To understand how impressive this is, play with the bicycle and power calculator at this website…. http://bikecalculator.com/index.html Using the sliding red button on the detailed calculator after the data is entered, you will quickly find out that 50 kph is off of the chart so that ought to tell you something right there. The highest speed for which power can be established using this calculator is 44.45…. Just to see what the calculated relationship is between speed and power, input the data for 22 kph which is half of the maximum value that the calculator goes to and what you will find is that the power at 22 kph is approximately 1/6 of the power at 44. In other words, doubling bicycling speed requires approximately 6 times the power (this is not definitive but a good rule of thumb). Now consider that a ‘typical person’ in decent shape should be able to average 25 kph….For that typical person be able to keep up with Jens Vogt, he’d have to be able to generate the pedal power of 6 people. There are lots of things that would have to be taken into consideration to refine this further but this should be a quick means of setting some context for what he did.
Ummm ... Tous dope.
Logically power should go up as the cube of speed since drag increases as the square of speed. If all the other factors were equal, that would mean that power would be 8 times as great if the speed was doubled.... hmmmmm.... more research and math required.
And you can’t overlook the fact Jens is 42 years old. The tours will certainly miss him. I loved watching him attack at the least likely spots, and hold off the peloton on his own.