Stage 1 - Tour de France 2016

Stage 1 - Mont-Saint-Michel - Utah Beach / Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont (188km)

Contributed by Vincent Villerius, Coach (Cofidis)

Let’s have a look at the SRM file from the first stage of the Tour de France of promising young French sprinter, Christophe Laporte, normally Nacer Bouhanni’s leadout man in the Cofidis sprint train. After the late withdrawal of Bouhanni just 3 days before the Grand Départ, Laporte has become the sprinter of the team for the sprints in this year’s Tour de France. He took a great 6^th place in the sprint behind world class sprinters as Cavendish, Kittel, Sagan and Greipel and missed out the white jersey for best young riders by just one place, with Edward Theuns finishing just in front of him.

Click on file to enlarge.

As can be seen in the first graphic of the SRM file showing the whole stage duration, it was an easy stage, except for the windy part of the stage along the coast after 95 km of the race. The mean power of the whole stage was 217 Watts (2.8 W/kg) and normalized mean power 291 Watts (3.8 W/kg). The total work during the stage was 3240 kJ. The main goal for Christophe during the stage was to save as much energy as possible before the final km of the race. So the low mean power value indicates that he tried to draft as best as possible in the bunch in order to keep all his energy for the sprint at the end of the race. After 95 km the intensity of the race got higher during 12 km because of the windy part along the coast. Over approximately 13 minutes Christophe rode at 360 Watts (4.7 W/kg) for an average speed of more than 54 km/h.

Click on file to enlarge.

As can be seen in the second graphic of the SRM file, the final of the race has been split up in 4 parts with the last 3km, 2 km and 1 km of the race and the sprint that started at 500 m of the finish line. In the last 3km the mean power is 499 Watts (6.5 W/kg) over 2min38sec for a mean speed of 68 km/h. In the last 2 km the mean power is 607 Watts (7.9 W/kg) over 1min48sec for a mean speed of 67 km/h with a high mean cadence of 109 rpm. In the last km the mean power is 734 Watts (9.5 W/kg) over 53 sec for a mean speed of 69 km/h with 112 rpm mean cadence. Christophe started his sprint right after Michael Morkov’s crash at 500 m from the finish line. The sprint lasted 26 sec with a mean power of 1021 Watts (13.3 W/kg) for a mean speed of 71 km/h at a mean cadence of 114 rpm. The peak power was 1521 Watts (19.8 W/kg) and was reached after 2 sec of the 26 sec sprint. This peak value is the highest value that Christophe has ever obtained in his career until now in a sprint at the end of a race. The maximal speed during the sprint was 74 km/h, reached after 14 sec of the 26 sec sprint.

The highest value over 20 sec in the sprint was 1110 Watts (14.4 W/kg) and it’s his highest value ever over 20 sec in a race. The last minute of the race had an 738 Watt averaged power (9.6 W/kg) and was his highest power value over 1 min duration of all his race files of the past 3 seasons as a professional cyclist.