Stage 4 to Uchon saw the peloton split in crosswinds at the start. A crash in the front group inside the final 50km saw half the Red Bull team ride on unhindered with Jonas Vingegaard along for the ride. This was the moment the race was won.
The two opening stages went to the sprinters with surprise wins for Luke Lamperti and Max Kanter with both triumphs were built on a strong lead-out and an early drop-off.
Stage 3 was the team time trial. Paris-Nice has had the rule twist of taking the time on the first rider across the line since 2023 and apparently lwith this year’s Barcelona Tour de France start in mind all along. The win went to Ineos who were two seconds faster than Lidl-Trek but the yellow jersey was for Juan Ayuso because he’d four second time bonus on the previous stage. Visma-LAB were close but UAE were not.
It was all looking like a classic Paris-Nice, Ayuso in the lead with seconds in it. And now came the bad weather stage as a cold front swept across France for Stage 4.
Look at the the picture above. Almost everyone is out of the saddle as Stage 4 starts. A three-quarters tailwind would whip the bunch along and cause splits from the start.
The decisive moment later happened on an innocuous portion of road. The descent of the Col du Rebout was over by the time the race reached the D3 out of Saint-Léger-sous-Beuvray. A reader even visited the location and remarked it was an ordinary bit of tarmac.
Whatever happened wasn’t seen. The TV motorbike camera was well ahead and filming backwards, there was no overhead shot as the helicopter was grounded due to bad weather. But Juan Ayuso crashed, taking down Brandon McNulty and others too.
It left Vingegaard with a free ride to the finish as Nico Denz and Tim and Mick van Dijcke rode on to tow their team leader Dani Martinez to a high overall position. Any unwritten rule about waiting for the yellow jersey was long gone but wouldn’t have mattered as Juan Ayuso was out of the race. His injury looked horrible in the moment but fortunately it was only hip trauma and he’ll be back for his next race as planned.
Cycling often has Snakes and Ladders moments but this was different. This was more a scene of a cartoon or a Buster Keaton movie where the protagonist jumps aboard a moving train to evade chasers, and then as it crosses a large viaduct with the pursuers closing in on a handcar only for the bridge to fall away to thwart them for good. You can make your own luck but it’s rarely this decisive in sport.
Another unseen moment was Georg Steinhauser slipping away from the chasers but this gave him over 40 seconds on the rest and would lift him up to third place overall and the podium in Nice.
Vingegaard got a free ride to the line and his greatest worry seemed to be clothing. He’d been dressed in layers of kit to see him through the early part of the stage only the relentless pace left him with no chance to stop and remove some of it. But the layering worked as Dani Martinez seemed frozen to the bone and unable to respond on the climb to the Signal d’Uchon. After he’d changed into the yellow jersey Vingegaard had minutes on most of the rivals who’d stayed in the race.
Vingegaard doubled up the next day. This stage win was much less complicated. He set his team to work to chase down the break and the last rider left, Victor Campenaerts, did a hail Mary turn on the hardest climb of the day and Vingegaard attacked and was clear for the win. This is probably going to be his route to the Giro d’Italia win as rather than waiting until late to move, he can shake off rivals mid-way on a summit finish and pace himself to the finish faster than the rest.
With the sun back out Harold Tejada took the win in Apt. If Dorian Godon was frustrated to win the sprint for second, he’d get lucky the next day. Snow fell on the planned route to Auron and so the decision was taken to finish in Isola village down in the valley below. On the day the route was shortened further to just 47km and Godon won the sprint.
The final stage saw Dani Martinez crash on the descent of the Col de Porte and begin a long chase with team mates. Normally losing a minute here would be ruinous on the final stage of Paris-Nice but he had help from team mates and a cushion to manage and by the time gaps were so wide that he did not have to panic.
Visma-LAB tried to set up Vingegaard for the stage win again but this time Lenny Martinez stuck to his back wheel and later said it was hard but he had something in reserve, he suffered more on the flat to hold the Dane’s wheel. Martinez won the stage and Vingegaard the race.
