Contador on Verbier (and on Old La Honda)
Note: I had to revise the numbers on this page because mapmyride does a relatively poor job with distance, as I determined by considering its profile of Old La Honda Road. Since I did the original calculation, an official km-by-km climb profile was posted to The Science of Sport . The Tour today ended with a relatively steep, short climb on a stage on which riders had relatively fresh legs: a perfect opportunity for some truly impressive rates of climbing to be demonstrated. And sure enough, they didn't disappoint. Various numbers have been tossed about for the stats on Verbier. Originally I used elevation data from MapMyRide's map of the stage : 630 meters climbed over 7.576 kilometers starting from the sharp left from Route de Verbier at km 199.1 in the stage, an average gradient of 8.32%. However, since then official data were posted in comments to The Science of Sport : 638 meters gained over 8.8 km, an average grade of 7.25%. They also reported reports that Contador d...