The Human Engine
Van der Poel, Pogačar and the difference between God and godlike
Tadej Pogačar won Stage 2 of Volta a Catalunya last week, stepping off the front of the peloton on a climb as easily as you or I might ascend a stepstool. He won that stage by 83 seconds. The next day, another summit finish, he won by 48 seconds. He won Stage 6, a punchy uphill climb after a day spent on undulating terrain, by 57 seconds. Then he won the final stage, a hilly circuit race around Barcelona, in a 20-man sprint.
Pogačar is not going to the Tour of Flanders this weekend. He’s racing Liège-Bastogne-Liège in a month, and following that up with the Giro d’Italia. There isn’t much discussion about whether he can win the Giro on his debut; that’s almost a foregone conclusion. The issue now is whether he can win Stage 1 and hold the pink jersey from wire to wire.
Mathieu van der Poel won E3 Saxo Classic on Friday. Wout van Aert crashed and left a gap, and van der Poel just wheedled off into the distance to win by a minute and a half. Like Pogačar, when van der Poel is feeling good, he can’t be beat. He’s got the immediate fast-twitch power and brute force to roll the road back faster than his opponents have the capacity to fathom. In the latter stages of E3, van Aert—one of the fastest time trialists in the world—just could not make any headway when van der Poel was up the road but theoretically catchable. Van Aert, winner of untold Tour de France stages, who looms over all the mortal riders like a patronizing brother, could not make a dent.
The most compelling evidence Pogačar and van der Poel give of their greatness is their aggressiveness. Winning alone is too easy—they have to make a statement, do something dramatic. Hence Pogačar’s 80 kilometer solo break at Strade Bianche. Greatness like that is self-reinforcing. In a sport that’s as much about game theory as physical prowess, it changes all the inputs in riders’ internal computers. You ride more cautiously, or more aggressively, or you just freak out and sit in the pack while the day happens to you.
The way van der Poel is riding, and with Pogačar not on the startlist, if he shows up in Antwerp on Sunday with his head on straight, he’s going to romp Ronde van Vlaanderen. And a week later, he’s probably going to romp Paris-Roubaix. I don’t know what the path is for van Aert to beat him; maybe a tactical situation could unfold that would cause other riders to gang up on van der Poel. Or maybe he could find himself in a place where it makes more sense to prioritize Jasper Philipsen, as was the case at Milan-San Remo.
But racing—any kind of racing—is more deterministic than other sports. Sure, there are tactics. The whole premise of this newsletter is that cycling is so tactically sophisticated it’d make Fabius Maximus shit his toga. Nevertheless, there is no flexbone in racing, no hit-and-run, no hack-a-Shaq to conjure victory from nothing out of guile alone.
Racing is science. Biology, chemistry, physics. Put more power on the road for less weight, and you’ll go faster. Maintain that faster speed longer, and you’ll win the race. That’s as true for van der Poel as it is for Max Verstappen. The rider is the pilot, but most importantly, the rider is the engine.
A Formula 1 car is limited by design regulations. It must be so big, and weigh so much, and its engines must have such and such a displacement. Every inch of it is measured, honed, and studied, both by regulators and competitors. It’s known, every strand of carbon fiber. Sometimes it fails. Even science is not immune to the occasional surprise. But a race car is built to be predictable.
So is a bike rider, whose training and nutrition are studied in minute detail. Van der Poel will hop on his bike on Sunday knowing exactly how much wattage he can produce, with a pretty solid idea of how long he can produce it.
On Sunday, at Gent-Wevelgem, van der Poel came into the final kilometers of the race with Mads Pedersen. These two giants of the classics season had worked together well in order to consolidate their escape. They knew that cooperation until the final kilometer would give each a coin flip’s chance at victory. Perfidy came with the risk of being swallowed up by their pursuers.
As they hit the final straight, Pedersen was out in front, but soft-pedaling. He knew that riding too quickly would only allow van der Poel to accelerate out of his slipstream. Pedersen probably has the better sprint overall, but van der Poel, after a long day in the saddle, can put down inhuman amounts of power. It was possible that the outcome of the race was out of Pedersen’s control completely.
So the Danish rider sidled up to the curb, leaving no space between his right shoulder and the barriers. If van der Poel was to make the first move, he’d have to go to the left, giving Pedersen only one shoulder to check.1
They rolled, and Pedersen checked. Roll and check. Roll and check. And rather than wait for van der Poel to strike first, Pedersen hit the gas with 300 meters to go. It was a long way out for a flat-out effort, and allowed van der Poel to stay in his wheel and come over the top.
Van der Poel started yanking his bike back and forth, holding Pedersen’s wheel. For 15, 20 pedal strokes, both sprinted to zero cumulative effect. Pedersen couldn’t pull out a gap, but van der Poel couldn’t swing around to make the pass.
Had Pedersen waited another 100 meters, he could’ve maintained that lead all the way to the line. But he’d started so early that van der Poel, even after taking longer than usual to accelerate, had enough time to swing out, pull level, and even edge his front wheel ahead with less than 50 meters to go.
And then all at once, all of a sudden, he stopped. To normal people, fatigue is a gradual process. You put in more and more effort but go slower and slower. That’s not how van der Poel experiences it. He lifts the planet on his shoulders like Atlas, then spasms, and then the power just cuts. He goes completely slack, as if he’s been unplugged.
The human engine has run out of gas and seized up.
It happens to van der Poel sometimes, without warning, and in big moments. Pedersen did this to him at the world championship in 2019. It happened at the Tour of Flanders in 2021, the only time Kasper Asgreen will ever outdrag van der Poel to the line. It happened at that famous Tirreno-Adriatico break in 2021, where he blew up with the line in sight but managed to crawl across before Pogačar caught him anyway.
As predetermined as this sport can seem sometimes, the clockwork mechanisms that keep the sport rolling are made of sloppy, fallible humanity. They wilt in the heat. They blow up with one pedal stroke. They sneeze at the wrong time and wipe out.
They only look unbeatable.
If that seems like a petty concern, it’s not. Checking over the wrong shoulder cost Rigoberto Urán an Olympic gold medal in 2012.
"....or you just freak out and sit in the pack while the day happens to you."...👏👏👏