Well if you’re after a racing licence in New Zealand you fill out the form and pay your money and voila, but in France it’s not quite that simple.   

To race at an elite or professional level in France you require some kind on insurance, but no insurance company will cover a rider unless they know they are fit and healthy.  Of course most cyclists would like to think they are fit and healthy, but there is the odd occasion that there can be complications with athlete’s health, due to genetics or some other reason. So to apply for a license you must go through a complete course of testing. 

To start with there is the standard body mass index (or fat test), which sometimes doesn’t bring quite the result your after damm it.  Following that your lung size and strength is tested on a fancy little machine connected to a computer that shows your results as you do it.  After that its time for a urine test, and a then you are hooked up to a few diodes to check you resting heart rate to make sure you are ready ride yourself to exhaustion on the test bike. So into the test lab you go, though there are about 400 questions to answer first, and this can take some time in French. 

Once the book work is done you have to lie down on a bed while about 20 diodes are hooked up to your chest and back to monitor your heart rhythm during the test, and a catheter in your vein to take lactate samples as you make you way through the pain barriers. 

Finally you’re onto the bike, starting at around 200watts and increasing 30 watts every 3mins until you’re at your limit.  Though the worst part I find here is after you finish you’re taken straight off the bike dripping sweat and laid back down on the bed for 10mins as the monitor your heart in recovery mode. So once you have been detached from all the cords there is time for a quick shower before a post test weigh in and a vision test.  So there’s an entire afternoon, though its still isn’t finished there. 

You are also required to have and echocardiogram or ultra sound of the heart done every year, and a full dental check every two years just for good measure. So as you can see it sure is some process, but at the end of the day I guess it is all just safety measures and keeps everyone in good check so they know they are all in order to smash themselves week in week out during the season. 

Below are a few pictures of me getting put through my testing in Toulouse just before I came home.