Tadej Pogačar finished his dominant Tour de France with a sixth stage win on his training roads in Monaco-Nice, becoming a three-time Tour de France champion.
With La Turbie (7.82 km, 5.77%) and Col d’Eze (1.6 km, 8.80%) climbs in the route it was a hilly time trial suited for GC riders. Tadej Pogačar was the favourite to take the sixth stage win in the 2024 Tour de France on roads he had ridden countless times.
Due to high speed and different cDa (coefficient of drag) on climbs, the calculations might not be as accurate as usual for all the riders. Pogačar was the fastest on both climbs. On La Turbie he pushed 7.05 ᵉW/Kg for 16:58 min, while on the short but steep Col d’Eze it was 8.02 ᵉW/Kg for 4:15 min. Jonas Vingegaard lost 8 seconds on La Turbie with 6.98 ᵉW/Kg and was 16 seconds slower on Col d’Eze with 7.47 ᵉW/Kg. World Champion in time-trial Remco Evenepoel on both climbs combined lost 46 seconds to Pogačar with 6.85 ᵉW/Kg and 7.23 ᵉW/Kg.
Pogačar performed better on Col d’Eze relative to other riders, meaning that he did not go that hard on the first climb. The Slovenian was also faster than his main rivals on the descent, as he had done it before the 2024 Tour de France countless times on training rides.
The only change in the GC Top 10 was Santiago Buitrago moving to 10th place as Giulio Ciccone did a horrible time-trial and even made a bike change at the top of Col d’Eze, despite aerodynamics mattering on climbs and flat sections in the first part of the course.
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Ciccone had a mechanical. He switched from a time-trial bike to a time-trial bike.
Why are these numbers so relatively low compared to the records set on previous stages?
Maybe they are underevaluated because of aerodynamics mattering much more than in previous stages
I’m pretty sure the other performances are overevaluated : Pogacar rides at least 25′ in someones wheel in plateau de Beille : at 25 kph there are some watts saved (i wouldn’t know how many but there sure are).
In this TT position it may be harder to apply the usual power, it’s made for high speed and flatter sections. the full wheel may have something to do with slower uphill speed.
Anyways, i’m all for these numbers and all, but unless we have real power data from the rider, it’s hard to make assumptions.
Also, remember this was earlier in the stage, the earlier records were all on stage-ending climbs, so they could go all-out and stop riding right at the end. After La Turbie, they needed to ride the rest of the TT (including Col d’Eze), which makes a difference. Also I’m not sure how they account for TT bike vs road bike, or TT positoin vs non-TT position, or as someone else said, the impact of pacing (Tadej got paced for 2/3 of the Plateau de Beille if you include Jorgensen and Vingegaard)
Love the stats. I am sure your method is very consistent. Wondering if you change the draft coefficient for riders in the wheels depending who they are behind? Jonas is so small, so I assume if someone is on his wheel they would get less benefit than behind Tadej.
The reason they perform worse that the climbing stages are:
1. They have to do full gas for the rest of the stage. So they can’t go all on the climbing
2. They are on a time trial bike, which are not optimized for climbing. Which for example made Pogacar change bike on last years time trial.
Draft is taking into account.