Cyclists Hunt for an Edge. This Time, It’s Data, Not Drugs

The Spanish city of Granada lies more than 1,000 miles from Paris and Milan, but for Nairo Quintana, the road to both could well pass through a small computer lab on the outskirts of town. The 12-year-old facility is where phone company Telefónica SA is analyzing hundreds of millions of data samples with an eye toward helping the Colombian rider win cycling’s two biggest races in a single season.

Coming out on top in the same year in the Giro d’Italia, which ends in Milan on May 28, and the Tour de France, which wraps up with a 65-mile ride to the Champs Elysée on July 23, is notoriously difficult, because cyclists must reach peak performance twice in three months. Only a half-dozen riders have done so, and none in the past two decades. Quintana, 27, has never finished the Tour in the yellow jersey of the leader, but he won the Giro in 2014 and, two years later, the No. 3 event on the calendar, Spain’s Vuelta a España.