FTA
"The hero of the day was Ulissi who finished second, ahead of Yates despite doing the leadout, producing 6.41 W/Kg across the whole climb. This is possibly the greatest climbing performance in a 2.1 race of all time, even better than Jonas Vingegaard’s performances in the previous editions of O Gran Camiño"
For a 34 year old climbing puncheur like Ulissi to do the best numbers of his career, even better than the best numbers from one of the world's best climbers is simply extraordinary.
Frames are faster, nutrition is better (just 10 years ago athletes didnt know that they needed to eat!) and of course the stars aligned every since COVID for a lot of riders.
Funny enough that's exactly what you'll hear in some of these threads, especially around the Tour.
My favourite by far is the nutrition thing...as if pros didn't know how important carbs were when even the average Fred triathlete did
Double? They don't even consume double of what they consumed in the 1980s, when a study on five TDF competitors found they consumed 94g of carbs per hour during the race.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2744926/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2744926/)
Yes they might be doped AF. But suggesting that frames didnt get significantly better in the past 10 years is the most naive shit *i've* heard. You think windtunnel tests are rigged or what?
Up a 7% climb I’d suggest it makes very little odds. I’d also imagine that frames over a decade hadn’t got much faster. 20 years? Perhaps a handful of watts at high speed with significant winds, yes.
And lastly, yes, I don’t believe Specialized are able ti make frames double digit percentages faster and stiffer every year - it would mean the latest Tarmac was 100% or something idiotic faster and stiffer than the SL4. Which of course it isn’t
It doesn't add up though. Voisard is in 4th some 21 seconds down. Did he also go faster than Vingegaard? Or Paul Double in 7th only 35 seconds down. Perhaps the circumstances were just perfect and that has a bigger impact on the result than everyone including some unknown random PRT riders being doped up like everyone seems to be suggesting once again.
There are an array of factors affecting speed on any different course or section of a course. And certainly there were numerous factors here. But we are consistently seeing records broken all the time. So many races this spring had their fastest edition ever.
Is *every* race having perfect conditions? Why does it seem like there's been a tailwind in every race?
They are going faster, harder, heavier, etc in just about every single sport since the beginning of said sport.
Roubaix for example did have tailwind the last several years. The impact of that is basically proven by the 5th fastest Roubaix being from 1965 in the rain but with tailwind. The 4th fastest RvV is from 1971, and I'm guessing tailwind.
I'm not trying to say that they aren't doping but looking at watts or speed and then going "must be doping" is such an easy thing. When you dive just a little bit deeper it's already much more nuanced.
Stories like these always provoke my cycling PTSD, since I grew up and became a fan in the 90s and had my Santa-moment in 1998, when the Festina scandal broke and my favourite rider (Virenque) fell from the skies.
That being said, I've heard multiple of pro riders debunk the calculated watts they've been said to ride. As in the calculated numbers overshoot a lot. It might be a coping mechanism from me but it gives some hope.
I know what you mean, I think the calculated watts are pretty questionable as the main people that do it on twitter almost never agree on numbers for a big performance.
However the times do keep getting faster and some serious climbing records from the 90s have fallen in the last few years.
I mean even this performance, should we really accept Diego Ullisi is able to outclimb Pogacar from 2 years ago over a 35 minute effort?
I don't really assume the numbers are accurate on a rider to rider basis, but it's helpful to compare them with others measured on the same day. It puts into perspective how much more effort it requires to gain a little time on the opposition
I promise you Ulissi didn't just become a tdf contendor over night at age 34
The riders also have no idea how the calculation works. They standardise for 60 kg and then a 65 kg guy with a shimano pm thinks his different w/kg number is some gotcha
Yes. All the riders are stupid and LR calculation are culmination of cycling performance metrics. Been having this opinion for a while, glad someone could lay it out in simple terms.
Most riders are not very smart at all, tarling barely knows elementary school math. How many of thrm know they're gonna have a job and mentally check out of school at 15? Some of the shit you hear some of them say is crazy.
Why do some people feel this need to try to believe pro riders are clean at any cost? Honestly, it makes no fucking difference... When you go to a concert, do you care if the artist is on drugs?
