It's almost a habit, like you do between friends, finding yourself the day after a great race commentating on it with Pino Toni. It happened with the fantastic Van der Poel's Roubaix and more recently with the Vingegaard Tour e the suggestion of the Vuelta for Pogacar. This time, just returned from Zurich, the topic of the chat with the Tuscan trainer, who had among his athletes also Alberto Contador, Peter Sagan and the Italian national team coach Bennati, is the Slovenian's world cup. Those 100 kilometers of escape they were not by chance, at least this is our feeling.
«In my opinion – he says smiling – it wasn't going full blast all day. But at the moment of the shot, he did that nonsense with his usual 5 minutes at 700 watts that dismantled them all. Bagioli He hurt himself keeping up with him. He could have recovered, thrown himself into the group, and caught his breath. But what hurts is precisely the moral blow.It's like being in a MotoGP Grand Prix. On the straight, you come up in the slipstream of someone you want to overtake, you pull alongside him, and he gains a 150-meter lead. At that point, what do you do?
Five minutes at 700 watts?
Exactly. In my opinion, in an evaluation test, He has 5 minutes of almost 700 watts in his legs. And I also think he could easily have 10 watts per kilo.When it fires up, it can produce 700 watts for 5 minutes. It might have been a high 600, but it was still around 700. Besides, Quinn Simmons who was behind was dropped when he had an average wattage of 743 wattsMaybe he just saw them or held them for two minutes, but looking at the data, for me Pogacar has these skills. And once they're back on track, they're devastating, because the others are far from those values.
If that were the case, we would truly be faced with a phenomenon.
There is also a question of strength here, not just physiological capacity. Strength and ability to exert force on the pedalsSo coordination, the right levers, the right muscles. This guy seems like a perfect machine. Ten years ago it was thought that 500 watts over 5 minutes was a number that was already out of the ordinary, but he changed everything.Maybe someone else on the long climb can make the most of their lighter weight, their different levers, maybe their better VO2 max. But the differences between him and all the others are theseIn my opinion, from what I can gather from the outside, Pogacar is someone who, in an evaluation of the best 5 minutes, so not when tired but with a good warm-up, has a capacity that is closer to 700 Watts over 5 minutes than to 600. For me he is someone who goes close to 10 watts/kg.
Other people's data
Confirming the data hypothesized by Pino Toni, here comes data published on social media very up-to-date (in this case Knowledge is Watt), evidently taken from the Strava files of the interested parties themselvesIt turns out that Simmons and Sivakov would have had to submit to rather brutal energy expenditures to keep up with Pogacar.
To respond to the first 41 seconds of Pogacar's attack, before being dropped, The American expressed an average power of 743 watts with a peak of 985 wattsImmediately after him, the same fate befell Andrea Bagioli.
Instead Sivakov, who Pogacar caught up with in the breakaway, on the Zurichbergstrasse climb he ran for 1'54” at an average of 641 watts (9,3 per kilo). While on the subsequent climb of Witikon the time was 4'38” at 483 watts (7 per kilo).
The few data released by the world champion concern his overall performance. We are talking about an average of 42,410 in 6 hours 27'30" for a consumption of 5.439 calories, with 92 pedal strokes per minute.
It didn't go all the way, so do you think it was handled?
But damn, of course: he's not a reckless boy! Let's say he's an expert in escapes, think about the 81 kilometers he covered alone he won the Strade BiancheAnd consider that if you do 81 alone on those roads, with the risk of getting a flat tire and falling and without the team car behind you for who knows how long, Does doing 100 runs in the World Championship scare you less?They talked about the risk of tactical suicide, but for me what he did to win in Siena was riskier. I don't know, that's how it is. He enjoys doing certain things, there's little he can do about it..
By being alone, did he spend much more than he would have spent if he had conducted himself more prudently?