The Verdict
For Vingegaard a successful week, for everyone else an atypical one. The pleasure of Paris-Nice often from the tiny margins and competition to the end. Not this time, this was a comprehensive triumph for Vingegaard. A margin of 4m23s is the fourth largest ever, and the three editions with wider gaps were all in the 1930s. Vingegaard won the points and mountains competitions as well, a feat only achieved by Eddy Merckx in 1970 and Sean Kelly in 1983, 1984 and 1986. Fate played an oversized role here: Stage 4’s bad weather and one crash defined the race.
The imponderable is whether Juan Ayuso would have challenged Vingegaard the win. Probably as the form was there, the team strong and the intent to go for the win too but first stay upright. We won’t know of course and if the question can’t be answered it is still a lament as seeing the two in duel decided by seconds should have been the race played out. For all the ease of Vingegaard’s win he can’t count on having it as easy again this season. His next test is Catalunya where he’ll face a denser field.
As well as the high profile exits, plenty of others left the race along the way. Bahrain finished with two riders. Cofidis with one in Ion Izagirre who finished 7th overall. But perhaps the struggle was worse for Picnic-PostNL which finished the week with only €200 of prize money but along the way got a CHF 500 fine from the commissaires so a negative outcome, at least in cash terms.
The week showed the role of team work: it made the difference for lead-outs in the first two stages; obviously for the team time trial which could have been won by Decathlon if they had an extra rider to accompany Daan Hoole; Red Bull’s numbers and the strength of the Van Dijke brothers got Dani Martinez on the podium and set up the decisive win to Vingegaard; it placed Harold Tejada back in the bunch after a puncture so he could attack and win; it set up Dorian Godon’s sprint; all this and more. Including the decision by Ineos not to give Kévin Vauquelin’s more support when dropped early on Stage 4 probably costing him the podium.
Milan-Sanremo is rushing up. We’re all meteorologists this week to see there’s a tailwind in the finish because this plays a big role in whether an attack on the Cipressa works. Right now six different models predict a tailwind. If Mother Nature obliges we’ll see if UAE can nail the team work soon.
Many thanks for the entertaining and enlightening daily pieces. If only we could have them for every single race… I certainly won’t forget this edition of P-N anytime soon. Some likeable stage winners, heroic riding in the face of adversity, and a cautious hope that we might have more of a contest at this year’s TdF. However, I have to admit that I will mainly remember it due to the chaos and drama (and slapstick) of Stage 4.
“The final stage saw Dani Martinez crash on the descent of the Col de Porte and begin a long chase with team mates.”
It was on the ascent of Châteauneuf that he crashed after his teammate accidentally bodychecked him when he looked over his shoulder.
Sorry, thought it was before the climb proper but you’re right it was on the early slopes.
Partially OT, but let’ say I’ll follow up on the Sanremo reference or the hopes of a closely battled TDF.
Much awe around about Pogi averaging some 40W more than the previous two editions for the final couple of hours of Strade Bianche. Actually, that probably means he went over 70 kg – how slightly so is to be seen.
In that sense, moving deeper into “conjecture terrain”, I’d dare to say that even if his “natural weight” is reported to be 69 kg, with a recorded race minimum of 64.5 kg and a more usual weight around 66 kg, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Strade data (assuming they’re correct) implied a weight closer to 72 kg.
Such a beefing up would be surely consistent with his strong commitment to “heavyweight” Classics. But another interesting question is what’s going to be the effect of supposedly losing 5 or 6 kgs in less than three months if Pogi wants to start the TDF at “climbing weight”.
Why do you believe Pogacar is as heavy as 70kg? I would be very surprised if he is more than 66-67kg. In previous years this was his normal weight for the classics, as far as I understand it. He is normally 64-65kg in the Tour.
380 avg. watts for the last 80 kms vs. 340 in the couple of previous editions.
Not very probable (euphemism) that he simply got vastly over +10% in pure power to weight ratio for a long duration power output from one season to the following one, even less so if you notice that such an increase actually corresponds to a less selective result (not just focussing on the closest chasers, which would have a modest statistical result: but this year you have more athletes within 5′, and also more athletes within 10, within 15′ etc., and by a large share).
