The power track sprinters are capable of is insane.

Well, ok then, I stand corrected. The TdF sprinters are just a little crazy =)

Still, 2k watts for the last couple 100 meters, or 400W average for the last hour (for the aforementioned TdF riders). I sure could use a little craziness like that =)

- S

Very cool and eye opening. Thanks for sharing.

The power that pro BMX racers are capable of are equally, if not more, "insane."

That was pretty cool. Except when they started playing handsy and the end, I though things might get a little 'German'.

Are track sprinters usually riding for 120 or so miles before they produce that power?

>Are track sprinters usually riding for 120 or so miles before they produce that power?


ProTour sprinters need not be offended. They're really good too. Just that peak 1-2s power isn't as important there.

Actually I think the tough part of ProTour sprinting isn't the 120 miles, but mile 119 spent at >600W as they try to establish position.

I think he is probably overstating some of the power numbers by a little bit, not a lot but a little.

The lsat 200meters for cav at 1,600? no. Maybe not even the peak 5 seconds within that most of the time, but sometimes yeah.

But really it is more insane than it seems. 120 miles of flat stage where you have to hang on and not get dropped...think about your local racing scene. Probably all of the cat3s and cat4s and cat5s would be dropped before the lead out for the sprint...and most of those cats3s are faster than your local AG tri studs.

THEN you have a few minutes at insane leadout pace, so you have to have the anaerobic capacity to survive that and not get dropped. That would lose a lot of your local Cat 2 roadies too.

THEN, you have to have enough left to do 1,200 to 1,800 watts (depending on your size) for a few seconds to separate and win the sprint.

nutty, it is a really really odd kind of person that can be a pro tour sprinter.

he could win a local cat 1 road race via breakaway or a local cat 1 match sprint in the same day!

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Here's Greipel's data from a Tour down under stage. Early season but I don't believe he is capable of 'well over 2000 watts' in the final 200 meters. I'm going with overstating the numbers by a lot.

Right, but another day he might do 1,700 if the approach is slower.

Either way, 2,000 watts for more than 1 second is going to be rare in the pro tour.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I suppose if it's a lower tier race but I don't see a lot of 'slow' approaches to the final sprint. They should just post their numbers on Strava to clear this up.

What I would be more interested in is the 10 second power that a 100m track runner could put out if you took him and put him on a bike and actually trained him to sprint on a bike. I don't think the best genetic talent in the world for bike sprinting is even on a bike. They might be actually be 100m sprinters or NFL cornerbacks no where near a bike. I think the same thing can be said about speed skaters (at least that is what the Dutch coach said)....if the US was half serious, there is a ton of raw genetic talent no where near the bikes and skates.

Very true. I think that most endurance talent manages to find its way to endurance sport, but where fast twitch is concerned there is way more attention and money for lots of sports, and cycling probably isn't even on the radar.

There are undoubtedly athletes doing other sports who could match the maximal neuromuscular power of elite sprint cyclists. However, it is incorrect to suggest that they could routinely exceed it. Simply put, ~25 W/kg (male) is a very high power output for a human being regardless of whether it is generated by pedaling a bike or, e.g., during a vertical jump or a weightlifting move.

i'd say a lot rather than a little. It seems that either Eurosport wants to make this into more of a fluff piece, or Schreiber intentionally inflated the numbers. Either way, seems like the purpose of the piece is to impress rather than to inform. Overall, i didn't like it a bit as you had one of the first pros who trained using power lobbing softball questions at the guy who presumably know the application side of his product very well...

He also said that in the lead-in, Cav would be doing ~300W, well below threshold, while trying to hold wheels. Given the graph shown below, that's just untrue. I think we had this debate with a clueless fool a few years back about how "easy" it is for sprinters to go all out at the end of a road race, and we basically provided power data showing that average power in the last 3-5 minutes is more along VO2 max range rather than endurance range.

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What makes it insane is that they hit those power numbers fueled mainly by Mountain Dew and Skittles.

Do you really think Tyler Farah (or even Cav) is in the same athletic zip code a Michael Johnson, Mo Green or Justin Gatlin (or Terrell Davis, for that matter)? If those guys spend even a small part of their childhoods on a velodrome, it would be an absolute slaughter. When I quit slowtwitch for good and get crazy rich, that is going to be my pet project: better velodrome access for USA fast twitch athletes to destroy the rest of the world in bunch kicks....

