29 Alberto Contador On The Angliru : Climbing Speed & Power to Weight Ratio

One can only sit back in astonishment and marvel at the speeds at which the breakaway flew up Angliru. Once again, Contador teaches his rivals how to tame mountains.









Anyone want to take a guess at his VAM for this climb? I'm pretty curious...

Okay, lets see if I can do it.

The EUROSPORT recording above kicks off right from the 4K to go banner. Assuming it is live like it says and there wasn't any cut and paste job by the uploader, Contador took about 15.5 minutes to get to the top at 1600m (5250 feet), as he crosses the banner there and proceeds towards the downhill. Referring to slope information for the mountain, the altitude difference between 4k to go and the top is roughly 500m. 15.5 minutes to climb 2 miles? Think about how steep that road was. VAM will be proportional to steepness. In this case, you can pretty much guess that it'll be in the high range.

So for the given altitude change (not for the whole climb) and from around the point he accelerated from Valverde and Rodriguez :



Ofcourse, there'll be an error percentage + or - something, but c'mon, it can't be huge. Nevertheless, a VAM of anything close to this number is bloody frickin remarkable!!!! Anyone disagree?

For a perspective, just remember - when Marco Pantani climbed the Alpe d'Heuz at record speed in 37 minutes & 35 seconds back in 1997 , he produced a VAM of around 1791!! And the climb was only at 7.9% average as opposed to Angliru's 10.13%, but oh well....he must have taken the pill too.

Finally, according to the evil Dr. Ferrari's method (and I have no idea where he digs this from), one can get an estimate of Contador's power to weight ratio (PWR) by dividing his VAM by 300. For the sake of calculation, lets take 1930 as his VAM.

That'll be just sufficient to be one the top climbers in history, eh?

Multiply that with his recorded racing weight of 62 kg, and you can see that he roughly produced around 400 Watts or close to it during those 15 minutes.

Don't grill me because of accuracy issues. I'm just giving you the numbers for the idea.

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1 Pedro's Thoughts

"There have been moments on the climb when I've felt as if time has stopped. You're pedaling like mad but every time you look up you don't seem to have advanced much at all. It's like one of those dreams where you're running but not getting anywhere... When you reach the false flat [after 6km], there are words painted on the road warning of what is to come. 'Hell starts here,' they say."

- Pedro Delgado on the Alto de L'Angliru, a monstrous climb featured in tomorrow's stage of the Vuelta

14 Return of The Alto de L'Angliru

Stage 13 is perhaps the most crucial point of this year's Vuelta a Espana. There's a surprise towards the end.

People either hate her, or fear her. I haven't heard of any tender feelings.

You may call her La Gamonal, Alto de L'Angliru, Cima del Angliru, The Angliru or just.. sweetly, the bitch.

For the first time since the 2002 Vuelta, after lying dormant somewhere in Northern Spain, her strangely steep existence will awake to the the feel of more than a 100 angry bicycle wheels scraping past her back.

And then you'll hear the crack of her whip. Expect hell.

Profile of the complete climb

Be at your own health risk with 39-25T gearing

You can get a feel for it by checking out the declivity.

When Spanish race officials first decided to try the climb out in 1999, local favorite known for his showman explosive attacking style , "el Chaba" José Maria Jiménez - got the edge and won the epic stage.

Apparently that day, he was too drained to even raise an arm in victory under the pouring rain. Just how he won is popularized, depending on what you read or whom you talk to, so its legend. The man isn't even alive today to talk about it. A heart attack took his life at a young age of 32. [Read letters to Cycling News following his demise ]





El Chaba winning the stage :






That day in 1999, German Jan Ullrich was content enough to limit his losses and not get killed on the climb. Language warning for the music in the background.