Training, genetics, and ageism: How close could you get to Pogačar and Niewiadoma?

How does an amateur rider compare to the demi-gods that are world-class road cyclists? It’s a question mulled over by many Sunday-morning club runs all around the world. A 2024 study didn’t necessarily set out to answer that question, but it did lift the physiological and performance lid on a recreational rider who’d completed the 2023 Tour de France parcours. 

The 58-year-old completed the event in 191 hours compared to the WorldTour rider’s 87 hours, driven by a VO2max nearly half that of the professional and weighing 96kg compared to the full-time rider’s svelte 67kg. It makes for interesting reading, at least from the angle of who rode closer to their individual limits. But as far as seeing through a comparative lens? They were riding on a different planet. 

But it did get us thinking, if an average amateur matched the training hours of an elite and enjoyed the full-time support of a nutritionist, strength & conditioning coach, masseuse and sport scientist, just how close could an amateur come to mixing with the world’s best? What separates the haves from the have-nots, the great from the good? Naturally, that leads us to ask, what attributes make a great junior rider a great senior? Let’s dig into nature and nurture in our quest to reach the top of the Parisien podium… 

Ageism rules

Stephen Barrett is head coach at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale. He’s not only involved in the recruitment of riders to the team’s WorldTour men’s squad but also its development and under-19 teams. He knows what it physically, mentally and emotionally takes to reach the upper echelons.

“Not surprisingly, the biggest factor that’d prevent someone making it at the top level is age,” he says. “It’s not something we should pat ourselves on the back for, but you become very ageist when it comes to recruitment. If you’ve got a 28-year-old or a 19-year-old, the probability of the 19-year-old developing to a higher level over the next four or five years is higher than someone who’s near 30.”

“That said, on our development team, that this year numbers 12 riders, we always try to keep spots available for late developers. Tom Donnewirth came to us as a 25-year-old in 2024 and made it to the WorldTour with Groupama-FDJ for 2025. Geoffrey Bouchard also came to us [as] a trainee pretty late, at around 25 years old. He’s still with us and has won King of the Mountains titles in the Vuelta a Espana [2019] and the Giro d’Italia [2021]. But all in all, most teams are ageist.”

Which arguably isn’t biased when you dig into the physiology. As you age, there’s a natural reduction in both the size and number of muscle fibres, especially your type-2 fibres or your fast-twitchers that generate high levels of movement for short periods of time. For many, these lose strength at around 30 years old (albeit there’s little evidence in Barrett’s team, the 34-year-old Sam Bennett winning two of Decathlon’s three WorldTour victories to date in 2025).

Conversely, type-1 fibres, the slow-twitch fibres, are packed with mitochondria (the cells’ energy producers), a richer capillary supply and greater aerobic respiratory for long, steady efforts. Comparisons of muscle biopsies from younger and older individuals reveal that type-2 fibres are smaller in the older athlete, while the size of type-1 fibres is much less affected. 

The reason why is down to many reasons but the biggest culprit is a drop in testosterone, which reduces by around 1% each year when you turn 30. That’s not great, as testosterone is vital for building and preserving muscle, especially those fast-twitchers. It also helps to create red blood cells, like nectar to the endurance athlete; boosts bone density to prevent conditions like osteoporosis; and accelerates recovery between sessions. Weight training has been shown to ameliorate this testosterone decline, but no matter your commitment, you simply can’t generate the same power at 40 as you can at 20.

It's a similar picture with human growth hormone. hGH helps to burn fat and boosts muscle, but like testosterone, it drops as you age. 

Women endure similar age-related falls in muscle mass (sarcopenia), which is heightened during the menopause. Again, strength training helps, as does raising protein intake, but if you have ambitions of making it at WorldTour level in your late 40s, you need to think again.

How well you might cope with 100km/hr descents of the Galibier or Stelvio remains to be seen, too, as research indicates that reaction time peaks at 24 and then declines by around 10 milliseconds a year. That means a 34-year-old’s reactions could be up to 100 milliseconds slower than 10 years previous, which could be the difference between victory and defeat. Why? The decay is due to changes in nerve fibres that slow the speed of conduction as you age.

All about the genes?

Of course, there’s a genetic element to proceedings. You might possess the physical and psychological aptitude to train up to 30 hours a week, but do you have the DNA? Are you a responder or non-responder to your training? No matter how hard you try, it’s not guaranteed. Take an early 2000s US study that looked at trainability, placing 742 sedentary people on a 20-week exercise programme. Measured factors included the ability to process oxygen and resting pulse rate. Dr Claude Bouchard discovered that 10-15% of participants simply didn’t respond to exercise, while others showed a 40% improvement in how efficiently their muscles could use oxygen.