Much more, because for better or worse, its average becomes much higher. I'll hazard a guess, but I could obviously be wrong. Let's say someone goes at 370 watts, so at 0,8 of his performance, he still consumed 200 grams of carbohydrates per hourRegardless of whether they had foreseen an action like that, he always has a well-made water bottle. It's understandable that they also have some things that are a little different, in the sense that They can even fit 100 grams into the water bottle, add a gel and you're already at 140 grams.So it's a good refueling, and I think he needed it all. In the end, I think he was really tired. He did a trick, and the guys behind him weren't exactly rested…
A good supply to support a good consumption, then?
The problem with fuel consumption is that it is mainly calculated based on leg work, because when you do tests you do them while sitting. However, in the case of running there is a more general consumption, because there are many vibrations and therefore you consume more.. It's also another gait, like when Van der Poel at Roubaix he averaged more than 47 on his own. And even Pogacar ended up doing over 42 miles an hour., not a little…
At the end of the race he said it was probably a stupid move, but do you think when someone like that starts, he really doesn't think he can finish? How much risk is there at these levels?
I think he accelerated. He left not with the conviction of going away alone, but to reduce the group to about fifteen people and that the best followed himThere were still many of them, and from different teams. They had already stretched him, but not enough. Instead, he found himself alone and managed this too, keeping first Tratnik and then Sivakov close. He even waited for him after the tough climb, because it gave him a breather. Maybe he only gave him two substitutions, but he wasn't alone in the meantime..
It's Pogacar. He's already had an 80-kilometer breakaway at the Strade Bianche. He's won Liège, the Giro, and the Tour, and when he attacks with 100 kilometers to go, Evenepoel and Van der Poel don't follow him?
In my opinion they tried the card “he kills himself: he recovers and we find him tired”But let's say that they were also struggling a little at that point in the race, in the sense that they were each on their own. They had their own tactics, they definitely had something different in mind and they wanted to wait a little longer to make the real selectionAlso because when Pogacar left, there was still plenty of time. They thought they'd catch him on the street and he'd be tired. Do you understand that everything changes here?
What changes?
One of these, which is today, changes what have always been the tactics of cycling. What do you say to him on the bus? When Pogacar leaves, will you follow him? On Monday I sent a message to Daniele (Welcome, ed.) to tell him: "I saw you were a little disappointed, but stay within your limits, you have these riders here, you couldn't have made a different selection and brought someone different." In fact we found ourselves Spain is in the same situation, with Ayuso, Mas, and Landa said to have some champions. The same goes for Denmark and Germany. Unfortunately, there's little you can do against them. When Bettiol isn't in form or says no, even taking away Ganna from Roubaix or Sanremo last year, we don't have much else.
Going back to Pogacar, on the last lap they had got to 35 seconds, he revved up the climb and brought them back to 45…
In my opinion had many time checks along the routeI saw the photo of the water bottle, but they prepared that and gave it out there at the gas station. However, in my opinion it had people on the route who gave him the gaps. After all, it was enough to have 5 or six.
In your opinion, is this breakaway more astonishing or Van der Poel's at Roubaix?
They're both beautiful things, but they come at different times of the season. In my opinion this is much more appreciable than the World Cup, especially made by someone who had already won the Liège, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France this year. Before the World Cup he already had 22 victories. Finding the strength to do something like this is remarkable.
Instead, can we think that Evenepoel arrived at the World Championships tired, having competed and won the Olympics after the Tour?
So, I made an observation. In all individual sports, where the mind counts a lot, those who have participated in the Olympics have come out battered.In tennis, the two finalists went out in the second round of the next tournament. In my opinion, they all came away mentally exhausted too. And then, looking at the cycling calendar, the Olympics is that extra event that gets you. It's something you can't really process in the end.Every season follows the same pattern, but the addition of the Olympics has ruined them all. And Remco wanted to do well in Paris.
It couldn't get any better than this: two gold medals in two races...
It is clear that he went with great motivation, but someone who wins two gold medals also goes down in the head and with tensionHere we are talking about minimal percentages that make huge differences. And after the Tour, Evenepoel had to prepare for the OlympicsHe didn't get there easily. Pogacar, on the other hand, stopped and had two months to recover and work. So maybe also the choice not to go to Paris, when he already had the World Championship in mind, allowed him to arrive there much fresher. Bearing in mind, as I've already said, that this year he could really do anything.