So you’d need to conjecture that Pogi became immensely stronger for the same weight, and also that the same happened, proportionally, to half of the peloton at least.
The best guess is Pogi expressing a power to weight 2 hrs ratio in the range of, say, 5.1 w/kg (his value for the previous two editions) to 5.36 w/kg (an already exaggerated +5%). It would be all well over 70 kgs.
good thoughts! He does look somewhat more well-nourished right now and based on his silhouette, around 70k is very likely…maybe that is an approach to prepare for PR, lets see!
As some commentators on X have noted (unfortunately, I forgot which one, so can not properly credit – possibly Benji Naesen), in the 340W edition Pog was riding with Pidcock for a good bit and they were sharing the turns. So you’d expect lower average power to this year where he rode alone.
Answered below 😉
Just to add that I’m surprised by those generalist X commenters (not the specialists of course) showing such a lack of proportion when trying to understand wattage, given that they love to talk a lot about that angle. I guess that it’s just as surprising as me myself spending paragraphs on it when I really think it doesn’t really grant much insight 😛
It is completely unrealistic that he weighed 72kg at 1,76m at Strade. That would look a lot different.
The peloton gossip is that he is bigger… but it’s hard to see by the eye.
Quoted by Inrng ! I can die in peace now ! (not now though I hope)
Coincidentally it all happened in the hamlet called La Mouillé, which translates as “soaked”.
Actually, to be pedantic, it’s “La Mouille Anet”, not “La Mouillé” (there is an error on google maps). On the other side of the river you have “Les Mouilles Renaud”. I guess the second word is just the names of ancient owners of the meadows. But the reason is what you said : water is often present in the fields… It’s land of livestock farming of the Charolles beef.
Your life’s work is done! Retire satisfied! By the way, is your first name Tony (ever so slightly different spelling for the 2nd name though?!)
I assume he’s either a Nancy or Marseille fan, most keenly in the 90s. 😉
Or perhaps also an ex-pat from my rain sodden island.
Or all of those! 🙂
Good guess ! Nancy fan, long time ago…
As for the spelling, it was an audacious crossover from my youth between Tony and Ronaldinho. Ot would have been a very strange player…
Picnic-PostNL scored a grand total of 5 (five) UCI points in the whole race, courtesy of Chris Hamilton finishing 51st on GC. They scooped up a whopping 22 points in Tirreno!
Thank you for this! The same action that cost them the monetary fine also came with a -25 uci points deduction for Timo de Jong. So I think they ended the race down 20 points! Ouch!
As ever not just the best cycling blog but the best sports blog, much thanks for a labour of love.
The inevitable question is how does JV’s form compare with the riders who weren’t at this race? I thought he was very impressive on the stage to Uchon. There always seems to be a large element of luck to avoiding the crashes etc but the really top riders seem to have an uncanny knack of avoiding the chaos and elephant traps. Here JV was in exactly the right spot at the right time and pulled off a win in atrocious conditions, something he has not always managed in the past. The next day was reminiscent of some of his rides at the Vuelta but also clearly had elements of Tadej Pogacer. Sean Kelly questioned why he needed to put so much effort in when he clearly had the race sewn up. I thought the answer was pretty obvious, a demonstration to those watching from afar. I also thought he looked far more relaxed and happy than last year. Wonder what the chances are of him repeating Chris Froome’s feat in holding all three GTs at the same time? Though Vuelta / Giro / TdF is harder than TdF / Vuelta / Giro. Certainly he looks like favourite for the Giro come May
A demonstration for him, for his leadership ahead of the Giro and more, but the team is looking for a new sponsor and needs high profile wins from their marquee rider. Put another way a sponsor needs to be persuaded to spend tens of millions a year and Vingegaard winning helps. Running away with the Giro would help even more but they’ll want a deal done by July.
