At the Tour de France, opportunity favors the teams that know exactly what their riders are capable of and how those strengths match the demands of each stage. Sprint finishes, breakaways, and brutal undulating terrain all require different performance profiles, and the ability to read those signals before race day can shape how a team competes.
For NSN Cycling, TrainingPeaks helps turn rider data into race strategy. By analyzing training load, freshness, subjective feedback, peak power curves, heart rate and power relationships, and workload progression through key interval blocks, the platform helps coaches understand each rider’s trajectory and prepare them for the specific demands of the Tour.
That’s why over 80% of the WorldTour teams on the start line in Barcelona trust TrainingPeaks to build, manage, and optimize their training data.
With We Speak Peak, TrainingPeaks is shifting the Tour de France conversation beyond race results to spotlight the coaches and performance teams behind cycling’s biggest stage. In this Q&A, NSN Cycling Head Coach Dr Ciarán Rawlins O’Grady explains how Team NSN, the Opportunists, uses TrainingPeaks to prepare riders to fight for wins across every kind of stage.
Meet NSN, the Opportunists.
We are a team of aggressive opportunists; we’ll challenge on a wide variety of stages for the win, and we will never stop fighting. You’ll see the NSN Cycling Team jersey in the thick of the action whether it’s on the sprint finishes, breakaways, or brutal undulating stages.
Q: How does your team specifically utilize TrainingPeaks to prepare for the unique demands of the Tour de France?
A: The TrainingPeaks system allows us to deeply analyse and understand rider capabilities ahead of the competition so we can effectively match our goals with stage demands and characteristics.
Q: What specific data metrics or tools within TrainingPeaks are absolute keys to your team’s Grand Tour preparation?
A: Monitoring the balance between training load and freshness coming into a key event, such as the Tour de France, is essential for our coaches. We will also focus on the balance between these external loads and the subjective parameters such as a riders’ mood, stress, and feeling.
Q: What are the key physiological indicators to you as a coach that your athletes are peaking and preparing in the right way?
A: Looking at the training files of key sessions we can ascertain the riders’ trajectories coming into key events using the Peak Power Chart, relationship between HR and Power, and progression of workload throughout key interval blocks.