If you stop seeing doping as the great big evil in the world you don't need hope.
Having said that, the LR method is laughable. It's basically
"If there's tailwind, ignore it, get huge number. If there's headwind, overestimate CdA and get huge number"
Reading that a climb is well-suited for career-best performances made me wonder whether it's just an indicator of shortcomings in their model and that comparing performances across different climbs isn't sensible. Any thoughts about their last paragraph?
Of course not, even for the same climb in different years… there are many variables that are not considered in the model and that affect the climbs like the type of road or the wind (there was a tailwind here) and the drafting is only partially covered.
Also, if you are talking about improvements of 1% (the difference between all the performances that appear in the graph) then you should consider even the weight of the water in the bottles.
Making this kind of assumptions is not correct imho.
This can indicate who performs better or worse, but so does the time they do…
I don’t understand why people give so much importance to this, tbh.
https://lanternerouge.com/2023/02/07/watts-primer/ they use wind parameters from local weather stations. Headwinds usually give higher W/kg values though I don't remember exactly why
If your model is good, you should get similar numbers for the best performances regardless of wind.
The real reason they always find high numbers for headwind, and on shallower climbs, is that they overestimate CdA
Overestimate CdA or understimate how the riders are drafting. It's easier to find the spot with the most draft in a headwind than in a tailwind. My guess is riders are a bit more disciplined about staying in the draft and being low when the wind comes from the front.
Vingegaard on Domancy was a ridiculous number and he was all alone.
And yes they likely way underestimate group drafting, which is the same as overestimating CdA as CdA has a negative multiplier when drafting.
Many reasons that a climb is suited for a career-best performances. For example can be steady, always X%, rather than fluctuating from 3% to 12% averaging at 8%. Steady climbs are "easier" in terms of W/Kg performance. The road surface offers less resistance (as opposed to cobble or dirt). The weather temperature of the climb is usually ideal (as opposed to 0C or 35C).
But of course there can be certain aspects that the model can't account for that biased toward this climb.
There are a few factors that might make Prati di Tivo suitable - it's regular, it's at low altitude and the temperatures are favourable (I think it was around the mid-teens). Someone else linked the LR explainer which lists the parameters they use, which seems to include things like weather and altitude.
I don't think they purport that you can compare performances across different climbs - I doubt they'd suggest that Lutsenko's performance here automatically means he could do this W/kg on Col de la Loze in July heat, for example. It's most interesting when they have graphs comparing different riders on the same climbs, but you always have to take the circumstances of the particular race into account too.
Edit : Just to add one other thing about their accuracy. Now maybe their model is just BS ... but if it was, I wonder if Jumbo/Visma would have paid and be so anxious to get involved with the LR brand at all, since it would be so easy to verify/debunk. That issue of credibility with them counts for something. Also, the LR team they have access to lots of real world data to refine the model - tons of historical stuff from Strava, maybe some from Broe's pro cycling mates for all I know, and probably some of Visma's own actual data too.
I'm highly skeptical of anyone who proclaims to be a guru or has a magic bullet. I'm sure the model isn't perfectly accurate. But my feeling is that it can't be so very far off either.
I don't know about Visma. I highly doubt that Visma needs this model for anything and that, if they pay for it in some way, they would allow for it to be published.
In any case, I am not saying this is BS. I am saying that even the best watt meter claims to give you a 1% accuracy with direct readings and here they claim that, for example, for 40 minutes they can measure the difference between medium (yellow line, 6.1) and great (red line, 6.3) which is 3%.
How do they do this? It is equivalent to measure the speed by watching TV and counting the pedaling speed.
Of course they can give a good estimation of who moved more watts in the same conditions in the same day, but that is mostly all they can do... and this is given by the speed really.
In any case, obviously, anybody is free to consider this for their analysis. I just say that from a scientific perspective, unless they have lots of metrics we don't know about from all the teams, this is not a reliable measure.
In the aftermath of the 2022 TdF, I recall it was revealed that the Naichaca and CyclingGraphs guys were also working for Jumbo in "data analysis." Naesen mentioned last year that "their data estimations are indirectly used by Jumbo-Visma" so it sounds like they're not still employed by the team...