That’s true, the money thing had not occurred to me. It will be interesting to see if the money pressures affect not just the smaller teams but those with the multi million Euro budgets. Those big time contracts need big time sponsors to pay for them, Visma (at the moment!) is a perfect example. Teams like Visma can hardly put a “rider in the break” to get a bit of TV coverage.
note – this is meant as a semi serious but humorous take on the Vingegaard clothing.
Vingegaard should have got a time penalty for that clothing mishap. Plus the entire team should have received a penalty for wearing those terrible helmets in the TTT.
Sounds silly but we have had to enable strict rules on clothing to prevent thigh high aero socks which at least for the mens peleton would look ridicules. I hope there are rules to prevent the aero boob inserts we have seen on some amateur TT riders.
So we can have a rule for bringing the sport into ridicule. What’s worse – the clothing or the helmet. I can’t say.
You’ll need to write the rule which allows for rain gear but not to look bad… good luck!
There’s a blog post in a mind draft stage for now about visual conformity in the peloton and how very few riders transgress it, the ones that can tend to be in power positions. Eg Sagan or Roglič not shaving their legs at the start of the season but no 24 year old rider with a year left on their contract would try it.
When I raced I used to intentionally not shave my legs just to annoy other riders. It was then even more satisfying to beat them!
Lot of talk these days about safety but the number one risk factor for crashing must be wet roads to state the obvious. It would be nice to have some data to really explore this but is there a case for neutralisation (or is this done sometimes already?). Or is that just anti-cycling?
Thanks as always for the blogging, echo many of the commentators who say this is the best cycling website around by some distance.
Many contributing causes I think, and hard to differentiate between them largely due to a lack of data, but for me the single greatest risk factor is increased speeds – what was 40-42kph 25 years ago is now often 48-50kph, an increase of c. 20-25%. That increased speed increases the kinetic energy of crashes, hence more severe injuries, reduces reaction time, exacerbates the effect of road furniture, reduces traction and grip in corners, especially when wet, etc. etc. All this while the racers themselves are racing younger at the highest level, with less racing experience and on-road experience generally. The age is a separate factor really, but again increased speeds magnify the effects youth brings.
Imagine the safety improvements that came with a 20-25% increase in motor racing speeds, whereas for cycling it’s marginally better helmets and clothing arguably less protective than ever before.
No easy solutions, just an observation.
I tend to agree with this. Speed goes up 20-25% but human reaction times don’t. Each individual crash or race-incidient is stochastic but under the described conditions the overall increase of injuries and horrific crashes and incidents is deterministic.
Neytralisation is basically always at the descretion of the jury and race director/organiser. Say, a crash happens at k10 on a 200k stage, I for one – back when I was a commissaire – probably would have ignored any sticky bottles or dragging to bring riders back as fast as possible.
It will always be dependent on the race situation, if a neutralisation is needed or not.
We once did a neutralisation in Hel van het Mergelland rater late due to a sudden minor landslide happening just as we were passing, keeping 2/3 of the peloton blocked even as the race was in full progress with lots of attacks and only 30k remaining.
So neutralisation/barrages etc. always; “It depends…”
Can only agree with this, would just add the “Extreme Weather Protocol” can apply but it’s a way for different people at the race to gather and agree something, ie something that can be done before the racing starts but it doesn’t exist during the race.
+1
I’ll add to this that on the EWP, we would normally open the subject at the team manager’s meeting and agree on who would contact the jury in case it needed to be applied; 1 rider from the peloton (a recognised rider/le patron like e.g. Matteo Trentin or – for stage races – the yellow jersey) and 1 DS from the teams.
These would have the mandate to approach the jury to discuss if the EWP should be applied. This to avoid everybody shouting and screaming about the subject and have a defined “chain of command”.
I once called off the entire last stage of the Tour of Holland due to bad weather but that was prior to the EWP. We heard from the police that storms had caused the barrieres to whirl around at the finish line in Amsterdam and the riders had difficulties staying upright en route also avoiding falling branches etc.
You should post more – such interesting insight that we don’t normally get. Thank you.
Thank you for contributing – it’s brilliant to get insights from someone who has actually been there making those (difficult) decisions. And kudos to inrng for the quality of comment post!
