thehammerdog

SO I watched todays race and heard Phil say tat they were going 71KPH or 40mph wtf???? I tried to ride as fast as I can and hit 31 and said I sux.....wow..

2ndGen

ibtm

ahsposo 

Me too.

gregf83 

They also said they hit 50mph in the sprint. Don't believe all the nonsense commentators say to fill up 3-4 hrs of broadcast time.

Just for reference, the average power for Chris Horner was around 170W for 4:40 in stage one. Riding in the Peloton on these flat stages is not stressful for these guys. When they're going 71kph it's downhill.

patentcad

I know a local guy who was a domestic pro, and he told me that when they did the biggest races with the UCI teams, there would be days when the last 5-10km never dropped below 35-40 mph.

Walter

Good job.

ls01

no way!!!!!

Clipped_in

Forget the PED scandal. I think they have all been abducted by aliens and implanted with bionic enhancements. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Pug

I think Phil was confusing MPH for KPH. To my untrained eye, when he said this, some of them were coasting and up a slight incline no less. Also, the peloton was still bunched up and not strung along, so I think 40KPH/25MPH was more likely, IMHO.

kenji666

I don't believe it. There's no way a human can push a machine that fast.

Laggard

That's about right. They then hand it off to their sprinter who winds it up to the mid-forties.

To quote someone else "When Liggett says they are coming into town at 60kph for the last 10k, he is not exaggerating. That's 37mph for the metrically challenged. Then they sprint off of even faster leadouts"

kimolop

Back in the early 90's, I was working in Europe and was lucky enough to see a couple of flat stages toward the end when they were chasing a breakaway. Pretty damn impressive. They were going a helluva lot closer to 40 mph than 25mph.

1962Ford

53x12 gearing will net you 41.4mph with 175mm crank and a 700x23mm tire at 120 rpm's at the crank.
53x11 gets you 45.2 mph with above setup.

Most of the fast guys should easily be able to spin it on their good days!

Bacciagalupe

Yes, pros can ride insanely fast, and can hit 40mph on the flats for a few miles.

They're in highly aerodynamic positions and can put out huge amounts of power for extended periods of time. E.g.: Tom Danielson, Tour de Suisse Stage 7. 137 miles, 11k feet of climbing, 289 watts average. https://connect.garmin.com/activity/94129019

Occasionally the camera man will take a shot of the speed of the motorcycle he's riding; a couple of times this week it's shown close to 70KPH.

mkadam68

Tyler Farrar has a video somewhere on YouTube of him doing intervals while motorpacing. (He'd come off the wheel and accelerate into the wind.) The camera shows the speedometer on the motorbike at 80kph or some such. I also occasionally have training rides with some of the domestic pros where I see it first hand. I totally believe it.

ultraman6970

The main issue of the people that think they are talking garbage is because they have not seen it and they never been there where the "potatos are being baked," racing with them.

The pros handle big heavy gears as they were butter. Since 99.9% of the population uses 53x12 at 50 rpms to go like 35 km/h (and they think they are super strong and fast) are simply wrong, these guys go in the peloton pedaling 100 to 120 rpms all the time, in a final sprint probably they get over 200 rpm easily. As for average peloton speed in calm state probably is 38 to 42 km/h, u can do that easily with 53x16 tho, but in general peloton gear is 53x15 at 100 rpm.

As for down hills, well today the stage was flat and the down hills were not pronunciated, but to get this in perspective coming down the alpes for example they can hit 100 km/h easily, today they showed up a motorcycle instrument panel and the moto was going behind between 65 and 70 km/h behind the peloton.

These speeds are normal since many years ago not now tho. Bikes changed but the speeds are pretty much the same than +30 years ago.

Well cheers god for the winners today, awesome finish, and in my opinion we wont see cavendish this year that much. Great for garmin and the the spanish team, now we know campy electronic does it good in sprints

kenji666

I don't believe you. Television is fake.

ultraman6970

Ex tracker here... one of the things we used to do in the road was go behind a car at steady pace of 60 km/h and then sprint and pass the darn car for at least 20 secs to gain some power. U can go behind a truck or a motorcycle easily doing 60 or 70 km/h man... u need to be trained to handle 150 rpm, thats the hard part that many of the normal cycling community doesn't get, because the secret is the cadence, the power will show up with the time.

Cheers.

Caretaker

I've checked my recording of stage 3 (Eurosport Harmon/Kelly) and with 7.8km to go the video shows moto speedo indicating between 65 and 70kph.

Pug

Tyler finished in 4 hours 40 minutes. Over 198 Km that's ~ 42.4 Km/Hr average speed.

Pscyclepath

The European pros are inhumanly talented. They quite often go 30 mph when they're just "pootling along" as we would say. On the flats, in the final sprints it's not uncommon to get into the mid- to high 40s, I've seen a few pix of their cyclecomputers after a sprint that showed they had maxed out in the mid-50 mpg.

Caretaker

50 miles per gallon. That explains it.

2ndGen

2ndGen

Like The Five Percenters used to tell me:
"Don't believe the man, man! Television: It tells lies to yo' vision!"

Hezz

That does not mean that the motorcycle was going the same speed as the peloton when the camera was on the speedo. In fact, I would bet on the networks trying to hype the event a little bit to make it more exciting.

The fact is the world record track sprint speed is around 41 mph. On the road they may get slightly faster due to the way the leadout chains can ramp up speed. But the only time they will be going this fast or faster is if it is a flat final sprint or a downhill or they have high tailwinds. These guys are fast. Very fast, but not super human.