“There are thousands of variations in our genes that influence endurance performance, which will be relevant to a road cyclist,” says Alun Williams, professor of sport and exercise genomics at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. “That much we know. What we don’t know is which ones. The proportion of genes we know too much about is very small.”

That applies the brakes to a good recreational rider seeking out a sports genetic test claiming to identify whether they’re naturally more suited as an endurance or power athlete. Years ago, there was an explosion of these types of tests, marketing the dream of optimised training based on your genetic make-up. I tested one myself from a company called DNA Fit, which told me something I already knew: I was highly middling when it came to power and endurance. It was interesting, but basing your entire exercising future on results from a handful of genes seemed somewhat exaggerated, or as noted exercise physiologist Graeme Close would say about adapting Bonafide science for commercial opportunity, “Sciencey.” 

“Companies like DNA Fit went too early,” says Williams. “The vast majority of gene variants that should have been included weren’t, and do you know why? Because nobody yet knows what they are.”

How ACE are you?

Which isn’t to say the likes of DNA Fit didn’t have some substance to them. One gene covered by the test that also became the focus of David Epstein’s must-read The Sports Gene was the ACE gene. ACE stands for angiotensin-converting enzyme. It’s one of the most-studied ‘sports’ genes, including by Williams himself, and has been linked with endurance performance.

“There’s debate about whether if you have a certain allele combination, you’ll have naturally high parameters of aerobic fitness like VO2max. That’s still to be ascertained,” says Williams. You inherit one allele each from your parents, with each pair of alleles representing the genotype of a specific gene. The phenotype is the observable expression of the genotype. “What seems clearer, or more probable, is that your ACE gene impacts how you respond when oxygen availability is low.

“Take a cyclist who’s constantly riding in excess of 2,000m above sea level. Their ability to tolerate and perform well at altitude could be affected by the ACE gene. In fact, it’s not just at altitude. Low oxygen availability is relevant deep within the muscle when working hard, so [it] is relevant at sea level, too.”

Do you have the perfect ACE gene combination that hoovers up oxygen no matter the topography you’re riding? That fuels your working muscles with an inexhaustible supply of endurance nectar? If you do, that might be one step closer to the pros, albeit in the complex world of genetic perfection, a very tiny step. It’s the same with another gene, ACTN3, which garnered similar media attention to the ACE gene around a decade ago. 

“It does a couple of things to skeletal muscle, including making a difference – again, a very small one – to the proportion of type-1 and type-2 slow- and fast-twitch muscle fibres you possess,” says Williams. “If your X allele dominates, you’ll naturally have slightly more type-1 fibres, which is useful for endurance. If you’ve got the other variant, the R allele, that’s going to give you slightly more type-2 fibres, so not as good for pure endurance but good for power.”

Choose your parents wisely?

It's a complex picture in search of your natural propensity to rub shoulders with van Aert or Vollering at the peak of the peloton but, in reductive fashion, is it simply about choosing your parents wisely? Seemingly, it didn’t do Mathieu van der Poel any harm. His genetic lineage is well-publicised. His father, Adri, is a former six-time Dutch national champion who won the World Cyclo-cross championships in 1996, plus has two Tour de France stage wins on his palmarès. Mathieu’s maternal grandfather is Raymound Poulidor, the forever bridesmaid who thrice finished runner-up at the Tour and was third five times. He did win the Vuelta a Espana in 1964. 

So, Williams, if your mother and father are competitive road cyclists, are you more likely to make it as a pro? “Maybe,” he replies. “Yes, their parents’ genes might be great for endurance cycling, but so might parents who’ve led a completely different lifestyle and didn’t cycle. 

“I agree that if you have two people who follow the same training programme and one of them is clearly better than the other, then what are you left with? Genetics. But even then, we know through modelling work we’ve done that there are so many genetic variants, no one is going to possess the perfect endurance-athlete genome. It’d be like winning the lottery every week for a year. But to be a professional you don’t need genetic perfection – you’ve just got be in the top half-a-percent or so.” Some would suggest Tadej Pogačar is a Euro Millions victor daily.

“Then, as it would be with an amateur athlete, it’s about maximising their personal environment – in other words, training, diet and lifestyle,” adds Williams. “The only way to really know if you’re good enough isn’t by having a sports genetic test. It’s to spend years training and living an athlete’s life.” 

Turning potential into peak performance

This brings us back to Barrett. The Irishman’s already ruled out the majority of us from turning professional due to age. So, let’s refine our search to the younger cohort. What exactly are the likes of Decathlon AGR2R La Mondiale and their WorldTour contemporaries looking for in adolescent riders?

