How hard is it to hold Tom Pidcock’s pace up Sa Calobra?

On their recent trip to Mallorca, Alex Paton and Ollie Bridgewood decided to go on a mission to find out what it would take to claim the prestigious Sa Calobra KOM, Mallorca's most famous climb.

Currently, the KOM for the 9.44km climb, that averages seven percent, is held by multi-discipline star Tom Pidcock. In December 2022 he set a time of 22 minutes and 46 seconds, averaging 24.9km/h. This attempt put Pidcock nearly two minutes clear of the next best time.

Although Pidcock hasn't shared his power data for the effort, Alex and Ollie aim to shed some light on the sort of watts per kilo it would take to claim this KOM. With the KOM effort loaded onto their Wahoo head units, the boys will ride at the record pace for as long as they can sustain, but how far will they get?

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Holding Tom Pidcock's KOM pace

At first the duo appeared to be ahead of Pidcock's pace, with the time steadily going out in their favour over the first minute. This seemed too good to be true, as neither power owns WorldTour-level power. Their suspicions were proven well-founded when Alex realised he had set the virtual partner to his own personal best rather than the KOM time.

By the time this realisation was made and they'd changed to the correct virtual partner, Pidcock’s time was already 15 seconds up the road. From this point onwards it was a losing battle with neither Alex nor Ollie able to scrape back any time from the KOM holder. After three minutes and 10 seconds of hanging on to the virtual pace, it was all over.

Pidcock went on to hold this pace for over 19 more minutes on his way to claiming the Strava trophy, something that baffled both Alex and Ollie after their effort.

How much power did Tom Pidcock hold on Sa Calobra?

As mentioned, Pidcock did not publish his power file from his attempt however, as Alex and Ollie held Pidcock’s pace for a few minutes, we can roughly work out the power-to-weight ratio that he maintained for the climb.

The great thing about power-to-weight ratio is that it is a constant across all riders. If you hold 5.5 watts per kilo, you will climb at the same pace regardless of your weight or your power output. This is because it is a ratio between your power and body weight.

If one rider weighs 50kg and puts out 250 watts, and then another weighs 80kg but puts out 400 watts, they'll both climb at the same pace as their power-to-weight ratio would be identical.

There are some other factors at play, with aerodynamics still playing a role on climbs, as does rolling resistance. As a rough ballpark, power to weight provides the best estimate.

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Using the data gathered through their attempt, Alex and Ollie have calculated that Pidcock held around 6.5 watts per kilo for the full 22-minute and 46-second effort. To put this into perspective, being able to ride at six watts per kilo for 20 minutes is considered a performance indicative of a top-tier WorldTour rider.

For Alex to rival Pidcock’s time, he would need to hold an average power close to 500 watts for the full duration of the climb and Ollie would need to hold 450 watts. This puts into perspective just how good Pidcock is when the road points uphill.

Have you ridden Sa Calobra? If so, what was your time and how long do you think you could hold 6.5 watts per kilo for? Let us know in the comments.