IvarAlmere wrote:
So 61.3 kg..
He stated that he almost had a 20% improvement. So his previously FTP could have been 291.
That sums up to a 4,75 W/kg which is a very good score -> cat. 1. Not sure if it is enough for a 14th place, but more plausible than getting a 14th place with 4,07 W/kg
There is just one point to pinpoint on this categories: they are based on the performance of athletes regardless of doping or not.
And in general those numbers are based on the results (watt/kg) of the last, say, 20 years?
But in the '90 EPO was "practically" legal, and today faster athletes show the same numbers. There is no way the the categories reflect "clean" athletes potentials.
There a different researches (irish tri, bbc), that shows that about 10-15% of amateur athletes take forbidden complements. About them you can average about 3-4% taking serious help, like EPO or GH. Over a field of 300 there is then about 10 people taking such substance.
(sure those a simple statistics, there are other factors that can influence those numbers, but there is no way, I repeat, NO WAY, that everybody is clean. Just remember that with EPO microdoses any control is useless, France2).
So, in the end, if you are a gifted rider, with a watt/kg > 4.1 or 4.2 you can expect finish no more than a 5-15 place on a race such in the Icarus movie.