“We certainly look at their current key physiological attributes,” says Barrett. “One of the most important is VO2max. It’s a little crude, and if you’re a WorldTour rider and have a high VO2max but low efficiency [factors like low anerobic threshold and low FatMax], you’re going to be beat nine times out of 10.

“But when it comes to 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds, you need to make so many assumptions, one of which is that a high VO2max means they have the potential to tolerate the higher workloads that naturally come with training and racing at WorldTour level.”

Barrett says that the VO2max norm for those making the under-19 squad is a startling mid- to high-80s. That’s measured in millilitres of oxygen a rider can process each minute per kilogramme of bodyweight, or ml/min/kg, with a good amateur rider tipping over 60.

As for tolerating workload, “On average, WorldTour men are racking up 30,000km a year via training and racing, though there’s a wide range there. Guys who are generally based in Belgium might reach up to 34,000km a year, with those in Andorra more like 26,000km due to the climbing metres.

“When you’re in your late teens, competing in junior races and cyclocross events, you’re looking at around 16,000 to 18,000km a year. That’s quite a discrepancy. You can’t just double that volume, but you do need to start closing the gap between the two levels to cope in races that regularly hit 240km. That’s one of the main goals of the development team – to help the transition from the under-19s to the seniors. 

“Of course, there are outliers, like Paul Seixas, who this winter jumped straight from the under-19s to the WorldTour [via a glittering 2024 for the then 17-year-old that saw him win the junior time-trial world title and the multi-stage Giro della Lungiana]. But, in general, we gradually manage that progression to build durability.”

Beating fatigue… and the competition

“Durability.” That’s the sports science buzzword of the past couple of years. In essence, it’s a rider’s ability to resist fatigue over long, brutal days in the saddle. Work by James Spragg, coach at Tudor Pro Cycling, showed that fresh power numbers between under-23s and senior riders were pretty much the same. What differed was the numbers they could generate when fatigued. More precisely, while under-23 riders’ figures dropped from as early as 1,000kJ work done, for senior domestiques, you were looking at 2,500 to 3,000kJ. GC riders were even higher.  

While there’s undoubtedly a genetic element to managing fatigue – as forementioned – Spragg noted that a huge volume of banked miles proved more important to forging durability than intensity, albeit riders still needed to maintain a certain amount of high-intensity efforts.

“It’s why we’ve looked at durability, or fatigue resistance as I call it, for many years,” says Barrett. “Young riders and their coaches send us their data, but once we’ve shortlisted potentials, they undertake fitness tests with us, too. One involves a long ride that includes several five-minute efforts early on and again at the end to test their durability.

“Then again, I feel some teams are placing too much emphasis on durability as a key recruitment metric as it’s something that can improve a lot over two or three years, especially when they’re young. In fact, if a 17-year-old comes to us and has awesome durability and a large VO2max, you start asking yourself how close are they to their performance ceiling? How trainable are they are to improve over the next few years? You make so many assumptions when bringing young riders in, but that’s part of the job.”

Cycling’s not solely a physical battle, of course. There are the psychological and emotional sides, too. “It’s important that we identify some of the psychosocial factors that influence high performance,” says Barrett. “We’re keen to understand what motivates them and how they cope with pressure. The speeds have exploded at WorldTour level, and racing is more stressful than ever.

“We also look at the social media stuff but not overly. It’s not something we try to change or curtail, but we must be aware as coaches and directeur sportives of its influence. For instance, the younger riders might see Remco or Tadej riding 300 watts for six hours and try to do the same. They then might perform for a day or two but become inconsistent and blow up. We need them to have trust in what we’re doing with things like training plans and get them to buy into it. That gives them confidence, and hopefully they improve.”

Whether they improve enough to make the senior grade remains to be seen. Whether you’re a budding professional or a keen amateur, you need concentration and a strong skin to resist temptation and overcome disappointment in search of your best, whatever that is. Sadly, if you began reading this feature thinking you’ll celebrate your 40th birthday by wearing yellow, think again. Making it at the upper level requires taking this focus and applying it at a young age. For those who are reading this, late teens or early 20s, and are becoming disheartened that your pro dream will remain just that, take comfort in our sign-off from Barrett.

“I use Ben O’Connor as an example to the younger riders of someone who didn’t break onto the scene like Tadej and Remco but grew into a world-class rider. He came to our team as a 25-year-old with potential. Now 29, he has second places at the Vuelta and Worlds (both 2024) to his name. Success isn’t guaranteed, but if you work hard, you give yourself your best shot.”

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