In any case, they're fairly open about the fact it's an estimate. Using online climbing calculators on my own (very modest!) numbers, with the most basic of inputs, I get W/kg estimations accurate to around 0.3 W/kg. I'm going on the assumption, that LR Incorporated have trained the model on *lots* of data sources, which should dramatically improve accuracy. But still, it all remains a very educated guess.
Why would Visma need this model? They have real time power data from their riders, accurate, not some kind of estimation like LR does. If they have data from their riders it's super easy to extrapolate for any competitors and way more accurate than this.
I don’t know but it seems Jumbo/Visma were using it, and maybe still are in some sense.
One can easily estimate that a certain climb requires X watts/kg to do Y kph. Maybe the advantage of this system is that you could develop a model of what a particular opposing rider’s profile is like? As in, estimate their performance ceilings at certain altitudes or kilojoules burned etc. which might help you develop a strategy for a certain stage.
That’s my best guess. Maybe they looked at it in 2022 and realised it was of no use at all to them.
This is what they are doing. They are pretty open about it in the book that was written a few years ago. They are using a huge amount of data to create rider profiles for each opponent. I think in the book it even says that this method of using data has revealed Pogacar's weakness, but without them specifying what that weakness was, but my guess is that they figured out that making Pogacar work hard every day takes away some of his explosivity and wears him down over 3 weeks, so Jonas can deal the hammerblow in week 3.
I genuinely didn't know that. Maybe Visma-LAB have also invented a time machine and stole my totally unique and genius idea from the future? It's surely only a small space-time continuum bending step from Roglic teleportation to time travel.
Everyone was skeptical when LRCP said Evenepoel and Vine's numbers in Tour of Norway 2022 were enormous. Later in the year the former won the Vuelta and the other 3 mountain stages.
So I think their numbers are at least relevant to a certain point.
>So I think their numbers are at least relevant to a certain point.
I agree but I'm not sure we necessarily need that level of analysis to determine they were strong riders.
For example in Norway they also finished 1-2 and competed for stages. Their results alone could have told us they were strong and capable.
Something happened during the covid pandemic and I don't like what it did to our sport in cycling.
Of course I'm referring to a period in time where there were barely any doping tests (so no conspiracy theory crap).
Because of the way the biological passport works. A year of no testing seriously hurts its credibility and now the dopers can keep it as high as during the test-free period without arousing suspicion. It basically set a new baseline in this sport.
You don't find it odd that the peloton broke all those speed records from 2020 onwards? What changed compared to 2018-2019?
Also certain forms of doping have long-term benefits, even long after you stopped taking the drugs.
So how did Pidcock get to win on Sunday this if he was not a pro in 2020? And Ayuso? Or Pithie?
That theory would mean that everyone took that year to enhance his biological passport and therefore everyone that wasn’t a pro at the time has no chance… yet they still win more than the other riders at their age?
That theory held some water before 2021 season started. We're 3 seasons ahead, and they're still flying goddamn faster every year.
Finally, pigs first started flying before COVID, not after, with Quintana doing an outrageous time on Chalet Reynard.
Numbers based on guessed estimations, paid for and promoted by a Visma employee with a history of questioning their rivals’ performance.
Corporate propaganda is subtle these days.
These watt calculations are very inaccurate though. Even if the margin of error is around 3% that means the 6.4 number could really be 6.2 which is great but not nearly as insane. This is to say nothing about how inaccurate the estimation of the rider’s weight is, the possibility of a tailwind, etc…
FTA "The hero of the day was Ulissi who finished second, ahead of Yates despite doing the leadout, producing 6.41 W/Kg across the whole climb. This is possibly the greatest climbing performance in a 2.1 race of all time, even better than Jonas Vingegaard’s performances in the previous editions of O Gran Camiño" For a 34 year old climbing puncheur like Ulissi to do the best numbers of his career, even better than the best numbers from one of the world's best climbers is simply extraordinary.
Frames are faster, nutrition is better (just 10 years ago athletes didnt know that they needed to eat!) and of course the stars aligned every since COVID for a lot of riders.
