How Did A 40 Year Old Lawyer Beat Pogacar?

Andrew Feather, a full-time solicitor and national hill climb champion, takes on Tadej Pogačar, the world’s best cyclist, in the Slovenian Pogi Challenge! We first take Andrew to a sports science lab to see if his incredible power-to-weight ratio could actually put him on a World Tour level. Watch the ultimate amateur vs. pro showdown to see who triumphs in this uphill battle!

Thanks to the Pogi Challenge for hosting this epic event.

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Chapters: ⏱️
0:00 – Feather vs. Pogačar: The Epic Showdown
1:06 – The Pogi Challenge Format
1:55 – Meet Andrew Feather
2:59 – The Sports Science Lab Testing
3:29 – Measuring Body Composition and Lactate Thresholds
6:22 – The VO2 Max Test: A Measure of Aerobic Power
8:07 – Andrew Feather’s Incredible World Tour Numbers
10:46 – Comparing Feather to Pogačar
11:44 – The Race: Cat and Mouse Begins
13:34 – The Biggest Upset in World Sport
15:14 – Conclusion

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Tade Pagatcha, the world’s best cyclist and tour to France champion, is racing 1,189 amateurs up his local mountain in Slovenia. But hidden in that crowd is a 40-year-old dad of two and full-time solicitor who might just beat him. There have been many epic battles of the ages. Hector versus Achilles, Oasis versus Blur, Chris Rock versus Will Smith. But now we have Feather versus Pog. The epic showdown. Now, unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to Slovenia, but in mystead, I’ve sent the most Italian man in the world, Alan Marangorni from GCN Italia, or as I like to call him, Alan. The event is called Pogy Challenge, and it takes to place in Command, Slovenia. Uh the format is very simple. 1,200 satur. And uh they will start at the bottom of the climb 3 minutes before today uh start will start and it tries to catch up everybody. The first part of the race will be neutralized for 8 kilometers. The bunch will stop at the bottom of the climb and from then will be the real start of the race. Pogacher is confident he can beat all the amateur riders, but maybe he doesn’t expect to find someone like Andrew Feather. I think it will be a big surprise for him. As an amateur, Andrew Feather is a multiple national hill climb champion and our very own cycling stig here on GCN. My fitness is is pretty good at the moment. I’m in uh the middle of hill climb season in the UK. So yeah, it’s good timing. I’ve done a recon of the climb this afternoon and the climb is it’s a really hard climb. It’s almost uh 1,300 m in elevation and it’s really really steep at the start. So yeah, it’s a it’s a big climb. I think that is pretty much the best best cyclist in the world at the moment. So it’ll be an incredible experience to go up against him tomorrow. Do I think I can beat him? No, I don’t think I can beat him. Oh, it’ll be interesting just to just go and ride against him and you know um hopefully he’ll he’ll try. So it’ll be interesting to yeah go up against him. Now I know what you’re thinking. There’s absolutely no way that Andrew Feather can come anywhere near to Tad Paga. He’s good, but he’s not that good. Well, don’t be so quick to judge. We took Andrew Feather a week ago to the sports science lab at Extter University to find out exactly what he is capable of and it’s outrageous. We went to visit Dr. Tim Poglagar, an exercise physiologist who works with cycling teams such as Bora and TUDA Pro Cycling. He knows the physiological requirements to win at the top of pro cycling. He first measured feather’s body composition which at just 4.6% fat is comparable to a torance contender and we then looked at his blood lactate. So what is the the purpose of this test this first test we’re doing? So during the first test we will measure his lactate thresholds. So basically see um his basic physiology. Um basically the first threshold is when you start the cycling becomes a bit harder. you start to accumulate blood uh lactate in the bloodstream which means that anorobic processes are a bit more active than otherwise. Um and this is the first point that you basically can’t talk anymore during exercise. So basically zone one or zone two training. And then we have alg2 is basically the second threshold the last sustainable point when you can still kind of yeah maintain stable concentrations and once you go above you basically can do anymore. And that to the sort of layman is what most people traditionally refer to as FTP. Yeah you can call it FTP or l second lact threshold or even critical power. Okay. So for predicting his performance on hill climbs we would use critical