On JB2 today they posted these results from various climbs up Plateau de Beille. One of the posters on the youtube thread mentioned the top VAM today from Tadej was 1875m. The back of the top ten GC today surpassed everyone all time other than Ullrich and Pantani (top 3 from today’s GC were top three all time).
Did they have a massive tailwind today (on top of better tech). Landa was around in the time of Froome and today he is blowing aways the 2015 group.
Just came to post about tadejs climb time for this. Destroys both armstrongs and pantanis best times. Close to 4 minutes better than pantani.
I am more curious how much faster they were today versus 2015 (9 years ago). Let’s say the road is repaved, faster bikes, faster rubber, faster clothing, faster helmets, but that’s still a lot. Must be a massive tailwind on top of faster everything else.
The climb was into a headwind today! It is considered the greatest climbing performance of all time.
https://lanternerouge.com/...rance-2024-stage-15/
Top 100 times of all time:
http://www.climbing-records.com/...le-takeover.html?m=1
Perhaps it’s the new car tailpipe inhalation method? What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger?
Dev - just enjoy the show and don’t try to figure out how the sausage is made.
Johan said they are estimating 6.98 W/Kg for 39 minutes, at altitude. He converted it to 7.27 W/Kg at sea level. Pogi is around 63Kg, so that’s somewhere in the vicinity of 450-460W.
Out of this world.
I think it doesn’t get talked about enough how bad training used to be. Commonly they’d just ride long, probably too hard, and use racing for interval work. Not only would they not fuel, but they’d intentionally do seriously fasted training. These things all self select for specific riders, and definitely doesn’t lead to top performances. While they did use chemicals to overcome this, training science has changed dramatically in the last 5-10 years I think. Cycling was worse than many in how it relied on traditions like this too. Same reason why you see some teams just don’t get good results, despite having good riders.
That is easy. It is because today they don’t have to carry the weight of doping, and hence they are lighter and produce more watts per kilo… That, and also because of disc brakes…
That is easy. It is because today they don’t have to carry the weight of doping, and hence they are lighter and produce more watts per kilo… That, and also because of disc brakes….
Gotta be the disc brakes !!!
On a relative scale though this would be like the marathon world record going down by over 15 minutes in that duration. We have shaved around 6 minutes of Carlo Lopes’ 2:07 from Rotterdam marathon from the mid 80’s so a bit longer duration than Pantani’s 1996 Plateau record.
Just came to post about tadejs climb time for this. Destroys both armstrongs and pantanis best times. Close to 4 minutes better than pantani.
That must be some super salad and mineral water they are consuming these days!
Just came to post about tadejs climb time for this. Destroys both armstrongs and pantanis best times. Close to 4 minutes better than pantani.
That must be some super salad and mineral water they are consuming these days!
Partial answer to this is Lance was fat relative to the top three today (OK maybe Lance was just Large). The rest, let’s discuss between bikes, rubber, skin suits, better pavement on that particular climb, tailwind, more aero helmets. The rest is the bodies and what goes into them.
For me what is more interesting is how fast Landa and Yates went yesterday. Landa was being smoked by Froome when the two overlapped and Froome was on top of his game and Froome is a no body on this Plateau list above.
Also yesterday they rode this in the last 10km of the Pyranee queen stage. I don’t remember what the race course was the day Pantani and Ullrich cleaned up in 1996.
The climb was into a headwind today! It is considered the greatest climbing performance of all time.
https://lanternerouge.com/...rance-2024-stage-15/
I’m not saying that the performance wasn’t remarkable or even that their analysis is wrong, but if I did an analysis that spit out “top 2 performances of all time” I’d redo and then redo again my methodology to make sure everything is as it should be.
Remember, Tadej was drafting Jonas and Jorgensen to start, so the times are not unassisted.
Remember, Tadej was drafting Jonas and Jorgensen to start, so the times are not unassisted.
