UAE Emirates again dominated on a mountain test in the final Tour de Suisse stage with Joao Almeida winning the final stage but Adam Yates securing the overall win.
There was a slight tailwind on the climb. After the flat section, the riders changed a time-trial bike for a road bike, which cost an average of around 15 seconds and 0.08 ᵉW/Kg on the climb. Every kilogram cost around 18 seconds on the Villars Sur Ollon. Adam Yates had a 31-second lead over his teammate Joao Almeida before the time trial. They both had performed on every mountain stage in the Tour de Suisse and pushed high watts also for the fifth day in a row.
UAE star climbers set almost the same time on the climb, Almeida being two seconds faster than Yates. Almeida did Villars Sur Ollon with 6.75 ᵉW/Kg for 25:11 min, while Yates averaged 6.74 ᵉW/Kg. They both did a huge negative split. In the final 3.1 kilometres, Almeida pushed 7.19 ᵉW/Kg for 7:54 min, while Yates averaged 6.98 ᵉW/Kg for 8:06 min.
Other top finishers Mattias Skjelmose, Matthew Riccitello and Tom Pidcock paced the climb evenly. At the same time, Lenny Martinez did a negative split with 6.80 ᵉW/Kg, while doing the full climb at 6.53 ᵉW/Kg. Riccitello, Pidcock, Skjelmose and Martinez performed well on a mountain time trial, while on bigger mountain days they might lose on average more ᵉW/Kg before the climb due to fatigue than their rivals. Egan Bernal lost 69 seconds and his podium position in the GC to Skjelmose, pushing 6.30 ᵉW/Kg.
As expected, the riders could not push as high watts as in the shortened stage 6. Almeida was the fastest in the time trial, while Yates won his fourth World Tour stage race title after winning UAE Tour, Catalunya and Romandie in the previous seasons.
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@karlisz Ozols: I was wondering, how does it make sense that they are pushing fewer watts than in stage 6? Aren’t you underestimating the drafting effect on road stages a little bit?
No, they definitely account for that no doubt.
That road stage had all the perfect conditions. 30 min easy warm up before the climb and they paced it so well + other riders and adrenaline might motivate. Here they had to switch a bike which cost around 0.08 W/Kg which you can add to that calculation + they needed to ride for like 8 minutes on flat on a ITT bike and in the previous four days they had mountain top finishes with maximum efforts which cooked their legs too
Could you give an estimate on how many w/kg did Cavedish do on this climb (just the climb)?