Comprehensive Climbers Ranking

[Peyresourde]

@Red Rick why would you find it weird for Passo Lanciano to be a good performance? AFAIK Tv-coverage only began after the start of the climb but most context clues would lead you to believe that it was a very good performance?

Mont Ventoux and all long climbs are a bit problematic for W/kg estimations. You may have noticed that Ventoux was not among my Top 24 performances even though Vingegaard, Mayo and Pantani all have delivered great performances there?

I do not necessarily think that the Watts themselves are overestimated. The performance gaps just seem smaller on long climbs. Additionally, the pacing is never really all out for the whole climb, so the subtoppers always have the best pacing while the best have a negative split.

This makes it easier to achieve good performances, but harder to achieve great performances. Weirdly, (lack of) fatigue before the climb also seems more important for long climbs than for medium length climbs.

 

[Red Rick]

@Red Rick why would you find it weird for Passo Lanciano to be a good performance? AFAIK Tv-coverage only began after the start of the climb but most context clues would lead you to believe that it was a very good performance?

Mont Ventoux and all long climbs are a bit problematic for W/kg estimations. You may have noticed that Ventoux was not among my Top 24 performances even though Vingegaard, Mayo and Pantani all have delivered great performances there?

I do not necessarily think that the Watts themselves are overestimated. The performance gaps just seem smaller on long climbs. Additionally, the pacing is never really all out for the whole climb, so the subtoppers always have the best pacing while the best have a negative split.

This makes it easier to achieve good performances, but harder to achieve great performances. Weirdly, (lack of) fatigue before the climb also seems more important for long climbs than for medium length climbs.

I don't think Lanciano wasn't good. I just don't think there's much reason to believe it was the greatest performance of the year. It was a very easy stage before Lanciano with more false flat downhill than uphill, and Lanciano very low altitude for a climb that size.

As for Ventoux, it doesn't have that much of a negative split because it tends to have cross/tailwind in the forest section which can then turn into a big cross/headwind after Chalet Reynard. I'm actually pretty sure Vingegaard set the record on the Chalet Reynard-Ventoux section in 2021 the one time they did race passively, which goes to say that's very uncommon there.

 

[Peyresourde]

The Ventoux climb is basically a U sideways (turned left by 90°). The wind is often either tail-cross-head or cross-tails-cross. I think 2009 had quite strong wind with Saxobank really pushing the pace on the flatter bottom part, which is important for fast times.

It would be cleaner to only calculate the Watts from St. Esteve, which I also do. E.g. Pantani in 94 and Vingegaard last year had higher performances on this 45 minute section than for the whole climb. On the other hand, the bottom half of the Top 10 has better performances for the whole climb as they are paced nicely in the beginning.

But both Nibali and Wiggins had exactly the same Index on Verbier and Ventoux in 2009, so I do not think I am that wrong.

If we look at normal Watt-Trendlines in the context of FTP, then I think the general 60 minute power is closer to the 20 minute power than the actual observed gap between the best 20 and 60 minute climbing performances.

And just as an example, if we assume that Poagacar is 0.6 W/kg better than the 10th best rider on a 20 minute climb. Then I think he might only be 0.45 W/kg better on a 60 minute climb. But aspects like these are almost impossible to consider accurately in my model.

 

[Red Rick]

The Ventoux climb is basically a U sideways (turned left by 90°). The wind is often either tail-cross-head or cross-tails-cross. I think 2009 had quite strong wind with Saxobank really pushing the pace on the flatter bottom part, which is important for fast times.

It would be cleaner to only calculate the Watts from St. Esteve, which I also do. E.g. Pantani in 94 and Vingegaard last year had higher performances on this 45 minute section than for the whole climb. On the other hand, the bottom half of the Top 10 has better performances for the whole climb as they are paced nicely in the beginning.

But both Nibali and Wiggins had exactly the same Index on Verbier and Ventoux in 2009, so I do not think I am that wrong.

If we look at normal Watt-Trendlines in the context of FTP, then I think the general 60 minute power is closer to the 20 minute power than the actual observed gap between the best 20 and 60 minute climbing performances.

And just as an example, if we assume that Poagacar is 0.6 W/kg better than the 10th best rider on a 20 minute climb. Then I think he might only be 0.45 W/kg better on a 60 minute climb. But aspects like these are almost impossible to consider accurately in my model.

Relative gap does go down on longer climbs. I also associate this with how fatigue makes gaps get smaller in a lot of races because nobody attacks anymore, and how on climbs like Bola del Mundo and Cuitu Negru the gaps can be really small in the top 10 because it basically becomes a really fatigued 10 minute effort where nobody really drops crazy watts anymore.

