Comprehensive Climbers Ranking

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Apr 30, 2011
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the itzulia itt should be a good comparison for his spring level in 2016 ( although that was the last stage of the race ) as that was close to the perfect 15 minute test

or the dauphine prologue
 
Feb 7, 2026
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The Itzulia TT was around 7w/kg for 15 minutes, though this was not the finish yet. very good, but nowhere near 7.4+ w/kg for 20 minutes.

The numbers I have for the Dauphine prologue are so bad that they are almost unrealistic. Either I have the wrong segment, or the hairpins are messing with the estimation. I will have to check that again.

Edit: Regardless of how I look at it, the raw w/kg of the prologue are terrible (Even if I somehow underestimated them). Despite that, the gaps were even quite large, no idea what was going on that day. (Every stage race, a lot of rider seem to underperform on stage 1)
 
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Aug 13, 2024
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How many grand tours the last 20 years were won by a worse climber than his direct competition in that race?

Perhaps operationalized as inferior avg.index (average of top three to five) in that race.

These comes to mind as more likely than not:
Wiggins 12'
Kuss 23'
Evans 11'
Dumoulin 17'

Depending on analytic choices perhaps:
Yates 25'
Froome 17'
Contador 15'
Bernal 19'
Aru 15'
Hesjedal 12'
Roglic 23'
Pogacar 20'
 
Feb 20, 2012
54,456
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Big difference between not having the highest and being below the top 3 average.

Problem is if you average the indexes out youre gonna favor the shorter climbs with higher variation a lot.

But the clearest non winning average should be Kuss, Contador in the 2008 Giro and probably 2012 Vuelta as well, in addition to Evans. Probably Roglic in 2020 but not in 2023, and likely Nibali in 2016, who I guess may be as low as 4th below Chaves, Valverde and Kruijswijk
 
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Jul 7, 2013
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Big difference between not having the highest and being below the top 3 average.

Problem is if you average the indexes out youre gonna favor the shorter climbs with higher variation a lot.

But the clearest non winning average should be Contador in the 2008 Giro and probably 2012 Vuelta as well, in addition to Evans

If you want to average GT performance then weighted average is needed: duration or at least some power of it (between 0.5 and 1) should be a weight.
 
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Feb 20, 2012
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If you want to average GT performance then weighted average is needed: duration or at least some power of it (between 0.5 and 1) should be a weight.
Probably.

You still get funny results because you get very tactical climbs influencing results such as Sestriere 2025 or the random result everyone forgot about like Etna 2020
 
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Feb 7, 2026
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How many grand tours the last 20 years were won by a worse climber than his direct competition in that race?

Perhaps operationalized as inferior avg.index (average of top three to five) in that race.

These comes to mind as more likely than not:
Wiggins 12'
Kuss 23'
Evans 11'
Dumoulin 17'

Depending on analytic choices perhaps:
Yates 25'
Froome 17'
Contador 15'
Bernal 19'
Aru 15'
Hesjedal 12'
Roglic 23'
Pogacar 20'
Normally it is easy to see who the best climber is in a race just by watching it. My Index is also not perfect to analyze this since riders often don't go all out or have 3 good performances but collapse later. It also weighs short climbs the same as long ones. Here is the average of the top 3 performances for the winner and the 'other best climber' in those races.
(The others have already mentioned shortcomings of this method, so use it for pure entertainment purposes.)

Tour 12: Wiggins 67.3 <--> 70.3 Froome
Vuelta 23: Kuss 80.3 <--> 86.3 Vingegaard
Tour 11: Evans 64.3 <--> 70.3 Schleck
Giro 17: Dumoulin 76 <--> 77 Quintana

Giro 25: Yates 78.7 <--> 85.3 Carapaz
Tour 17: Froome 70.3 <--> 73.3 Barguil
Giro 15: Contador 71.3 <--> 72 Landa
Tour 19: Bernal 76 <--> 77.3 Pinot

Giro 23: Roglic 80.7 <--> 77.7 Thomas
Tour 20: Pogacar 87 <--> 82.3 Roglic

I left out the Giro 12 and Vuelta 15, but Aru and Hesjedal might have been the strongest in these races.
 
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Aug 13, 2024
908
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Yeah, didn't think that question through before I asked. My bad.

But even stupid questions can provide some interesting answers, Warren Barguil in 2017? What?
 
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Jul 7, 2013
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Probably.

You still get funny results because you get very tactical climbs influencing results such as Sestriere 2025 or the random result everyone forgot about like Etna 2020

You could select climbs that really made the difference but then again the best way to access general performance in the mountains is to look at the GC (minus TT results, echelons and crashes).
 

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