Flattered, thank you guys – and Mr. INRNG, of course.
I am not the most prolific writer, though, but I do read 99 % of what is written and discussed on this the most excellent blog. And I will add, if I fell I have anything meaningful to add.
Anyways, don’t hesitate to give a call out, if you think I can add.
In brief, I was a UCI Commissaire for 23 years, initially doing both Cross, Road and Track. Then the UCI made us choose only 2 and I went with Road & Track. Never made it to the big tours or World Tour due to lack of time (the UCI compensation did not allow me to take work off) but I did do 3 Road World Championships, 1 Track WC and 2 Cross WCs as well as a lot of other interesting and fun races; U23 Paris-Roubaix & Ronde. So, there it is…
We’ve seen in Paris-Nice last year when mid-stage the race was halted. It was partly due to rain, part snow/sleet but a police moto and a team car ahead of the race slipped off the road before the race arrived so out came the flags to stop the riders, similar can happen on wet descents.
As most times, “stating the obvious” means stating something which looks obvious but actually isn’t. It’s a risk factor but far from being number one, essentially because the athletes perceive it as such and are normally able to behave accordingly. Speed and thickness of the group being generally more relevant, as the presence of pinch points. Rain reduces speed, splits the group in smaller ones anfpd generally help riders to consider more savily their priorities
^___^
In my defence I did note the lack of data. Everything you’ve written above also seems pretty speculative in the absence of any kind of hard information.
Loved it – great race, as was T-A.
My only disappointment is being able to chat less with friends here in the UK about the joys of pro-cycling than I used to because fewer and fewer people seem to be following.
You have friends? Good for you.
And a year or so ago, I was worried about your dark outlook on life. 🙂
ha, that’s kind – maybe I was going through a bad patch!
my only really darkness is wanting to share this era of cycling with more people IRL – it’s so magnificent that I wish the ecosystem was larger and we had the luxury of talking with random people on trains about the joys of our sport as football fans do!
but INRNG is not a bad substitute… plenty of informed and exuberant voices here.
Football? …Careful with what you wish for.
(I understand you well, of course. I guess we end up creating our own little ecosystem, so I managed to turn some of my friends in cycling enthusiasts – the process requires decades and you normally need to also have them riding a bike 😛 )
Hmmm. I don’t see or hear football fans talking on trains about their teams. Most people are glued to their phones or are wearing headphones of one sort or other. And every now and then there’s someone reading an actual physical book or newspaper (I remember the days when the Standard was either being read or strewn across carriages).
Not surprising that fewer people are trying to follow sysling given the massive TNT Sports price rise last year. I’m still trying to follow what’s happening via Pro Cycling Stats, Twitter, cycling news websites & on here but it’s not at all the same as being able to watch the races so I’m not surprised if many people have given up altogether.
Uff utterly depressing, typical short-term short-sighted attitude by too many stakeholders. In the case of UK years of past investments will fall into irrelevance, hence diminishing future potential value, as you just can’t count on building it all up from scratch. “We’d better invest on something else now”, yep, but this way you’ll hardly reap full fruits from anything. I guess that as so much money was public, nobody really cares. The Aussies played a better game, I’d say, and probably the Danes, too.
I feel like I’m drifting away, only being able to catch seven minute YouTube highlights packages. Inrng is my main link now. I’d barely noticed T-A took place.
As has been pointed out, Ayuso crashing out was a shame, as the contest with Vingegaard could have been extremely interesting. Hopefully Ayuso can return in the not too distant future. Lenny Martinez’s performance on the last day was also an encouraging sign.
Once again, chapeau to Mr Ring for the always informative and entertaining posts.
No idea who”gabriele” is, but oh boy. Asked Gemini:
this is a comment about cyclist Pogacar: “The best guess is Pogi expressing a power to weight 2 hrs ratio in the range of, say, 5.1 w/kg (his value for the previous two editions) to 5.36 w/kg (an already exaggerated +5%). It would be all well over 70 kgs.” does that make any sense?
