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.

 

[Peyresourde]

@Pozzovivo I would say Nibali definitely was a bit worse as a climber than Froome both in terms of peak watts and especially consistency. Pinot had the potential and he also was not a lightweight, so he should have potentially been a good timetrialist.

Now we come to the biggest tier, the one containing many 'true/pure' climbers, as some like to call them. I named Tier 5 'Tiny (Spanish Speaking) Climbers'.

Tier 5 (80-85)

Laurent Jalabert | 84.3 | PB: 92 (-6): 7.53 W/kg for 11:17 on Naranco (Vuelta 1995)
Gilberto Simoni | 83.8 | PB: 91 (+1): 6.39 W/kg for 41:42 on Mortirolo (Giro 1999)
Adam Yates | 83.7 | PB: 88 (-9): 7.12 W/kg for 19:31 on Blatten R.I.P. (Suisse 2024)
Richie Porte | 83.2 | PB: 88 (-11): 7.84 W/kg for 7:41 on Willunga (Down Under 2017)
Mikel Landa | 83.1 | PB: 87 (+2): 6.23 W/kg for 43:44 on Plateau de Beille (Tour 2024)
Alejandro Valverde | 82.8 | PB: 89 (0): 6.23 W/kg for 50:25 on Courchevel (Tour 2005)
Nairo Quintana | 82.7 | PB: 87 (-4): 6.69 W/kg for 28:05 on Chalet Reynard (Provence 2020)

Ivan Basso | 82.5 | PB: 97 (-5): 6.62 W/kg for 46:16 on Bondone (Giro 2006)
Richard Carapaz | 82.3 | PB: 93 (-1): 7.44 W/kg for 11:23 on Pietra di Bismantova (Giro 2025)
Jai Hindley | 81.7 | PB: 88 (+2): 6.29 W/kg for 41:38 on Angliru (Vuelta 2025)
Sepp Kuss | 81.6 | PB: 88 (+2): 6.28 W/kg for 41:40 on Angliru (Vuelta 2025)
Simon Yates | 81.5 | PB: 90 (-2): 6.17 W/kg for 59:23 on Finestre (Giro 2025)
Carlos Sastre | 81.2 | PB: 85 (+2): 6.25 W/kg for 39:31 on Alpe d'Huez (Tour 2008)
Miguel Angel Lopez | 81.0 | PB: 85 (+3): 5.92 W/kg for 60:45 on Loze (Tour 2020)
Enric Mas | 80.7 | PB: 83 (-1): 6.60 W/kg for 25:29 on Covadonga (Vuelta 2024)


Notes:
1) Mas lower than I would have thought, still below Lopez who has been out of the game for a while
2)Simon lower than his brother Adam who has much more performances overall and timed his career peak 'perfectly' for the summer of '24 when watts where flying

3) Hindley finally beat his perfomance on Piancavallo 5 years later, showing he has the watts
4) Carapaz with a complete outlier last year in the Giro. But if you rewatch the stage and how he won, I actually think this was a genuinely great performance.
5) Quintana had by far his best shape in February of 2020 with two 87 performances. Think about that what you want...

6) 9 of Landa's top 10 performances come 2022 or after. No wonder he never won much in the 2010s, he just always is the ~5th best climber
7) Richie Porte, the '7 Minute Man': His 3 best performances come on Willunga *2 and Leysin. Otherwise his level was comparable to peak Froome.

8)Bonus: Roglic (2018-2022): 82.1
Pogacar (2019-2022): 84.7

 

[Red Rick]

If anything, I think it just shows that gaps in this metric are very small between riders, and mainly determined by timing and hitting top shape in the moments when climbing conditions were perfect.

Also, it misses overall changes in performance in the sport entirely, so any cross era comparisons are gonna be silly

 

[Netserk]

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.

i dont think them arriving at the bottom of loze with so different ascents of madeleine in the legs makes for a good test of general fatigue on gaps

had jorgenson drilled it until he dropped dead, it would have resulted in huge gaps, and maybe even rogla on the podium

 

[Peyresourde]

The gaps between '2nd page' riders are indeed relatively small. Though 0.1-0.2 W/kg over an entire GT can easily be a difference of 3-5 minutes.

And even with all the best adjustments in the world, I still think the 2010s were relatively weak (especially the early 2010s were horrible in terms of general level, only 5-6 riders could perform at least decently). Even the top guys in the 1950s!! and 80s probably had a comparable peak level. You also have to remember that I have much more performances available for the newer guys.

 

[tobydawq]

Valverde better than Froome, Nibali and Quintana. Very interesting.

 

[Red Rick]

Valverde better than Froome, Nibali and Quintana. Very interesting.

I would crash out but then I see Porte being even higher and I can only chuckle.