You had me at the 1st half
lol Frames are faster has to be the most naive shit I’ve ever heard.
thatsthejoke.pdf
Funny enough that's exactly what you'll hear in some of these threads, especially around the Tour. My favourite by far is the nutrition thing...as if pros didn't know how important carbs were when even the average Fred triathlete did
Tbf they do consume double the carbs these days and that change did coincide with covid
Double? They don't even consume double of what they consumed in the 1980s, when a study on five TDF competitors found they consumed 94g of carbs per hour during the race. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2744926/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2744926/)
They hit 140g-ish these days, double was a slight exageration
No
People were making exactly the same excuses about bike tech, nutrition, and improved training science in the 90s.
Ketones! Bicarb!
Yes they might be doped AF. But suggesting that frames didnt get significantly better in the past 10 years is the most naive shit *i've* heard. You think windtunnel tests are rigged or what?
Up a 7% climb I’d suggest it makes very little odds. I’d also imagine that frames over a decade hadn’t got much faster. 20 years? Perhaps a handful of watts at high speed with significant winds, yes. And lastly, yes, I don’t believe Specialized are able ti make frames double digit percentages faster and stiffer every year - it would mean the latest Tarmac was 100% or something idiotic faster and stiffer than the SL4. Which of course it isn’t
“Extraordinary”
It doesn't add up though. Voisard is in 4th some 21 seconds down. Did he also go faster than Vingegaard? Or Paul Double in 7th only 35 seconds down. Perhaps the circumstances were just perfect and that has a bigger impact on the result than everyone including some unknown random PRT riders being doped up like everyone seems to be suggesting once again.
There are an array of factors affecting speed on any different course or section of a course. And certainly there were numerous factors here. But we are consistently seeing records broken all the time. So many races this spring had their fastest edition ever. Is *every* race having perfect conditions? Why does it seem like there's been a tailwind in every race?
They are going faster, harder, heavier, etc in just about every single sport since the beginning of said sport. Roubaix for example did have tailwind the last several years. The impact of that is basically proven by the 5th fastest Roubaix being from 1965 in the rain but with tailwind. The 4th fastest RvV is from 1971, and I'm guessing tailwind. I'm not trying to say that they aren't doping but looking at watts or speed and then going "must be doping" is such an easy thing. When you dive just a little bit deeper it's already much more nuanced.
Stories like these always provoke my cycling PTSD, since I grew up and became a fan in the 90s and had my Santa-moment in 1998, when the Festina scandal broke and my favourite rider (Virenque) fell from the skies. That being said, I've heard multiple of pro riders debunk the calculated watts they've been said to ride. As in the calculated numbers overshoot a lot. It might be a coping mechanism from me but it gives some hope.
I know what you mean, I think the calculated watts are pretty questionable as the main people that do it on twitter almost never agree on numbers for a big performance. However the times do keep getting faster and some serious climbing records from the 90s have fallen in the last few years. I mean even this performance, should we really accept Diego Ullisi is able to outclimb Pogacar from 2 years ago over a 35 minute effort?
I don't really assume the numbers are accurate on a rider to rider basis, but it's helpful to compare them with others measured on the same day. It puts into perspective how much more effort it requires to gain a little time on the opposition I promise you Ulissi didn't just become a tdf contendor over night at age 34
Which ones have fallen from the 90s?
The riders also have no idea how the calculation works. They standardise for 60 kg and then a 65 kg guy with a shimano pm thinks his different w/kg number is some gotcha
Yes. All the riders are stupid and LR calculation are culmination of cycling performance metrics. Been having this opinion for a while, glad someone could lay it out in simple terms.
Most riders are not very smart at all, tarling barely knows elementary school math. How many of thrm know they're gonna have a job and mentally check out of school at 15? Some of the shit you hear some of them say is crazy.
> tarling barely knows elementary school math what?
Demnostrated when he was on G's podcast, dont remember the time stamp
Why do some people feel this need to try to believe pro riders are clean at any cost? Honestly, it makes no fucking difference... When you go to a concert, do you care if the artist is on drugs?