Answer: “That comment sounds like someone trying to use “pro-cycling math” to sound authoritative, but it’s a bit of a mixed bag. While the numbers aren’t entirely hallucinations, the logic has some significant flat tires.” and more …
https://gemini.google.com/share/5681fabf9786
I think he is arguing that Pogacar has 40 more watts this year than last year (at least according to Velon, make of it what you will). And this means he weighs more rather than he has more watts/kg. His claim is certainly possible, I don’t know for sure, and Inner Ring also hinted at extra weight. My take was that he didn’t weigh 3-4kg more, but as I said, I don’t know for sure.
You stopped quoting right where the interesting part should have begun!
To start with, using a cheap AI with a random prompt in order to look authoritative is a bit like trying to look a seriously competitive cyclist riding on the road a 400w fat tyres e-bike. And getting dropped.
Secondly, as most humans using cheap AIs might have noticed, the AI itself spends the best part of its text production merely in order to “sound *more* authoritative”, generally through a void, vaguely humurous derogatory tone, aiming firstly to self-affirmation as a source before even offering any (generally poor) argument. Which we have above a perfect example of. It’s a commercial product whose first task is persuading the casual user it has proper content to provide, no matter it’s actually able or not. It has been learning from what users like me do in endless forum threads, but it doesn’t have the knowledge behind to support its claim, among other reasons because basic maths is one of its weakest points.
Now, as I’m not loggin’ in for this, why don’t you copy and paste the rest, so we can have a meaningful debate?
PD I’ll leave you guessing what part of the above is AI-made.
We have power data saying he was at 380W compared to 340W last year. How to account for this? There can be tactics, weather, the accuracy of the power meter itself, and Velon always publishing round numbers in a multiple of 10W too. But Gemini assumes Pogačar’s weight is 66kg as this is a frequent number on the internet but nobody has measured him in recent days, the talk is that he might he heavier and if so has more power for the upcoming classics.
Oh s**t, I achieved to read the link without loggin’ in (as I was instead requested from mobile!), and this goes straight into my collection of “why the AI still sucks” ROTFL
Point 1, “he doesn’t weigh around 70 because he’s been reported to weigh less in the past and his rivals are lighter”
– as this models work on statistical basis, they suffer from the contrary of “recency bias”, they struggle to perceive change (especially relevant for, e.g., prices).
– petitio principii (affirm what you need to demostrate)
– doesn’t really “understands” what it’s speaking of, like comparing weight of rivals on a kg to kg basis (nowadays not even the most illiterate cycling fan would stumble on this).
Point 2, “as Pogi was attacking and 5.1-5.4 is zone 3 to 4, those can’t be conservative figures”
Again, the references are correct but the machine can’t think. A 2-hrs-long “attack”, albeit linguistically “an attack”, can only be deployed at the power corresponding to its duration in time. Average power over 2 hrs will be what you can sustain for 2 hrs – or less. In any TDF mountaintop finale, top athletes will necessarily ride at an average power somewhere *over* their threshold (imagine them theoretically riding on the threshold and then summing up an all-out effort, or the other way around, depending on race dynamics).
The average on 2-hrs at top-sustainable-effort will sit precisely a tiny bit under the threshold, in the intersection between top tempo and low Z4. Which is exactly what we discover checking 380w against the zones “leaked” earlier on this year. Oh, what a pity Gemini isn’t aware of the most commented and published cyclnig news mid-February… ^___^
Counterfactual – imagine Pogi weighing some 65 kgs… oh sure, he rode nearly 2hrs at 5.8 w/kg i.e. 95% of his FTP, yep yep makes lot of sense, can’t he ride ar 7w/kg after all? Jeeeez.
No comment on the “block of a mountain stage”, but let’s quote it all the same as it brings us to the following point
Point 3 – Allucinations. That’s why we can’t count on AI for now. Random verbal salad about “the whole TDF”, “specific climbing blocks” etc. when even the most limited human, I guess, would have properly understood the sentence on “the previous two editions”. Which, of course, was a key point also in order to check Pogi’s effort against the rest of athletes.
