The HARDEST Climb In Pro Cycling? Amateur vs Pro

Cycling Weekly

Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard made some of the hardest climbs in Europe look almost flat in the Tour de France...but how hard really are these climbs? To find out Jamie, an amateur cyclist, set off to ride some of the Grand Tours most famous climbs to compare his time to the pros, how fast do the pros climb? How hard is a Grand Tour worthy climb? And how are pro cyclists so good?  The climb in question is the infamous Mortirolo pass which we rode as part of the Stelvio Epic Rides (10 Epic climbs starting near or in Bormio, Northern Italy) - Reckon you could beat his time?

Transcript

00:00If you've been watching the Tour de France then you'll have seen the world's best riders

00:05making some of the world's hardest climbs look rather tame. But just how good are the pros and

00:11just how hard is a Grand Tour climb? Well, with the help of a trusty set of Fevero power pedals

00:18I'm off to Italy to find out.

00:19Well, I've made it here to Borneo right at the bottom of the Stelvio Pass and now I need to go

00:34and find myself a bike so let's go grab one. Well here it is my bike for the week it's a very Italian

00:39affair a Bianchi Specialisma complete with Shimano Ultegra Di2 and I wanted to hire a bike because

00:47I'm only out here for a few days and so what not only does it cost a fair bit of money to put a

00:51bike on a plane but you also get the the added uh well they're not always the kindest to bikes so

00:57it seemed a shame to pack it all up just for a few days um and I knew that there was lots of lovely

01:03bike shops out here this one is the is the Stelvio experience and uh yeah so I can hire a bike just for

01:09a few days um there is a few things that I need to do to it to get it ready to ride though number one

01:15a computer mount and number two I brought my power meter pedals with me now I brought them with me

01:20to obviously measure my efforts up the climb so I don't go off too hard because I do make a habit

01:24of that and I brought with me the Fevero Asioma Pro RS2 pedals which are lovely and easy to fit and

01:32they'll go on almost every bike so whether that's my bike whether that's a higher bike and I can record

01:38my power to plus or minus one percent there is just one or two more things to do before I get

01:44riding first I'm going to take the power meter pedals out of their sleep mode which I put them

01:49in for the flight um and it was quite nice flying with them because they've got this podless design

01:54it means that all the all the clever bits the accelerometers the strain gauges even the battery

02:01that's uh welded to the circuit board is all housed in those stainless steel spindles and that

02:06means that I could put them in my bag and not fear for them well braking the next thing to do because

02:11this isn't my bike I've actually got a different length crank on this one they're 172.5s whereas I

02:16run a 170 mil crank on my bike and then with any power meter obviously I need to calibrate it and then

02:23we're ready to go right what mountains first today is the Mortirolo and uh I think we're all a little bit

02:32I think apprehensive is the word isn't it just looking at what's in front of us

02:40big climb

02:51okay so this is the start stops off easy apparently but it does feel quite steep

03:02well we're well and truly on the climb now just went past the sign 10k to go so we haven't made much

03:24of a mark on it yet the next section is 11.7 uh but there's going to be sections that are far steeper

03:32than that stereo man is gone he's in the distance and i just wanted to point out this isn't even the

03:40steepest part of the of the climb and i don't have big gears on so down there we've got semi-compact

03:5352 36 and an 11.30 at the back now for granted

04:01i could have gone for an 11.34 probably should have gone for an 11.34 because i haven't come out of my

04:07smallest gear and it's just got me thinking really in the old days how the hell did they get up these

04:17at the end he had four gears at the back absolutely monstrous effort

04:33okay so climb update 7.4 k to go and i also got overtaken by mobistar rider um he overtook me just

04:41before a hairpin i went around the hairpin and then he was gone uh he had literally teleported

04:49up the entire next section of climb i i don't know how he did it literally disappeared

05:02well we've made some good progress we made it to hairpin 11 for the pantani monument we keep on going

05:23past the hairpin signs look a little bit like that behind me and uh they say like there's maybe one

05:30that says like six or seven percent and six or seven percent on this climb feels really nice and then