 

[tobydawq]

I would crash out but then I see Porte being even higher and I can only chuckle.

Porte is only there because of short efforts.

And it's only the best ten efforts, so having a higher variance in performance will not be punished in this type of ranking even if it is quite an important parameter.

 

[Peyresourde]

This ranking contains all lengths of efforts, even Mur de Huy. And over a 20 year career you have a lot of opportunities.

 

[mikks]

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.

But it is also counterintuitive. Pinot has won only three Tour de France stages. The first one was from a breakaway and not a mountaintop finish. Another one, although it was a mountaintop finish, also came from a breakaway. Only the third was a mountaintop finish that did not come from a breakaway, and he won it by just few seconds over Alaphilippe.


It’s really hard to believe that he was (or potentially was) a climber of the same caliber as Froome.

 

[Red Rick]

Porte is only there because of short efforts.

And it's only the best ten efforts, so having a higher variance in performance will not be punished in this type of ranking even if it is quite an important parameter.

Porte isn't just short efforts, but more specifically fresher W/kg efforts with nearly all of them being outside of GTs.

The weighted ranking I think fairly favorable to outlier results, and a guy like Valverde who had a massively long career at very high consistency would have had the most chances in good form to get those high scoring results.

 

[Peyresourde]

Porte was very good and consistent in the 2020 Tour, too. I also think that fresh w/kg are being a bit unjustly disparaged in this forum. Most riders (at least nowadays) can eventually translate fresh efforts also onto harder stages. If you perform only well after hard stages, e.g. Ben O'Connor, you are even more limited in your opportunities to perform.

I also think that Porte was less of a low kilojoule merchant than Quintana. Circumstances just did not always favour him.

 

[Red Rick]

Porte was very good and consistent in the 2020 Tour, too. I also think that fresh w/kg are being a bit unjustly disparaged in this forum. Most riders (at least nowadays) can eventually translate fresh efforts also onto harder stages. If you perform only well after hard stages, e.g. Ben O'Connor, you are even more limited in your opportunities to perform.

I also think that Porte was less of a low kilojoule merchant than Quintana. Circumstances just did not always favour him.

Maybe Porte is seen unjustly as an unipuerto climber because he had most of his best performances as a domestique and his most notorious performances were on near unipuerto stages.

As for unjustly disparaging fresh w/kg, I mostly think it's the freshness element is just more complex than it's often portrayed to be, so many will only really register unipuerto stages as fresh W/kg. Similarly, nobody will treat Mortirolo or Finestre as a near-unipuerto climbs when they can fairly often be treated like that.

 

[Forever The Best]

What are Nibali's scores in 2009 Ventoux and 2014 Hautacam? Also I remember reading about Ventoux having strong headwind in 2009 on steephill: http://www.steephill.tv/2009/tour-de-france/

 

[Peyresourde]

Vincenzo Nibali | 77 (-4): 5.91 W/kg for 59:05 on Ventoux (Tour 2009 Stage 20)
Vincenzo Nibali | 78 (-4): 6.25 W/kg for 37:24 on Hautacam (Tour 2014 Stage 18)

It is funny that we are having the most discussions about an average performance of Ventoux by Nibali. (I corrected it down by one point after further review). Even Froome did better in 2013...
Yes, there was a very strong headwind towards the top, but conversely there was more of a tailwind the first half.

 

[Red Rick]

Vincenzo Nibali | 77 (-4): 5.91 W/kg for 59:05 on Ventoux (Tour 2009 Stage 20)
Vincenzo Nibali | 78 (-4): 6.25 W/kg for 37:24 on Hautacam (Tour 2014 Stage 18)

It is funny that we are having the most discussions about an average performance of Ventoux by Nibali. (I corrected it down by one point after further review). Even Froome did better in 2013...
Yes, there was a very strong headwind towards the top, but conversely there was more of a tailwind the first half.

The difficulty is really that we see performances when they happen mainly in relation to other riders in the same race, and less as a pure W/kg exercise versus riders (including the same rider) in wildly different circumstances.

Nibali on Hautacam is him at his most dominant, winning his 4th stage and basically attacking out of spite chasing someone down having no respect for his yellow jersey competitors versus on Ventoux when he was doing his first GT for a top 10 place and fighting it out in lower half of the top 10. It is absolutely no surprises that the former gets treated with more awe than the latter.

But performances are a product of the time and place they were in, and especially in cycling w/kg calculations, where you can have extreme variation day by day because conditions change heavily day by day, relative performance should outweigh absolute performance.

I would for example consider myself a world class Froome hater, but I don't see his Finestre climbing time as anything to particularly trash him for even if it was the slowest in history.

 

[Pozzovivo]

relative performance should outweigh absolute performance.