power which usually is a bit higher than lack threshold too but in the lab it’s easier to measure. So we do this by um having four minute stages increasing the power at 30 40 30 watts um and yeah we just go for as long as we can and the other thing we will do is I think it can be pretty useful is measure his efficiency so how efficiently he utilizes the oxygen puts uh down the power um this is something that in especially in running for instance is like determinant that’s as important as v2 max and the second likely threshold In cycling, people are more like close together in terms of efficiency, but still it’s really important for people like him. Why do you why does he even have the saddle on I’ve asked these questions many times. Why does he have a saddle on his bike? So he’s currently doing like 47 ml. Feathers currently doing 390 W. And his V2 max at this point is about 67. And he’s just been asked what his rate of perceived exertion is. And he pointed to somewhat hard, 14 out of 20. Keep pushing. Keep pushing. Imagine Pagatch is right behind you. Good job, mate. The next test was a V2 max test. This is a measure of a person’s aerobic capacity. So, we’re going to measure maximum oxygen uptake, which is the maximum amount of oxygen you can uptake or he can uptake. Um and it’s a really good predictor of aerobic fitness and it’s one of those parameter that we’re really interested in uh when we are profiling someone for physiological characteristics and what would for for like a reference what would an average human man be be sort of capable of doing? What would you expect to see? An average inactive person would probably have this value below 40. Probably 30 30 just over. Um average active person would have his value between 40 and 50. Um and anyone that kind of trains regularly um either cycling, running would have this value above 50. Um and then elite athletes would be in the 70s and or 80s. Okay. Okay. Let’s go. Pushing. Keep pushing. Come on. Come on. Andrew, go on. The start is the hardest. Come on. Keep pushing. Keep pushing. That’s good, man. Keep going. Still going up. Let’s keep pushing. Keep going, mate. Keep going. Amazing work. Come on. Push. Push. Push. Push. Push. Push. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. You got more. Come on. Push. Push. Push. Now push. Push. Push. Push. Push. Super strong. Super strong. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. That’s it. Very good. Good job, mate. Good job. Amazing. Wow, that was impressive. With the tests performed, I was keen to find out how Feather compares to the best Tour to France riders. Well, thanks for carrying out those experiments, Tim. What are the scores? What are the numbers that we’ve seen for Andrew Fella? That he can pretty much go straight into the world tour and not be just somewhere, but be among the best probably in a fresh state really. And like what what were his values for V2 max and his his like lactate threshold and so V2 max is just above 80. So 82 around 82 which is put him into like the among the best in the world probably actually once Tim had processed the results Feather’s relative V2 max was 83 and is huge considering his age. It’s likely to have been higher when he was younger, too. And for context, Chris Froom was famously tested after winning the tour to France and was shown to have a V2 max of 84. But what is even more impressive, at least in my opinion, is harder threshold. Um, the first lus threshold, this is when you start to breathe a bit more um hard. So, zone two, basically the end of zone 2 and we found it to be around 370 W. 370 watts. That’s ridiculous. That is absolutely ridiculous. In terms of watts per kilo, that’s over 5 watts per kilo. Oh, that’s well above 5 watts per kilo. Um like talking about more than 5.5 watts per kilo. Wow. And then so is more is is second lactate inflection point commonly referred to as like FTP people for people at home. What did we see that as just over 400 watts, right? So, this we’re talking about more than six watts per kilo. Yeah. Which is exceptional. And not many world tour riders would probably be able to hold that pace. So, he’s not just as good as a world tour pro, he’s as good as the he’s amongst the best world tour pros in terms of what he’s able to do. Yeah, I would say so. Like when it comes to the power on the climb, definitely. Um the question is how he would cope with fatigue resistance. So how much power he would have after doing I don’t know two three four 5 kilogjles of work. Um so after 200 km but in a fresh state. So if it was just like an uphill time trial he would definitely perform among the