Pavel Sivakov is a professional cyclist riding for UAE Team Emirates, currently on a three-year contract that began in 2024 and will conclude at the end of 2026. Sivakov is one of Tadej Pogacar’s top domestiques and, in addition to a stellar performance at the Tour de France, was instrumental in Pogi’s fourth Il Lombardia victory in October.
Sivakov showed good promise at INEOS Grenadiers, where he rode the first six years of his career. As a youngster (representing Russia at the time) he won the Tour of the Alps and the Tour of Poland, and finished ninth in the Giro d’Italia in 2019. But his career quickly stagnated from there, and despite being consistently well inside the top 100 cyclists in the world, it became apparent that unless he made a sudden, shocking breakthrough, he would likely be battling for 10th place in Grand Tours (or stages from breakaways) for the rest of his career.
But he chose a different option: take the big paycheck and sign up to be a domestique in most races for the bigger leaders of UAE, particularly Pogacar. Clearly, something worked well for him training-wise at UAE, because he was stellar in his debut season with the Emirati outfit. Despite largely working for his team in 2024, he still scored 1,118 UCI points and sits 78th in the World Ranking, which is near his highest career position. There is no good statistic to measure how strong a domestique one is, so I’m going to analyze Sivakov’s power data from selected training and races from the past year. This may also give us insight into the way UAE as a whole trains and in particular, Pogacar.
I analyzed Brandon McNulty’s training and racing leading up to the Volta a la Communitat Valenciana last winter with the (incorrect) assumption that McNulty was coached by UAE’s former head of performance Inigo San Milan. In reality, McNulty is coached by Jeroen Swart, and I cannot tell if Sivakov is coached by him as well or Javier Sola (Pogi’s coach) or a different UAE staff member. In any case, Sivakov and McNulty, who is flying right now in Arizona (AGAIN) are on similar programs.
Sivakov lives in Andorra at moderate altitude (not enough to usually meaningfully affect his power), but he’s often traveling to races or training camps.
Note: Sivavok switched allegiance from Russia to France after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
I am going with his listed 70 kilogram weight on ProCyclingStats.com, though he could be slightly heavier.
Finally, UAE are on Shimano power meters, which sometimes (or always? I do not know a lot about power meters) over read, so all of the nitty-gritty data has to be taken with a grain of salt. However, I believe the numbers are either accurate or close enough to precise that it’s worth digging deep into Sivakov’s power files.
So let’s dive into the weeds. Sivakov does not always share his power data, so many of his rides from early last year are not that useful in analyzing his training. It seems he started to share his power around May.
Sivakov does a lot of Zone 2 training, which seems to be ubiquitous in the UAE team. For these rides, he tends to keep the riding relatively flat (not at all pancake flat, which is utterly impossible in Andorra or at most of his training camp locales), ride solo (except when at camp) and keep incredibly steady pressure on the pedals.
For example, let’s look at a ride he did May 10, 2024 from Andorra, in what was his last ride before altitude camp, the Criterium du Dauphine, and the Tour de France. Sivakov rode 4 hours 10 minutes at 280 watts then mostly coasted down a hill to finish the ride. He was incredibly smooth at 280, which adds to the productiveness of the endurance session.
280 watts (incidentally, exactly four watts per kilogram) would be his Zone 2 and 4 hours steady Z2 is a staple training effort for UAE riders. The difference between him and Pogacar, who is 64.5-66KG and says he does 320-340 in Z2 (5+w/kg), is stark. But the difference between Sivakov and most amatuers is far more stark. Getting to 4 w/kg FTP (Z4) is a great accomplishment for most cyclists. Sivakov is routinely doing that for four hours in Z2.
Then Sivakov joined some teammates at the Sierra Nevada in Spain for an altitude stint. The power data from this training camp is hidden, but we can tell that UAE camped at 7,500+feet (about 2,300 meters). He was at the training camp for 19 days, doing a couple weeks averaging about 25 hours, then a lower one at 16 before the Dauphine started.
Stage One of the Dauphine was a slightly hilly sprint stage won by Mads Pedersen. Sivavok’s average power was a paltry 208 watts for a bit over four hours, though the average power of a race does not usually tell the full story of the accelerations and coasting involved in sitting a peloton.
