So, on my morning commute I was wondering what sort of power output (Kw or hp) the top TdF riders are likely to be putting out – it struck me that their average speed is probably not that dissimilar to a scooter (50cc) buzzing along? Anyone got any figures/ideas?

over a kilowatt in the sprints.

a lot of team have online garmin/powermeter feeds and, from memory, they seem to average 300-400 watts over a stage.

So peak power over a Kw – that’s pretty impressive, just over 1hp, or 0.5 2cv! I wonder what Hoy can generate?

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that in a TT Wiggins pegs his output at about 450W and in a sprint Chris Hoy peaks at about 2700W.

F£$k me! That’s amazing! So what about us mere mortals, anyone know what they can generate?

Strava tells me my peak 10 minute power is 289watts.

I’ve assumed it could be 50% wrong either way, though…

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/power-and-power-to-weight-ratio
from there

http://cozybeehive.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/power-to-weight-ratio.html

6.2 watts/kg continuous for TdF

According to a british cycling document they had measured an mtb xc rider during a world cup race at an average of around 600watts. Crazy!

According to a british cycling document they had measured an mtb xc rider during a world cup race at an average of around 600watts. Crazy!

I’m reasonably dubious of that!

My FTP is about 315w (or it was when I fit, probably a fair bit lower at the moment), can do c1100w in a sprint, but only for a couple of seconds and not after 100 miles!

I dont think anyone can maintain 600 watts for anything beyond a few minutes if that

I read on Twitter that Jens Voigt said he did 319w average for 4hrs 45 mins on yesterdays stage..

It’s not the peak power that is impressive, it’s the Power x Time. pootling along in the peleton is what 200W? GC contenders don’t worry about peak power. It’s the integral that will win the race.

a pro in the TdF on strava FWIW

poor bloke 420watts for an hour and he still only gets a suffer score of 53 🙂

I dont think anyone can maintain 600 watts for anything beyond a few minutes if that

Indeed, and besides average power on an MTB will be massively affected by time spent not pedalling (even if they use normalised power), and on anything downhill you’d not manage anywhere near 600w unless you had the brakes hard on.