How good is Chris Froome?

pblakeney

I was under the impression that TTTs were timed on the 5th man over the line?
That would be most, and they don't want a flat etc in the last km if they only have 5 men left.

inseine

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/velon-b ... ia-attack/

I assume someones already linked to the cyclingnews article about Velons records of his power on 'that' stage.
397w for 3k (11 minutes) are the headline figures and the ones that are getting the comments section hot under the collar.

ddraver

I've lost the tweet now but someone has 'run the "numbers"' and it works out at about 5,6 W/kg. So well under any PE Teachers level of Pas normal.


He must be crushed

inseine

What i found interesting (a bit) was that Tom's power was pretty much the same. On one hand he's heavier but on the other I assume he was following wheels at least a bit of those 3km?

bobmcstuff

inseine wrote:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/velon-belatedly-release-chris-froomes-power-numbers-from-giro-ditalia-attack/

I assume someones already linked to the cyclingnews article about Velons records of his power on 'that' stage.
397w for 3k (11 minutes) are the headline figures and the ones that are getting the comments section hot under the collar.

Not really sure why anyone would get hot under the collar about 397 watts for 11 minutes.

Below is the Coggan power to weight chart which is generally used for comparisons.



Froome's stated race weight is 68kg, which gives 5.84 W/kg. His FT must be somewhere in the mid-to-high 6 W/kg, so sustaining less than that for a period less than the length of time he can sustain FT for is not really very remarkable. At all.

Even if his weight is inaccurate, he would have to be much, much lighter for that number to be especially remarkable (about 57 kg for 7 W/kg).




All that number really says to me was that the Giro was really hard and they were all on their knees by that point in the race - if Froome was able to make that kind of difference off that relatively low power ***. This supports what we already know about the climb times on these climbs (they were slow compared to past ascents)



*** relatively low for one of the best riders in the world, it's obviously very high in absolute terms.

DeVlaeminck

Yeah I have to hold my hands up that I don't know too much about what riders generally produce at the end of a three week tour but it doesn't seem that high does it - I know Froome doesn't weigh much compared to say me but he's not a small guy he's just extremely lean. If a 50 year old 3rd cat can hold 340 plus for a 20 minute test 397 doesn't sound extraordinary for the worlds best GT rider.

joey54321

Any 3rd cat rider able to put out 340W+ for 20 minutes shouldn't be a 3rd cat.

rick_chasey

Numbers schmumbers.

Who had one of the biggest VO2 maxes in Dutch cycling??

Pieter Weening.

Who’s got very average numbers? Cavendish.

So much context. All this measuring the output is silly.

We want these guys to push the envelope of what is athletically possible. That’s half the bloody point. Otherwise, why don’t we watch third cat races?

bobmcstuff

Rick Chasey wrote:

Numbers schmumbers.

Who had one of the biggest VO2 maxes in Dutch cycling??

Pieter Weening.

Who’s got very average numbers? Cavendish.

So much context. All this measuring the output is silly.

We want these guys to push the envelope of what is athletically possible. That’s half the bloody point. Otherwise, why don’t we watch third cat races?

Yeah, context is quite important. I would argue that in this context (a long climb) threshold power is extremely relevant.

And that's why it's interesting: it shows that the race must have been very hard for the preceding 2.5 weeks for Froome to put what was it, 30s, into Dumoulin despite producing very average looking numbers.

Cav may have so-so threshold power (for a pro) but his <30 second power must be immense, so if we were looking at sprints you'd be totally right and the Coggan chart would not be very relevant.

shirley_basso

Cav's power isn't actually THAT high, he's just very aero.

inseine

bobmcstuff wrote:

Froome's stated race weight is 68kg, which gives 5.84 W/kg. His FT must be somewhere in the mid-to-high 6 W/kg, so sustaining less than that for a period less than the length of time he can sustain FT for is not really very remarkable. At all.

I'm not anti froome , at all, but i think your missing the point that although Velon quote his 11 avaerage power, the race wasn't 11 minutes long. He might have help it for 5 hours....

rick_chasey

Sure, and I bet Caleb is even more aero.

I've seen plenty of sprinters who can out drag Cav on their day.

I've not really seen any who can so consistently position themselves where they need to be and go when they absolutely should.

The same goes for GC riders.

That Cycling podcast bit a year or two ago where they get Joe Dombrowski to do a diary. He's chilling with other friends from the peloton, and one of them makes the point most of them there have numbers that on paper can win a GT. They've all realised there's a hell of a lot more to it, and being able to unlock that performance within you on the day, when it matters, with the right tactics, etc etc. That's why it's a good sport.

bobmcstuff

Rick Chasey wrote:

Sure, and I bet Caleb is even more aero.

I've seen plenty of sprinters who can out drag Cav on their day.

