Le Tour tidbits

By Anthony Tan in Les Essarts

The pre-race medical check-up that each of the 189 riders went through before the 2005 Tour de France got under way on Saturday revealed some interesting factual tidbits about this year's peloton...

• At 35 beats per minute (BPM), Chris Horner (Saunier Duval) and Laurent Lefevre (Bouygues Telecom) both have the lowest resting heart rates.
• And at 7.66 litres, two riders also have the largest lung capacity: Christophe Moreau (Credit Agricole) and Mikel Astarloza (Ag2r-Prevoyance).
• The heaviest rider? No prizes for guessing here: it's big Maggie Bäckstedt from Liquigas-Bianchi - all 95 kilos of him!
• The lightest? This one's a little trickier: it's Horner's team-mate, Leonardo Piepoli, weighing in at a featherweight 57 kilograms.
• The tallest? The long and lanky Johan Van Summeren, who falls just two centimetres shy of the two-metre mark.
• The shortest? I am Sam, Ag2r-Prevoyance's Samuel Dumoulin.
• The average rider: 1.79 metres tall, weighing 71 kilograms, with a resting heart rate of 50 BPM and a lung capacity of 5.69 litres. The average rider, but by no means average figures!