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People with attractive physical appearances have their own reserved benefits. Further a new research asserts that riders with attractive faces performed better during the Tour de France. 

The findings hint a possibility that we can assess a men's endurance performance by looking at the face. 

Erik Postma, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich noted that during the course of human evolution, hunting success and, by extension, feeding a family depended on the ability to chase game for hours and days. "That's why endurance performance was a key evolutionary factor", said Postma in the press release. 

Postma hypothesized that facial attractiveness has evolved to signal and endurance performance. If the hypothesis turns out to be correct, women should find men who are better at performing in terms of endurance particularly. 

Researchers tested the hypothesis on participants of the 2012 Tour de France. "The Tour de France is the ultimate test when it comes to endurance performance", explained Postma. Participants were all top fit, there was considerable differences in the performance. 

Around 800 people, including men and women, were asked to rate the portraits of 80 participants in terms of facial attractiveness. They were not told how fast the participants really were. 

Afterwards, an evolutionary biologist measured the performance of each rider on the basis of the time taken in completing the three times trails and complete race. 

 "Attractive riders are, therefore, faster", summed up Postma. 

"These results are in line with other studies showing that hormones play an important role when assessing potential sexual partners", added Erik Postma from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies in the press release. 

The study titled "A relationship between attractiveness and performance in professional cyclists" is published in the journal Biology Letters.