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Pro Cycling’s Pursuit of Perfect Sleep


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Not even sleep is safe from pro cycling’s relentless pursuit of performance perfection.

Riders are lazing on “smart mattresses,” snoozing in “recovery pajamas,” and tracking every Z of their body-boosting slumbers in the quest for a winning half-watt.

“There’s always been a lot of attention on us getting good sleep. But it seems like teams are taking it more and more seriously now,” U.S. racer Neilson Powless told Velo.

“It’s another area that can be optimized so if you can do that, why not do it?” Powless said. “If you want to get the best out of yourself, you have to do everything you can.”

The once serene, science-safe space of sleep has been buzzed awake by a wave of high-tech sleep enhancers.

Multi-thousand dollar “smart mattresses,” energy-boosting sleepwear, and algorithmic “sleep scores” have turned shut-eye into another dial to tweak in the performance dashboard.

“Sleep, nutrition, and managing stress are the most important elements of recovery, especially in a stage race or grand tour,” Visma-Lease a Bike head of performance Mathieu Heijboer told Velo.

“Racing damages the body,” Heijboer said. “Nutrition and sleep is what builds it back so a rider can do it again and again.”

Sleep has joined aerodynamics, training, and fueling as a performance input waiting to be optimized.

If you ain’t snoozing, you’re losing.

Races are won at bedtime

Sleep, nutrition, and load management are the three foundations of athletic recovery. (Photo: Gruber Images / Velo)

Simple Zs are one of the most coveted commodities in pro cycling.

They’re almost as precious as Ws and Kgs.

That’s perhaps no surprise given sleep is nature’s most simple and powerful performance enhancer.

A proper night’s sleep helps to restore muscle glycogen, flush toxins, and reset stress and cognition.

Deep sleep – the Holy Grail of a night in bed – promotes the release of human growth hormone. “HGH” is a muscle-repairing wonder drug that creates a recovery stimulus far more effective than any protein-packed recovery shake or high-tech pair of compression boots.

Yet sleep isn’t always so simple for pro cyclists.

Racers spend months away from home on training camps and stage races and bunk down in more hotel rooms than even “TripAdvisor” could cater for.

And like any accommodation listing site, those bedrooms can be either five-star or sub-par.

“Sleep can be difficult on a stage race or grand tour,” EF Education-EasyPost racer Powless said.

“The rooms might be hot or noisy, you might be overheated or sore from racing. And you don’t get a chance to get accustomed to any one room because you’re always on the move,” he said.

Several nights of bad sleep caused by injury, illness, or bad Netflix habits can send a rider into a downward spiral.

It can slow heart rate response, decrease ventilation and metabolic rates, ruin reaction times, and a whole lot more.

“One bad night doesn’t impact things too much. It might change mood or motivation, but not performance.” Powless said. “But over time, a lot of bad sleep can make a massive impact on physical performance, as well as how much you ‘want’ to race.”

‘Smart mattresses’ put science into sleep

Sleep is a precious commodity in pro cycling.
Sleep is a precious commodity in pro cycling. (Photo: Gruber Images / Velo)

Team Sky was one of the first to drag sleep into the performance sphere.

The former grand tour dominator drew derision when it started dragging its own bedding around the Tour de France and provoked a polemica when Richie Porte started snoozing in his own grand tour motor home.

Sleep-enhancing “marginal gains” have now become the norm.

Mattresses, bedding, air purifiers, and even blackout blinds have joined wheelsets, cassettes, and chains on teams’ pre-race checklists.

Mobs of team staff swarm into hotels to clean and customize shabby hotel rooms while riders are out on the road earning their night’s sleep. Visma-Lease a Bike even has a dedicated crew of “mattresses men” from their bedding supplier M-Line to travel ahead of team busses and make two-star hotel rooms boutique.

Powless’ EF Education-EasyPost team and sister squad EF-Oatly-Cannondale pack one of the most sophisticated sleep aids of pro cycling into their team trucks.

Sleep tech experts Eight Sleep partners both teams.

The NYC-based brand produces mattress covers that monitor the snoozing user and increase or decrease in temperature accordingly. In theory, it should help maintain a slumber-promoting body temperature.

Eight Sleep’s fabrics can also track heart rate, breathing rate, HRV, and more.