Stage Two was another hilly affair, this time with a soft uphill finish won by Magnus Cort over Primoz Roglic. Sivakov finished 17th on the same time as the leaders (I think Juan Ayuso was UAE’s team leader for this race). His average power for the stage was 266 watts for 3 hours, 21 minutes with a best 15 minutes on the Power Curve just over 400 watts. That’s not even his threshold.
Stage Three was quite similar, and Sivakov finished 20th after a five-minute soft finishing climb. He averaged 231 watts for about 4 hours, 20 minutes which is quite easy. On the final climb, he did 423 watts for just under six minutes (6 w/kg, probably around Z4) to finish in the GC group, three seconds behind stage winner Derek Gee and fellow escapee Romain Gregoire.
Stage Four was a Time Trial. Sivakov rode 33 kilometers in 44 minutes for an average speed just under 47kph on a course that finished uphill to finish 21st. Unfortunately, he hid his power.
Stage Five was a hilly affair that ended with a massive crash neutralizing the stage. Sivakov was involved in the crash but not seriously hurt. Before the crash, he did 223 watts for 3.5 hours in a pretty easy day out.
Stage Six was a mountaintop finish at Le Collet d’Allevard (11.2km/8.5%). Before any climbs, Sivakov averaged just 219 watts for 2:46, a very easy run-in. There was a “warm-up” climb before which was not steep at 5%. But the peloton went surprisingly fast and Sivakov did 376 watts for 19:04. On Allevard, he did 397 watts (5.7w/kg) for 32 minutes and lost 70 seconds to stage winner Roglic.
Stage Seven was a harder day out in the Alps with 4,300 meters of climbing but a nearly identical finishing climb Samoens 1600 (9.9km/9%). The peloton rode hard on the first climb, with Sivakov averaging 342w for over an hour to start the stage, including a six-minute effort at 450 (6.5w/kg) which would have cooked much of the peloton. The race did settle down eventually, but we can’t tell exactly how much since Sivakov’s power meter dropped out for a while before the final climb. On Samoens 1600, he started doing 410 for the first 6:45 but he was already fading. The last 20 minutes he was barely over 300 and hemorrhaging time to the leaders. He ended up losing over 6 minutes to Roglic and finished 26th. His Strava caption read “Kaput engine from start to finish.”
Stage Eight was yet another MTF at Plateau de Glieres. Sivakov climbed off the bike after an hour of racing stating “not enough resources left in the body to get any further than this. Rest and recover for a big July.”
It was certainly a disappointing Dauphine for Sivakov.
He then went to altitude at Isola 2000 in France with the team and started with a major down week, also mentioning that he was recovering from sickness which makes sense given his race performance the week before. His down week was 12 hours.
Then he did two weeks just over 20 hours, the first week at Isola 2000 (he was only there 11 days, a surprisingly short altitude stint) and the second week in Italy (some reconnaissance of the opening stage) leading into the Grand Depart of the Tour de France in Florence on Saturday.
He re-started publishing his power as the Tour commenced. So here is some analysis of selected stages.
Stage One was a brutally hot and hilly day in Tuscany, from Florence to Rimini on the Adriatic Coast. Romain Bardet won the stage from a 50-kilometer attack with his teammate Frank van den Broek surviving from the early break in second. Wout van Aert sprinted to third and Pogacar took fourth. The pre-race assumption was that UAE would control for a Pogi stage win and bonus seconds, but they likely decided against that with the intense heat. Sivakov averaged 253 watts for five hours (best effort being 17min just under 400 on the Barbotto, the hardest climb of the race) and finished in the back of the main bunch in 44th.
Stage Two was a similar affair with a double ascent of the San Luca, a short and steep climb in Bologna, that probably favored Pogacar over Jonas Vingegaard. UAE were again expected to control the stage, but they let the breakaway escape. Kevin Vauquelin won the stage for a double France opening weekend. Behind, on the second San Luca, Pogacar attacked and broke the climbing record, but Jonas hung onto his wheel. Pogi rode into the yellow jersey but gained no time on Jonas. Sivakov averaged just 237 watts for just under five hours with a few bigger efforts on earlier climbs, but finished 11 minutes down. He surely took it easier to save energy for later stages when he would be needed.
