Mathieu van der Poel battled to a last-gasp solo victory at E3 Saxo Classic just under a week ago.
The Dutch superstar claimed his third straight victory at the race, but surprisingly, his long-range solo effort floundered at the death as a four-man chase group slowly but surely reeled him in.
He found one last effort to stay clear as the chase faltered behind, but any illusions that the Classics superstar was in subpar form were cast aside when the Dutchman uploaded an Instagram story after the race.
The story, simply a screenshot from his training app Training Peaks, showed he set an all-time 90-minute power personal best of 446 watts.
For a man who has dominated several races with long solo breakaways and taken some incredibly dominant wins in his career, it's surprising to see his personal best come on a day that almost fell apart.
In the wake of this upload, Cyclingnews dug back through the archives to see how this figure stacks up against his past performances.
Can we learn anything about Van der Poel himself, the wider peloton this season, or even the expected battle with his great rivals Tadej Pogačar and Wout van Aert at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday?
Mathieu van der Poel is generally believed to weigh in at around 75kg, which means, based on his post, he rode at just under six watts per kilo for 90 minutes; an incredible power no doubt.
But one of his breakout wins, and still one of his most spectacular, was his 2019 win at the Amstel Gold Race. Conveniently, it's also a race that he posted to his Strava account with power numbers, providing a useful comparison against this week's upload.
During the final 90 minutes of Amstel Gold, Van der Poel rode a still-impressive, but much lower 325 watts.
Of course, it was a different race with different parcours, and he wasn't riding completely solo (even if he did drag the group back to the front of the race by himself towards the end).
Perhaps a more stark comparison is that for the final 12 minutes of Amstel Gold - the part where he went on his rampage and rode his group back to the front of the race, attacked, caught the leaders and sprinted at 1400 watts to win the race - he averaged just 434 watts.
At E3 Saxo Classic, he not only held 12 watts more power, but he did it for 7.5 times as long. This highlights how Van der Poel has improved, but also how much stronger the peloton as a whole is nowadays.
Back in 2019, that power was so ridiculous that almost every cycling media outlet on the internet wrote a story breaking it down. Nowadays, it's barely enough to keep you from being caught by Stan Dewulf and Florian Vermeersch, who, no offence to the pair, had respectively been in the breakaway all day and had an awfully-timed puncture earlier in the race.
Admittedly, there was a cross/headwind in the latter part of the race. Van der Poel will have had to use all of his strength to maintain his speed while the chase group behind was afforded some respite, perhaps a key factor in them being able to pull him back as he tired in the final stages of the race.
Looking ahead to the upcoming Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, there will be another solo breakaway artist on the two respective start lines, in the form of Tadej Pogačar. The Slovenian world champion is believed to have averaged around 380 watts during his 80km solo attack at Strade Bianche this year. While this is a lower figure on paper, his lower weight and the hillier Strade route may have affected the average. Regardless, it's an interesting comparison when it comes to power top trumps.
Ultimately, no one truly knows what Van der Poel is capable of except himself, his team and those close to him. It is safe to say that the Dutchman is surely one of the most powerful riders the sport has ever seen, and his performances have only been boosted by cycling's wholesale improvements in training, nutrition and fuelling over the past several years.
Regardless of the numbers, it takes more than just brute strength to win a Monument. Power-to-weight will certainly be a factor when the two titans of our sport do battle again in Flanders. Judging by their last few performances, neither will go down without a fight.
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