1. I said elite sprint cyclists, not roadies such as those you mention.

2. While track cycling may not be particularly popular in the US, it draws more attention in other countries (England, Australia, and France in particular). There's also professional BMX to consider.

3. As I mentioned, maximal human power has been quantified during movements other than pedaling. The numbers recorded by elite sprint cyclists are directly comparable to such records.

1) Are the track guys really better athletes than the TDF sprinters? I thought the most talented track guys jumped to the road (like Kittel) where the money is.
2) Track cycling has massive barriers to entry that keeps the best athletes out of contention. Guys with Western African heritage (with a few notable exceptions) have filled out the 100m Olympic finals and most of the rosters of the power/speed sports where "real" money (football) is since those sports have modernized. Sprinting (running) requires almost no infrastructure or investment, and is contested by everyone, not just people with access to a purpose-built facility for a niche-of-a-niche sport. Everyone at one time or another gets into a sport where sprint ability is evaluated, if yoou are good, you keep going. Not everyone does a flying 200 on a fixed gear bike.
3) You're telling me the BMX guys can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Bolt in power/weight measurements? Again, BMX seems like a pretty narrow gene pool to be able to match the world-wide talent net cast for sprinting.

the track sprinters, are better at the purely sprinting part of cycling, than road sprinters are. road sprinters also have to have near world class aerobic power to even be around to sprint at the end.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I've tested my fair share of NHL hockey players, in addition to cyclists.

Its not abnormal to see peak wingate powers of 1600w+ from a hockey player. I'd say every one that I've ever tested has been over 1k. I don't think I've ever seen anyone break 2k. (Velotron).

With that said, these guys weigh ~86kg on average, so we're only looking at 18ish w/kg. which technically makes even me stronger in a relative sense.

I'm sure that a track running sprinter could brute force their way to high numbers, perhaps significantly better than the hockey players. Consider, as well, that michael johnson was 170 lbs. For him to hit that 25w.kg mark, he'd have to hit 1950ish watts. (Vs. 1700w for a 150lb Cav. )

But, unless they're doing a flying 200, they have to get to the finish line. This is going to be hampered by the fact that they have an inordinate amount of type II fibers.

Remember that despite the fact that we consider cycling sprinters, sprinters, they are still endurance athletes first and foremost.

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Depends on what you mean by "track guys".

Track sprint and track endurance are totally different beasts. Someone like Cavendish is a track endurance rider, not a track sprinter. Even if he trained for it exclusively, Cav would get smoked in world class elite track sprint competition.


Track sprint riders who are successful that move over to road racing are pretty rare, e.g. Theo Bos, but not many do it, and Bos hasn't really made it to the higher echelons.

Kittel was never an elite track sprinter. He started out as a junior road and MTB rider, indeed winning junior road time trial championships.

Most track riders that move over to the road are track endurance riders, i.e. team pursuit, individual pursuit, points racing, scratch racing and the like. Riders like Wiggins, Cavendish, Phinney, Zabel, O'Grady, McGee etc etc.

No elite track sprinter does those events, or at least not with any hope of being competitive. They are just not physiologically suited to it.


No one disagrees that riding a bike requires a bike, and that riding on a track requires a track.

Triathlon is pretty limited in its access to those with limited resources too.

In some countries though cycling tracks are very common. There are about 100 of them in Australia for instance. Most cities and towns have one. It doesn't need to be an expensive indoor facility. Most Australian track sprint talent for instance comes from local outdoor tracks.

However once you progress to elite world class, you pretty much need access to high end sports facilities no matter the sport.


From numbers I've seen, yes they are in the same ballpark. Of course such events are joint angle and force specific, as well as many other traits that vary, so don't expect one to have pointy end success in the other exercise modality.

I saw one reference saying Bolt is estimated to have put out ~2.6kW for ~0.89 seconds shortly after the start of his sprint:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0143-0807/34/5/1227/

BMX elite (and cycling track sprint elite) can be 2.2 - 2.4kW+ for peak power measured at cranks with at least 1 crank rotation of data (minimum of 1 second), and I would not be surprised if there are occasional measurement that are higher.

If you want to measure shorter duration power than that, well that's a bit trickier, and I've no doubt instantaneous power is much higher, e.g. peak torque is roughly double the average torque of a full 360 degree pedal stroke. So an instantaneous power level of well over 3kW would not surprise me.

You might be surprised to realise how close much of the talent pool is. The differences are often pretty small.

I'm yellow-carding you for excessive and unnecessary use of italics.