A high pressure question answered

How do riders on the Tour de F go to the loo? This has been interesting the senior pro on this venture for some while. Tom having found the answer below Ed suggested that our readers might be interested in it. The senior pro's interest remains entirely academic.

Generally, the riders pull over to the side of the road, stop, and shed liquid ballast in the usual way. Some time in the first couple of hours of the race, a senior rider (a team leader or team captain) will organise a comfort break and the whole peloton will slow down enough that riders can stop for a break and easily catch up afterwards.

The etiquette is that you don't attack while a large-scale comfort break is in progress, and you certainly don't attack the yellow jersey when he's taking a leak.

On some days there will be no organised break. If the stage is short, fast or very hot it may simply not be necessary, but on a cold morning at the beginning of a long day's trek across Northern France a mass disposal of that last cup of coffee will almost certainly happen.

If a rider needs to go outside of an organised stop, that's another situation where team-work comes into play. Along with a couple of team-mates, the rider will drop back in the peloton, and move to the side of the road. While his team-mates push him along at the back of the bunch, he'll take a mobile comfort break. It's a skilled operation, and some riders just can't relax enough to, er, let it all hang out this way…

It's considered extremely bad form for photographers and TV to shoot this whole process which is why, as some readers have observed, you never see it on TV or in pictures.

So, now you know. What a relief!