best. Heading into his race against Pagatcha. How how does he compare to Pagatcha based on sort of what you know? I would think that yeah, Pagacher is still stronger than him. Um because Pagacher is on the next level as compared to compared to everyone else. But if he has a few minutes of an advantage at the start, I’m pretty sure that it’s possible to beat him, especially I because I doubt Bugattacher is expecting a person that is as strong as him and that caliber to to hustle him. The best watts per kilo performances in the tour to France on climbs of a similar length have typically been around 5.9 to 6.3 watts per kilo. However, Pagatcha is on another level and I think he thought that this would be a fun ride and was not necessarily expecting someone like Andrew Feather would crawl out of the woodwork. Back at the race and the ultimate game of cat and mouse was about to begin. 10 km of a neutral flat runin followed by a 15 km climb. Alan was trying his best to stay with Feather on the flat runin. But even before Feather had started the climb, Pagatcha begins his chase. On the lower slopes, a few riders start writing checks their bodies can’t cash. But fortunately, Feather can and quickly dispatches them. Despite several strong amateurs in the field holding over five watts per kilo, they are all inevitably dropped by feather. But Pagatcha was in hot pursuit. His aero seated climbing position giving him a distinct advantage. Pagatcha was riding at well over 6 watts per kilo, but making it look easy while taking selfies. Ridiculous. into the final kilometers and Feather still had a lead. Pagatcha was closing the gap, confident of victory. He was also still enjoying the crowds. Approaching the finish line, Andrew Feather emerges through the mist as the first rider. The commentators are expecting it to be Pagatcha. That has been the entire setup of the event, but Feather has ripped up the script and completed the biggest upset in world sport since Leicester City won the Premier League. The first place goes to Great Britain, Andrew Feder. Andrew averaged an incredible 397 watts, which equates to 6.22 watts per kilo for 45 minutes. We know this because his weight on the morning of the climb was 63.8 kg. To put this into context, this is amongst the very best climbing performances you see in the tour to France. It also allows us to see just how good Taday is. He was 3 1/2 minutes faster on the climb and this allows us to back calculate his power. His weight is reported to be 65 kg, meaning he’ll have to produce a bit more power than Andrew. However, he prefers to ride seated, which at these incredible climbing speeds is faster because aerodynamics still matters. Factoring this in, we can estimate that TAD did around 6.45 45 watts per kilo or around 420 watt which is insane when you consider that less than 24 hours before he won one of the most prestigious and grueling races in pro cycling Ill Lombardia. It has been estimated that Pagata has produced 6.8 to 7 watts per kilo on climbs of similar duration in big races meaning he’s capable of much more than what we saw today. As good as Tad Pagatcha is though, I’m willing to bet that immediately after the race, he didn’t have to fly home, do the school run, uh, followed by a full day of intense legal paperwork and litigation. So, what can we conclude from this? Well, Andrew Feather is phenomenal, and I hope that this video highlights not just his natural ability and talent, but also the hard work that he’s put in to be in the shape that he is despite being a husband, a father, and having a full-time job. It It’s incredible. But I also hope this video highlights just how unbelievable Tad Pagatcha is. He’s on a whole another level. And not just to riders like Andrew, but to the very best riders in the world tour. He physiologically is, you know, arguably the the greatest cyclist the world has ever seen. But I can’t help but wonder what if, you know, what if Andrew Feather had been talent spotted at a younger age and had had the opportunity to become a pro cyclist and benefited from the very best coaching, nutrition, altitude camps, and all the rest of it. What would have happened? Well, I guess we’ll never know, but um it’s interesting to think about. And if you’d like to see more of him, well, make sure you subscribe to the channel if you don’t already. And if you want to see some more of the other outrageous things we’ve got him to do on the channel, of which there are many, then make sure you check those videos out as sort of our cycling stig. Anyway, I’m going to go now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Love you. Bye.