Vingegaard Surprises With Best Pure ᵉW/Kg Effort | O Gran Camiño Stage 2

Jonas Vingegaard delivered the second victory for Jumbo-Visma in the 2023 season with a huge climbing performance on Monte Trega, accelerating and quickly creating a gap against his rivals in O Gran Camiño Stage 2. A promising start from the Tour de France champion.

After the cancelled snow stage the day before, this stage was long and with several climbs before the final up Monte Trega (3.6 km, 7.4%). Efapel rider Joaquim Silva spent 3552 kilojoules for 4:22h before the final climb, which is 11.76 kj/kg/h. Not a hard tempo but still some fatigue was accumulated in the legs.

Jumbo-Visma paced hard at the bottom of Monte Trega (Santa Tecla). The young Norwegian Johannes Staune-Mittet gave his all for Jonas Vingegaard. Staune-Mittet finished 2nd in Tour de l’Avenir last year and definitely has a bright future ahead of him.

Vingegaard was riding in front of his teammate Attila Valter. This made initial separation from the group easier for the Dane when he attacked, as none of his rivals were sitting on his wheel. After Staune-Mittet had emptied his tank, Vingegaard started sprinting full gas with 2.4 km to go, immediately creating a huge gap. Cofidis’ leaders were helpless and it was impossible to respond to the incredible acceleration by the reigning Tour de France champion.

In 2021 Vingegaard won the Jebel Jais stage in the UAE Tour and the 2022 Drôme Classic, showing great performances in the early season. However his climbing effort on Monte Trega was a big statement that he can push big w/kg after his Tour de France win. In the last kilometre, there was a rough cobble section for around 50 seconds. Unusual for a climbing stage but O Gran Camiño organizers wanted to make the finale more spectacular.

Vingegaard beat his closest rival Ruben Guerreiro by 21 seconds which is massive on a sub-9-minute climb. The biggest surprise was Lukas Nerurkar’s performance. Nerurkar is only 19 years old and riding for Trinity Racing – 9th place on a mountain top finish in a high-level climbing field will bring some attention. Lukas is the son of Richard Nerurkar who finished 5th in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games marathon and won a World Marathon Cup in San Sebastian in 1993.

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Vingegaard in our estimations did 7.45 ᵉw/kg for 8 minutes and 38 seconds which is up there with some of the greatest sub-10-minute climbing performances of all time (not many sub-10-minute climbs are paced with a high pace from the bottom). The calculations were made harder due to the 50-60 second cobble section, where the rolling resistance was way higher than on the asphalt. Before the cobble section Vingegaard by our estimations did 7.58 ᵉw/kg for 6:56 min.

By pure ᵉw/kg standards, this is the best performance so far in 2023. The trend-lines are until the 9-minute mark but if it were extended Vingegaard’s effort would be slightly above the red Generational trend-line, which is extremely hard to achieve. In February probably only Nairo Quintana have performed at such a high level by pure ᵉw/kg standards. That being said, the shorter climbing efforts are harder to evaluate as the power curve gets steeper way faster.

Monte Trega is 27 seconds shorter and 0.20 ᵉw/kg higher than Vingegaard's Mende performance in the 2022 Tour de France according to our estimations. Vingegaard on Mende was sitting on Pogačar's wheel and did not go even full gas but it is impossible to compare the 2022 Tour performances to Monte Trega. Stage 2 in O Gran Camiño was fairly easy, in cool conditions and at the start of a stage race. In contrast, the Mende stage was hot, raced hard from the start and in the middle of a full gas edition of the Tour de France. Nonetheless, this is a great effort and a promising start of the 2023 season for Jumbo-Visma and Vingegaard who does not appear to be suffering from a post Tour de France hangover.

Kārlis Ozols (@CyclingGraphs)