11. THE MAGIC W AND W/KG NUMBERS TO EXCEL IN WOMEN'S PRO ROAD CYCLING
In the last post we saw the magic watt and watt/kg numbers required to arrive and excel in men pro road cycling.
We are lucky enough to have the same reference numbers for women pro road cycling. This is particularly interesting as more and more men’s World Tour teams are creating also women’s squads: Movistar, UAE, Jayco-Aula, Visma, Uno-X, FDJ, Lidl-Trek, Team dsm. It’s very likely that female cycling will grow exponentially in the next years (also economically) and, as a consequence, many job vacancies will born for both athletes and staff.
What are the actual power numbers required to be in women’s professional road cycling peloton and to excel in different race typologies?
In 2022 the same research group that published reference power data of men’s pro road cyclists (the group is composed by a bunch of sport scientists working with different professional teams that have both men’s and women’s squads) puts together and published on International Journal of Sport Physiology and Performance a dataset containing real (not estimated!) power output data of women’s professional road cyclists. (1)
WHAT DID THEY DO?
They retrospectively analysed the maximal mean power outputs recorded in training or races over different fixed duration (from seconds to hours) of 44 women’s pro road cyclists from 3 different teams (2 World Tour, 1 Professional Tour).
The sample included also cyclists who ranked in the top 10 in the most important international races.
The timeframe analysed was between the 2015 and 2020 season.
WHAT DID THEY FOUND?
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