From the list on my screen capture, we also don’t know (off the top of our collective heads) who out of the list in the first jpeg (from all time) did it solo or drafting. I think the times of Yates and Landa yesterday were least assisted by the Tadej+Jonas train?
Maybe, but who was assisting the guy that worked full time at a fish factory just a few years ago and Pogacar?
Maybe, but who was assisting the guy that worked full time at a fish factory just a few years ago and Pogacar?
From wiki:
As Vingegaard was beginning to achieve better results in races, Danish UCI Continental team ColoQuick–Cult and general manager Christian Andersen signed a contract with him in May 2016 and he switched teams with immediate effect. In order to structure his daily life, Andersen had Vingegaard start a job at a fish factory, Chrisfish in Hanstholm. Working there during weekdays, Vingegaard skinned fish from 6am to noon before training in the afternoons. For a time he worked with Michael Valgren at the factory, who was also pursuing a career as a professional cyclist.
The most important factor is do they ride hard from the buttom or only last 5km, so these records are hard to compare.
Climbing records are being crushed, with all-time VAM’s being put down, and we’re talking about improved tech, training methods, diet, marginal gains, etc. Where have I heard this before???
If you were skeptical of Froome, but you aren’t now, I’d love to understand your rationale
This isn’t an accurate estimate. Derek Gee’s ride here for comparison: https://www.strava.com/.../3247603250452824426
Stats:
Gee rode 45:58 at ~5.3w/kg (or even slightly less). 411w at 172lbs/78kg
All else being equal, Pogacar (at a listed ~143lbs) would’ve needed only 420-440w (very rough estimate). Call it 425w at 64.5kg and we have 6.6w/kg (actually a bit less). In fact, my calculation on the http://bikecalculator.com/ phone app says very near to 420w (with everything equal except Pog vs. Derek’s weight). If either of those guys is even 1-2kg less (believable after 2 weeks in the tour), then these numbers remain totally insane… but far less insane than the dopers’ numbers, with every detail of the performance dialed as perfectly as nutrition, tactics, and training allows in the modern era. The altitude conversions are probably not super accurate anymore, but it’s still only going to be ~6.8-6.9w/kg at the absolute top end. BikeCalculator.com dramatically overestimates the power Gee would’ve needed to do that climb. On the phone app, you can adjust aerodynamic and rolling resistance, and that made it more normal (without a 25mph tailwind).
Something in their estimate is way off, else Derek Gee would’ve needed another 30w to do the time he did.
Is it absurd? Absolutely. Is it evidence of some beyond normal superhuman performance? Nope. In fact, I’d say it’s actually put my mind much more at ease about these riders because of what guys in the early 2000s were ACTUALLY measured doing, not some estimate.
As everyone has been mentioning, every aspect of tech and training is considerably more advanced than the “eat a slice of bread and ride 5.5 hours” of Lance’s day. He claims to have ridden 7w/kg (alleged 500+ w) for 30+ minutes. Just metabolically, 500w for 30min is hard to fathom. Then there’s this: Contador rode 458w for a 20 minute test prior to one of his tour wins, at 61.6kg. That’s 7.44w/kg (!!!). Using our accepted 95% (or even 92% rule) he would’ve been capable of >6.8-7.0w/kg for an hour. He may have trained incredibly, but it’s almost certainly not to the level of today, and that’s pretty well accepted by everyone. THOSE numbers are truly absurd.
Here’s a screenshot of that (which Contador himself allegedly supplied) shared 3 weeks ago: https://www.instagram.com/...25ttgld/?img_index=1
The modern guys’ performances are crazy, impressive, and unbelievable, but the entire point of the sport is to go as fast as possible, so performance itself, within reason, is not damning evidence of doping like is being implied here. If it was 100% doping and impossible to achieve, I personally would expect to see numbers beyond what they’re doing.
This time it’s different, I tell ya.
The Derek Gee proxy stats projected to the rest of the top ten is really helpful since Gee’s times sits in the vicinity of many in the top all time
.