As for Ventoux 2009 being the same index as Verbier, that climb was also notoriously tailwind assisted, which was recognized even back then as the speculation came out about the power estimates.

 

[Peyresourde]

After this discussion I might rewatch the Ventoux stage and I will probably adjust the windspeed to lower the watts a little bit.

[EDIT: After rewatching, the wind was indeed very strong that day. maybe the real direction was slightly more favourable than the nearby weather stations indicated. But there was a very strong (cross-)headwind at the top.

It was actually mostly Garmin (not Saxobank) pushing at the bottom. The pace for the fist ~40 minutes of the climb was actually really good, and Nibali even attacked across to Schleck and Contador once. From just before Chalet Reynard to the top it was slower.

Overall I still think Nibali did one of his better performances. The overall level in the 2009 Tour was also simply much higher than 2014.]

I have already included a tailwind on Verbier. But this climb has a lot of swichbacks. So even if there was a Hurricane pushing the riders, the effect could not have been that big. Watching it also gave me a slightly similar feeling to PdB with Voigt+Cancellara=Jorgensen and a visual feeling of speed. It is also one of the rare climbs (of that era) with great pacing.

 

[Pozzovivo]

It is also my impression that the hardest mountain stages often lead to smaller time gaps between the GC riders, @Red Rick . This seems to go against what many people expect when they look at a stage profile, and to me it also feels a bit counterintuitive. If riders of different ability are exposed to more stress over a longer day, why does that not create bigger differences by the finish? Do you have the same impression, @Peyresourde?

Maybe a combination of conservative mindset and the w/kg trendline being more similar among riders for longer efforts, but still.

 

[Netserk]

i dont think they do. in any case, its a mixed bag.

all else equal, i think it leads to bigger gaps. but all else is not equal. more tired doms leading to an easier pace is a counteracting force

 

[Pozzovivo]

It is very interesting to see data that runs against my own impressions. Nibali, who I have always thought of as a relatively average pure climber, comes out with an index almost as strong as Chris Froome and Thibaut Pinot, whom I have always considered genuinely elite on climbs. It is also notable that the index supports what many people have long believed about Pinot, namely that at his best he had a climbing ceiling comparable to Froome.

My best explanation for the Sky years of dominance is that Froome benefited from the era he competed in. For most of that period he was only really challenged by one consistently elite climber, Quintana, who was and is a horrible time trialist and lacked versatily. Many of the other contenders (Bardet, Pinot, Aru, Uran, Purito, washed Contador) were very inconsistent, lacked versatility, or had clear weaknesses. Several were very poor time trialists, which is in part where Froome secured his overall victories, and most teams were noticeably weaker than Sky, with perhaps one or two exceptions from Movistar in certain seasons.

The only rider who really resembled a complete GC package was Dumoulin, and his races only partly overlapped with Froome’s. Even the second or third tier talents of today, like Lipowitz or Derek Gee, would have been serious problems for Froome if they had been present in the 2010s. In that sense, it feels like a strange decade in retrospect.

 

[Red Rick]

It is also my impression that the hardest mountain stages often lead to smaller time gaps between the GC riders, @Red Rick . This seems to go against what many people expect when they look at a stage profile, and to me it also feels a bit counterintuitive. If riders of different ability are exposed to more stress over a longer day, why does that not create bigger differences by the finish? Do you have the same impression, @Peyresourde?

Maybe a combination of conservative mindset and the w/kg trendline being more similar among riders for longer efforts, but still.

It's a big case of 'it depends'. Gaps below the top 5 do tend to explode on harder stages, but riders also don't easily create much of a gap anymore so they clog together a little bit.

Mostly it mainly changes the tactical profile. If you have a climb you really need to push hard to get a gap, or a climb where you need a hard domestique pace early, having riders be more tired is awful.

Even just compare the gap that Vingegaard and Pogacar had versus guys like Oscar only on Col de la Loze last year versus how many lightyears he was behind on the Madeleine. Even notorious unipuerto merchant Roglic lost only a minute.

Then, the cases where it does seem to have a big effect, I think recovery before the final climb is important, so that the best riders can do a near-peak performance (which subsequently gets overrated) while the lesser riders don't recover anymore and start doing kilo's per watts instead of the other way around.

Finally, I think attrition and endurance in high mountain stages often gets treated too samey as attrition and endurance in one day races and just hilly stages, while I think it's very different altogether.