Stage Three was a preposterously long sprint stage, in which Sivakov practically coasted along at 182 watts for 5.5 hours (that’s silly easy for a Tour de France rider, but would not be light work for most amateur riders, though they could probably pull it off with a gargantuan effort if the pacing was steady). Still, the average cyclist could not have hung in the peloton because there was a four-ish minute effort over 6w/kg on one of the hills in the middle of the stage, which would’ve shredded normies out the back. Sivakov was caught behind a crash but given the same time (irrelevant) as stage winner Biniam Girmay. Richard Carapaz got amongst the sprinters to claim the yellow jersey off Pogi’s back on stage placements.
Stage Four went over the high Alps into France, but descended the Galibier into Valloire. UAE targeted this stage for Pogacar to win and gain time on his rivals. At under 140km, it would be relatively easy for the superteam to control. Sivakov averaged 275 watts four hours, including some at high altitude. The peloton went extremely hard up the drag Sestriere as the breakaway attempted to form and Sivakov did his best 20-minute power of the race at just under 400 watts. After the race settled down, UAE locked down the breakaway. Sivakov lapped his computer for his pull on the Galibier which was three minutes at 446 watts. Into a headwind on a not-steep grade, the top GC riders followed without a ton of difficulty. However, doing those watts above 2,000m elevation is nothing to scoff at. Then he dropped and rode easy to the finish. Pogacar attacked on the final ramp and dropped his rivals, pried the gap open further on the descent, and won the stage by 35 seconds to reclaim the yellow jersey.
After a few more sprints, Stage Seven was a Time Trial in which Sivakov took it “easy” and did 348w for 32 minutes to finish 80th.
Stage Nine was the infamous gravel stage in which Pogacar attacked his rivals relentlessly but gained no time in the end due to Visma | Lease a Bike’s team strength neutralizing him. Sivakov did 299w for four-and-a-half hours including plenty of bigger efforts. He finished 79th, nine minutes down.
Stage 11 was the next GC day, and UAE wanted another stage win and more time. This was a 211km 4,300m day in the Massif Central. Despite the high speed, length and climbing involved in this stage, Sivakov’s average power was lower than I would have expected. In the race, he averaged 268w for just over five hours. His best efforts came early in the stage on the relentless rolling hills, including 2:30 at 480w. He finished in 37th, but was 16 minutes behind stage winner Vingegaard, who shockingly outsprinted Pogacar after Slovenian attacked far from the finish line on Puy Marie.
Stage 13 was a crosswind day as the peloton headed towards the Pyrenees. Sivakov averaged 307w for 3:24 at an averaged speed over 48kph. On the start of the first hill of the day, Sivakov did 561w for over two minutes (8w/kg). The stage ended in a sprint even after those brutal efforts.
With Pogacar tenuously in yellow, UAE gambled big-time on Stage 14 which had a summit finish at Pla d’Adet and included the Tourmalet. Nils Politt smashed the Tourmalet and UAE had the breakaway in a vice grip. Sivakov averaged 311w for 3.5 hours before the final climb. Sivakov was to be first man on Pla d’Adet and started his pull at 496w for three minutes! That’s over 7w/kg. His entire shift was about five minutes at 472. After that ferocious opening pace, Pogacar eventually won the stage by 39 seconds over Jonas with, according the Watt Police, the climbing performance of the 21st Century (around 6.85w/kg for 27:50, but normalized for sea level would be more like 7.16). UAE and their leader were flying, but nothing could have prepared us for what happen the next day, the final stage of Week Two.
