Tadej Pogačar again showed off his incredible legs, pushing all-time great watts on the popular Isola 2000 climb, winning his 15th Tour de France stage.
It was the hardest stage in the 3rd week of the Tour de France, featuring Cime de la Bonette (23.1 km, 6.8%) the highest paved road in France, and Isola 2000 (16.1 km, 7.1 km), which is a popular place for altitude camps. Visma | Lease a Bike put in the day’s breakaway Matteo Jorgenson and Wilco Kelderman as potential satellite riders if Jonas Vingegaard decided to attack and successfully drop Tadej Pogačar on the mighty Cime de la Bonette. But it did not happen, and UAE Team Emirates controlled everything in the peloton. Nils Politt did another great pull on Bonette, reducing the group to less than 25 riders. If the 2024 version of Politt had ridden the 2018 Tour de France, he at least would have been a strong contender for a podium finish.
The 18 rider GC group did Cime de la Bonette in 63:40 min, averaging 5.40 ᵉW/Kg. It was a high-altitude climb and 5.88 ᵉW/Kg normalized for sea level. They broke the 1993 record by Philippa York who on a 9-kilogram bike did the climb in 67:12 min, averaging 5.49 ᵉW/Kg, which was 3:32 min slower but 0.09 ᵉW/Kg more due to doing practically the whole climb solo with no drafting effect on an old bike.
Before Isola 2000 Derek Gee had spent 3,478 kilojoules for 3:26h at 14.71 kj/kg/h, which is a tough day considering how much climbing was done at a high altitude. Richard Carapaz had gained 60 KOM points after winning the Col de Vars and Cima de la Bonette mountain top finishes, becoming the new KOM leader with 101 points. Jorgenson and Kelderman were still in the breakaway, with Simon Yates and Cristian Rodriguez riding for a potential victory. But unlucky for them Pavel Sivakov, Marc Soler and Adam Yates did a strong leadout for Pogačar on Isola 2000, reducing the gap quickly to the leaders. Adam Yates’ pull was very long and impressive, as Joao Almeida did not even need to pace the climb.
Pogačar attacked early and immediately put a huge gap into Evenepoel and Vingegaard. Jorgenson was not waiting for his teammate and was fighting for a potential stage victory, but even almost a four-minute gap before Isola 2000 and a very strong performance was not enough as Pogačar was flying, and we were once again witnessing greatness from the best cyclist of all time.
Pogačar on Isola 2000 averaged 6.83 ᵉW/Kg for 37:44 min and 7.21 ᵉW/Kg normalized for sea level. Despite it being at a high altitude, Pogačar’s raw ᵉW/Kg numbers still are incredible, and he did the second-greatest climbing performance of all time, losing only to his Stage 15 performance on Plateau de Beille. Evenepoel with Vingegaard on his wheel did 6.42 ᵉW/Kg for 39:26 min.
Adam Yates in the first 17:06 min averaged 6.96 ᵉW/Kg, while Pogačar, Vingegaard, Almeida and Evenepoel in the draft pushed 6.75 ᵉW/Kg. After Pogačar attacked, he did 7.00 ᵉW/Kg for 20:38 min. Evenepoel and Vingegaard slowed down with 6.22 ᵉW/Kg and 6.03 ᵉW/Kg in the second part of the climb, showing how much better the Slovenian superstar was, pushing almost 1 ᵉW/Kg more than Vingegaard in the final part.
Pogačar and Vingegaard now both have three above the pink trend line performances. Vingegaard in the 2023 season did it on Puerto de Bejes (which we forgot to add in the previous article) and Izua-Arrate at low altitude. Pogačar has produced his three All-Time Top 40 performance in this 2024 Tour de France, making this the greatest single Grand Tour climbing-wise of all time.
Matteo Jorgenson lost 21 seconds to Pogačar, despite doing 6.06 ᵉW/Kg for 41:56 min from a breakaway. This performance alone would be at the very top of Chris Froome’s peak level, being similar to Froome on Ventoux in 2013 where he did 5.91 ᵉW/Kg for 59 minutes.
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Why is Jonas Combloux performance not included in the all time great performance?
Propably because it is a TT with fresh legs. You can’t compare it to these efforts.
Do you think Pog will be the favorite for every tour from now on until he retires with high likelihood?
Yes, sadly for me, probably very good for Pogi fans
He is at least 10% better than the previous years talking about climbs. This means one thing: Inigo San Milan is the reason Pogacar doesn’t have 5 tours already in the bag
“Pogačar on Isola 2000 averaged 6.83 ᵉW/Kg for 37:44 min and 7.21 ᵉW/Kg normalized for sea level.” – why aren’t all of the results on the chart normalised for sea level?
I have a question. How good is 2024 Adam Yates in comparison to pre-UAE years?
PED’s these days coupled with advances in training combine to create these best ever cycling peformances.
Conspiracy
It’s probably not for nothing that Drogi is on par with the likes of Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Bjarne Riis and other well-known PED users…. But no… He is as clean as the streets of Singapore….. I think that it is more like the sewage under the streets of London….
The yellow jersey and stage winner are tested at the end of the stage. Results are compared to samples taken before the tour started.
Wow?!?! Really? That must mean they’re clean then!
Sarcasm off – there is virtually no chance of being caught these days unless the team doctors are complete morons.
I understand the technology argument and I do usually just enjoy the racing and don’t think about it, but the gap between the mid to late nineties (peak EPO) and post covid is odd in terms of top performances especially as there hasn’t been a particular sudden tech shift in terms of climbing. The people saying Froome’s performances were ‘not normal’ feel rather silly now.
I guess it could be that training/nutrition and sheer talent have only just brought us back to that level again. Anyway fingers crossed for them that it’s all kosher!
You talk about Kiljoules, but does that not need to be kilocalories? 1kcal = 4,2 kjs. the amount of kjs Derek Gee used before Isola 2000 need to be the amount of kcal?
Nevermind! I did not know that the amount of calories you use to produce a certain amount of kjs is actually a 1:1 factor in cycling!