If you watched any of the spring classics this year, you saw incredible performances by Fabian Cancellara, including a few stunning attacks. Apparently there has been speculation that he used some sort of seat post-embedded electric motor.
Were Cancellara's decisive accelerations even humanly possible? How much power did he generate when he hammered the field at Paris-Roubaix?
Physics to the rescue! (Don't get to say that often enough.) The link takes you to an excellent post at Cozy Beehive where video analysis is used to determine Cancellara's speed, acceleration, and power output. There's also a clip of the race in case you missed it. For the sort attention set: the analysis suggests his move required over 1000 Watts during the attack. Humanly possible, but incredible.
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