Stage 15 was arguably the Queen Stage at 200km with over 5,000m climbing in the Pyrenees, concluding on Plateau de Beille (15.7k/7.8percent to 1,782 meters). Visma LAB were getting desperate without many opportunities left to crack the yellow jersey. As such, they pace full-gas all day to attempt to tire out Pogacar so Jonas could attack him on Plateau de Beille. The breakaway was annihilated by the might of the yellow bees and the brutality of the stage profile. Our man Sivakov dropped early and was not a factor in this race, likely ruined by a 2min/7w/kg effort near the top of the first climb of the day, the Peyresourde. In all, he averaged 287w for 5:45 (6,000KJ), but this was nowhere near enough to handle the speed of the GC group. After four climbs of 15-30 minutes ridden between 5.6 and 6 w/kg and lightning-fast valleys, the GC group finally arrived at Plateau de Beille. Matteo Jorgenson, Vingegaard’s chief lieutenant, got on the front and started doing 7w/kg. I don’t know if this has been mentioned anywhere before, but Jorgenson was on a spare bike and might not have had a power meter, which may explain why he paced so hard, incidentally teeing up a legendary performance. After about a third of the climb, Jonas attacked and Pogacar was the only follower. After about 12 minutes of Jonas smashing 7+w/kg, he upped the pace even more trying desperately to finally shred Pogacar off the wheel. The only thing that happened was a small attack from the Slovenian and the greatest climbing performance of all time, as Pogacar pushed 6.98w/kg for 39:50 up to moderate altitude, to win the stage by 1:08 ahead of Jonas and all but seal the Tour de France.
Stage 17 was a breakaway day but Sivakov still had to push 299w for over four hours, including 500 watts for four minutes during breakaway formation.
Stage 19 was also arguably the Queen Stage going over the Cime de la Bonnette and finishing at Isola 2000. Visma’s domestiques went into the break and UAE was either forced to chase or wanted another stage win for Pogacar, so the race was controlled. Sivavok averaged 317w for 4.5 hours working for Pogacar, who won the stage on Isola with another monstrous performance, the second-greatest of all time (6.83w/kg for 37:44, 7.21 normalized for sea level).
Stage 20 was a short, explosive mountain day and Sivakov did 314w for 4:12, to finish 28th but 8:36 down on stage winner Pogacar, who benefitted from Remco Evenepoel’s team pushing the pace in an effort to crack Jonas and claim second place. The only result was that Jonas secured his position by dropping Remco and Pogacar coasted up the finishing climb and nuked Jonas in the sprint to claim fifth stage of the race.
Stage 21 was the time trial from Monaco to Nice. Sivakov soft-pedaled 323w for 52 minutes to finish 82nd. Pogacar won his 17th career TDF stage and the yellow jersey by six minutes. It was a rather successful Tour for Sivakov and UAE.
Sivakov rode the Vuelta after the Tour and finished ninth on GC, but seemed more focused on breakaways and going for stage wins. His best finish on a stage was third on Stage 15 from the break, where was defeated by Pablo Castrillo (of Equipo Kern Pharma, a ProTeam) and Aleksandr Vlasov after a brutal day out.
I’m not going to analyze all of Sivakov’s power from the entire Vuelta, and he did not even share it every day, but here’s some data and takes on the later stages of his Vuelta.
Fortunately, he published his power on Stage 15, and he averaged a crazy 339 watts for 3 hours, 45 minutes. Castrillo is heavier than Sivakov, so he must have gone absolutely ballistic to beat him on this mountain stage.
Sivakov did 463w for 18:00 (6.6w/kg) on the first climb of the day which is a tough way to get going. His best hour was 407w which included the false-flat run-in the final stepped climb of Cuitu Negru (18.9km/7.1 percent with a vicious finishing rampas inhumanas of 2.9km/13 percent). His power understandably declined on this final ramp after savage day in the saddle and he lost 31 seconds to Castrillo. Sivakov’s final two hours were 378w, which is of course a power that most cyclists, many of who are far heavier than Sivakov, couldn’t hold for three minutes. Castrillo probably did 400w for two hours to win, after a near 500w 18-minute first climb. Bonkers.
The next stage, after a rest day, was Lagos de Covadonga. Sivakov did a solid performance to only drop a minute to Roglic and Enric Mas as teammate Marc Soler won the stage from the breakaway. In a 181km stage with 4,000 vertical meters, Sivakov averaged 278w for just under five hours, doing 4,900 kilojoules. Just another day on a Grand Tour mountain stage. For the first 23 minutes of Covadonga, he was doing 450w before fading a bit and the descent near the top of the climb. This was a great ride and indications that he would come off of the Vuelta flying.
In the Basque Country, Stage 17 was a slightly-reduced sprint due to some climbs in the middle of the stages. Sivakov finished safely in the bunch in 45th, but his power data from this stage is revealing: even on a sprint stage, he averaged 275w for 3.5 hours for 3,500KJ with some much bigger efforts on the climbs. This was, of course, succeeding to massive mountain stages. There is no just end to the brutality of professional cycling.
