Greg Henderson's Tour de France Power Data

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Andre Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) sprints to the stage win in Rouen as lead-out man Greg Henderson is already celebrating in the background.(Image credit: AFP)

Rider Profile: Greg Henderson
Height: 1m 81
Weight: 70kg

The stage was a perfect opportunity for the sprinters and their teams to make a mark on the race as every opportunity to strike out on a result in this extremely hard fought Tour is not one to be missed. So the nervousness and anxiety of a swelling and erratic peloton in the last 20km of a Tour de France stage is not a place for the faint hearted, cue the lead out men who have the job to not only chaperone their team leader but also put their limbs on the line in the process. Who better to do this job than prolific winner in his own right, Greg Henderson, who is partaking in his first Tour de France in the service of André Greipel of Germany. Greg has been racing at the top level of the sport for many years and has the tag of one of the best lead out men in the business and we now have the power files to confirm his strengths along with the results this formidable Lotto-Belisol team have gained so far in this years Tour.

The data shows that for the first three hours of the stage Greg had an average power of 146 watts which is below his endurance range, proving that the initial 100km on the stage was a conservative affair for this lead out man whose mindset was on the race final and making sure had all his bullets left to use come 10km to go. So for these reasons we can see that he has done a perfect job to conserve his energy for the final kilometres. The fireworks really started in the last 25km of the stage and fighting for position is the priority and keeping your sprinter and GC riders out of harm's way, this is seen by Greg’s average speed of 49kph in the section from 25km to 10km to go approximately - with an average power of 231w (260w Normalized) and 3.3w/kg, the effort was starting to ramp up as you would be expected coming into the final of this stage.

With an increase of nearly 2 watts per kilo difference between those two sections you can see that a major concerted effort was made by the Lotto-Belisol team to keep Greipel out of danger and using the initial lead out men to keep the pace high at or near the front. This proved to be a excellent move to take the reins at the front of the bunch as a major crash just 15 riders back from the front at 2.7km to go caused major chaos for some of Greipel’s main adversaries, but this left Greg and his team in a excellent position to finish the job as the pace was at a level that no one was going to take over there dominant position at the head of the bunch while the chaos of the crash behind was casing havoc to the other lead out trains and sprint favourites. At this point Greg was still sitting on the wheel of his fellow lead out men sitting at a cool 60kph.

From this you can see an average close to 60km per hour in this last kilometre with Greipel having to come off his teammate's wheel and starting his own sprint as Greg was hitting close to 68kph.... Amazing to say the least having to start a winning sprint while your lead out man is sitting at 68kph! Greg’s cadence averaged 109rpm which shows his ability to hold a high sustained cadence producing a maximal effort, an early career schooling on the track showing it’s benefits here. A max effort of 1150w for a guy of 70kg is a power to weight of 16.5 w/kg at the tip of this text book lead out. A very high anaerobic effort produced after a solid previous 20min gradual rise in speed and power.