Here's a link (I hope) to the most interesting paper I've read in a long time, which examines at great length exactly what we've been talking about in this thread:
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...cycle_exercise
An interesting quote from near the end of the paper:
According to unpublished observations of our laboratory, in a group of professional cyclists, the differences in the torque–velocity relationship between stage race specialists and classic specialists was greater than between the classic specialists and a group of amateur road cyclists.
If you don't know what force-velocity and toque-velocity curves are, the paper explains it. Very applicable here.