They’re a biohacker’s wet dream – hence the endorsements by the likes of Elon Musk and Andrew Huberman.

“The temperature control is most useful for me,” Powless told Velo of his Eight Sleep system. “If you had a hard day racing or training and your metabolism is running hot, it really helps cool you down and gets you into deep sleep and deep recovery.

“It learns how your body temperature runs through the sleep cycles and adjusts the temperature of the mattress to keep you stable,” Powless explained. “After the first few nights it learns the stages you’re at in the cycle and is able to auto-adjust how hot or cool it is.”

Snoozing beyond ‘smart sleep’ – air conditioners, recovery pajamas, and more

EF Education EasyPost hauls EightSleep units around grand tours (see unit to left).
EF Education EasyPost hauls EightSleep units around grand tours (see unit to left). (Photo: Courtesy EF Education EasyPost)

Eight Sleep produces one of the most sophisticated “smart” solutions in what seems to be a burgeoning mattress market.

Brands like Chili Pad, Ergomotion, Sleep Number, and Sleep8 all produce similar space-age snoozing systems.

At around $3,000 USD per piece, these swanky mattress toppers are only for the most monied-up or sponsor-savvy pro teams.

Those without such luxuries drag basic bedding and non-smart mattresses around stage-races.

Some don’t even do that.

These “have-nots” instead make do with the sagging springs and dubious smells of haggard hotel mattresses.

Air conditioners

Other sleep-hacking solutions are available to the WorldTour.

Many teams cart air conditioners around as an insurance policy for extra-basic hotels in backwater valley towns and fusty sixties ski stations.

And when a hotel does have pre-installed air con, there’s still work to do.

Team-issue dehumidifiers, purifiers, and fan systems are set up to clean the air for snoozing pro athletes.

“The problem with air conditioning is that it makes you more susceptible to illness,” EF Education-EasyPost medic Dr Jon Greenwell said.

“The constant flow of air from A.C. units tends to dry out the immunoglobulins in your nose and mouth, which require moisture to fight the onset of coughs, colds, sore throats, flu, and even COVID,” Greenwell said.

“Air conditioners can also be noisy and there is never any guarantee that their filters have been cleaned on a regular basis.”

Recovery pajamas

If rider-specific mattresses, blackout blinds, air conditioners, and air purifiers aren’t enough, it’s time to consider bedwear.

Tudor Pro Cycling has partnered P.J. perfectionists Dagsmejan to clothe all its riders in the brand’s “recovery pajamas.”

This premium loungewear uses a “nattrecover fabric” which the brand says “recycles excess body heat into natural far infared energy, which enhances muscle regeneration.”

Team owner Fabian Cancellara can’t get enough of his squad’s beyond-luxury apparel.

“Riders are offered optimized sleep quality and increased muscle recovery with Dagsmejan recovery sleepwear and accessories,” Cancellara said. “It’s a real opportunity for us.”

To track or not to track?

Mathieu van der Poel doesn’t even take off his Whoop strap (see left wrist) for Paris-Roubaix. (Photo: Gruber Images / Velo)

The primal act of sleep doesn’t escape pro cycling’s obsession with data.

Whoop bands, Oura rings, smart watches, and now Eight Sleep track sleep hours, phases, and efficiency, and use algorithms to pump out “sleep scores.”

“The biggest benefit I’ve noticed from tracking sleep is how it gives me an idea how many hours I’m actually in bed,” Powless said.

“The biggest way I can make a proactive impact on sleep is just being sure to get to bed as early as possible and not messing around on my phone, and hoping you wake up at the same time as normal,” he said. “I’m always aiming to nail 10 hours a night.”

Team medics monitor sleep scores and accompanying heart rate variability data to check for potential illness or under-recovery.

But not everybody trusts the tech, all the time.

Something as simple as a loose Whoop strap could produce dodgy data that throws doubt into a months-long training schedule.

“We don’t use wearables. We don’t believe the measures are valid and reliable,” Tudor Pro Cycling performance guru James Spragg told Velo.

“Instead, riders report to us their sleep duration and quality. Their own subjective sense of themselves is just as important as data.”

A good night of sleep won’t likely give a lowly domestique the watts to wallop Tadej Pogačar or Mathieu van der Poel.

But it might help them hold the wheels a few fractions longer.





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