Tour de France: The pace of riders in the modern era

With the last week of racing in the 2017 Tour de France underway, John Wakefield digs into the numbers we have seen so far and looks at reasons why the peloton has gotten faster over time.

Why might the tour be faster in this modern era?

I said I would touch on this in my last article, and with there being SO much to type about on this subject, I thought I would give some data values and numbers with some personal thoughts on the matter. There is so much being made of the difference in climbing and race speeds in today’s times vs the dark era of the sport where doping was very prevalent and well known.

While I don’t believe the sport is totally clean today, there is no doubt it is head and shoulders above the era gone by. Riders and teams have now gone looking for other ways to seek performance gains and this is where modern science comes into play.

ASO/Alex Broadway.

A few elements you need to take into account in modern times are the following:

Riders have always trained hard. One cannot dispute that, but over the years training has become more specialized and scientific. I am not saying there wasn’t a science to their training schedules back then, there was, but it is now more advanced, giving more benefit to the rider and helping them progress.

A single example of that is previously riders were well known to do 30 hour weeks in training. Today that is not done as the fuel is not the same.

In 2015, I attended the Science and Cycling Conference in Utrecht before the Tour start with my business colleague and good friend Dr Jeroen Swart. The Lotto-Jumbo coach (Louis Delahaije) was giving a presentation on altitude training, which I was really looking forward to attending. Afterward, I found him in the foyer and chewed his ear off and he was happy to answer all I had to ask.

The one question I asked him was overall hours in a week his riders were doing. He said a maximal week would be 25-30 hours in base season only. Then during the season, they are doing 15-20 hours. His reason was “in today’s times you can’t do 30 hours and get quality in, and it’s not the old days any more”.

The science behind training has progressed which will give an athlete better performance gains.

Nutrition has also improved. Previously riders would eat huge bowls of pasta before stages, often with plain sugar, and on the bike the standard bars and gels. Today, meals are all mostly periodised to riders training and race programs.

Bikes and equipment have also become more advanced. Fitting ceramic bearings to your wheels and bottom bracket alone will give you an advantage; this will give your bike improved rolling resistance and pedal stroke. Bikes are a lot stiffer and equipment is also a lot more aerodynamic when compared to years prior. Not a huge benefit, I will admit, but when you consider all these factors together it adds up to give a rider an advantage.

Other factors are environmental and tactical. At the bottom of the climb was there a tail or headwind? How did the race hit the bottom of the climb, was it full gas? Was it an easy pace and riders got there fresh? Where was the climb in the stage? Which stage was it? What week was it in? All these things need to be taken into account when comparing Pantani to Aru on a certain climb. You cannot just take a climb and think all things being equal will result in a positive outcome.

Motor vehicles. The one element I am also convinced increases the over Tour speeds in today’s times is the number of cars and motorbikes on the stages. There are a lot of bikes and cars ahead of the race with photographers, officials and the likes. This has to have a positive effect on race speed purely from a pacing and aerodynamic benefit by cutting the air in front of the peloton creating more drag efficiency. If we remove all those vehicles and the few points above will we be doing the same or better speeds? I really don’t think so.

Now let’s dig into the rider data

On every stage someone draws the unlucky straw in a team and has to get themselves into the break, yes some love it like Cummings and Voeckler for example.

On Stage 7, Dylan van Baarle (1.87m tall and 78kg) from Cannondale- Drapac and three other riders went from the start to get a break formed which worked and they were allowed to get away and stayed away until 6 km to go.

Dylan van Baarle.

While a day in the break is incredibly tough in its own right, the interesting data comes from the beginning of the stage where he has to force a move and get away from the Peloton. This is typically the 5 min period after the attack has worked where you are creating the gap. His data over those 5 minutes was the following:

His data can be seen here on TrainingPeaks:

Alexander Kristoff (78kg) also posts his data on TrainingPeaks and it’s interesting how and where things really hot up for the sprinters on their stages. When you look at his overall stage 7 data where he finished 4th in the sprint is the following:

Looking at those numbers you can see he really saved energy over the lumpy course so he was able to give it his all.

The sprint started with 400m to go and this took Kristoff 21 seconds to complete at a top speed of 72.3km/h. His average power over that period was 954w / 12.63 w/kg and a Max of 1287w / 17.05 w/kg.

That alone is impressive in its own right and then you hear of Greipel (75kg) pushing a Max of 1790W with a top speed of 74km/h who came around Kristoff. Then, once again, Kittel came over both of them to win. I don’t have my phone book with me but I’m sure his numbers are in there somewhere.

While some people may be able to produce those numbers once off, the impressive part about these sprinters is that they doing it two weeks into a Tour continuously.

There was a lot made of Fabio Aru’s win on La Planche des Belles Filles and the numbers that would estimate he climbed at. To me, it was what a standard general classification rider would produce. Things to take into account is that the stage was basically a once off effort for 16 minutes and it came very early in the Tour where the riders are still feeling very fresh.

Fabio Aru on his way up La Planche des Belles Filles. ASO/Bruno BADE.

While we don’t have his power data you can get pretty spot on with calculation and his data was the following:

When you look at his data it honestly is not that out of the ordinary, he did 16 min at 6.5 W/kg, in order to be competitive in a Grand Tour you need to be producing close to sometimes above 6.2 W/kg for 30 minutes. What did surprise me is that when he went no one followed and they played a cat and mouse game which brought their overall speed and power down.

The other stage, which has also caused a twitter outrage, was the exciting Stage 15 where AG2R went on the sniper attack and had everyone on the back foot chasing.

Froome suffered a mechanical and had to swap a wheel with his team mate and chase back to close the gap. He got back to the front group at the top of the Peyra Taillade (8.39km / 7.5% / 624m in elevation) after a serious effort.

Barguil was up the road banking the KOM points on offer in a time of 23:15s at 5.87 W/kg.

The general classification favourites group containing Bardet, Uran, Contador, etc climbed a time of 22:40 at 6 W/kg

Froome came in at 22:00 at 6.2 W/kg.

While I found this pretty impressive considering he had one team mate helping and then going alone it makes me think that maybe that short break while waiting for the teammate to get to him, swap wheels and set off again acted as a slight recovery enabling him to get going like he did. Remember the others general classification leaders were full tilt from the top of the previous climb with no respite. This saw the likes of Quintana get dropped and other quality riders due to the pace being set by Ag2R.

Just as a reference to some data, I’m sure you all remember Chris Froome was tested publically before the Vuelta. Some of the important stats that were produced in the lab are the following:

All the top general classification contenders will be in and around this value so when you look at the climbing data above, they are all climbing the longer efforts just above threshold and the shorter efforts like Aru’s win for 16min is really not that far out of the ordinary.
What does impress me is them doing it two and three weeks into a Tour consistently.

Here is a graph of data showing the values produced by top level cyclists and when you compare it to the above data, it’s all pretty spot on.

As I said, in the beginning, the Tour is still wide open amongst the top four and keep that couch space booked till Sunday.