Measuring the total amount of climbing on a grand tour

[Dedelou]

I often wondered if anybody was keeping track of the amount of climbing both in term of actual kilometers and total elevation that a rider face when racing in a grand tour. We do have a notion of what each climb measure, but I would love to get final numbers for the entire three weeks. Does anybody know where to look for such a thing?

 

[Bala Verde]

I often wondered if anybody was keeping track of the amount of climbing both in term of actual kilometers and total elevation that a rider face when racing in a grand tour. We do have a notion of what each climb measure, but I would love to get final numbers for the entire three weeks. Does anybody know where to look for such a thing?

steephill has this table for the TDF

2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006

Flat Stages 10 9 10 10 11 9
Medium Mountain Stages 3 4 1 4 1 4
Mountain Stages 6 6 7 5 6 5
# of Categorized Climbs (Cat 2, 1 and HC) 23 23 20 19 21 22
Mountaintop Finishes 4 3 3 4 3 3
Individual Time Trialing 41k 59k 55k 82k 117k 116k
Team Time Trial 23k 0 39k 0 0 0
Overall Distance 3469k 3596k 3435k 3554k 3547k 3657k

see at ~3/4 of the page...

for exact numbers of elevation and km climbed, perhaps official race books?

On stage by stage sections on the official TdF website you will find things like (2010 example):

Mountain passes & Hills

Pau Col du Tourmalet - 174 km

Km 13.5 - Côte de Renoir - 2.2 km climb to 6 % - Category 4
Km 56.5 - Col de Marie-Blanque - 9.3 km climb to 7.6 % - Category 1
Km 117.5 - Col du Soulor (D 126-D 918) - 11.9 km climb to 7.8 % - Category 1
Km 174.0 - COL DU TOURMALET (Souvenir Henri Desgrange) - 18.6 km climb to 7.5 % - Categor

 

[Skip Madness]

It's not exactly what you're after, but PRC does comparisons of the 15 toughest climbs in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta (12 toughest in each race in 2010, 2009 and 2008) and provides averages and totals on distance, height gain, average gradient and difficulty coefficient. It excludes the easier climbs, but as a representation of the high mountains it paints a pretty broad picture.

2011 2010 2009 2008

 

[Dedelou]

It's not exactly what you're after, but PRC does comparisons of the 15 toughest climbs in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta (12 toughest in each race in 2010, 2009 and 2008) and provides averages and totals on distance, height gain, average gradient and difficulty coefficient. It excludes the easier climbs, but as a representation of the high mountains it paints a pretty broad picture.

2011 2010 2009 2008

Well thank you .. I was curious mainly to know what the final and total elevation would be for a grand tour.. I know they give you all the famous categorized climbs and they are sort of easily totalled. But I imagine that, let's say you take a day in Tuscan when you go up and down all day on short hills that have a sharp percentage but are not long enough to be categorized it does still add up at the end of the day and might change the overall total elevation of a race, non?. I remember climbing to high elevation in colorado but basically doing one long climb a day , starting at an already good elevation and ending with a number that was inferior to the total elevation i did two weeks later when going across Pennsylvania where none of the hills were more than a kilometer or two and I was going from one hill to the other with practically never going flat the whole day. When i tried to measure i much i had climbed in Pensylvania it was more than what i had done riding the continental divide.

 

[Bavarianrider]

I often wondered if anybody was keeping track of the amount of climbing both in term of actual kilometers and total elevation that a rider face when racing in a grand tour. We do have a notion of what each climb measure, but I would love to get final numbers for the entire three weeks. Does anybody know where to look for such a thing?

They measure every rise in altitude, not just the the listed mountains.