Not many people can look at cycling through three lenses, a Rider, a Director and a TV Pundit. Brian Smith shares his unique insight into a life on two wheels.
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Rowman, it's Wednesday, that can only be in one tang, it's interview time. I'm gonna talk with the one, the only, Brindsmit. Let's cue that intro. The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back Roadman to another Roadman's Cycling Podcast. It is Wednesday, that means it is time for the full form Roadman interview and this week, like how blessed have we been on this Roadman podcast. Since the start of lockdown, we've just been nailing top guest after top guest and again today is no exception. He's ex British Champion, he's Euro sport pond that he's former, director sporty for some of the biggest names in cycling and we're lucky to have him as a guest today. I find Brown Smith is just so unique because he's someone who has a three-dimensional outlook on cycling because he's experienced it as a rider, he's experienced it as a director sporty and now experienced it as a ponder. So from that he gives a very textured look and a multi-factorial analysis of cycling which I find fascinating. I loved my chat with him. My chat with him is actually part of a wider summit that you've heard me talking about. Brian Smith is one of the summit speakers and this interview is in extract from that very summit. So if you want to tune in and you want to listen to Brian and 29 other top performers, that's the idea of the summit. It was to use the leverage from this podcast to take that idea of performance and how we optimise performance and tackle it from 30 different angles. We have chefs from like Michelton Scott, we've world-tore mechanics, we've director sport heaves, we've roider, sports psychologist, nutritionists, list goes on. This is the first summer of its kind in cycling and I'm really pleased to be able to bring it to you guys. It's the roadman's summit. It's a free ticket. It's like my Christmas present to you. There's not even a charge for it. I just wanted to spread a bit of joy over coming into the holiday season and COVID has just been such a fucking depressing time for all of us that I think it was much needed. So you can register for your free ticket at roadmansomit.com. Please if you're in a cycling club, share it in with the cycling club, stick it in the WhatsApp group, help spread the good word because I think everyone from World Tour all the way down to weekend warrior is going to benefit hugely from this summit. And the way you can pay it back and pay it forward, like I mentioned, every single podcast, but it matters guys, it matters. Patreon, it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. That's where you can pitch me a little thank you beer coming into the Christmas for the summit for the podcast if you're getting some value out of either them please think about making a contribution there and give a little bit of love reciprocity. Okay, road man, the moment you have been waiting for, it is the one the only brightsmith. Thanks for having me. I'm delighted to chat with you Brian, and I feel like isn't weird when I've spent so much time watching you on the TV and you've never seen me before. Is this weird dynamic we have gone now? Um, I don't do a lot of envision stuff. I've started to do more envision stuff in the last three years. It's more my, my voice. So people don't really see me. Um, you know, when my kids were growing up, they were my partner. was putting the TV on and they were watching TV, they could hear the voice but they couldn't see me. And sometimes even in New York I met a group about three years ago and I just asked them just politely, is it okay if I tag along with you? And he turned round and went, I recognise your voice. I can recognise my voice. And he said, I'll shoot and got to the other man. Yeah, it's strange that people, people know because I've done a lot more than vision people see me and say hello to me. But three, four years ago, it was just all about my voice. So I don't think I've got a distinctive voice, but people think now. When I was thinking about people for the summit and we were trying to tackle this idea of performance and how to maximize your performance from as many different angles as possible, I taught there can't be as many, there can't be, I don't know if there's another person in the world as well placed as you to look at this from different perspectives, because you've been a writer of some notes with national titles, you've been a director of some note, and now you're one of the leading pundits in the sport. That sort of trifect that is very unique, I think. Yeah, it brings a lot to commentary as well, because too many times a lot of teams, you work with one team, you concentrate on one team, and with commentary, because I've been there, I took the first half to continue to do a difference, but some good success. You concentrate on what you're doing, but you don't see what others are doing. And with commentary, you have to look at all the teams, what all the teams are doing.
