How long can Jamie (and his mum) ride at the same speed as Remco Evenepoel? Trying to keep pace with an Olympic and world champion cyclist

We recently reported that 6% of the UK population reckon they could qualify for the 2028 Olympic Road Race if they started training today. With that in mind, we set out to see just how long we could ride at the same speed as the pros in an attempt to put into perspective just how fast they really are!

The image above is Remco Evenepoel. Despite being just 24 years old, he is already one of the best cyclists in the world. He’s won the Vuelta Espana, he’s won the world championships, this year he finished third at the Tour de France, and then a few weeks ago he added two rather nice big shiny medals to his collection. 

> Remco Evenepoel make history by winning Paris Olympics 2024 cycling road race

And this is me. The last medal I won was at a fun run, however, armed with a very tight skinsuit, I had just one aim: to attempt to ride as fast as Remco to prove that at least 6% of the UK population are completely and utterly deluded. Let me explain…

The '6% of Brits think they could be an Olympic cyclist' research: some background

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Pro cyclists are quick, right? They are genetic superhumans, with the best bikes and the best equipment, and they’ve trained for the majority of their lives to do just one thing: ride a bike as quickly as possible. Now, I didn’t really think that that was up for debate, and yet over the last few weeks, you might have seen this piece of research doing the rounds...

Here in the UK we love a bit of a poll, so luckily for us, YouGov published this gem shortly after the Olympics ended. Of the members of the general public it surveyed, 6% of Brits reckon that if they started now, they could qualify for the 2028 Olympic Games Road Race. To be honest, this had much of the road.cc office completely and utterly baffled (although some were no doubt thinking about training plans).

Take this year’s Olympic road race, for example. There were four Team GB riders selected, and when double Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Pidcock doesn’t even crack the top 10, you kind of know that it's not your average Sunday club run.

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For starters, the route was a whopping 273km long. It's not like it was flat either, with 2,800m of elevation. 

And yet after 235km, about the length of my longest ever bike ride, Remco decided that he fancied attacking, and proceeded to ride the remnants of the breakaway off his wheel before soloing to the finish.

So, how fast do pro cyclists ride then?

Thanks to his Strava data, we can actually see how fast Remco was riding for this portion of the race.

The Belgian attacked about 39km from the finish, and then without the help of a peloton, he averaged 47.7kph (for anyone who prefer miles per hour, that works out at just a smidgen under 30). He maxxed out on the downhills at 96.8 kph (60.1mph) easing back to a leisurely 86.1 kph (53.5mph) on the descents after he'd destroyed the field with his attack.

The test

That got us thinking... just how long could we cycle at these crazy speeds?

The test was simple. I'd roll down a hill to help me get up to the magic speed, and then once at the bottom, I'd use the flat, pretty straight road of my local TT route to see how long I could hold it for.

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If I didn’t make it very far, then I had lined up a few excuses. For example, I'd be using my Tarmac SL7 rather than the latest Tarmac SL8 that Evenepoel used (shown above). That, according to Specialized, is a MASSIVE disadvantage to the tune of about seven watts. It’s obviously not that Evenepoel is better on a bike, I kept telling myself!

The results

Despite going very deep and tasting my own lungs for the next half an hour, I managed to hold Evenepoel’s Olympic speed for just under 5 minutes... so it's pretty clear then that I’ve got some work to do if I want to be selected for the road race in four years' time. Hopefully this puts into some sort of perspective just how fast the pros are. 

> How to get the most from your limited training time

I am a pretty keen cyclist, riding for about 12 hours a week. I race criteriums and road races, and yet despite having no corners to contend with, none of the Parisian kickers and none of the chasing attacks for 230 kilometres prior, I could only hold the same speed for less than an eighth of the time that the Olympic champion did.

Evenepoel held that 47.7kph for 46 minutes, while having time to swap bikes when he punctured and slowing down for a nice celebration over the finish line. Now, I know that even if I quit my job today and trained relentlessly for four years, I'm probably not getting anywhere near that Olympic call-up…

Part 2

...And that brings us to the second part of the test. Technically I have a bit of an unfair advantage over the majority of the UK population surveyed, because I already ride a bike competitively. 

So, to really try to hammer home just how fast the pros are riding, and put into perspective how misguided the UK population appear to be about how fast they are riding, my mum kindly volunteered herself to give the same test a go.

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The result? 18 seconds at 47.7kph. It's not as easy as it looks on the telly!

Why is it so hard to ride this fast?

According to my trusty bike calculator, on a flat, smooth road with no wind, it would require 65 watts to maintain a speed of 20kph. However, the watts required to maintain double the speed requires many more watts, not just double.

In fact, on the same road, with the same body position and same set-up, I'd require around 375 watts to ride at 40kph. That's nearly six times more than the requirement for the lower speed.

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This is because the relationship between drag and speed is not linear, resulting in the need for a lot more power to go only a little bit faster when at high speeds. Evenepoel is so quick because he has mastered the art of being able to put out huge power numbers, while also maintaining a super aerodynamic position.

Could 6% of the population really do it?

> Are expensive carbon wheels worth it?

So, in conclusion, we found what most of us knew already: the pros are ridiculously, superhumanly, eye-wateringly fast.

Rather than let it depress us that very few of us will ever be that quick, let's instead just respect the road cyclists who do get to call themselves Olympians. Just getting to a race like the Olympics is a huge achievement and most of the riders there have spent their entire lives dedicated to training for that moment. That’s certainly not something that 6% of the population can fast track in the next four years...

Let us know how long you think you could ride as fast as Evenepoel in the comments section below.