Monday’s breakaway group, on the lumpy roads of the Tour de France’s 10th stage, featured an interesting statistical quirk: represented in that group of impressive rouleurs were half of the identical twins in this year’s race.
In years past, that would be easy enough – a single Yates would’ve done it – but this year the Tour de France twin representation has doubled courtesy of the Johannessen twins, Anders and Tobias, from Uno-X Mobility. Another curious statistic: 2.3% of the remaining riders in the Tour this year are an identical twin, a ratio roughly seven times that of the global birth average (around 3-4 in 1,000). Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) took the stage win, while Adam Yates supported his teammate Tadej Pogačar and moved up 20 places on GC after a lacklustre start. In the other twin camp, Tobias Johannessen moved up into 10th on the GC, and his identical twin brother Anders took seventh on the stage.
In the stress and turmoil of the world’s biggest bike race, perhaps there’s a psychological boost to be had for the twins at the race – one that has seen both Yates twins win Tour de France stages in the past few editions.
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But for the Johannessen brothers, there’s a sense of having achieved the pinnacle of twinly success even being here together. The two are unusually close, even for twins – the 25-year-olds moved out from the family home to a house they bought together just south of Oslo, and only recently have split up, but not far. Their new housing arrangement: "We live four and a half, five metres apart," Anders told me today. "We're neighbours, but as close as we can get. That's really special ... It's the perfect setup for the rest of our lives."
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