For the first time since Bradley Wiggins rolled to victory in 2012, the Tour de France route is stacked with time trials—and that single fact has reframed the entire conversation about who can beat Tadej Pogácar. The 2027 edition carries 71 kilometres of racing against the clock, and the rider it most obviously flatters is four-time time-trial World Champion Remco Evenepoel.
The time-trial picture for 2027 just got more interesting: Filippo Ganna’s shock move to Lidl-Trek hands another squad a genuine weapon for the race of truth.
So the question the whole cycling world is chewing over this off-season is a simple one with a complicated answer: can all that time trialling actually be enough to topple the sport’s dominant force? Here is what the numbers really say.
What Happened
When organisers unveiled the 2027 Tour route, the headline detail for the general classification was the sheer volume of individual time trialling: 71km split across two stages, the most the race has offered in 14 years. As Cyclingnews noted in a detailed breakdown by James Moultrie, the course is about as favourable as a modern Tour can get for Evenepoel, with only three summit finishes and most of the hardest climbing loaded into the back half of the race.
Evenepoel, runner-up to Pogácar in 2026, is widely expected to return in July with GC ambitions. His Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe boss Ralph Denk was measured about it, telling Het Laatste Nieuws that he sees the “dream profile” framing as too simple—but he conceded the point that matters: “Remco is currently the very best time trialist in the world, so that is an aspect of this Tour we are certainly going to take into account. That he can gain time on Pogácar, Vingegaard, Seixas and co. in those? In theory, yes.” Former world champion Tom Dumoulin put it more bluntly, arguing the only realistic way to beat Pogácar is through time-trial kilometres.
Why It Matters
On paper, Evenepoel’s edge against the clock is enormous. Across their careers the two have met in 12 individual time trials, and the Belgian has won 10 of them. At last year’s World Championships in Kigali he caught and passed Pogácar despite starting two minutes behind, and finished a staggering 2:37 clear. If that version of Evenepoel showed up to 71km of Tour time trials, the race would be effectively over.
The catch is that the Tour is not the Worlds. In the five Grand Tour time trials the pair have contested—all at the Tour—the score is a much tighter 3-2 to Evenepoel, and even his wins have come by slim margins: 12 seconds in 2024, 16 seconds in 2025, and 28 seconds this past July. Pogácar, meanwhile, has taken the two most climbing-heavy tests against the clock. So the gap that looks like a chasm elsewhere shrinks to a sliver at the Tour.
Why? Largely weight. Evenepoel has admitted he arrives at the Tour around 4kg lighter than his Classics racing weight, chasing the power-to-weight ratio he needs to survive in the mountains. That climbing-focused build costs him some of the raw wattage that makes him untouchable in a pure, flat time trial. Add Pogácar’s almost supernatural ability to hold form and recover across three weeks, and the Slovenian’s time-trial deficit becomes manageable rather than ruinous.
There is a genuine unknown hanging over 2027, too: Pogácar is recovering after revealing he fractured three vertebrae in a crash, a reminder that even the metronome of modern cycling is not invulnerable heading into a new season.
Crunch the math and the romance cools slightly. Using the pair’s average speeds from this year’s 26.1km Tour time trial—where Evenepoel won by 28 seconds—a perfect-world extrapolation across 71km yields a gap of roughly 1:05. Real time trials, with corners, climbs and accelerations, are never perfect worlds, and stage 16 even throws in the brutally steep Côte de Pech David (800m at 12%) to claw time back toward the climbers. The clear conclusion from Cyclingnews’ analysis: Evenepoel cannot win on his time-trial weapon alone. He will have to at least limit his losses in the high mountains—something he did far better in 2026, trimming his final deficit to 6:26 after bleeding nearly three minutes on a single early mountain day.
What This Means For You
You are not racing Pogácar, but the same physics that will decide the 2027 Tour decides your local time trial or fast group ride. The lesson from the Evenepoel-Pogácar gap is that time trialling rewards very specific, trainable skills—and that where you gain or lose time depends heavily on the terrain.
Aerodynamics is the free speed. Evenepoel’s advantage is largest on flat, fast courses because drag dominates at high speed. The same is true for you: on flat efforts, a cleaner position and lower frontal area beat extra watts. Understanding where a bike’s speed actually comes from, including rolling resistance, is the cheapest way to go faster without getting fitter.
Build the engine that lasts. Pogácar’s edge is durability—the ability to repeat near-peak efforts day after day. For the rest of us, the equivalent is resisting fade within a single hard effort. Learning to spot and limit aerobic decoupling, when your heart rate drifts up as power falls, is one of the clearest signals that your endurance base needs work before your top-end does.
Respect the hills. Just as a single steep ramp can erase a time-trial specialist’s advantage, a punchy climb mid-effort can wreck your pacing. On rolling courses, ease slightly before the gradient and push over the top rather than hitting the base too hard—exactly the balancing act Evenepoel will have to manage on stage 16.
Key Takeaways
- The 2027 Tour de France features 71km of individual time trialling, the most since 2012, tilting the route toward four-time TT World Champion Remco Evenepoel.
- Evenepoel leads Pogácar 10-2 in career time trials, but only 3-2 at the Tour, where his margins have been just 12, 16 and 28 seconds.
- A best-case extrapolation suggests Evenepoel might gain around a minute across 71km—useful, but not decisive against Pogácar.
- Weight is the great equaliser: Evenepoel races the Tour lighter, trading some flat-TT power for climbing, which narrows his advantage.
- For everyday riders, the takeaways are timeless: chase aero gains on the flat, pace by effort, build durability, and manage the hills.
