Hmmm. It's the kind of story that might, say, make the BBC News website...so you can see why academics might be interested in concocting it, but I have to say, I'd be interested in seeing the actual photos they used.
As Monkey says, the basic story is a familiar one - "Healthy, physically fit men would on average be seen as more attractive by women." - but it's hard to believe there would be any real variation on that score between "80 professional cyclists from the 2012 Tour de France". Seems fair to assume that anyone who earns his crust as a TdF pro is about as uber as it gets. So what *did* make the difference? My guess would be something in the eyes that, in very subtle ways, reveals the subject's take on themselves: that the winners radiate positivity, while the losers' eyes look somehow down at the mouth. And it's that that the respondents are responding too. (I did think it was an interesting aside that "Dr Postma and his team found that women who were on the contraceptive pill were less likely to link attractiveness to performance.... women on the pill had a reduced preference for faster cyclists.")
The whole cultural aspect is fascinating. It's only relatively recently that we've begun to see a tan as attractive - and we do, I do certainly. There's clear evidence that as recently as Victorian times, men were more likely to be turned on by milky white skin, it being evidence that one was a lady and one didn't have to go around grubbing around in the dirt for mangle wurzels. Even today, in much of the third world, men show a preference for what we in the west would consider fat women. We've come to prefer skinny; in some societies, fat remains a major 'success' indicator, and is therefore attractive.
Overall though, quite an interesting bit of pop science...though I certainly wouldn't read too much into it. I might if I was a bit faster.