Golfer Rory McIlroy is "a bona fide Peloton stud"

Not our words; the words of Golf Digest. They know a lot more about Rory McIlroy than we do and – we’ve got to be honest – they know the ins and outs of the bike produced by excessively-litigious purveyor of sexist adverts, Peloton, better than us too.

Golf Digest’s piece is based on a tweet that showed an unnamed golfer’s power output during a 45-minute session on a Peloton bike.

Technology aside, the obsessive focus on fitness is very real. Tour players are in better shape than people understand.

Recent Peloton data from a guy who will go down as an all-time great. These numbers are totally incomprehensible — Top .001% of 9K riders. pic.twitter.com/IxkXWQj5Z8

— Outside The Cut (@OutsideTheCut) February 18, 2020

For reasons that are not entirely clear, they figured it was McIlroy and they asked him and he confirmed that it was.

Their article dwells on the number of kilojoules and the Peloton ranking, neither of which mean a great deal to us.

The power output though – that’s a number we can wrap our heads around. Averaging 354 watts for 45 minutes is unarguably good.

McIlroy’s weight is variously listed as 70-73kg, which would mean W/kg of 4.8 to 5 for that session.

Pro riders can typically achieve 6 W/kg for around an hour, so McIlroy’s not in this territory, but his effort would still put him above the majority of club riders.

Alberto Contador reveals power data from his Tour de France-winning days

But there’s an asterisk. Questioned about his effort, McIlroy said he thought the bike, “was a little juiced.”

Expanding on this, he said: “So I did that the Monday after Riviera in the hotel I was staying at in Santa Monica.

“My bike at home, I can sort of get on the Peloton, and I can sit in the saddle at like a 50 resistance at like 90 – like a 90 cadence – and just sort of bang that out for 45 minutes or an hour.

“But 50 resistance on this bike felt really easy, so I sort of cranked it up. So I’d say that was a little juiced.”

McIlroy says he rides his Peloton two to three times per week.

“It makes me earn my dinners,” he said.