Five toughest sportives in the world

Sportives are mass-start cycling events, where the clock runs, but no winner is crowned - everyone is just riding to record their own time. These events aren't races like the Tour de France or Giro d'Italia (although don't try telling the folks at the front of the pack that), but just because they’re not competitive doesn’t mean they’re a walk in the park. For most sportives, completing the course alone is an accomplishment worth shouting about.

However, there are a select few sportives that push the boundaries of difficulty to the next level and present an opportunity for amateur cyclists everywhere to really hurt themselves. And we cyclists tend to like that, for some reason.

We’ve rounded up the five toughest sportives in the world, counting down to what we think is the hardest one out there. Let us know which event you want to tick off next.

5. Fred Whitton Challenge, Great Britain

© GCN

Brutal climbs on the Fred Whitton challenge

Conceived in honour of Lakes Road Club member and local legend Fred Whitton, who died at the age of 50 in 1998, this sportive takes on some of the toughest climbs in the Lake District. Across 180km, the route tackles over 3,000m of climbing and ticks off the hill passes at Hardknott, Kirkstone and Honister, to name just a few.

It may not be the longest ride in the world, but anyone who has braved the Lake District roads knows how slow progress is on those constantly shifting gradients. And then there’s the weather. Those lakes got there for a reason, after all - don’t expect the sun and blue skies you might get in a French or Swiss summer sportive.

4. L'Etape du Tour, France

The route for the L’Etape du Tour changes each year, as it follows the route for the Queen stage of the Tour de France. For the uninitiated, the Queen stage is the name given to the toughest, most mountainous stage of the race, and it’s always in the high mountains of the Alps or Pyrenees. So wherever this sportive ends up in any given year, you can guarantee it’s going to be a big day out.

For 2023, the route strung together the longest and hardest climbs between Morzine and Annemasse, including the Col de Cou, the Col de Ramaz, and the Col de Joux Plane. All told, in a single day the riders tackled over 4,100m of climbing, packed into 152km of road. Ouch!

In 2022, we tasked our in-house stats guru Cillian Kelly to ride the Étape. The GCN+ documentary is well worth a watch. Check it out here.

3. Mallorca 312, Spain

Breaking the 300km mark on any ride is going to be a tough day out, but riding that distance while tackling the kind of climbs that top pros use for training is a real ask. This is the Mallorca 312, a sportive on the cyclists’ favourite island just off the coast of Spain. Despite an astonishing 8000 spots available for this super popular event, the ride sells out within hours every year. So for this one, the ride is hard, but getting a place on the start line is even harder.

In 2021, we tasked a beginner to take on the Mallorca 312 with just 7 weeks of training. See how Freddie got on here.

2. La Marmotte, France

© Velo Collection (TDW) / Getty Images

Riders take on four climbs, finishing with the Galibier and Alpe d'Huez

One of the most famous – or should we say infamous – sportives in the world, La Marmotte sends riders up four of the toughest climbs the pro peloton faces each year in a single day. In ‘just’ 174km the route covers 5,180m of climbing, as it ascends famous climbs including the Col du Galibier and Alpe d’Huez.

For any cyclist wanting to get a taste of the very hardest challenges faced by the pros, this is the sportive to tackle. At 2,642m above sea level, the Galibier is one of the highest mountains to feature in the Tour de France, so this really is one of the biggest challenges out there.

1. Tour des Stations Ultrafondo, Switzerland

The longest and hilliest sportive in the world is the Tour des Stations Ultrafondo, in Switzerland. It’s a miracle that the riders even make it to the finish line of this eye-watering, unpleasant ride. Riders are timed for 242km, but from start to finish the ride is a total of 254km. Then there’s the elevation. This is the only sportive we’ve found that ‘Everests’, meaning that riders climb the height of Everest in the course of a single day. That’s 8848m of climbing, all in one ride, over the stunning climbs in the Valais.

When the organisers planned the route for the Tour des Stations, they weren’t sure that anyone would be able to finish it: it features 11 categorised climbs at altitudes of over 2000m. Remarkably, most of the 600 or so people who line up on the start line do make it to the finish, with the fastest riders completing the ride in about 10 hours. The quality of riders that this route attracts is remarkable – when our very own Ollie Bridgewood took part in 2022, seven-time Grand Tour winner Alberto Contador was among the riders. And much to our surprise, Ollie dropped him.