We know that professional cyclists are stronger and faster than us amateurs, but by how much? Cyclist heads to the Étape du Tour to ride the hills and crunch the data
Words JAMIE WILKINS Photography CHRIS STORRAR
How much better are pro riders than the rest of us? It’s an age-old question, and there’s one event that offers the opportunity to lay out the harsh reality.
Each year, the Étape du Tour lets amateurs ride a complete mountain stage of the Tour de France a few days before the professionals, providing a unique chance to compare times and power data to assess the gulf between the best and the rest.
Earlier this year, Cyclist sent me to the Alps to ride the 2023 event – 157km (145km of it officially timed) from Annemasse to Morzine with 4,100m of climbing – and turn myself inside out in the name of science before submitting to the ritual humiliation of comparison to the world’s top riders.
Helping me to analyse the numbers and establish some lessons is coach Chris McNamara from trainSharp Cycle Coaching (trainsharp. co.uk). McNamara trains riders at every level, up to and including the WorldTour, and has also coached me for years, so he’s ideally placed to put all the data in context. As well as comparing myself to a couple of pros, we’ll also look at a couple of other amateurs to cover as broad a range of abilities as possible.
I love events like the Étape and was motivated to achieve the best possible finishing time and position. I trained hard, prepared meticulously and had a great ride on the day. By the end, I was absolutely shattered, and my efforts got me 104th place out of 11,791 finishers, inside the top 1%, which I’m very happy with. So how does that stack up against the pros?
Setting the groundwork
While the concept of the Étape is that amateurs and pros ride the same route, on this one the pros had a different roll-out from Annemasse and only met the Étape route after 6km. Then they suffered a huge pile-up moments later that forced the race to be briefly suspended. Added to that, the Étape also had a different finish point to the Tour stage, so to unpick all this we gathered data for riders’ complete rides and also for the 132km where the two routes overlapped exactly after the pro race had resumed.
The winner of that Tour stage – Stage 14 – was Carlos Rodríguez of Ineos Grenadiers, who covered the 132km section in 3h 41min 13sec at 35.9kmh, versus the 4h 48min 25sec it took me at 26.7kmh. That gives a basic insight into the differences bet
