Virtual Tour de France gets off the ground
Canadian Michael Woods looks fully recovered and flying, reports Vern Pitt
The first weekend of the Virtual Tour de France provided valuable insights into which riders are starting to hit peak form before the return to road racing later this month. Winners over the weekend included Ryan Gibbons (NTT) and Julien Bernard (Trek-segafredo) in the men’s race and April Tacey (Drops) and Lauren Stephens (Tibco-silicon Valley Bank) in the women’s contest.
These were all impressive results but Stephen Gallagher, director of coaching and sports services at Dig Deep Coaching, who has spent years analysing data from races, pointed to Sunday’s climb to the Zwift Epic KOM as the best indicator of riders’ form. That climb, at just under halfway through the 33km race, is around 10km long and is mostly steady around six per cent but kicks up in the final section, to the radio tower, to 12 per cent.
Geraint Thomas (Ineos) animated the early parts of the climb and his young team-mate Tao Geoghegan Hart was left to follow the offensive of Michael Woods (EF) at the beginning of the steep section and eventually a quartet of Nicolas Edet (Cofidis) and Freddy Ovett (Israel Start-up Nation) would form over the top. The race eventually came back together, with Bernard winning the group sprint.
Gallagher pointed to Woods as putting in the most impressive display. “All of those guys [in the front at the top of the climb] were able to sustain over seven watts per kilo for the full final part of the climb, the last three and a half to four minutes… at the bottom of that steep section they were over eight watts per kilo while the other guys could only lift it to about 6.7 to 6.8W/kg.”
Woods was the only one known to be at altitude, however, at his European base in Andorra, and it shows he is very well recovered from his leg break in Paris-nice in March. “I’d say he’s going to come back to the start of the year really strong,” said
Gallagher. He also pointed out it was a similar effort to that which Woods had done to ride to bronze in the World Championship road race in 2018 and that showed he was back to his best.
He added the power of the leading quintet on the final climb was “impressive” and not something many riders, even at pro level, could readily do. He also said that, while some riders that specialise in online racing might be able to match that over the shorter races, it was reasonable to think that pros with proven track records like Geoghegan Hart – who would have been doing similar numbers to Woods though his data was not made publicly available – would be able to come very close to replicating that after five hours of racing on the road.
With a number of big GC names missing, including Chris Froome or with team-mates up the road in the final stages of the climb, however, it was more difficult to draw conclusions. While Thomas spent much of the time on the early slopes of the climb riding at around 6-6.2W/kg, according to data displayed in the race, he appeared to be setting the race up for Geoghegan Hart and so his inability to follow on the climb’s final stages was, Gallagher said, more difficult to judge.
“Woods is going to come back to start the year really strong”
But he argued there was reason to think that those who could perform on the virtual road would take that into 2020’s truncated season. “If they’ve done well on this Tour and have had some standout performances they’re going to go into a Worldtour race – on the assumption they have everything else such as their economy and endurance base – they are going to be pretty fit in a race. Whether they can say they’re going to win or not, I wouldn’t go that far, but they have good fitness,” he said.
He added that the coming weeks’ stages could prove even more telling. “Next week’s stage and the week when they’re going up the Ventoux, where there’s a lot bigger climbs, I would say you’d be able to read a bit more into the data. Those stages will be more fitness than tactics. Like this stage with the epic KOM, if you know how to race on Zwift and draft you can do well.”
By contrast Gallagher argued the sprints in Zwift races were more drawn out than in the real world and so were a less reliable indicator of sprinting ability.
Drops hope
One team that will be hoping the weekend’s performance is an indicator of things to come are British women’s squad Drops. April Tacey (see box) won the first women’s stage of any form of Tour de France since Emma Pooley won on the road in 2009 and team-mate Joscelin Lowden was second the following day as the team kept hold of the polka-dot jersey.
It’s a welcome return to prominence on the big stage after the team nearly folded at the end of 2018 after it lost its then co-title sponsor Trek, which set up its own team.
It’s been run on a shoestring ever since and owner Bob Varney is hopeful the result could prove a fillip in the team’s quest for backers. He said he was currently “a million miles away” from securing that going into the weekend despite having two agents working on helping the team.
He said: “The Tour de France is a big thing, the fact that there was a women’s race is a big thing. So we wanted to be out the blocks fast, that was absolutely 100 per cent part of the master plan. The fact that April won the opening stage was beyond my wildest dreams.”
The team put out a call for sponsorship on social media in the wake of the results in the hope of attracting some interest. Varney in this week’s column (p11) points out that you just need to attract one wealthy backer. “We’ve spoken to the UCI, we tick a lot of boxes, the criteria for World status; our biggest and only stumbling block is financial,” said Varney.
“Getting out the blocks fast was 100% part of the masterplan”