At the highest level of professional cycling, performance margins are measured in seconds.
UAE Team Emirates XRG, one of the most successful teams in professional cycling, is partnering with Eight Sleep to integrate advanced sleep and recovery technology across training, racing, and recovery for the 2026 season. As competition intensifies and race calendars grow more demanding, recovery has become a decisive performance lever. And no recovery tool is more consistent or more foundational than sleep. Eight Sleep brings sleep fitness to elite sport by actively optimizing the sleep environment in real time, night after night.
Why sleep is the ultimate competitive advantage in cycling
Elite cyclists face constant physical stress from multi-stage races, travel, altitude exposure, and compressed recovery windows. While modalities like massage, compression, cryotherapy, and nutrition all play important roles, sleep remains the only recovery process that directly governs adaptation, hormonal regulation, cardiovascular recovery, and long-term resilience.
Optimizing sleep represents the highest-leverage opportunity to improve recovery without adding training load. Through this partnership, UAE Team Emirates XRG will deploy the Pod by Eight Sleep, an AI-powered sleep system that actively optimizes the sleep environment in real time, across training camps, altitude blocks, and key races.
From individual adoption to team-wide integration
The partnership was sparked by early adoption at the rider level. Four-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar integrated the Pod by Eight Sleep into his personal recovery routine and experienced noticeable improvements, particularly during demanding multi-stage races. As its impact became clear, interest quickly spread across the team.
What began as an individual performance tool quickly evolved into a team-wide commitment to sleep as a strategic advantage. “At this level, performance is not just built on the bike, it’s built overnight,” said Jeroen Swart, Head of Performance of UAE Team Emirates XRG. “Recovery is essential to sustaining performance across a long and demanding season. Eight Sleep brings a level of precision and personalization to sleep that aligns with how we approach every other aspect of performance.”
How Eight Sleep supports elite recovery
The Pod by Eight Sleep is a fully integrated hardware and software system that fits directly on the bed like a mattress cover. It continuously measures physiological signals such as heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and sleep stages, then automatically adjusts temperature and sleep conditions to improve recovery throughout the night.
Unlike traditional recovery tools that operate for minutes or hours, the Pod works across the entire sleep cycle. Eight Sleep’s technology has been clinically validated to increase deep sleep by up to 34% and improve cardiovascular recovery by up to 15%. Riders and performance staff also gain access to longitudinal sleep insights, enabling more personalized decisions around training load, travel adaptation, and race preparation.
Advancing sleep fitness at the highest level of sport
Eight Sleep is trusted by elite athletes across cycling, Formula 1, tennis, and endurance sports worldwide. Its AI platform is trained on hundreds of millions of hours of real-world sleep data, bringing a closed-loop, data-driven approach to recovery that mirrors the sophistication of modern training systems.
“When the difference between winning and losing is measured in seconds, consistent recovery becomes a strategic advantage,” said Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder and CEO of Eight Sleep. “Our mission is to help athletes recover faster, adapt better, and perform at their best, night after night.”
The partnership will roll out during UAE Team Emirates XRG’s pre-season performance testing and extend across the 2026 racing calendar, supporting both the WorldTour squad and the team’s development program. At the highest level of cycling, sleep is no longer passive recovery. It’s part of the performance system.
