing in extreme heat looks like. Ice socks, bottles over the head and riders finishing completely cooked have almost become part of modern Grand Tours.
The Col du Tourmalet has now featured in the Tour de France 91 times, making it the most climbed ascent in Tour history. It also has one big advantage for a little bit of Grassduning: almost every recent Tour ascent is sitting on Strava.

The data
Of course, I could have looked up historical weather records. But where’s the fun in that? Instead, I collected Tourmalet efforts from recent Tour de France editions and extracted the temperatures recorded by the riders’ head units on Strava.

This year’s ascent was certainly a warm one, but not the hottest in the dataset. That honour goes to Laurens ten Dam, who climbed the west side of the Tourmalet in 2016 at an average recorded temperature of 33°C.
At the other end of the spectrum sits Wout van Aert, whose 2021 ascent averaged just 21°C.

Still, one thing stood out. Pogačar didn’t just climb the Tourmalet in one of the hottest editions in this sample, he also crushed the previous KOM held by Bardet by 4 (!) minutes.
If there was still a lingering hope that extreme heat might be one of his few weaknesses, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to argue that it is.