Astana Cycling Team

The Tour Down Under, by Josep Jufré Pou: My data on the SRM in the queen stage - biciciclismo.com

Queen stage of the Tour Down Under. Don’t think that this means summit after summit, because here in Adelaide there aren’t any mountains, but for years there’s been this stage and it’s quite true that it’s the Queen since it gets very fast and there are always lots of attacks in the final part.

The stage consisted of two laps of a circuit near the beach and two more laps of a 25-km circuit with a 3-km climb called Old Willunga Hill. In the cycling community we call this “the Willunga stage”. It passes over the ascent of Willunga twice and the second time happens just short of 19 kilometers from the finish. We find that just after the banner at the summit, there are six kilometers of flats, nothing else to climb, which makes it harder since there’s no rest; on the contrary, it goes straight and at 1,000/hr. Once the flats are over, you start to go down, definitely a very fast descent, and in the end we have a final five kilometers of flat on average, with slight ascent, which, by the way, really take hold of you.

That’s the route. We’re going to look at some data produced during this stage. We have three kilometers of climb with an average gradient of 7.5%. This is the fixed data. Now we’re going to look at the variable data, the figures that are specific to each rider. I’m going to put to you, with examples, the data that I’ve registered myself on the SRM. I generated 360 watts of power on average during seven minutes and ten seconds, the exact time taken for the ascent of the three kilometers at an average speed of 25.5 kilometers per hour at a rate of 87 ppm and an average pulse rate of 170. I remarked to you that the descent was fast, well, it was no more nor less than 95.3. km/h!

All things considered, this was the most exciting stage so far. It’s worth the trouble to watch the summary.

Luis León Sanchez won (Congratulations!), after the escape that formed on the last climb with Alejandro Valverde, Cadel Evans and a very promising young rider, Peter Sagan, who will be 20 years old next Tuesday. Valeriy Dmitriyev, on behalf of our team Astana, has placed third in the KOM general and was a main player in the escape of the day, always visible and proving his quality. For his part, Andriy Grivko is still our man in the GC and now occupies 10th place.

Tomorrow we’re looking at 20 laps around 4.5-km urban circuit, a circuit that’s very good for Allan Davis, and he’ll certainly be fighting for the stage win.

Ciao, and off we go already on the last stage of the Tour Down Under!

Josep Jufré Pou
(Astana)