Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) did not just win Stage 15 to Plateau de Beille in 2024, he produced a climb that researchers now quantify as one of the most physiologically extreme ever recorded in a Grand Tour. In a paper published in the Journal of Science and Cycling, Ole Kristian Berg estimates Pogačar sustained 442 ± 15 watts for roughly 40 minutes on the final ascent, equating to about 6.85 W/kg at his reported Tour race weight of 64.5 kg. The model places his mean oxygen consumption during the effort at 80 ± 3 mL/kg/min and, by extrapolation from established power–VO₂ relationships, concludes his VO₂max during the race “likely exceeded 90 mL/kg/min.”
The numbers attach scientific weight to what the race already suggested. On July 14, 2024, after 198 km and close to 5,000 m of climbing, Pogačar attacked Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) with 5.4 km remaining and won the stage by 1 minute 8 seconds. External timing put his Plateau de Beille ascent at 39:50, a new benchmark that surpassed the late‑1990s mark and sparked immediate comparisons across eras.
How Berg got from watts to VO₂max
Berg’s approach, outlined in Science and Cycling, reverse‑engineers the physiological cost of decisive Tour climbs using publicly available timing, climb geometry and validated mechanical models. In practice, that means solving the power balance of a rider on a gradient, where gravitational work dominates, while accounting for aerodynamic drag at climbing speeds, rolling resistance, drivetrain losses and course altitude. With rider mass set by race‑reported weight, the model yields a mean mechanical power compatible with the observed time.
To translate watts to oxygen consumption, the paper applies standard relationships between external power, gross mechanical efficiency and VO₂. From there, Berg uses established links between severe‑domain endurance performance (all-out sprint efforts), critical power and VO₂max to infer an upper bound for aerobic capacity under race conditions.
The headline result is twofold: a mean VO₂ near 80 mL/kg/min for roughly 40 minutes on Plateau de Beille, and a likely race‑period VO₂max above 90 mL/kg/min. “Extrapolating from these efforts and known relationships between critical power and VO₂max suggests that Pogačar’s VO₂max during the race likely exceeded 90 mL/kg/min,” Berg writes, adding that the analysis underscores the extraordinary aerobic capacity behind record Tour climbing.
The figures align with independent performance work. Lanterne Rouge’s post‑stage analysis estimated 6.98 eW/kg for 39:50 on Plateau de Beille. Plugging a 64.5 kg rider into that estimate yields a similar ballpark to Berg’s 442 ± 15 W mean, lending cross‑validation from separate methods that converge on near‑7 W/kg for close to 40 minutes.
Stage 15 was among the hardest of the race, a Pyrenean route that amplified fatigue load before the final 15.8 km at roughly 7.9 percent. Pogačar himself pointed to the environmental stressors that day. “Today was super hot and it was a really hard day. I always struggle with the heat and the team did a super good job with cooling me down,” he said after the finish, crediting support as he seized time to consolidate yellow.
Berg’s framing does not claim perfect precision. The paper acknowledges that assumptions about mass, efficiency, air density and the small aerodynamic component on steep gradients can shift the mean wattage by several watts. Likewise, micro‑drafting in a small group before the winning move, road surface affecting rolling resistance and minor wind variations can all tilt the power requirement. Yet the convergence of independent estimates, the length of the effort and the late‑stage race context make the qualitative conclusion hard to escape: this was an all‑time climb in both performance and physiology.
The implications reach beyond a single stage. A race‑period VO₂max in the 90s places Pogačar at the frontier of what has been observed in elite endurance athletes, and it illuminates how modern Grand Tour performances are achieved. Training that targets all-out efforts, nutrition that sustains high carbohydrate availability, cooling that blunts heat strain and equipment that minimises losses at the UCI’s weight limit all contribute. Berg’s analysis helps partition what belongs to physics and physiology from what belongs to tactics and context, transforming bar‑stool speculation into a quantified framework.
It also shapes a conversation that cycling cannot avoid. Extraordinary numbers invariably cue debates about sporting evolution and anti‑doping. This paper does not adjudicate those debates, nor can any single model. What it does provide is a transparent, reproducible path from climb time to physiological demand. By stating assumptions and bounding uncertainty, it narrows the space for misinterpretation while inviting scrutiny of the inputs.
As the sport continues to parse the generational level of Plateau de Beille, two things can be true at once. The exact wattage and VO₂max will always carry error bars. And the scale of Pogačar’s effort, measured independently and now anchored in a peer‑reviewed model, sits at the leading edge of cycling history.
