{"id":15847,"date":"2026-07-23T15:12:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T15:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=15847"},"modified":"2026-07-23T15:12:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T15:12:35","slug":"scientists-analyzed-tadej-pogacars-tour-de-france-climbs-to-measure-the-limits-of-human-endurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=15847","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Analyzed Tadej Poga\u010dar&#8217;s Tour de France Climbs to Measure the Limits of Human Endurance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"justify-start\">\n<nav class=\"align-left col-span-full mb-base\" data-pom-e2e-test-id=\"breadcrumbs\"\/>\n<p>Forget lab tests: the Tour de France provides a real-world look at the limits of human fitness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/p>\n<p class=\"fp-leadCaption py-tight text-left font-utility text-utility3-size leading-utility3-line-height text-secondary\">Tadej Poga\u010dar wearing the overall leader&#8217;s yellow jersey cycles with the pack of riders <!-- --> (Photo: Jeff PACHOUD \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"article-body\">\n<p>Published July 23, 2026 08:39AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The official record for highest VO2 max belongs to a former cyclist named Oskar Svendsen, whose brief career I wrote about back in 2019. VO2 max is a measure of how much oxygen your lungs, heart, and muscles can use to fuel your metabolism; if you want a single number to measure your aerobic fitness, it\u2019s what you use. At 18, Svendsen could use 96.7 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of bodyweight per minute, one of the only lab-verified readings above 90. Two years later, after an undistinguished stint with a minor Norwegian pro team, he quit cycling for good.<\/p>\n<p>There are a few different ways to interpret this parable. One is that VO2 max is overrated as a predictor of success. That\u2019s more or less the perspective that Svendsen himself takes. \u201cTalent is more about grit and ability to perform over time,\u201d he <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"article-content-link text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingweekly.com\/news\/its-almost-12-years-since-i-quit-i-still-dont-regret-it-we-tracked-down-cyclings-lost-world-champion-and-vo2-max-record-holder\">told <i>Cycling Weekly<\/i><\/a> when they tracked him down earlier this year, 12 years after his retirement. \u201cThe physical is a bonus.\u201d Another is that the measurement was wacky or the machine was miscalibrated, a possibility that is frequently raised for ultra-high VO2 max scores (like <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\" class=\"article-content-link text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-training\/blummenfelt-vo2-max-record\/\">the Instagram-only report<\/a> that triathlete Kristian Blummenfelt had notched a 101.1 ml\/kg\/min earlier this year).<\/p>\n<p>A third option is that lab tests don\u2019t accurately reflect real-world conditions. Sure, you might pedal hard on a stationary bike because a scientist tells you to\u2014but are you really digging as deep as you might when you\u2019re trying to break your rivals on a key Tour de France climb? And are you even using the same muscles and movement patterns on a stationary bike? If we really want to understand the upper limits of human capacity, wouldn\u2019t it be better to analyze actual world-beating performances?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the approach in a forthcoming study in the <i>International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance<\/i>, from Pedro Valenzuela of the University of Alcal\u00e1 along with colleagues Sebastian Sitko and Ole Kristian Berg. They take real-world race data from the most dominant cyclist of our time, Tadej Poga\u010dar\u2014who, barring disaster, will soon wrap up his fifth Tour de France title\u2014and come up with an estimate of his VO2 max. Their conclusion: it\u2019s comparable to, and perhaps even higher than, Svendsen\u2019s off-the-charts number.<\/p>\n<h2>How They Estimated Poga\u010dar\u2019s VO2 Max<\/h2>\n<p>Grand Tour stages are several hours long and mostly ridden well below VO2 max. The moments of truth come on brutal climbs up mountain passes, where heroes are made and contenders sustain steady near-maximal efforts for as long as 40 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>If you have a power meter on one of these climbs, you can make a decent estimate of your VO2 max. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re climbing Peyragudes, a pass in the French Pyrenees, and you manage to sustain an average of 476 watts over the duration of the climb:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Watts are a measure of energy per time: 476 watts is equivalent to burning 6.8 calories per minute. That\u2019s how much energy is turning your pedals.<\/li>\n<li>But humans aren\u2019t perfectly efficient. When you burn a calorie of food energy, about a quarter of it (23 percent, on average, for elite cyclists) goes to turning your pedals while rest is wasted as heat. So if you\u2019re using 6.8 calories per minute to turn your pedals, you actually need to burn 29.7 calories per minute of food energy.<\/li>\n<li>The metabolic reactions that turn food energy into muscle contractions during aerobic exercise require oxygen. In fact, they require a predictable and consistent amount of oxygen. To burn 29.7 calories per minute, you need 5.73 liters of oxygen per minute.