I don’t believe the goal, for Armstrong, was ever 7.0w/kg because I recall reading one of the many books about his TdF time and how he bragged about knowing he was fit enough for the Tour when he was able to push 450 watts for a particular time up a climb. He weighed 75kg (165 lbs) so that’s right at 6.0w/kg
Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvmG4HUMDos
He does mention 7.0W/KG towards the end of the video. It’s funny he mentions “bread and water” too as that was what the doped up riders would claim to be using (“pan y agua”)
This is an interesting article from 2020:
https://jralong.com/2020/09/21/we-wont-get-fooled-again/
An excerpt from the link:
Here’s an explanation from VeloNews
“Better science, nutrition, and technology, which helps any bike racer, only acts as an accelerant when applied to today’s über-talented youngsters. Lighter frames, aero helmets and skin-suits, calibrated diets and recovery, coupled with the granular attention to detail in training programs means young riders can advance their racing development at a staggering rate. If they have the motor, and the skills to back it up, they can expect to perform almost immediately.â€
Arguably, the piece doesn’t unpack these claims because that’s not what the article is about. However, it doesn’t make any sense. “Better science, nutrition, and technology,†are available to all, not just young riders. So the “advantage†is shared by all. And as teams dictate what racers use, it’s hard to see those things resulting in an edge for anyone. The riders aren’t suddenly being given these advances, they have been available for some time. It’s not like young riders were racing on steel frames with 36-spoke box-section clinchers before they raced the WorldTour circuit. And five years ago, as well as long before, the science, nutrition, and technology of the day were similarly available to all.
Maybe the new generation is different and is somehow beating the older riders because even though everyone has them, the benefits only accrue to people under 22. This kind difference has been claimed for many generations. Maybe this time it’s true.
Have the limits of human performance changed?
Doping can be present, even if the athlete doesn’t go beyond what has been seen has humanly possible. That written, there does seem to be a consensus. When it comes to riding a bike uphill, the limit for a 10-20 minute effort is under 6.5 watts per kilogram. An analysis of the L’alpe d’Huez climb at the Tour shows some pretty stark numbers. This climb typically occurs at the end of a long road stage. It can take upwards of 37 minutes to ascend. LeMond climbed it at 5.7 w/kg in 1989 and 1990. Pantani climbed it at 6.6 w/kg in 1998. Armstrong managed 6.98 w/kg in a time trial up the Alpe in 2004. In 2008, when Riccardo Ricco was blowing everyone away in the Pyrenees at the Tour and then got busted for doping, coach Allen Lim said the following: —
“That was black and white. That was 6.7-watts-per-kg for 12 minutes. No one else has done anything else that in the Tour. Not even close. Everything has been tactical. Getting time before the climb. Riding at 5-watts-per-kg moving in the peloton to 5.5 to 5.7-watts-per-kg in the final 10km, maybe just under 6 watts in the final 5km. That’s normal physiology. Talk about a guy doing that for 10 minutes, 6.5, 6.7, you’re smoking crack or you’re some sort of man-greyhound hybrid.â€
Looks like we might have a man-greyhound hybrid in Tadej Pogacar. Thanks to his and his team’s association with Stages Cycling and TrainingPeaks, we learned that the young Slovenian rode at 6.75 w/kg for the final 10 minutes of the Peyresourde. And it was sandwiched between a 10 minutes 6.42 w/kg effort on the lower part of the climb and nearly five minutes at 6.45 w/kg for the stage finale.
Of course, there are caveats. The power meter might not have been calibrated properly, or the offset drifted over the course of the day or climb, of he’s heavier than the advertised 66kg. But with the widespread use of powermeters, much of the guesswork separating what is equipment and what is human has largely evaporated.
Further, it’s within the realm farthest edge of possible that human performance has advanced some over the past 12 years. But that kind of advance, in the 5%-10% range, is far.
Strikingly, it has been reported that Pogacar didn’t use a powermeter or bike computer for his stage 20 time trial effort, at least for the climbing portion. Most of his competition did.
Can time trials reveal inadvertent truths?
Racing against the clock is known as “the race of truth†because each rider is alone. But they can also be revealing in other ways.
Because there aren’t the tactical skirmishes in time trials, the efforts are simple. There’s the rider. He’s going all out for a fixed distance. His competitors are also going all out for the same distance. Thanks to repeated efforts, we know how riders have compared to one another in other races. Thanks to competitive refinement, we can probably evaluate equipment choices as well—for the most part, elite time trialists are probably close to a draw when it comes to their equipment. Everyone uses a disc rear, a deep-dish front wheel, and their frames have to conform to UCI standards; the bikes are almost all so close as to be a wash. So their position is the variable. And when it comes to climbing, they probably all have bikes pretty close to the 6.8kg UCI minimum weight, and position probably doesn’t count for much when climbing at 20kph.
In 2008, German rider Stefan Schumacher suddenly became a time trial threat. He went from finishing behind the usual top time trial suspects to beating them handily in two Tour de France time trials. He didn’t have a markedly different start position than some of the competition, so it’s hard to claim he had better road conditions. He wasn’t riding a new bike or in a new time trial position. Turned, out, it was a new form of EPO.
Provided all the competitors we’re evaluating are trying to put in their maximum efforts and they’ve raced against one another in the recent past, we should have a decent idea of what they’re capable of.
At the 2020 Slovenian Time Trial Championships, held on June 28, Pogacar beat Roglic by nine seconds after 15.7km of racing. So in a 36km time trial, that would be 22 seconds or so. Interestingly, it seems they did the first half on road bikes, the second half on TT bikes. In 2019, both rode the 36.2km Jurancon-Pau individual time trial stage of the Vuelta a España, both putting out their maximum efforts, as both were going for the overall. Roglic beat Pogacar by 1:29. Pogacar finished third overall; Roglic won. Of course, there are the caveats about great days and terrible days, and Pogacar geting stronger as he gets older.
It’s hard to think equipment was the difference at the Tour. Both rode time trial bikes for the flatter section of the course and both switched to their road bikes at virtually the same spot on the climb. Pogacar might have had a slightly faster switch, but by then, 30km in, Pogacar was already 36 seconds ahead. And made up another 80 seconds in the final 6km.
Almost more striking is that Tom Dumoulin, who also was at the front the entire Tour and was riding both to win the stage and improve is overall standing, was beaten into second place on the day by 81 seconds after Pogacar’s ride. Dumoulin was shocked. “My values were World Championship-worthy values. That’s great to see,†he told Cyclingnews. “That’s why I was all the more surprised that PogaÄar was 1:21 faster. I’m sure I can tell you I’m never going to reach that level. I may be able to win one per cent somewhere, but not five per cent.â€
Dumoulin rode his time trial bike for the whole stage, rather than switch on the climb as Pogacar and Roglic did. He appears to have lost 21 seconds on the flatter part of the stage and then another minute on the climb.
I hope it was a clean Tour. But the old spidey sense is tingling.