Fifteen years since finishing his first three-week race, Nelson Oliveira is six stages away from the Tour de France end and setting an incredible record for most grand tours finished without abandoning.<\/p>\n
If he crosses the line in Paris, it will be his 24th grand tour completed, 24 out of 24 in his career. He has not abandoned or crashed out of a single Giro, Tour or Vuelta during his career. That is 496 successive stages ticked off \u2013 and counting.<\/p>\n
The Movistar rider might not have won many bike races in his long career, but this unsung tough guy deserves his flowers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was young, I watched these grand tours on the TV and never thought I\u2019d even do one,\u201d the Portuguese veteran tells Velo<\/i>. \u201cI never<\/em> thought I would do 24.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that a rider spends approximately 27 days on a grand tour, he has spent practically two years of his life suffering in the gutter, sleeping in so-so hotels, and shoveling down industrial quantities of pasta and rice.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an endurance miracle, on and off the bike.<\/p>\n Aside from the challenges of warding off debilitating sickness and staying within the race time cut during a three-week race, there are the inevitable crashes.<\/p>\n Oliveira\u2019s most dramatic was his fall into a barbed wire fence in the 2021 Vuelta. He picked himself up and crossed the finish line in C\u00f3rdoba, with blood streaming down his arms and legs.<\/p>\n That same race, he was walking uphill and fell over, over-stretching and hurting his foot. Fortunately, he experienced more pain off the bike than on it. A bizarre way to get injured on a grand tour, though.<\/p>\n There was one Tour de France \u2013 he doesn\u2019t remember which one, testament to his nine and three-quarters editions \u2013 where he crashed and injured his rib.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last week, I kept going and I was really suffering,\u201d Oliveira says.<\/p>\n That is the point: Oliveira is a racer with a four-leaf clover in his pocket who magically avoids misfortune. He has hit the deck many times in his career and felt the painful after-effects.<\/p>\n He broke an elbow and collarbone in the 2016 Paris-Roubaix and fractured a collarbone at the 2018 Paris-Nice.<\/p>\n Even five months ago, he crashed while training on his TT bike and broke his collarbone, going \u201ctoo fast\u201d.<\/p>\n He got surgery the next day, was on the rollers within five days, and out on the road within a week. He has recovered to do the Giro d\u2019Italia and Tour de France.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t call myself lucky, but I don\u2019t have bad luck. Sometimes you crash and you need to go home. Until now, I have been fortunate,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Making it through these races requires a ton of mental and physical fortitude.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need consistency. Resilience. I really don\u2019t know \u2013 sometimes you are here and you don\u2019t know why,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI just keep focused and try to do my best every day \u2013 and don\u2019t think about the next day. Don\u2019t think too much sometimes!\u201d<\/p>\n His versatile rider type is well-suited to these three-week suffer-fests. At 5-foot-9 and 148 pounds, Oliveira is right in the sweet spot, powerful but able to handle the mountains. He has finished mid-pack or better in almost every grand tour.<\/p>\n A powerful time-trial rider and longtime domestique, it also means he can do a valuable job in any kind of race, ferrying bottles to his leader and taking opportunities to go up the road in breakaways.<\/p>\n There is a lot of respect for Oliveira in the bunch, a real pro cyclist\u2019s cyclist.<\/p>\n Mentally and physically, the 37-year-old believes the biggest thing is having a good group and ambience around him.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you can laugh after the stage. It makes you want to keep going. Mentally, it\u2019s hard but with a good group of friends you can keep riding.\u201d<\/p>\n He says former world champion Alejandro Valverde was one of his best leaders, while his current sports director Jose Joaquin Rojas brought the mood, as did Movistar alumni Andrey Amador and Imanol Erviti.<\/p>\n \u201cThey also helped me to be who I am in cycling,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to forget anyone because they are really my friends. And I know what they gave me.\u201d<\/p>\n Naming all those retired riders is a giveaway of the fourth oldest man in the Tour bunch\u2019s age.<\/p>\n \u201cI know it\u2019s a big career and I start to realize how long it is \u2013 and I remember how old I am!\u201d he says, laughing.<\/p>\n His best result in the Tour de France was third in a hilly TT behind Tom Dumoulin and Chris Froome in 2016. On his 10th edition of the event, he is still hoping to win a stage.<\/p>\n \u201cAlways. It\u2019s a dream and it\u2019s possible because I\u2019m here. I know it\u2019s difficult, but it\u2019s not impossible,\u201d he says. This year, he has been one of the most active racers on the roads of France, making it into four breakaways so far.<\/p>\n It would be a red-letter day for his Movistar team, who lost their GC leader Cian Uijtdebroeks to sickness in the race\u2019s first week. They are a long way from the dominating days of Miguel Indur\u00e1in: the legendary Spanish team has not won a Tour de France stage since Nairo Quintana\u2019s 2019 victory in Valloire.<\/p>\n When Oliveira joined the WorldTour in 2011 with Radioshack, Lance Armstrong was his teammate. He has seen so much change.<\/p>\n He believes that clothing and lighter, aerdynamic bikes have been big leaps forward when comparing eras. But he has no doubt that nutrition is the biggest thing that has evolved.<\/p>\n He says he did not even used to think about carbohydrate intake per hour and some squads did not even have a nutritionist.<\/p>\n \u201cCarbohydrates in racing, also at home [in training]: the way we eat is completely different. Before, when I started, we didn\u2019t eat \u2013 because you were scared to gain a little extra weight. Maybe we made a lot of mistakes compared to now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n If he makes it to Paris, he deserves a steak and a beer to celebrate breaking the record without needing to worry about calories or weight. He would surpass Spaniard Vicente L\u00f3pez Carril, who finished 23 in a row between 1968 and 1978.<\/p>\n How will the Portuguese feel? \u201cI never thought about setting records. I just want to go day by day and enjoy the bike if I can, and that\u2019s it,\u201d he says midestly.<\/p>\n And then this WorldTour hardman is doing the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a next month, right?<\/p>\n \u201cI hope not! My teammates joke about that too,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/broken-bones-barbed-wire-suffering-hardman-23-grand-tours-without-dnf\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1486309504-scaled.jpg”] Andy McGrath Updated July 21, 2026 11:24AM Fifteen years since finishing his first three-week race, Nelson Oliveira is six stages away from the Tour de France end and setting an incredible record for most grand tours finished without abandoning. If he crosses the line in Paris, it will be his 24th grand […]<\/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-2054587","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\/2054587","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=2054587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2054587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2054587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2054587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Oliveira\u2019s Vuelta brush with barbed wire fence<\/h2>\n
Avoiding bad luck is the key<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Nelson](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2138396135-720x480.jpg?width=1920&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
What it takes to finish 23 grand tours<\/h2>\n
![](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284869938-720x480.jpg?width=1920&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")
Laugh while you labor<\/h2>\n
Still chasing a Tour stage<\/h2>\n
Then and now: carbs, aero and clothing revolution<\/h2>\n