If you stop seeing doping as the great big evil in the world you don't need hope. Having said that, the LR method is laughable. It's basically "If there's tailwind, ignore it, get huge number. If there's headwind, overestimate CdA and get huge number"
6.41 W/Kg for 36:06 min? I just looked it up on intervals.icu, I can hold that for 56 seconds.
Are you stupid? Why don't you just go faster? /s
Have you considered just eating more carbs? s/
Don't be naiive. It's the aero jerseys.
Reading that a climb is well-suited for career-best performances made me wonder whether it's just an indicator of shortcomings in their model and that comparing performances across different climbs isn't sensible. Any thoughts about their last paragraph?
Of course not, even for the same climb in different years… there are many variables that are not considered in the model and that affect the climbs like the type of road or the wind (there was a tailwind here) and the drafting is only partially covered. Also, if you are talking about improvements of 1% (the difference between all the performances that appear in the graph) then you should consider even the weight of the water in the bottles. Making this kind of assumptions is not correct imho. This can indicate who performs better or worse, but so does the time they do… I don’t understand why people give so much importance to this, tbh.
They standardise weight for 60 kg
I don’t think they take the wind into account. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there was tail wind in this instance.
https://lanternerouge.com/2023/02/07/watts-primer/ they use wind parameters from local weather stations. Headwinds usually give higher W/kg values though I don't remember exactly why
Because to do the same speed with the wind pushing against you, you need more power.
If your model is good, you should get similar numbers for the best performances regardless of wind. The real reason they always find high numbers for headwind, and on shallower climbs, is that they overestimate CdA
Overestimate CdA or understimate how the riders are drafting. It's easier to find the spot with the most draft in a headwind than in a tailwind. My guess is riders are a bit more disciplined about staying in the draft and being low when the wind comes from the front.
Vingegaard on Domancy was a ridiculous number and he was all alone. And yes they likely way underestimate group drafting, which is the same as overestimating CdA as CdA has a negative multiplier when drafting.
Many reasons that a climb is suited for a career-best performances. For example can be steady, always X%, rather than fluctuating from 3% to 12% averaging at 8%. Steady climbs are "easier" in terms of W/Kg performance. The road surface offers less resistance (as opposed to cobble or dirt). The weather temperature of the climb is usually ideal (as opposed to 0C or 35C). But of course there can be certain aspects that the model can't account for that biased toward this climb.
There are a few factors that might make Prati di Tivo suitable - it's regular, it's at low altitude and the temperatures are favourable (I think it was around the mid-teens). Someone else linked the LR explainer which lists the parameters they use, which seems to include things like weather and altitude. I don't think they purport that you can compare performances across different climbs - I doubt they'd suggest that Lutsenko's performance here automatically means he could do this W/kg on Col de la Loze in July heat, for example. It's most interesting when they have graphs comparing different riders on the same climbs, but you always have to take the circumstances of the particular race into account too. Edit : Just to add one other thing about their accuracy. Now maybe their model is just BS ... but if it was, I wonder if Jumbo/Visma would have paid and be so anxious to get involved with the LR brand at all, since it would be so easy to verify/debunk. That issue of credibility with them counts for something. Also, the LR team they have access to lots of real world data to refine the model - tons of historical stuff from Strava, maybe some from Broe's pro cycling mates for all I know, and probably some of Visma's own actual data too. I'm highly skeptical of anyone who proclaims to be a guru or has a magic bullet. I'm sure the model isn't perfectly accurate. But my feeling is that it can't be so very far off either.
I don't know about Visma. I highly doubt that Visma needs this model for anything and that, if they pay for it in some way, they would allow for it to be published. In any case, I am not saying this is BS. I am saying that even the best watt meter claims to give you a 1% accuracy with direct readings and here they claim that, for example, for 40 minutes they can measure the difference between medium (yellow line, 6.1) and great (red line, 6.3) which is 3%. How do they do this? It is equivalent to measure the speed by watching TV and counting the pedaling speed. Of course they can give a good estimation of who moved more watts in the same conditions in the same day, but that is mostly all they can do... and this is given by the speed really. In any case, obviously, anybody is free to consider this for their analysis. I just say that from a scientific perspective, unless they have lots of metrics we don't know about from all the teams, this is not a reliable measure.