<\/li>\n<li>If (like Poga\u010dar) you happen to weigh 66 kilograms (145 pounds), that means you\u2019re burning 86.8 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body mass per minute.<\/li>\n<li>But that\u2019s still not your VO2 max, because Peyragudes is too long to ride up at max power. When Poga\u010dar rode it in the 2025 Tour de France, he took 17 minutes and 19 seconds. For a climb of that duration, elite cyclists can usually sustain about 92 percent of their true max, which implies that Poga\u010dar\u2019s VO2 max is 94.3 ml\/kg\/min.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are a lot of assumptions baked in there. He might be slightly more or less efficient than 23 percent. He might be able to sustain slightly more or less than 92 percent of VO2 max over a 17-minute climb. He might not have been exactly 66 kilograms that day.<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s a more serious challenge: Poga\u010dar doesn\u2019t make his power data public. So we don\u2019t know that he averaged 476 watts on that climb. Instead Valenzuela and his colleagues have to estimate average power based only on how high the climb is and how long it took. With some assumptions, you can estimate how much energy was required to overcome gravity (397 watts), air resistance (45 watts), and the rolling resistance of the tires (13 watts), and you can make further adjustments for factors like high altitude. That\u2019s how they came up with the estimate of 476 watts.<\/p>\n<p>You might think this process is doomed to inaccuracy, but they tested it out on old data from former Grand Tour winner Chris Froome, who famously <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\" class=\"article-content-link text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/sky-releases-chris-froomes-srm-data-from-stage-10\/\">released some of his power data<\/a> and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"article-content-link text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/27508883\/\">lab testing<\/a> in an attempt to quell doping rumors. Valenzuela\u2019s real-world estimate for Froome\u2019s VO2 max is 85.3 ml\/kg\/min, which is remarkably close to Froome\u2019s published lab value of 84.4 ml\/kg\/min.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, Valenzuela and his colleagues analyzed four of Poga\u010dar\u2019s recent climbs, ranging from 17 to 40 minutes: Plateau de Beille and Isola 2000 from the 2024 Tour de France; Peyragudes from the 2025 Tour de France; and Ganda from the 2025 Tour of Lombardy. The VO2 max estimates were, respectively, 96, 97, 94, and 98 ml\/kg\/min, for an overall average of 96 ml\/kg\/min\u2014just like Oskar Svendsen. If you play around with the assumptions, for example imagining that he\u2019s unusually efficient or inefficient, you can get a range of VO2 max predictions between about 90 and 102 ml\/kg\/min.<\/p>\n<h2>What It Means<\/h2>\n<p>For a long time, Svendsen\u2019s record was way out of line with other readings. The previous \u201crecord\u201d of 96 ml\/kg\/min that he broke, from cross-country skiing legend Bj\u00f8rn D\u00e6hlie, was only reported in a newspaper rather than a scientific journal. One version of the story I\u2019ve heard is that they suspected the measurement was probably off, but decided to circulate it anyway to psych out D\u00e6hlie\u2019s opponents.<\/p>\n<p>Other super-high measurements have often been accompanied by similar baggage, which is why there was plenty of skepticism when Blummenfelt shared the Instagram pic with a VO2 max machine showing an apparent score of 101.1. Valenzuela\u2019s new analysis doesn\u2019t tell us what Poga\u010dar\u2019s VO2 max is, but it tells us that he <i>must <\/i>be in that mid-to-high-nineties neighborhood\u2014and possibly even higher, since Valenzuela\u2019s assumptions were generally conservative. That means that these other sky-high readings are plausible, not necessarily measurement malfunctions.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I assume that Poga\u010dar has had his VO2 tested in a lab. I\u2019d love to see the results of those tests, needless to say. But it\u2019s probably for the best that Poga\u010dar and most other truly world-beating athletes tend to keep their lab data under wraps. You want to be remembered as someone who won races, not as someone who had the physiological potential to win races. Just ask Oskar Svendsen.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><i>For more Sweat Science, sign up for the <\/i><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"article-content-link text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/sweatscience.substack.com\/\"><i>email newsletter<\/i><\/a><i> and check out my new book <\/i><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"article-content-link text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" rel=\"nofollow\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/products\/the-explorers-gene-alex-hutchinson\">The Explorer\u2019s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map<\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!-- --><span hidden=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/health\/training-performance\/tadej-pogacar-vo2-max-tour-de-france-study\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forget lab tests: the Tour de France provides a real-world look at the limits of human fitness. Tadej Poga\u010dar wearing the overall leader&#8217;s yellow jersey cycles with the pack of riders (Photo: Jeff PACHOUD \/ AFP via Getty Images) Published July 23, 2026 08:39AM The official record for highest VO2 max belongs to a former<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wild-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}