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Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard made some of the hardest climbs in Europe look almost flat in the Tour de France...but how hard really are these climbs? To find out Jamie, an amateur cyclist, set off to ride some of the Grand Tours most famous climbs to compare his time to the pros, how fast do the pros climb? How hard is a Grand Tour worthy climb? And how are pro cyclists so good?
The climb in question is the infamous Mortirolo pass which we rode as part of the Stelvio Epic Rides (10 Epic climbs starting near or in Bormio, Northern Italy) - Reckon you could beat his time?
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0:00
If you've been watching the Tour de France then you'll have seen the world's best riders
0:04
making some of the world's hardest climbs look rather tame. But just how good are the pros and just how hard is a Grand Tour climb
0:14
Well, with the help of a trusty set of Favaro power pedals, I'm off to Italy to find out
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well i've made it here to borneo right at the bottom of the stelvio pass and now i need to go
0:34
and find myself a bike so let's go grab one well here it is my bike for the week it's a very italian
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affair a bianchi specialisma complete with shimano ultegra di2 and i wanted to hire a bike because
0:47
only out here for a few days and so what not only does it cost a fair bit of money to put a bike on
0:52
a plane but you also get the the added uh well they're not always the kindest to bikes so it
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seemed a shame to pack it all up just for a few days um and i knew that there was lots of lovely
1:02
bike shops out here this one is the is the stalvio experience and uh yeah so i can hire a bike just
1:09
for a few days um there are a few things that i need to do to it to get it ready to ride though
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number one a computer mount and number two i brought my power meter pedals with me
1:19
now i brought them with me to obviously measure my efforts up the climb so i don't go off too hard
1:23
because i do make a habit of that and i brought with me the fivero asioma pro rs2 pedals which
1:30
are lovely and easy to fit and they'll go on almost every bike so whether that's my bike
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whether that's a higher bike and i can record my power to plus or minus one percent there is just
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one or two more things to do before i get riding first i'm going to take the power meter pedals
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out of their sleep mode which i put them in for the flight um and it was quite nice flying with
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them because they've got this podless design it means that all the all the clever bits the
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accelerometers the strain gauges even the battery that's uh welded to the circuit board is all housed
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in those stainless steel spindles and that means that i could put them in my bag and not fear for
2:08
them, well, braking. The next thing to do, because this isn't my bike, I've actually got a different
2:13
length crank on this one. They're 172.5s, whereas I run a 170 mil crank on my bike. And then with any
2:20
power meter, obviously, I need to calibrate it, and then we're ready to go. Right, what mountains
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first? Today is the Mortirolo, and I think we're all a little bit, I think apprehensive is the word
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isn't it? Just looking at what's in front of us. Big climb
2:51
Okay so this is the start Starts off easy apparently but it does feel quite stupid well we well and truly on the climb now just went past the sign 10k to go so we haven made
3:23
much of a mark on it yet the next section is 11.7 percent uh but there's going to be sections
3:30
that are far steeper than that stereo man is gone he's in the distance and i just wanted to point out
3:39
this isn't even the steepest part of the of the climb and i don't have big gears on so
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down there we've got semi-compact 52 36 and an 11 30 at the back now for granted
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i could have gone for an 11 34 probably should have gone for an 11 34
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because i haven't come out of my smallest gear and it's just got me thinking really
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in the old days how the hell did they go up these like they only had four gears at the back
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absolutely monstrous effort okay so climb update 7.4 k to go and i also got overtaken by mobistar rider
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it was open just before a hairpin I went round the hairpin
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and then he was gone he had literally teleported up the entire next section of climb
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I don't know how he did it literally disappeared Well, we've made some good progress
5:18
We made it to Hairpin 11 for the Pantani Monument. We keep on going past the hairpin signs
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Look a little bit like that behind me. And they say there's maybe one that says 6 or 7 cent
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And 6 or 7 cent on this climb feels really nice. And then it's for about 200 meters
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and then you get to another one it says 14 And that one takes you about five minutes to get through So yeah we making good progress 11 hairpins Let do it