On a breakaway day, the GC group still did a monster shift on the hardest climb of Stage 18. Sivakov pushed 479w (almost 7w/kg) for almost 13 minutes on an 8.5-percent grade, the peak of which was 45 kilometers from the finish. His average power on this non-GC day was 267w for over four hours and 4,000KJ, which simply reinforces the concluding sentence to the previous paragraph.
Stage 19 was no unipuerto, but essentially, it was a 3:45 Z1 (232w for our protagonist with no major efforts) ride before a 20ish-minute smash up the steep Moncavillo. Red Bull – Bora – Hansgrohe predictably controlled the stage for Roglic to finally put the nail in red jersey Ben O’Connor’s coffin. The Slovenian did the best pure watts per kilogram performance of his career (7w/kg for 23:55… but as an aside, this is not in the same galaxy as Pogacar’s 7 for 40 on Plateau de Beille, enough evidence for us to conclude that Roglic is not capable of winning the Tour de France, even at an all-time level approaching age 35) and clinched his fourth victory in La Vuelta, winning the stage by 46 seconds. Sivakov simply could not cope with the ferocity of the tempo and dropped 2:15 to finish 17th. It was not a bad performance from our French/British/Russian/Andorran/Emirati boi, but not his best. He did 445w (6.5w/kg) for 26 min, but in 2024, that is not nearly enough to compete for victories in Grand Tours.
Stage 20 was meant to provide chaotic entertainment via GC carnage with 5,000 meters of climbing culminating in Picon Blanco (8k/9%) packed into just 172km. That is not what happened, and despite the difficulty of the pace (Sivakov did 363 weighted for nearly five hours and well over 5,000KJ) nothing really happened. Eddie Dunbar attacked out of the GC group and won his second stage with his best career performance, while Roglic let him have it. Sivakov lost a little over a minute despite doing 400w for the final 67 minutes of the race, which included him going better on the penultimate climb than Picon Blanco. For the final 3.5 hours of the stages, he averaged 340w. He moved up to ninth on GC.
Finally, it was TT time in Madrid. He finished 25th to secure ninth overall. He averged about 53kph for 25km, but hid his power.
Sivakov was going to be the last man (ahead even of Adam Yates) for Pogacar at Lombardia because the team knew his form was excellent. Pogi admitted that UAE had planned the attack on the Sormano, the final significant climb of the race with just under 50 kilometers to the finish line. Sivakov did the lead out and Pogi duly soloed 48 kilometers to victory by an enormous 3 minutes over Remco Evenepoel. Our multinational hero finished the race in sixth place, a spectacular result and his biggest points haul of the entire season.
But let’s analyze the whole race before we dive into the lead out and Sivakov’s finish to the race. Sivakov’s power and energy expenditure is nothing short of insane and he did not even finish on the podium, pointing to the high level of professional cycling even at the very end of a long and hard season of climbing and speed records. His average power for 6 hours, 9 minutes was 314 watts. Ridiculous. That’s precisely 4.5 watts/kilogram, and includes all of the coasting in the wheels and down the many descents. But that’s how you average over 40 kilometers per hour in a race with 4,700 meters vertical. He did 7,000 kilojoules, which is about quadruple the normal energy expenditure of a lean human being in one day (this likely means he had to eat 9,000 calories that day to maintain his bodyweight). Sivakov’s “weighted “average power, a Strava feature that accounts for oscillation and coasting (which according to his power file was over 41 minutes, in addition to over an hour under 236 watts, which is indicated as his Z1), was 357, an absurd number for six hours, indicating how incredibly hard this race was. Sivakov spent about 3.5 hours of this race pushing over 323 watts, or Z3 or higher, 2.5 hours at 387 or above (Z4+) and over an hour above 452 (Z5+).
Sivakov split the race into three parts, lapping his computer after the neutral, during which he did 154w for five minutes, the race before the final climb, during which he did 296w for 4:44:12, and then the final 55 kilometers including the final climb and finish, during which he did 378w for 1:24:59. That final 85 minutes alone would be a very impressive effort, and it came after almost five hours of climbing and includes a long descent.