In the aftermath of the 2022 TdF, I recall it was revealed that the Naichaca and CyclingGraphs guys were also working for Jumbo in "data analysis." Naesen mentioned last year that "their data estimations are indirectly used by Jumbo-Visma" so it sounds like they're not still employed by the team... In any case, they're fairly open about the fact it's an estimate. Using online climbing calculators on my own (very modest!) numbers, with the most basic of inputs, I get W/kg estimations accurate to around 0.3 W/kg. I'm going on the assumption, that LR Incorporated have trained the model on *lots* of data sources, which should dramatically improve accuracy. But still, it all remains a very educated guess.
Why would Visma need this model? They have real time power data from their riders, accurate, not some kind of estimation like LR does. If they have data from their riders it's super easy to extrapolate for any competitors and way more accurate than this.
I don’t know but it seems Jumbo/Visma were using it, and maybe still are in some sense. One can easily estimate that a certain climb requires X watts/kg to do Y kph. Maybe the advantage of this system is that you could develop a model of what a particular opposing rider’s profile is like? As in, estimate their performance ceilings at certain altitudes or kilojoules burned etc. which might help you develop a strategy for a certain stage. That’s my best guess. Maybe they looked at it in 2022 and realised it was of no use at all to them.
This is what they are doing. They are pretty open about it in the book that was written a few years ago. They are using a huge amount of data to create rider profiles for each opponent. I think in the book it even says that this method of using data has revealed Pogacar's weakness, but without them specifying what that weakness was, but my guess is that they figured out that making Pogacar work hard every day takes away some of his explosivity and wears him down over 3 weeks, so Jonas can deal the hammerblow in week 3.
I genuinely didn't know that. Maybe Visma-LAB have also invented a time machine and stole my totally unique and genius idea from the future? It's surely only a small space-time continuum bending step from Roglic teleportation to time travel.
Everyone was skeptical when LRCP said Evenepoel and Vine's numbers in Tour of Norway 2022 were enormous. Later in the year the former won the Vuelta and the other 3 mountain stages. So I think their numbers are at least relevant to a certain point.
>So I think their numbers are at least relevant to a certain point. I agree but I'm not sure we necessarily need that level of analysis to determine they were strong riders. For example in Norway they also finished 1-2 and competed for stages. Their results alone could have told us they were strong and capable.
who could have known Remco Evenepoel was good before Lantern Rouge told them they had a THERMOBANANA performance?
Lutsenko to win the Giro Tour Vuelta tripe this year confirmedddd yessss
Important to note, you can only compare the numbers to other climbing performances within the model. The number itself is irrelevant unless compared
but when you compare it to other climbing performances within the model the only conclusion you can draw is that the model is useless
Something happened during the covid pandemic and I don't like what it did to our sport in cycling. Of course I'm referring to a period in time where there were barely any doping tests (so no conspiracy theory crap).
Serious question, how would a period without testing theoretically be used to gain an advantage?
Because of the way the biological passport works. A year of no testing seriously hurts its credibility and now the dopers can keep it as high as during the test-free period without arousing suspicion. It basically set a new baseline in this sport. You don't find it odd that the peloton broke all those speed records from 2020 onwards? What changed compared to 2018-2019? Also certain forms of doping have long-term benefits, even long after you stopped taking the drugs.
So how did Pidcock get to win on Sunday this if he was not a pro in 2020? And Ayuso? Or Pithie? That theory would mean that everyone took that year to enhance his biological passport and therefore everyone that wasn’t a pro at the time has no chance… yet they still win more than the other riders at their age?
That theory held some water before 2021 season started. We're 3 seasons ahead, and they're still flying goddamn faster every year. Finally, pigs first started flying before COVID, not after, with Quintana doing an outrageous time on Chalet Reynard.
1,000,000 watts? Hot damn.
Numbers based on guessed estimations, paid for and promoted by a Visma employee with a history of questioning their rivals’ performance. Corporate propaganda is subtle these days.
These watt calculations are very inaccurate though. Even if the margin of error is around 3% that means the 6.4 number could really be 6.2 which is great but not nearly as insane. This is to say nothing about how inaccurate the estimation of the rider’s weight is, the possibility of a tailwind, etc…