This page covers what's specific to the Femmes edition. Data sources, the 50-year baseline method, WBGT estimation, and the pipeline-validation checks are shared across every edition on the platform — see the platform methodology page for the full method.
The 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is complete (raced 1–9 August 2026), so this edition is built entirely from observed data — there is no forecast/"today" path here; every card ships in its final, permanent observed state.
Stage times are computed in race-local time — Europe/Zurich for stages 1–2 (Switzerland), Europe/Paris for stages 3–9 (France).
Baseline windows use the same calendar-date ±7-day method as the men's Tour, but shifted to early-to-mid-August (the July windows used there wouldn't apply — this edition races a month later).
Stage 7 finished on Mont Ventoux's summit (1,910 m) — the first-ever Femmes finish there, and the race's high point. ERA5's grid cell (~28 km) smooths an isolated peak like this heavily, so the finish-point absolute temperature reads somewhere between true summit and true valley conditions, not a precise on-summit reading. The anomaly is still valid (the same grid-cell offset applies to both the observed value and the 50-year baseline, so it cancels out) — but for the raw heat story on this stage, the route-max line (which lands in the Rhône valley approach before the climb begins) is the more physically meaningful number.
This edition's vertical scale is computed fresh from only this edition's own cached elevation data — the largest real relief of any Femmes stage, not shared with the men's edition's scale, so the two races' heights are never mixed together.
One stage — stage 8 (Sisteron → Nice) — exceeds our normal validation tolerance by around 380m in one short section (between Col des Robines and Col de Toutes Aures), after several rounds of densification reduced it from an initial ~460m spread across five separate spike locations. That remaining gap sits in genuinely mountainous terrain between two real ~1,000m+ passes; we disclose the exact number rather than either hiding it or chasing it indefinitely.