The headline from yesterday's Vuelta a Espana stage was the whopping 50.63kph average speed. But what caused such a rapid stage? We delve into the data and race situation that led to the high pace.
Location
Starting from North of Madrid, the route took the riders across a particularly hot, dry and windy part of Spain. Crosswinds were always going to be a factor on today's stage and due to the Vuelta's rather late start times, the wind only gets stronger as the heat of the day intensifies.
Wind Direction
That leads us nicely onto the wind direction, which was coming straight from the North-East. With the riders heading South-East and South all day, that gives them a cross-tail and tailwinds all day.
Race Profile
Rolling and open Spanish roads invite attacking racing and everyone knows this. That means that GC leaders and sprinters all want to be at the front of the group to be on the right side of any splits. This just ramps up the pace even more.
Stage Start
3km into the stage and we have our first split. Those that are sitting too far back in the group, like race leader Roglic, are in big trouble.
Quick-Step's Tim DeClercq did a lot of damage during the fast start, clocking nearly 80kph despite the positive gradient. The 390w average power and high cadence suggest that this was a very frantic start to the stage.
Teams Represented
With the gap formed it was time to take stock of who had made the front group.
The sizable group contained the Belgian giants Quick-Step who really do love a good crosswind. They were joined by multiple representatives from Movistar, Sunweb, Bahrain-Merida, CCC, Bora and Mitchelton-Scott.
There were multiple teams in this group that had both stage and GC ambitions with Quintana, Knox and Teuns all jumping up the overall classification. This meant that the group was fully committed to making the gap stick.
GC Losers
The big losers of the day, Roglic and Pogacar, were hardly short of teammates. This being the Vuelta, though, meant that many of those teammates are lightweight climbers, taken to support their leaders on the brutally steep climbs. A big group containing the likes of Belgian rouleur Tim DeClercq and British strongman Ian Stannard will always out-muscle teams with only a few climbers to support one stronger rider.
Poor old Tony Martin had the likes of Sepp Kuss and George Bennett to help manage the gap. Bennett's day of chasing was long, spending three and a half hours rolling through and off with his Jumbo Visma teammates. He spent his day at 284w average, though due to the surge and stop nature of this effort, his normalised power or weighted average will have been significantly higher.
With his leader Roglic following a smaller group of GC favourites into the finish, the tired Jumbo Visma team rode into the finish together, eventually losing a whopping 25 minutes to stage winner Phillippe Gilbert.
I know this thread is a bit old, buy my Ultegra 6800 failed about two weeks ago. I was going up a hill at the time, but fortunately I was in the...
I was supposed to be in court next Monday as a witness to careless driving but sadly Birmingham Magistrates Court has been closed due to fire...
Funnily enough this does 95% of what my ex-Birdy did for 25% of the cost! Only omission on a commuter imo is the mud guards.
no I dont believe it currently calculates the aspect that this vehicle that starts behind you then passed within randomly plucked from air value of...
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/20138199.cyclist-involved-four-in......
Just from that one picture, it seems obvious to me that the separate bike lane turns off to the left through a modal filter, so cyclists who want...
Same here, and the bottle never leaves my hand afterwards either...
Going by updates, it looks like Chris' supplies were actually (accidentally?) donated to a local food bank. He now has them back.
LOL, it was Grace o Groats, that was John's mother; he didnt bring the correct messages from the Shop in scotland and had to go back again.
I expect a driver to be able to judge for himself how far he can move over without tipping over. If he does tip the tractor over into a ditch on...