You have to keep in mind how much the course matters when trying to compare speeds. Not just wind and climbing, though those are big, but also altitude and road surface. As a random data point, during VR1 I decided to do a hard 56 miles on a 6 mile stretch of road in Albuquerque (altitude of ~5600ft). With 8 u-turns I averaged 29.0mph (46.67kph) on only 304w. I am in no way a better time trialist than Kienle, but the altitude and near perfect road condition played a huge role in how fast I was able to go. Out of curiosity, I just plugged the course I rode into best bike split and matched the numbers to my effort, then dragged the power to 375w which resulted in an average speed of 31.27mph. Drop the Cda a bit to account for better positions and then take out the uturns and you're looking at a mph or two faster than that. And 375w would be nothing for a World tour cyclist for a bit under 2 hours.

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Not sure how the power duration curve would go for something like that.

But, it's road vs TT bike but routinely hear quoted some silly high figures for Paris Roubaix.

I'd look into the British long distance TT champions and record holders for ideas perhaps.

They would get demolished by world tour TT specialists. Wurf is pack fodder at that level.

Going from 40kph to 43kph is also significantly easier than 43kph to 46kph and so on. Power becomes exponential related to speed at the higher ends.

Here you go:

387w for 1:30:2 for 50mi

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/...-1-30-31-ride-387704

Tony Martin did 44.8 kph for 175 kilometers in a day-long breakaway on stage 6 of the Vuelta. On his road bike.

http://www.timetriallingforum.co.uk/...-004-10-00-menwomen/

The time trial forum in the UK has a comprehensive list.
Marcin Bialoblocki smashed some records recently. 100 miles in 3.13.37
He was an ex pro and was good but not world beating. The courses in the UK are chosen for speed but his times are amazing. A top pro should beat his times but by less than you'd imagine.

Marcin was not in top 5 world tour TT rider, but he is a very very good specialist. If we just take power, i won't be the best like Wiggins was or Cancellara, but for a tall rider he is very aero and can stay in very very low position for long time, so the balance is very good. His record for the 100 miles is 340 watts at 50km/h, so very very aero optimized.

His 25 miles record is around 430 watts, and his 10 miles record around 450.

I think Rohan Dennis is the most powerful TT rider today in the peloton. Maybe 10 or 20 watts more than Marcin for each same distance, but not sure to be as aero so...

For Kienle, sure he has a big motor, but the key in TT is pacing. You have to be used to pace yourself at a specific power. TT grand tour is pacing around 400 watts, IM pacing is around 300 watts.

Kipchoge has the marathon world record, Bekele has the 10000m world record, who is the best ??? Maybe both.....

Cancellara held 45.34km/h for 1 hour 12 mins at 440W at 80kg (5.5w/kg if he was as heavy as listed) with 635m climbing to win the Rio Olympics TT. Just watched the entire race on YT yesterday by happenstance.

That's over 45km/h with 635m of climbing and he was putting out 550W for the 5 minute climbing portions. That also includes many coasting sections and the weather was awful so they were taking turns very cautiously.

He was blazing past many other OLYMPIANS by over 10 minutes in a race just over an hour long. Maybe Kienle could've also done well but he made other TT specialists who were the single best riders in their entire country look like amateurs. This was 2 days after the 150 mile road race as well. As far as power output, some guys in the top 10 weren't above 400W and we know top triathletes are in that range for similar bodyweight so maybe it isn't necessarily that big of a gap, hard to say.

It seems the biggest difference is that road cycling generally requires a lot more than just TT ability, but that top road cyclists still are a cut above the rest on TTs as well.

How about going up against Phil Gaimon?

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Less is more.

It's a point-to-point, there could be a significant tailwind (or headwind) on any given day.

With all due respect to Gaimon, he was a good professional cyclist but with very limited action at the top of the sport, don't get me wrong, still better than 99.9% of amateur and semi pro cyclists out there. He has gained a lot of popularity in social media like Strava, etc. but to keep things factual, and you can check his stats online a PCS. Quickly scanning, he did not see a lot of action in Europe during his career. He was never selected for a grand tour. Best result in a TT was like top 30th @ TT in a small stage race where the winner was Pinot ( a climber with a decent time trial, but no Dennis )

So in very simple terms, he was not even at the same race when Froome and Quintana were racing flat out to Mont Ventoux in 2013 (for example) to even have a climbing time to compare it to the top riders.

Like Wurf, good enough to turn pro, but nowhere near the level of Cancellara et al, even at his peak.

This has been asked and answered. "Pro cyclists can't time trial like triathletes!"

Imagine what a triathlete could do, then multiply x 100. That's your typical back of the pro cyclist. Roglic or Martin or Campanaerts are 100x again times that.

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It's not exponential, it's cubic. Power to overcome wind resistance scales as the cube of the speed given still air. There's not actually that much difference in the power needed to go from 40-43 kph compared to 43-46 kph -- if you took CdA = 0.24 m^2, and still air at density 1.2 kg/m^3, then overcoming air resistance would take 197 W at 40 kph, 245 W at 43 kph, and 300 W at 46 kph. So about a 48 W jump from 40 to 43 kph compared to a 55 W jump going from 43 to 46 kph.

The limiter is as much the tail of human ability as it is the steep increase in air resistance with increasing speed.

Good point, It looks like Kienle was actually just chilling for this ride anyay based on this article.
https://blog.2peak.com/...kienle-100k-results/

The drag increase is indeed exponential as the equation includes an exponent. It is not cubic. Cubic would be V^3.

Drag equation is d=Cd*p*v^2/2*A

Cd= coefficient of drag, dimensionless unit
p=rho, density of fluid, kg/m^3
v= velocity, m/s
A= Area, m^2

That's the equation to calculate the drag force. twcronin was talking about the power required to overcome drag, which is cubic with respect to speed (because drag power is the drag force multiplied by the speed).

Also, about exponential functions: in mathematical discussions, saying that something is "exponential" with respect to some variable means that that variable is used for the exponent in the exponentiation, not for the base. So in these two examples:

y = a^x

y = x^a

In the first example, y grows exponentially with respect to x. In the second example, it does not.