Tadej Pogačar was once again unstoppable in Volta a Catalunya, doing multiple high level climbing performances during the hardest mountain stage. Egan Bernal finished second, losing 57 seconds to Pogačar and moved to the third place in the general classification behind Mikel Landa who has been performing well on his new team.
The sicth stage of Volta a Catalunya was really hard with 4,075 metres of climbing and a hard pace throughout the day. Visma-Lease a Bike was doing some work in the peloton before to add more fatigue but the plan backfired, as their GC riders Sepp Kuss and Cian Uijtdebroeks finished only in 15th and 32nd position on the stage .
The GC group already shattered on the Coll de Pradell stepp section (5.4 km, 11%), with UAE Emirates riders pacing it at 6 ᵉW/Kg. Only 12 riders crossed the top in the first group, doing the steep section at 6.02 ᵉW/Kg for 20:31 min. It was enough to drop climbers like Kuss as there was fatigue from previous climbs.
After Pradell the next climb was Collada de Sant Isidre where Pogačar finally attacked. Carlos Verona was dropped on Pradell but before Sant Isidre he had spent already 3,399 kilojoules for 3:14 h at a high intensity – 15.07 kj/kg/h. The peloton caught the Pogačar group right before Sant Isidre but there were left two big climbs, and it was already a very tough day.
Pogačar easily dropped everyone on Vallter 2000 and Port Ainé with impressive high altitude performances and he repeated that dominance in the medium mountains on Stage 6. The Slovenian accelerated and went solo on Sant Isidre, pushing 7.02 ᵉW/Kg for 13:44 min. This performance alone would be the most impressive he has done outside of Grand Tours at lower altitude, considering the fatigue and intensity on the previous climbs but there was left 27 kilometres of tough climbs and descents. Mikel Landa lost 23 seconds to Pogačar on Sant Isidre, doing 6.79 ᵉW/Kg. Bernal pushed 6.44 ᵉW/Kg but the following group with 6 riders did 6.28 ᵉW/Kg.
Bernal joined Landa after the descent, while Pogačar held his advantage in the valley and was not going to be caught by anyone before the final climb. On Santuario de Queralt the UAE Team Emirates superstar did another great effort, pushing 6.93 ᵉW/Kg for 13:28 min. Outside of Grand Tours this stage appears to be Pogačar's best performance ever on a climbing day - it will be impossbile to stop Slovenian if he carries this form to the upcoming Giro d'Italia.
Bernal and Landa finished only 57 seconds behind Pogačar, doing on the last climb 6.63 ᵉW/Kg for 13:45 min. The following GC riders Martinez and Almeida did 6.59 and 6.65 ᵉW/Kg, while Mas who was almost caught pushed 6.28 ᵉW/Kg. Overall it must be one of Bernal's best Bernal's performances ever on such a hard stage and his best after the crash, despite not pushing very high w/kg on a single climb but going hard the whole day against elite competition.
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¿Podemos decir que Bernal ya está en el nivel que tenía antes del accidente? si es así, ¿tendrá margen de mejorar aun mas?
Thank you for the nice content. Your graphs are unfortunately not readable in dark mode. The black background makes it impossible to read legend and title.
Same here, on Android at least.
Whatever happened to telling the story of what happened in the days racing. All this statistical nonsense nobody can decipher or cares about. What a load of baloany.
I love it, as do many others. Plenty of places to read race reports. This is the only place to learn actual data about performance and see how what you saw on the day actually compares.
I suggest learning how to decipher this “statistical nonsense”. It’s quite useful and interesting once you do.
Indeed, we come here specifically because this site specializes in this type of data, and does it uniquely well. This is what sets Lanterne Rouge apart. So, instead of moaning perhaps just find yourself a classic sports news site, there are plenty.
There are dozens of reputable sites that provide that storyline content. There is one single site, this one, that provides this level of technical analysis. The people who read this content generally have read the multiple articles explaining the metrics focused on. If someone hasn’t picked up on it yet and wants to learn it’ll only take a few articles to get caught up.