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Next time, 3.7k to go. 10.3% in the next section. Not too bad
6:07
That's about average for this climb. And when you see them riding up here in the Giro d'Italia, it's like, are they in the wheels
6:18
I wonder when they're going to attack. There's no easy ride up here. None at all
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You can see why so many people get dropped in the first kilometre, but it doesn't ease up
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In fact, if anything, it gets harder. We found Stelvia man, the Movistar guy
6:43
That's Formula. Ah no wonder he was so fast. Okay we're just over 1km to go and it's not gotten easier but mentally I think
7:02
it probably has. I think by the time you get to this point it's like I've come so far
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you're gonna have to finish. I mean try to hold about 270 watts on the Ferraro pedals. There's
7:17
someone up ahead that I want to try and catch but the problem is they don't look like they're that
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far up the road but it's going to take me a minute if he was stationary to catch him. So let's dig in
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Out of all the beautiful climbs that I rode out in Italy, I think it's the Mortarolo which
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I found the toughest. Harder even than the 21km long Stelvio Pass. The locals call it
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The , and it certainly lives up to its name. It took its toll on me, but how
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does my time stack up against the pros? Well I just about tipped in under the hour and a half
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mark, finishing the 11.5km climb with a time of 1 hour 29 minutes and 18 seconds. According to the
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Fevero Asioma Pro RS2 power pedals, I rode at an average power of 238 watts, and that output gave
8:20
me an average speed of just 7.7kmph on the 11.7 cent gradient climb. Now I'm sure that many of you
8:28
could have ridden it far quicker than I did and I like to think that on an all effort with no talking maybe I could have taken 10 minutes off this time To be honest though compared to the pros that would still have been fairly insignificant On the Strava leaderboard 8 out of those top 10 times are set by the pros with plenty
8:46
of recognisable names occupying those spots. The fastest times? Well, they're about twice as quick as mine, and that's without a Tade
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Fogaccio or Jonas Fingigo masterclass sucker. If we compare the power numbers, my 238 watts pales in insignificance compared to the 435
9:04
watts that Jack Burke held on his successful comm attempt. Oh, and then you also have to take into account that he's also lighter than me
9:11
69 kilos versus my 75. In my home country of the UK, watts per kilo is rarely a conversation worth having
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I'm pretty sure that a rider such as Wout Van Aert or Mathieu van der Poel would win
9:24
just about every race in the country, despite not being the lightest. Why? Because short climbs are
9:31
often considered power climbs, and it's only when you go to the proper mountains like these
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that it becomes a pure watts per kilo fight. Jack Burke averaged 6.3 watts per kilo for his effort
9:43
up the Mortarolo, but it's estimated that the needle has been moved once again, with Pogaccia
9:48
and Vingigo averaging over 6.5 watts per kilo for nearly an hour up Mont Ventoux during this
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year's Tour de France. My watts per kilo? Yeah, they were 3.17 up the Mortarello. When I was racing
10:02
at my very best, I've seen numbers more like 4.5. So why did we do this experiment? Well, it wasn't
10:09
just to make me depressed, but mainly because it's easy to forget whilst watching the Grand Tour from
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our sofas that what the pros are doing is simply incredible. Think of the fastest person on your
10:21
local group ride. They'd probably get blown out of the water by the fastest in the country
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Those people would probably get thrashed by a continental rider who in turn get made to look
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quite ordinary by the world tour pros. Then you've got the best of the best, the likes of Pogaccia
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Vingago, Lipovitz who are riding these things at incomprehensible speeds. If you still don't
10:43
believe me, come and ride one of these climbs yourself because they're not for the faint-hearted
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And that's kind of all I've got to say on that. Other than if you do want to ride mountains then I can't recommend Borneo enough
10:55
Definitely make sure that you've got the right gearing that is suitable for these climbs
10:58
and I can genuinely recommend using a power meter. If like me you often go off too fast then it can really help with pacing your effort
11:06
because these climbs don't take any prisoners. If you want to find out anything more about the Favere pedals that we've been using
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then we'll pop a link in the description below. If you want to see more content like this then please give this video a like and subscribe
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to the channel for lots more bike stuff
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