{"id":2044788,"date":"2026-07-14T07:24:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T04:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2044788"},"modified":"2026-07-14T07:24:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T04:24:31","slug":"tadej-pogacar-lost-out-in-the-tour-de-france-hotel-room-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2044788","title":{"rendered":"Tadej Poga\u010dar Lost Out in the Tour de France Hotel Room Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Untitled-design-6.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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Jim Cotton<\/span><\/div>\n

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Updated July 14, 2026 05:58AM<\/div>\n
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Hotel rooms are the great leveler of the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

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In a race split between $60 million superteams and minnow squads funded by scraps, riders get the rooms they\u2019re given, and they have to make do.<\/p>\n

Race organizers ASO assign hotels to teams at random every night. ASO ranks all the hotels they book across the race and ensure all teams get an equal share of five-star luxury and two-star squalor.<\/p>\n

Teams are prohibited from booking their own alternative accommodation or using motorhomes. Remember the short-lived Richie Porte-wagon?<\/p>\n

Tadej Poga\u010dar and UAE Emirates-XRG definitely didn\u2019t get winning tickets in the Tour\u2019s hotel room lottery Monday.<\/p>\n

According to Spanish reporter Sergi L\u00f3pez-Egea, the world\u2019s richest team was allocated a hotel without air conditioning \u2013 not ideal given the Tour de France is cooking right now.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the hotel\u2019s wonky power supply reportedly couldn\u2019t handle the portable aircon units that team UAE drags around France.<\/p>\n

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Visma-Lease a Bike must have been laughing at their rivals after the Killer Bees suffered through days riding a team bus with broken AC.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Uno-X Mobility riders shared images of their accommodation for Monday\u2019s rest day.<\/p>\n

It looked like it needed a little TLC.<\/p>\n

Anders Halland Johannessen posted a video of filthy floors and cobwebbed corners in his hotel room. He and his twin brother, Tobias, even suggested they decided to sleep on the balcony in a follow-up reel.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s not to say every night at the Tour de France would be this way.<\/p>\n

The peloton was hunkered down in the unpopulated, untouristed Massif Central ahead of Tuesday\u2019s stage from Aurillac. This remote region is certainly not crammed with city-center hotels or Alpine ski lodges for ASO to choose from.<\/p>\n

Smart mattresses and \u2018sleep staffers\u2019 insure against Tour de France horror hotels<\/h2>\n

However, superteams do buy themselves something of an insurance policy in the hotel room lottery.<\/p>\n

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Extra-rich squads like UAE and Visma make the most basic hotel rooms bling with portable AC units, blackout blinds, and dehumidifiers.<\/p>\n

In most cases, they have a dedicated team of staffers who check in to rooms in advance, armed with hoovers, mops, and a cleaning kit.<\/p>\n

UAE Emirates-XRG has taken it one step further for 2026 by partnering with EightSleep.<\/p>\n

We covered these $3k \u201csmart mattresses\u201d in depth, here \u2013 but in short, they track a user\u2019s body temperature and use an internal cooling-heating system to maintain an optimal sleep environment.<\/p>\n

EF Education-EasyPost uses the competitor \u201csmart sleep\u201d brand, Somnus.<\/p>\n

At the other end of the financial spectrum, riders from low-budget teams do their best with the pillow they brought from home, and not much else.<\/p>\n

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Jim Cotton<\/span><\/div>\n

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Updated July 14, 2026 05:58AM<\/div>\n
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[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/pogacar-lost-tour-de-france-hotel-room-lottery\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Untitled-design-6.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated July 14, 2026 05:58AM Hotel rooms are the great leveler of the Tour de France. In a race split between $60 million superteams and minnow squads funded by scraps, riders get the rooms they\u2019re given, and they have to make do. Race organizers ASO assign hotels to teams at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2044788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2044788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2044788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2044788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2044788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}