USSEL, France — Charly Wegelius swings his legs down from the sofa at the back of the bus and addresses his fellow EF Education-EasyPost directeur sportifs.“OK then,” he kicks off the meeting. “How are we going to win this?”It is 9am in the car park of a budget hotel near the Dordogne town of Périgueux, five hours before the start of stage nine of the Tour de France. Today is the first clear opportunity for the breakaway — a discipline at which the American squad excel.Last year, Irish rider Ben Healy exploited them to win stage six, claim the yellow jersey, and come within a bike length of winning on the legendary Mont Ventoux — and there are similar plans to gild the 2026 Tour in fluorescent pink.To win a race at WorldTour level requires bravery, legs, and incredible attention to detail — and, as the race enters the baker’s oven of the Massif Central, EF invited The Athletic to witness how one of the sport’s top teams plan their tactics.Ordinarily, Wegelius explains, this is a process that begins after the route is released the previous October, but as the team prepare to head to the start in Malemort, race organisers have forced them to readjust on the fly — shortening the stage by 30km due to a red-alert heatwave.“Imagine if they told Jose Mourinho, just before the start, that they’re going to change the shape of the pitch,” he jokes, semi-seriously, as he painstakingly adjusts the kilometre markers on VeloViewer, the mapping software used by the entirety of the peloton.EF loosely categorise days based on their perceived level of opportunity — which, with their current team make-up, includes cutting out sprint and general classification (GC) stages — prioritising nine over the course of this year’s race. But each Tour is unique and fragile; its particulars, as proved ahead of stage nine, are written in vanishing ink. Though lengthy prior research will be done on VeloViewer by rewatching races over similar finishes, the most important work has to take place immediately before the start.“There’s a conception that we have all our data and planning and that everything is in boxes long before the start,” says Wegelius. “But we can’t know how other teams are going to be managed until after the startlists are released — and until the race itself unfolds. Our most important planning happens between us on the bus each morning.”“It’s what we’re going to do and where we’re going to do it,” adds fellow DS Tom Southam. “How we can adapt our race to things other teams are doing — and what we want to make clear amongst ourselves.”Sometimes, these meetings can take just five minutes — if it is a stage where EF have no interest in the win, or if the race plan is so clear that the DS team instantly agree. At this Tour, EF have sometimes held this meeting as part of a morning walk, though temperatures have been so warm that the air-conditioned sofa area at the rear of the bus has often been their first choice.The heat, as they are eventually able to animatedly discuss, has made a real impact on the shape of the race as well as its difficulty — moving the intermediate sprint forward so it takes place after just 14km, significantly affecting the likely formation of the day’s breakaway. The conversation resembles a wargame exercise — running through several potential scenarios, and EF’s likely reaction, as they hone in on the rival Lidl-Trek team, riding for Mads Pedersen’s green jersey, as the key to the stage.EF’s Ben Healy won stage six of the 2025 Tour from a breakaway — his team were hoping for a similar result on Sunday (Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images)“There are four people in the green jersey race now,” states German DS Andreas Klier, the final member of the EF trio. “They’re very close to each other, ultra close, so that will have an influence. So (Pedersen’s teammates) Mathias Vacek and Quinn Simmons will drill it towards the top (of the first climb) for the sprint and keep on riding.“So the break could be 20 or so riders — and the problem is that Lidl-Trek are so strong that even if our rider, like Richie (the team’s best climber Richard Carapaz) gains 50 seconds on an ascent, they can easily bring it back; 50 seconds is nothing for them.”Wegelius and Southam agree. “The ones who are going to move the race are Lidl-Trek,” says Wegelius. “So if that happens, who could fix it if they weren’t happy (with the make-up of the break)?”They begin to plan, running through teams who may prosper if the peloton finishes together, producing a likely reduced bunch sprint. Several are ruled out.“I’d be pretty confident if a break goes, and Lidl aren’t in it, then we can chill,” says Wegelius, suggesting that the German team would be likely to work to bring the race back together. “I don’t see many other teams to resolve that situation.”“It’s a fact,” summarises Klier. “If Lidl isn’t in the group, it won’t go to the line — it’s simple and there for everyone to read.”That conclusion, thrashed out over 15 minutes, is one piece of data that can inform their plan. The next step is to discuss which riders might target the stage — though EF’s squad are all strong breakaway riders, they possess different characteristics, such as northern classics specialist Kasper Asgreen and pure climber Carapaz.Wegelius explains that Healy, possibly the team’s best all-round breakaway rider, has been slightly nervous about the heat of the day.“I said: ‘Join the f***ing club,” Wegelius recalls. “I told him that we had a good team who can carry some of the weight for him — he doesn’t need to do all of it on his own. He was talking about stage five, where the key moves were splits rather than breaks — that it’s so hot that it just snaps. So the best thing for him to do is to be placed in the right part of the bubble without jumping — to risk (not making the break) so he doesn’t overheat his engine.“I think the real way to win is by being someone who handles the heat better than everybody, and then your whole characteristics as a rider don’t count as much any more.”