I think this is very instructive reading. For whatever reason, AI works well to produce images, sound, music even, but it seriously sucks with texts, which should be its specialty…
I would pay to see gabriele debating with an AI who don’t agree with him. The neverending fight.
“Chatgpt, tell me why Paris-Nice is better than Tirreno…”
The AI would try to agree with me as it tends to be accomodating towards the human it speaks with, while I’d try to find every possible way to disagree with it, as a matter of principle ^___^
It’s not only his figures, it’s about a comprehensive comparison with the rest, *both* the general impact of his action on the distribution of differences in time on the line (explained above), *and also*, may I add, contrasting Pogi’s figures with Seixas’ also official data averaging 330w for the same duration at 64 kgs (as reported by his team), which totally makes sense when checked against the final delay and Pogi’s 2024 numbers… it makes sense, of course, assuming Pogi is quite much heavier this year, whereas the contrary doesn’t at all.
I,m only a person who has used a power meter and has a better than laymans grasp on the numbers having paid attention to it for 15 years.
But a large increase in power between one race to the next (event the same race one year later) is possibly going to have more to do with the race situation than any other thing.
A change in the weather, a change in the race position. Pedaling more on the downhill because they have more confidence in there tyres. etc etc many reasons.
Now i have not watched the race’s in question so i cannot say.
But a 10% increase in potential POWER for an athlete who is already at the top of their game and has been professionally trained for 10 years is pretty much impossible.
If POG was that much better he wouldn’t need a team. Just attack at the start line of Milan sam remo and solo for the easy win.
So i would take the power numbers as an indication that maybe POG has improved this year buts all. The actual numbers don’t mean anything without context of the race and comparing POGS actual FTP year to year which we don’t know.
Asking AI this question is nuts. It can only skim the internet for info – right and wrong. The intelligent part of the title is a long way from happening.
As noted by other commentators (e.g., I /think/ I read this from Benji Naesen), wasn’t Pog riding with and sharing turns with Pidcock for a good chunk of the edition where he did 340W? Wouldn’t that lead to reduced overall average power output?
And note, 340W is *not* at all the kind of peak 2-hour output you’d expect from a rider capable of dominating all others for years. There are /many/ top-level riders who can do 340W for 1 to 2 hours.
Yep, at what weight?
And let me add that I’ve seldom heard of “1 to 2 hrs” as any defining time interval of sort to identify a power zone. There’s a huge difference from what you can hold for one hour and what you can average for 2 hrs.
1 hour is your FTP, 2 hrs will normally be very significantly down (as a term of comparison, 20′ will be around 105% of your FTP).
So some pros will be able to keep 340W at most for 1 hour but they aren’t the same ones who can do it for two hours… And, anyway, as I hinted above, that’s always weight-relative.
Pog’s 1 hour sustainable power is almost certainly well north of 400W. I would assume at least 440W. He may be >450W. He is the dominant rider of this decade, he’s an average height, and he’s not even that scrawny by WT cyclists. He’s also a specialist in very sustained efforts that absolutely no one can follow – so undoubtedly he has insane 1 hour power. Hour record level riders have been in the 440 to 460W range, so he’s surely around there too.
Pog was on a podcast over the winter talking about his training, and didn’t he say that his long, Z2 endurance rides were about 320W average? That’s over more than hours.
If his Z2 is 300 to 320W, then 340W for him the other year (that was sharing with Pidcock right?) was cruising along. And even 380W for 2 hours will have been fairly comfortable for him.
@Paul J
You seem to be failing to understand that even on a flat route, your absolute power will always be related to your weight.
Ganna was around 460W I think and he’s well over 80 kgs.
Wiggins was also over 75 kgs and averaged I think some 440W.
Campenaerts, at 68 kgs, is reported to have achieved the record averaging 330W.
Of course none of them is at Pogi’s level, but it may help you to catch the tight relation between weight and power.
So, to start with, even assuming that Pogi could get the Hour record, he’d never do it at those Wiggo-Ganna wattages, unless he bulks up accordingly.
Even suggesting the comparison shows little insight on the subject.
