Road World Championships 2021: Strava data shows brutality of race around Flanders

The UCI Road World Championships elite men's road race was, as ever, a brutal race full of attacks with an outstanding ride by Julian Alaphilippe to take the win - But what do the rider's Strava rides tell us about the race?

While Alaphilippe himself does not appear to have Strava, other riders involved in the race absolutely do. 

However, not all are willing to share power data with only Remco Evenepoel and Michael Valgren, who finished third on the day, happy to do so out of the top names.

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Valgren came into the race off the back of two impressive wins at the Giro della Toscana and the Coppa Sabatini in Italy after not taking a win since 2018, but he could not quite manage to turn that form into a Worlds title victory as he took third.

The Danish rider rode 276.96km in 6-12-41 averaging 266 watts (3.75w/kg) with a peak of 1183w on the course around the Flanders region of Belgian. Valgren held 619w (8.69w/kg) for a minute on the Veeweidestraat climb in the 224th kilometre, and his best 20-minute power for the race was 360w (5w/kg), which came at the end of the race.

Over the final two kilometres, where he was battling for second place with Dylan van Baarle, Jasper Stuyven and Neilson Powless he was averaging 333w with a peak of 1134w in the final seated sprint to the line where he managed to take third behind Van Baarle.

Here his heart rate was averaging 170bpm with a peak of 178bpm and a max speed of 55.4km/h.

Other riders had completely different roles during the race with Evenepoel coming into the event as the super-domestique deluxe for Wout van Aert, despite criticism from Eddy Merckx saying he would not work well in the Belgian team.

Evenepoel proved Merckx wrong by putting in a monster ride on the front of the group, riding himself to an almost complete stop after helping Van Aert and Stuyven.

The young Belgian star gave his all and held some big power on his ride. He managed to hold over 700 watts (11.34w/kg) for a minute with 907w (14.63w/kg) held for 30 seconds. 

Evenepoel's peak power was 1084w (17.48w/kg) with an average of 252w (4.05w/kg) on his 266.08km ride, taking him 6-01-29 to complete. He averaged 44.2km/h throughout the day maxing at 85km/h.

The 21-year-old put in a huge ride over the second and final lap of the Flandrien circuit before drilling the pace onto the final couple of laps around Leuven as he split the peloton to bits on the testing climbs.

Between kilometres 200 and 245, Evenepoel averaged 288w with a peak of 745w holding an average cadence of 96rpm and speed of 44.2km/h.

Multiple other riders did upload their rides to Strava, however they withheld their power data unfortunately.

Some of those top riders were second place on the day, Dylan van Baarle, sixth place Tom Pidcock, pre-race favourite Wout van Aert and Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar among others.

All four averaged around 44km/h during the race as they all battled to try and be up there for the win. In the end, Pogačar did not have his best day finishing in 37th with team-mates Matej Mohorič (14th) and Luka Mezgec (30th) finishing ahead of him. 

Van Aert, despite looking like he would bulldozer the competition in the build-up to the race, did not have the legs to stay with Alaphilippe and co with him finishing outside the top 10 in 11th place. 

The likes of Van Aert and Van Baarle will now likely be looking at Paris-Roubaix, which takes place on Sunday, October 3 after it was rescheduled due to Covid-19.