Want more Pogi Points? Bike Faster!

A research published at the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters shows that fast male cyclist are rated as 25% better looking. Now, I want to buy a bike and start training!

Dr Erik Postma, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Zurich, asked people to rate the attractiveness of 80 professional cyclists from the 2012 Tour de France where 198 cyclists started the race. Postma excluded from his batch all those who didn’t finish and those who were pictured wearing sunglasses, caps, or beards in their photographs.

These men are not included in the survey but would rank high in attractiveness too.

He used an online survey to show photos of riders from the 2012 Tour de France to 816 people, 72% of whom were female, and asked them to rate the riders for attractiveness, masculinity and likeability. Their scores were excluded if they recognised the rider.

“If we took the 10% best riders and compared their performance to the 10% worst, we found the best were on average 25% more attractive than the worst ones.”

One example was Maxime Monfort, was ranked 3rd in terms of attractiveness and 6th in terms of performance at the  2012 Tour de France. Rui Alberto Costa came 9th in terms of attractiveness and 15th in terms of performance.  2012 Tour de France winner, Bradley Wiggins, was not included in the survey because he was wearing sunglasses in his race portrait.

Maxime Monfort ranked 6th in performance is 3rd most attractive.

Rui Alberto Costa ranked 15th in performance is 9th in attractiveness.

The implication is that women have been programmed by evolution to find attractive men who are physically talented. The endurance in a man is a big plus for women. This is a finding that Postma says is consistent with Darwinian theories about mating choice.

During the course of human evolution, hunting success—and by extension, feeding a family—depended on a man’s ability to chase game for hours or even days.

“That’s why endurance performance was a key evolutionary factor,” said Postma.

There are also other factors for attractiveness though. Amael Moinard, who ranked 1st in attractiveness was actually just ranked 42nd in performance.

Amael Moinard was the most attractive in the survey but only ranked 42nd in performance.

“This shows that there is no one-to-one relationship between attractiveness and performance, and there are many other things that affect both a rider’s attractiveness and his performance,” Postma said.

This is the list of the most handsome cyclists in the 2012 Tour according to the research.

1. Amael Moinard
2. Yann Huguet
3. Maxime Monfort
4. Andriy Grivko
5. Michael Schar
6. Martin Velits
7. Christophe Riblon
8. Adam Hansen
9. Rui Alberto Costa
10. Manuel Quinziato

Someday, I wish to find my name in the list. Hehehe…

You can read the published research here. A relationship between attractiveness and performance in professional cyclists.