Plus, you fail again to perceive the huge difference between 1 hour effort (FTP) and a 2 hrs effort. By definition, you won’t get even close to your FTP if you had to average that for 2 hrs.
Finally, you seem to have quite a modest understanding of what each zone means or what a 20W difference (or more) may imply.
“If his Z2 is 300 to 320W, then 340W for him the other year (that was sharing with Pidcock right?) was cruising along. And even 380W for 2 hours will have been fairly comfortable for him.”
This sentence actually makes very little sense.
According to his leaked power zones, and someway in contrast with what he commented to Attia (probably because he trains more with cardio than with power), 320 is *the rooftop* of Pogi’s Z2. 340 is full tempo (324 to 387).
“Tempo is still primarily aerobic, but riding at this intensity begins to recruit some Type IIa muscle fibers. This is the first zone that feels challenging to sustain over long periods as it adds some muscular endurance demands”.
380 would be exactly 91% of his leaked threshold, that is more Z3 rooftop or better said Sweet Spot, i.e., 87% to 94% of the threshold.
“It is challenging and fatiguing to sustain for long periods”.
415 is Pogi’s threshold, so “While theoretically a pace you could sustain for an hour, in practice most athletes find riding at threshold quite uncomfortable for any longer than about 20 or 30 minutes at a time”.
(Quotes from trainerroad.com, but you can find them essentially everywhere)
So, in no case Pogi was ever “cruising along”. In 2024 and 2025 (you always forgetting 2024, uh?) I assume he was riding full tempo, that is, *for him* (based on his zones) a moderate to hard effort you can sustain over a long period, albeit challenging. If he sat at the same weight in 2026, we must assume he rode at a very challenging (for him, i.e., related to his zones) pace at 91% of his threshold for two hours, that is more Sweet Spot (not that sweet despite its name) than Tempo even. It really didn’t look like that, even less so as it turned out to be a less selective performance when checked against the rest of the peloton.
I can only suggest some empiric test, like check your threshold and ride two hrs (not one) averaging 91% of that.
@Paul J
No way Pogi’s 1-hr power is “over 450W”, as in his most astonishing recent uphill TDF performances (PDB25, Hautacam26) he came close to such figures “only” in 35-40 mins effort (and probably thanks to the explosive sections, as I explained elsewhere), whereas the Ventoux, closer to the hour mark, was estimated at 410W.
He’d probably save those ~40W during the mutual drafting sections, hardly so across the whole couple of hours. If anything, I’d think about the effects of the crash on data.
However, in 2024 he was alone essentially all the time and attacked essentially at the same place (couple of kms of difference at most, I’d say) as in 2026, and the power data are reported to sit at 340W in that case, too.
I suspect he was riding a bit harder on some sections in 2026, but so was the rest of the world, apparently. Take into account that Seixas wasn’t chasing at full gas commitment, either, as he had Del Toro (whom he later dropped) on his wheel.
The most basic version of my point, anyway, is that such a difference is extremely hard to explain unless one takes into account some (hard to define exactly in this case) difference in weight.
Thanks for providing the link. It’s a really salutary example of the flaws in current AIs, as it shows clearly how the AI is unable to understand the context of what Gabriele was saying.
What a wonderful weeks racing. Not only P-N, but also T-A. Downfalls & disappointment alongside heroics & bravery made for some highly entertaining racing.
Thank you, as always, for the daily recaps, previews & postcards. They add great amount of value to our enjoyment throughout the week!
Jonas looked tentative to me last season. His post race interviews did not show the humble confidence that he usually exudes. It was comforting to see him back to his smiling, happy self during P-N. There’s been lots of talk about luck, but his team kept him out of trouble, and that factor has to be considered. Catalunya is a great race that suits him well. Almeida and Pidcock are confirmed. Let’s see who else shows up.
I was not surprised at all that Luke Lamperti won a stage. He’s done it before in ProTeam races, and he is a three-time US National Criterium Champion. He knows how to go flat out for 10km and finish it off. What was surprising was that EF got him there.
I loved that “I’ve got my winter pants ready” joke
^___^