Depends on whether the protocol is the same, of course, but I think at least the time for each step (3 minutes) is the same.

A kilogram is a kilogram. It’s not like some kilograms have girly bits and some have manly bits and one type is harder to get over a hill. If a woman can put out the same number of watts per kilogram for the same length of time as a man, then she can compete with a man. Of course, this is extremely unlikely, but that doesn’t mean that comparison is impossible, just means that the comparison won’t flatter the woman. Except that in this case, we have a woman who looks at first glance to be about as good as a man would be, at something we expect there to be a big sex difference at. Hence the surprise and confusion. She seems like a female track-and-field athlete from the eighties.

I know it’s only a maximum. I don’t know how long she can hold it for. One commentator here suggested 8 minutes, which would certainly suggest to me that she could have held on to CAS when he put in his 10-minute burst. It’s true that this will be affected to some degree by a long day in the saddle – although it was a relatively short stage, and they’d had 60km ‘rest’ since the last hill. Do we know what effect that has? From a casual look, it would seem as though the effect of stage length seems to only have an effect of a few tenths of a wat per kilogram anyway. But OK, maybe Vos would have tired and not been able to put out quite that much on the day. So… she wouldn’t have been at the head of the TdF, she’d have rolled in a couple of minutes down? Still… impressive, no?

Of course the Lance comparison wasn’t like-for-like, but that was the point. I compared Vos to top modern men and it seemed like she was on the same planet. Then I threw in Lance, showing that he was on a different planet altogether: a maximum effort for Vos, or a major field-breaking pull for CAS, could only match Lance’s average sustained effort.

[blackswangreen adds a useful datapoint. If Gesink can do 7, and Vos can do 6.6, Gesink can’t really break Vos in an attack. (I’m guessing. As I said before, Horner could follow Sorensen matching 6.4 for CAS’s 6.6… suggests that, as a guess, Vos would be technically dropped, but only marginally). It may of course be that Vos doesn’t have the same stamina… but then women are generally no worse than men at maintaining their power, so far as i’m aware.]

this year they are going down there too. It’d be interesting to get split times for the section they do in common. And for those who haven’t seen, here’s Vos doing that descent (rewind a minute or so if you want the cow shots)