I've not really seen any who can so consistently position themselves where they need to be and go when they absolutely should.

The same goes for GC riders.

That Cycling podcast bit a year or two ago where they get Joe Dombrowski to do a diary. He's chilling with other friends from the peloton, and one of them makes the point most of them there have numbers that on paper can win a GT. They've all realised there's a hell of a lot more to it, and being able to unlock that performance within you on the day, when it matters, with the right tactics, etc etc. That's why it's a good sport.

I agree with you.

That doesn't mean the numbers aren't interesting though!

shirley_basso

Yeah. Sorry - that was my point - power isn't everything.

Nice snippet on Joe and the power #s.

bobmcstuff

inseine wrote:

bobmcstuff wrote:

Froome's stated race weight is 68kg, which gives 5.84 W/kg. His FT must be somewhere in the mid-to-high 6 W/kg, so sustaining less than that for a period less than the length of time he can sustain FT for is not really very remarkable. At all.

I'm not anti froome , at all, but i think your missing the point that although Velon quote his 11 avaerage power, the race wasn't 11 minutes long. He might have help it for 5 hours....

That is a reasonable point. I had been assuming it was the highest period and it was what he did for the attack on the Finestre (seems logical to provide the power for that bit).

But if not, in that case the number is completely meaningless in terms of doping or really anything else.

larkim

That's the point from Froome's perspective isn't it - despite the fall which impacted his ability to ride hard, he wasn't capable of digging as deep into his reserves over weeks 1 and 2, and therefore had those reserves when his body had healed. Might be a gross over-simplification, but whilst riding with an injury and being in discomfort at night will have fatigued him somewhat, had he not had the fall (and his post TT reaction now tells the story of someone who was expecting something good but was mightily p***ed off that he couldn't pull it off) it feels like Yates wouldn't have been in pink by the end of week 2.

RonB

Tweet from Swart ...

"395W for 10min & we can assume he was 67kg at lowest. Which is 5.9W/kg for only 10min. That’s in no way extraordinary & highlights my earlier point that in the 3rd week of a GT the performance is always relative due to the cumulative fatigue. Not absolute."

... Take from that what you will. Plenty of comments after the CN article claiming foul (incomplete data/ why the delay) or lies. If the figure was 7.5 I wonder what the comments would be?

RichN95.

Back in 2011 Sky published Froome's data from the Vuelta time trial (where he was second). He averaged 400W for an hour. No-one called foul then. And not much has changed since.

Also his WCC test results in 2007 have his threshold power (unsure as to the right terminology) as 400W

bobmcstuff

RonB wrote:

Tweet from Swart ...

"395W for 10min & we can assume he was 67kg at lowest. Which is 5.9W/kg for only 10min. That’s in no way extraordinary & highlights my earlier point that in the 3rd week of a GT the performance is always relative due to the cumulative fatigue. Not absolute."

... Take from that what you will. Plenty of comments after the CN article claiming foul (incomplete data/ why the delay) or lies. If the figure was 7.5 I wonder what the comments would be?

Good to see that Swart agrees with me

This all ties in with the comparatively slow climb times at the end of this Giro, and ultimately the idea that it was a really hard race and they were all on their knees. Froome just didn't fade quite as much as the others.

If it was 7.5 W/kg, for 10 mins that would be pretty unbelievable after 2.5 weeks. It would give him an FTP somewhere around maybe 6.8-7 W/kg (FTP usually being 0.9*8 min or 0.95*20 min power in most test protocols), which would be a lot even if he was completely fresh (Lance supposedly used 6.8 as a benchmark, IIRC).

None of this really has much bearing on whether or not he is doping.

Vino'sGhost

bobmcstuff wrote:

RonB wrote:

Tweet from Swart ...

"395W for 10min & we can assume he was 67kg at lowest. Which is 5.9W/kg for only 10min. That’s in no way extraordinary & highlights my earlier point that in the 3rd week of a GT the performance is always relative due to the cumulative fatigue. Not absolute."

... Take from that what you will. Plenty of comments after the CN article claiming foul (incomplete data/ why the delay) or lies. If the figure was 7.5 I wonder what the comments would be?

Good to see that Swart agrees with me

This all ties in with the comparatively slow climb times at the end of this Giro, and ultimately the idea that it was a really hard race and they were all on their knees. Froome just didn't fade quite as much as the others.

If it was 7.5 W/kg, for 10 mins that would be pretty unbelievable after 2.5 weeks. It would give him an FTP somewhere around maybe 6.8-7 W/kg (FTP usually being 0.9*8 min or 0.95*20 min power in most test protocols), which would be a lot even if he was completely fresh (Lance supposedly used 6.8 as a benchmark, IIRC).

None of this really has much bearing on whether or not he is doping.

Hes a tour winner of course hes doping.

knedlicky

Shirley Basso wrote:

Cav's power isn't actually THAT high, he's just very aero.

