What Actually Happened
Pogačar does ~455 watts & 6.8 to 7.0 W/kg for 35:27 up Alpe d'Huez and smashes Pantani's record by 1:14
We predicted 38 minutes at 6.8 W/kg and wrote that Pantani's record would take 7.0+ W/kg. Pogačar did 35:27, which works out to 6.8 to 7.0 W/kg and roughly 455 W at his 66 kg. The spread is honest: the biggest unknown is not his weight or his position but the Alpe itself, sources quote its elevation gain anywhere from 1,071 to 1,141 m, and that alone moves the answer more than every aero assumption combined. What is not in doubt: a record that had stood for three decades fell by more than a minute, and his Strava file pins the climb at 1,872 m/h of VAM. For scale, the 2022 GC group climbed this road in 39:08, nearly four minutes slower. At 23 km/h on an 8.1% grade over 90 percent of the power goes into lifting rider and bike against gravity, so there is nowhere to hide and nothing to draft.
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What that workout looks like (Bayard 4 min Sweet Spot · Noyer 6 min Threshold · Ornon 4 min Sweet Spot · Alpe d'Huez 12 min crescendo: Sweet Spot → Threshold → Zone 5 → Zone 6 → 10-second sprint):
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