Alexys Brunel

Lifestyle

Challenge

The drafting effect: How long can we hold a pro's wheel on the flat?

Professional cyclists ride at unfathomable speeds

 and can average up to 50kph, or just over 30mph, for hours at a time.

Those are incredible velocities that are unattainable for all but the elite pros who are capable of pushing out equally impressive wattage – or are they?

Dig a little deeper and a different picture emerges. Sure, the pros have FTPs and peak wattage that we can only dream of, but they often don’t need to recruit these levels for most of a race. In fact, on many race days, they spend most of their time riding at power numbers that many amateur riders are more than capable of achieving.

That’s because pro cyclists spend most of their time riding in a peloton where they’re receiving a big draft, also known as slip-streaming. Drafting behind another rider reduces the air resistance that a rider has to contend with. This has a huge effect as, along with rolling resistance and gravity, it’s the largest force working against a cyclist. The effect of drafting becomes exponentially larger when a rider is protected in the middle of a peloton by dozens of riders. All of this means that pro riders can go at faster speeds for much less effort.

But how much less effort and does this mean that everyday amateur cyclists could ride in a pro peloton? To find out, we recruited an average cyclist (okay, slightly above average cyclist), our very own 

, and tasked him with sticking in the draft of a pro rider for as long as possible. We couldn’t convince the UCI to let Ollie test things out in an actual WorldTour peloton, unfortunately.

How are pro cyclists getting more powerful than ever? 

, a man who recently swapped his road bike for the pro gravel scene, having spent multiple years riding for WorldTour teams 

. That’s some seriously impressive pedigree, which is backed up by his 

Ollie, who has never ridden at a pro level, clearly had his work cut out if he was to hold Brunel’s wheel. That task was made harder as the Frenchman was tasked with ramping up his pace, starting at 40kph before moving up to 50kph, and then beyond. Ollie simply had to hang on for as long as possible.

At what speed would Ollie finally crack? Watch the full video at the top of this page to find out.

Amateur vs pro descending challenge: Can an everyday cyclist match a WorldTour pro on a descent?

Professional cyclists descend at hair-raising speeds. This often exceeds 100kph and there have been rare incidents where it has topped 130kph – that far exceeds the maximum limit in most countries.

Simply reaching these speeds is unfathomable, but it’s even harder to comprehend when you consider that all that’s keeping a rider up right is a pair of tyres only a few centimetres wide. It takes a lot of confidence and courage to put all of your faith into a small strip of rubber, especially when all the majority of your body can rely on for protection is some flimsy lycra.

It’s seriously impressive which got us thinking: how much faster on descents are the pros than everyday cyclists? Are they super talented or does riding in a peloton give them a natural edge?

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To find out, we decided to pit a pro against an amateur, with 

 thrown into the mix for fun too – at this point we’re not sure we can classify him as an amateur, so we’ll go give him an ‘intermediate’ tag instead.

For the pro role we recruited former WorldTour star turned gravel-specialist 

, while Joe stepped in as our amateur. Joe has been cycling for 10 years and has taken on many sportives and dabbled in some local races during that time, but coming up against the might of Ollie would be his biggest cycling challenge to date.

The setting for this epic showdown was a 5km selection of the Els Àngels climb near Girona, which averages 6.1km of smooth tarmac and fast, sweeping bends.

To ensure that the experiment would be fair, all three riders used 

, which gave us a chance to compare how they perform.

Could our amateur and Ollie challenge Brunel or would the former WorldTour pro score an easy descending victory? Watch the full video at the top of this page to find out.

head over to the ‘Lifestyle’ section on the GCN website

Time-trialist turned triathlete and former Groupama-FDJ and UAE pro

GCN Presenter Hank

Alexys had a crazy run in the youth ranks, winning races like the Philippe Gilbert Juniors at age 16, Gent-Wevelgem Junior and the European championships ITT the very next year.

He was part of the first wave of recruits for the now renowned Groupama-FDJ Continental Team, one of the first efforts to establishing young riders and linking them directly to a WorldTour Team. There he had teammates such as Kevin Geniets and Jake Stewart.

Alexys rode for Groupama-FDJ and UAE Team Emirates at WorldTour level, competing in races such as Tour de Suisse, Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Nice. After leaving the pro ranks, he tried triathlon, rode in Guadeloupe, and is now much more relaxed living his passion without the pressure of the pro peloton.

Alexys Brunel

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Latest articles from Alexys

The drafting effect: How long can we hold a pro's wheel on the flat?

Amateur vs pro descending challenge: Can an everyday cyclist match a WorldTour pro on a descent?

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Alexys Brunel

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Latest articles from Alexys

The drafting effect: How long can we hold a pro's wheel on the flat?

Amateur vs pro descending challenge: Can an everyday cyclist match a WorldTour pro on a descent?

Subscribe to the GCN Newsletter