I'm not sure I'd call Cavendish very aero. Yes he is a bit accidentally because smaller than many, also he has a tendency to lean more forward over the bars than some, but I'm unsure how aero-conciously he does that. Perhaps more out of eagerness to win!

His pluspoint (as Rick C. pointed out) is that he is good at positioning and then knowing when to go.

The best aerodynamic riders are good at TTs and at descending; it's only when you notice a sprinter who is good at both prologues and descents that I think you can say they are markedly aero. Maybe an example was Freire?

shirley_basso

I think cav does do a mean short TT and is a good descender.

Compared to other sprinters I think he's down even a few 100 watts.

DeVlaeminck

knedlicky wrote:

Shirley Basso wrote:

Cav's power isn't actually THAT high, he's just very aero.

I'm not sure I'd call Cavendish very aero. Yes he is a bit accidentally because smaller than many, also he has a tendency to lean more forward over the bars than some, but I'm unsure how aero-conciously he does that. Perhaps more out of eagerness to win!

His pluspoint (as Rick C. pointed out) is that he is good at positioning and then knowing when to go.

The best aerodynamic riders are good at TTs and at descending; it's only when you notice a sprinter who is good at both prologues and descents that I think you can say they are markedly aero. Maybe an example was Freire?

But sprinting, prologues and descending you could be in three completely different positions. I think Cav must be pretty aero as a sprinter as on form he was extremely fast as well as being able to position himself well and knowing when to go - you don't get to be the most successful Tour sprinter of all time without having top speed and if he isn't getting it through huge watts it has to be aerodynamics.

DeVlaeminck

joey54321 wrote:

Any 3rd cat rider able to put out 340W+ for 20 minutes shouldn't be a 3rd cat.

I know plenty that can - if you only race once in a blue moon and can't sprint it's not that hard not to pick up 40 points or whatever they are asking now.

gsk82

knedlicky wrote:

Shirley Basso wrote:

Cav's power isn't actually THAT high, he's just very aero.

I'm not sure I'd call Cavendish very aero. Yes he is a bit accidentally because smaller than many, also he has a tendency to lean more forward over the bars than some, but I'm unsure how aero-conciously he does that. Perhaps more out of eagerness to win!

His pluspoint (as Rick C. pointed out) is that he is good at positioning and then knowing when to go.

The best aerodynamic riders are good at TTs and at descending; it's only when you notice a sprinter who is good at both prologues and descents that I think you can say they are markedly aero. Maybe an example was Freire?

If you can find a front on shot of a sprint you'll see how low he is compared to most of his rivals.

m.r.m.

Cav is very aero and his other big strength is his foot speed. That is what gets him to enough Vmax to win against the beef trains.


Check the gap between handlebar and chin

Matthewfalle

gsk82 wrote:

knedlicky wrote:

Shirley Basso wrote:

Cav's power isn't actually THAT high, he's just very aero.

I'm not sure I'd call Cavendish very aero. Yes he is a bit accidentally because smaller than many, also he has a tendency to lean more forward over the bars than some, but I'm unsure how aero-conciously he does that. Perhaps more out of eagerness to win!

His pluspoint (as Rick C. pointed out) is that he is good at positioning and then knowing when to go.

The best aerodynamic riders are good at TTs and at descending; it's only when you notice a sprinter who is good at both prologues and descents that I think you can say they are markedly aero. Maybe an example was Freire?

If you can find a front on shot of a sprint you'll see how low he is compared to most of his rivals.

This - there was an article on him a couple of years ago about how unfeasible but effective his position was - everyone else looked like they were on shopping bikes compared to him.

m.r.m.

RichN95 wrote:

Back in 2011 Sky published Froome's data from the Vuelta time trial (where he was second). He averaged 400W for an hour. No-one called foul then. And not much has changed since.

Also his WCC test results in 2007 have his threshold power (unsure as to the right terminology) as 400W

I'd expect Froome to be in the 6.2 W/kg range. So if his FTP is 400W I'd guess his actual race weight is in the range of 65 kg. I don't think it's far fetched to assume his power being slightly higher or his weight being slightly lower than the published 400W or 68 kg. He is the best in the world and among the best of all time, so really not worth second guessing at all.

In terms of winning races it's obviously just a piece of the pie.

bigmat

joey54321 wrote:

Any 3rd cat rider able to put out 340W+ for 20 minutes shouldn't be a 3rd cat.

I beg to differ!

bigmat

DeVlaeminck wrote:

joey54321 wrote:

Any 3rd cat rider able to put out 340W+ for 20 minutes shouldn't be a 3rd cat.

I know plenty that can - if you only race once in a blue moon and can't sprint it's not that hard not to pick up 40 points or whatever they are asking now.

What he said.