Hello you beautiful cycling fans and welcome back to another A1 show of Welta Special. This time we're talking about stage 12, one of my favourite riders in the bunch won today, he's been around for a long long time, a season journeyman I suppose. When you say journeyman you kind of think about someone who's washed up and no talent so I don't know if we could describe him as a journeyman because he still won the stars of the sport, Philip Gilbert, I'm going to unpack a pretty epic state. Like we've been really lucky that we've had on the transition stages, really exciting racing out of the breakaway. And today was no exception. One of the more exciting ones similar to yesterday's stage, with drama all the way to the finish line. So let's jump right in. Before we do, let's have a chat about missing piece. Missing piece are our show sponsor for the Vuelta and they have been amazing. I've got my chopping boards, I wonder if I get them like two days ago, loving them. Still haven't brought myself to actually chop anything on them yet because they're like walks of art. Like these things what they're only, they're probably super torto... I couldn't believe when I went onto their website they checked their price and they're like, 30 euro, a phenomenon, what a nice gift. It's the gift I've just started buying up for an anticipation of being unorganized at Christmas, starting to buy up some shop boards and the reason being that it just, there's a really nice personal touch to them and when you gift them it kind of feels like you care, even if you don't. So there you go. For all the lads out there who are normally going for the gift vouchers, get the chopping board, get the chopping board with your wife or partners home town engraved into it and that will show a real touch of class. There you go, and all the girls listening, you aren't as lazy with your presents, so you can just do what you do. You do what you do because those presents are a lot more thoughtful than ours. Anyway let's talk so stage 12, took two hours for the breakaway to go today. That was some rough racing. Yumbo Wismer, we talked about them, their transition into this role as sort of the new team's guy. I'm going to touch on the Tommy D stuff as well, Tommy Dummelan, because there's been a lot going on with the Swoon Web director, but even in advance of Tom Dummelan's arrival as Yumbo Wismer, they are taking up this sort of head of the Peloton role quite well, and they weren't happy with the composition of the break for a good chunks of the early part of the race and it took two hours of pretty frantic racing for the break to go. The final climb was an absolute wall of the yoke today. That's where most of the big racing went. Well let's talk about Tom Dumelan for a second. So Tom Dumelan is a roiving ass, Yum Bovizma in the off season. So he's There's been a bit of back and forth in the press between Doomlan and Sunweb owners and they basically have commented, you know, it was a money thing, it was a payment from Doomlan to Sunweb and they said it's a mutually beneficial deal for everyone and it's difficult to see how Sunweb are spinning this is a positive, you know, they have some big sponsors on the Samsung, they've servello, obviously Sunweb and they've spun a line to those sponsors that they're going to contest for grand tours with like outside team in the else team's going. Doomland has been the most consistent GC rotor for years so now without him the proposition looks very different but they tried to make the analogy of you know Oix didn't stop producing players just because you all have Croyf left the thing the whole concept and the academy kept rolling forward and that's the same for Sunweb but they're like if they're gonna home develop talent. It's going to be a long time waiting for a Sunweb rider to win a grand tour. They need to get in and active in the transfer market. Like you would wonder with Sunweb losing Dumelan. Why they didn't make an approach for Dan Mart. It seems like their wages would have been comparable. He's a GC guy on the move. There's not many of them. We've make a land again on the move. Why did they not make a move for him? We carapazers on the move, I know we went to any else, but it seems like this rumblin Dumelana turned out, I didn't know this, Dumelana turned out, it actually turned the car around as he was driving to the team training camp for the pre Tour de France training camp and just you turned the car and went home and that was basically the nail that broke the nails breaker, camel's back, or is that straw as the breaker, camel's back, who knows.
But if you succeed in something you launch in the business and it does work and you're still not happy, that's a dangerous place to be in. So yeah, I'd say that if you don't get fulfillment and you do get success, it's quite an unhappy place to be and it's one of the most unfortunate things in life. So fulfillment, we're gonna break it down in some of the upcoming podcasts, but like without your health, happiness, longevity, there's such core pillars to fulfillment. And then obviously we can get into our subcategories like giving and a sense of communal achievement and helping other people out help and give someone else a leg up but all these things are so powerful. We're happiness and it breaks back down. I've been saying I've been harping on anyone who's been listening to the podcast for months about this that it's cycling and it needs to be a 360 view and the best thing I'd own was stepping away from the sport because it gave me some context and coming back into the sport I can see that it's also interlinked unless we're happy you're not gonna perform even happiness linking into stress hormones and the links between stress hormones and poor sleep and excess body fat and it's also interrelated. So for coaches and coaching companies to just say do these sessions and that's going to make you a better bike rider without looking at other aspects of your life. It's very narrow and short sighted. So I'm happy that we're spearheading that and I honestly am really looking forward to just jumping back into that content because of some super cool stuff coming up. But I'm going to stay focused and I'm going to stay strong on the Vuelta because were over halfway there and I am super excited about tomorrow's stage. Roglich, always the entertainer in the pokes race, press conferences, he said, yeah, the guys were super strong on the climb, no problems for us today, keep the focus. Yeah, I do like him because I'm viewing his comments as somewhat ironic now. I know a lot of the press don't like him. They were in the Basque Country obviously today and as Gilbert remarked, it's the center of world cycling, so it was so special for him. For him he said, every day he goes out training, he thinks about two things, he thinks about the worlds and the classics and that's what get him out the door. He also what was interesting and it's something that comes with experience, I mean at the front the boy graces on big days, he said he'd be very careful about pacing and effort on a climb went extreme atmosphere like that because he can't hear yourself breathing, you can't hear your heart rate. The normal prompts and cues that we get from our body, you can't actually hear them with the wall of noise and sounds. So he said, you really need to make sure you don't go too deep. That was very interesting I thought. He's a very likable guy, he's a very charismatic guy and I'd love the same way in worlds. It was a great stage, it was a very enjoyable stage but it's going to pay in comparison to tomorrow. Tomorrow we're staged, we're at 166km, seven categories climbs and we're finishing up Las Speciale or Horves category for the French out there. Las Magigos, it's epic, it's a wall and it's going to be one of the places that we see GC decided this year. So hopefully Fatherdé, Quintana, Lopez, Poggakar, these guys can mount a entertaining challenge to Roger's stronghold on the race so far. Guys, thank you for listening. I'm also going to pop a link to our training camp in the show notes down below. Do check that out and get signed up because I'm gonna knock that off soon. Like it's not a I'm not trying to bring 50 guys out to Spain. It's gonna be a small training camp and I I think we're gonna do a price bumping up in, it's at 650 at the moment, which is insane value. For six days, it was paying with all your meals, covers, support cars, airport transfers. It's insane value, so we are gonna bump that price, I think, in the next, probably week or so, but I'll keep you posted on that. So if you are thinking about it, get booking now before the price bump. Okay guys, thanks for listening and enjoy your ride you haven't changed yet already this evening and I will be back to you tomorrow, Friday for another one of the classic stages. Ciao, see you later.