Climb by climb, and valley by valley, we can see how UAE managed a massive, dangerous breakaway that escaped early in the race and included strong climbers.
After a frantic first half-hour of the race, partially on a flase-flat drag, in which Sivakov averaged 48kph and 285 watts (max 1,041), the first climb was about 5.5 kilometers but shallow at 5.4 percent. Nonetheless, the peloton blasted up it at 31kph and got it done in 10:30. Sivakov averaged 436w (6.4w/kg) in the wheels, so God only knows what UAE’s early Doms (Finn Fisher-Black and Jan Christen) did in front.
The next climb was harder, but paced easier as the race settled with the breakaway up the road, and UAE began to strangle the race. Sivakov did 402 watts for 23 minutes with the first five again around 6.5 w/kg before the team settled down on the six-percent climb.
The third climb of the day was another 10-minute six-percent affair, and our man did 412 watts to average over 24kph. This probably was not even Sivakov’s threshold, but these efforts, combined with the length of the race and the ferocity of the opening to the race, take a toll on all but the strongest rider.
Immediately following (the first four climbs include almost no valleys between them) was a climb almost identical to the second one, in which Sivakov did 397w for 24 minutes on a six-percent grade.
Then there was a bit of a rolling valley, in which Sivakov averaged 240w (very surgy, as all races are) for 53 minutes to go about 45kph.
The penultimate climb of significance was a two-step ascent, averaging just over three percent for about 16 kilometers, but including much steeper pitches. He averaged 376w for 27 minutes, including the last four-ish minutes at 463 (6.6w/kg).
There was a 15k valley before the Sormano, in which Sivakov pedaled at about 330w for about 17 minutes to go about 49kph as the peloton closed in on the breakaway.
Finally, it was time for UAE to execute their plan. The Sormano is 12.5k at 6.7 percent, so just about 30 minutes for the best riders. For the entire climb, Sivakov averaged 440w (6.3w/kg)for 32 minutes. Sivakov did a lead-out at the same pace he had been riding (there is no discernible increase in power) before Pogacar attacked rather far from the top and soloed away to victory.
However, Sivakov did not stop, and after the brief flat section (a two minute respite at 312w), he surged hard and did 490w (7w/kg) for over four minutes on the steepest final ramp (1.6km around nine percent) to put himself back in contention for the podium.
The descent included over two dozen sprints, mostly around 800w+ to accelerate out of corners. Because of this, Sivakov still averaged almost 300w for the 11 minute-downhill.
The final short ascent came after a brief valley in which Sivakov was hammering along at 350+w. On the three-ish kilometer, seven percent climb, Sivakov did 457w for seven minutes, took the descent, then did a 1,000w sprint to finish third in the sprint for fourth (Remco had long distanced the rest for second, and Giulio Cicconne had escaped and finished third). Sivakov thus took sixth after a mammoth day out.
And by the way, that monstrous breakaway was simply crushed by the might of the Emirati team, with the highest-placed survivor Xandro Meurisse finishing in 10th, five minutes behind Pogacar. Such is the state of professional cycling in 2024.
Sivakov rode other races in 2024 but this has already been quite a long piece, and I don’t feel the need to analyze power data from a sprint stage of the Godforsaken Tour of Guangxi.
In all, in 2024, Sivakov rode 1,016hr, 59 minutes, 21,559.2 miles and climbed 1,805,023 feet (I’m not converting that to metric). That’s an average of about 2 hours, 46 minutes, and 58.9 miles per day on the bike (ok fine just under 100km per day).
Of course, November and December should be considered part of 2025 training, for which I will write another essay on, since he is now publishing his power data from training sessions. We can get a sense of how UAE as a team is training for a big 2025 (after their historic 2024 season) and a glimpse of what sort of a power a midweight, yet topflight WorldTour domestique pushes in training, and thus attempt to extrapolate what the all-time greats in the peloton, particularly Sivakov’s teammate Pogacar, are doing.
If you made it this far, kudos to you, you’re almost as much of a watts nerd as I am. This essay took me about 5-6 hours across several days to write, which is the longest that any piece has ever taken me. And of course, there’s always more to write.
Thanks for reading,
Jamie.
Puncheur 
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