05:36it's for about 200 meters and then you get to another one it says 14 and that one takes you about

05:41five minutes to get through so uh but yeah we're making good progress um 11 hairpins let's do it

05:50next time 3.7 k to go 10.3 percent next section

06:06not too bad that's about average for this climb and when you see them riding up here in the in the giro

06:14it's like oh they're in the wheels i wonder when they're going to attack there's no easy ride up

06:22here none at all you can see why so many people get dropped in the first kilometer but it doesn't

06:30get down these up in fact if anything it gets harder we found still be a man the movistar guy it's formula

06:44that's formula ah no wonder he was so fast

06:47okay we're just over 1k to go and it's not got any easier but mentally i think it probably has

07:04i think by the time you get to this point it's like i've come so far i'm gonna have to finish

07:10um in trial hold about 270 watts on the ferrero pedals there's someone up ahead that i want to

07:19try and catch but the problem is they don't look like they're that far up the road but it's going

07:25to take me a minute if he was stationary to catch him so let's dig in

07:40out of all the beautiful climbs that i rode out in italy i think it's the motorolo which i found

07:49the toughest harder even than the 21 kilometer long stelvio pass the locals call it the bastard

07:56and it certainly lives up to its name it took its toll on me but how does my time stack up against the

08:01pros well i just about tipped in under the hour and a half mark finishing the 11 and a half kilometer

08:08climb with a time of one hour 29 minutes and 18 seconds according to the ferrero asioma pro rs2

08:15power pedals i rode at an average power of 238 watts and that output gave me an average speed of just

08:217.7 kilometers per hour on the 11.7 cent gradient climb now i'm sure that many of you could have

08:28ridden it far quicker than i did and i'd like to think that on an all-out effort with no talking

08:33maybe i could have taken 10 minutes off this time to be honest though

08:37compared to the pros that would still have been fairly insignificant on the strava leaderboard

08:42eight out of those top 10 times are set by the pros with plenty of recognizable names occupying those

08:48spots the fastest times well they're about twice as quick as mine and that's without a tade figaccia

08:54or jonas fingigo master class supper if we compare the power numbers my 238 watts pales in insignificance

09:02compared to the 435 watts that jack burke held on his successful com attempt oh and then you also

09:08have to take into account that he's also lighter than me 69 kilos versus my 75. in my home country of

09:16the uk watts per kilo is rarely a conversation worth having i'm pretty sure that a rider such as walt

09:22bernard or matthew van der poel would win just about every race in the country despite not being the lightest

09:29why because short climbs are often considered power climbs and it's only when you go to the proper

09:35mountains like these that it becomes a pure watts per kilo fight jack burke averaged 6.3 watts per kilo

09:42for his effort up the motorolo but it's estimated that the needle has been moved once again with

09:47pogaccia and vingigo averaging over 6.5 watts per kilo for nearly an hour up mont bontu during this year's tour

09:54of france my watts per kilo yeah they were 3.17 up the motorolo when i was racing at my very best

10:03i've seen numbers more like 4.5 so why did we do this experiment well it wasn't just to make me depressed

10:10but mainly because it's easy to forget whilst watching the grand tour from our sofas that what

10:16the pros are doing is simply incredible think of the fastest person on your local group ride they'd

10:23probably get blown out of the water by the fastest in the country those people would probably get

10:28thrashed by a continental rider who in turn get made to look quite ordinary by the world tour pros

10:34then you've got the best of the best the likes of pogaccia vingigo lipovitz who are riding these

10:39things at incomprehensible speeds if you still don't believe me come and ride one of these climbs yourself

10:46because they're not for the faint-hearted and that's kind of all i've got to say on that other than if

10:51you do want to ride mountains then i can't recommend borneo enough definitely make sure that you've got

10:56the right gearing that is suitable for these climbs and i can genuinely recommend using a power meter

11:02if like me you often go off too fast then it can really help with pacing your effort because these

11:07climbs don't take any prisoners if you want to find out anything more about the fevere pedals that

11:13we've been using then we'll pop a link in the description below if you want to see more content like this

11:18then please give this video a like and subscribe to the channel for lots more bike stuff

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