And like you said, I've been a sports director at the highest level. I've been a rider, I wouldn't say the highest level, but a good, very good level. And also working in the media across most of the major events. but I've also watched in a lot of events as well. And being at a lot of events, you know, I've been on site at the Giro, the Vuelta, the tour, the World Championships, I've worked in the tour of Britain. So that gives me another element because I'm, is that, is a pundit, I'm looking at the motorbikes, the set up and things like that. And I understand from the riders point of view that the motorbikes are getting too close and helping the riders, there's a lot of performances have been helped by the motorbikes at the front of the race, but working on the media side and working on the event side, I can see both sides. So that gives me a unique element, as you say, to what I think about cycling. I think you were quite modest when you were describing yourself as a rider of not much note, because you've two national titles, it was a 91 and 94. So if we joined us back to that, talk to me to then, like how it's changed from then to now. like were you coached back for those British National titles? I'm self coached. It's something I've learned. I think when I retired from the sport, I coached someone from Scottish club level up to winning in Britain. You know, there's a series that a national series called the premier. I think the premier events are coached them from hardly finishing a Scottish race to winning a British level. So I did a bit of coaching, but I'm not too sure if coaching was a mealyke helping individuals, but it's like having kids. I know that now I've got two young kids and being a coach. Yeah, it's not about I can coach you. Let me get to know you first. Once I get to know you, and I think that's what a lot of coaches maybe don't understand, that it's about the relationship. because I can go into a team like Sevella Testim or NetApp Enduro or MTN Quebecor, but of the riders that are in that team, I don't think I could coach every one of them. It's maybe six or eight, maybe more ten I could coach, but it's that personal relationship. If you don't have the relationship, it's like father and son. My father was a cyclist and I used to listen to them. But I wouldn't take everything in, but yet a stranger or someone I didn't know really well, give me the same information and I'll take it in. So it's all about that relationship, the trust relationship, because I don't think someone that's got even rider agents, I've got a stable of maybe 20 or 30 riders, but they just put them in teams to make money. They don't put put them in the right teams. It's the same with coach and you can coach 20 or 30 riders, but do you really know that rider? Because it's not just about given the training. You've got to know how it fits into their life and what their life is about. It's something I learned from a coach, the coach show for a program here in the UK where myself and Rob Hales we selected kind of two individuals and coached them towards an event. I was just thought to even, you know, I got the moment of individual, I got to know the circumstances and it's one thing he said to me, you want me to invest into your power meter and that rang a bell, invest. And I went to meet them. It was a two up to down house, just a nice simple house, two young kids looking around. I'm thinking, I don't want him to spend a £1,000 in a parameter. Yeah, it's going to help me look at it, help him train, but I couldn't do that to him. And you have to look at specific things that are going to help not just the individual, but help the family. And when he said invest, if someone says, do you want me to invest, that's a bit of money for them. And so, you know, they cannot, alarm bells go off, they cannot afford them. So we went back to kind of old school ways where you asked me the question, I was self-taught. I used to pick up the phone when I was younger and phone Robert Miller and ask. Robert Miller would give me. He's a nice guy to have in your corner. Yeah, he gave me the training that he was doing with Panasonic, some of the power training that we're doing in the winter. And it was a lot of the weight training and the power training was done over either a no one or a no in 50 minutes, but it was done on the bike. So I was doing a lot of this stuff. So it was not just big gear stuff on the bike? Yeah, well, you did an hour on the flats in the biggest gear on your bike. So it's just like some power stuff that is like in a load training. So what was the biggest gear down, where you still 50 straight 11? No, I don't think it was 11. I think it was 53 12 at that time. And then, another 15 minutes, oh and maybe some helier trick terrain, but you use the gears a little bit more, but your cadence was always about, you know, 50, 60 maximum and it was just about power stuff.
So that's what they were trying to think. Most of the flat stuff was more down towards kind of time-trolling efforts because Robert told me that that helped his time trial efforts, that bit at the end and also towards the end of once you'd done your four hours, your five hours, just for 10 minutes, you'd put it in the maximum gear and just ride that power stuff. So there's a lot of stuff that I learned. There was no scientific way they were they were cannot pass down. But the biggest thing in training that I got is if you don't want to do it don't do it. Yeah and I think that's something I'm getting. Like when we look at this multi-factorial approach to performance across the summit, I spoke with Scott Morphy, he's the head physio for Mitchell Scott and he was talking about you've all these studies now to talks about biomarkers or recovery should you use ice bath space boots all this different stuff. He's like, but he thinks you can basically throw all them stories out the window because you need to figure out, doesn't make the writer feel better. And that's not captured in any of these stories, because he said, if it makes you feel better, like if I ask you, how did you feel today you won the British National Championships, you'll probably come back with something like, I had good legs. And that's common, we hear that a lot from writers, like good legs, bad legs. It's all subjective. No, I think a lot of that is a, forgive my French is sometimes a bit of bollocks when someone says they were floating. In my book, whether I won a lost, Stakeland's not easy. My first British title, I got, I was a bit lucky in getting it because other people were marked out of it, but I gave everything and I was on the limit to the end. My second British title between them I finished second twice but the next title I was like this is hard it was like a couple of weeks after the Giro d'Italia. That was 1994. Yeah so you wanted to miss Motorola that year was it? Yeah so all my wins that I had in my career and even before I was a professional there was there's not one I thought I was on a float there that was easy they're all hard and that's what I said to a lot of writers you will not win Because you've got great legs or your floor turn or ends like that, you just have to suffer more than anybody else. That's what you have to do. And my philosophy is that you can suffer more than others, you'll win more. It's not about, yeah, you can have good legs and feel good. How many people do, and even now, in interviews we get after the world, the gero, the tour, I had good legs, but you didn't win. So there's a lot of people felt, their good legs have felt good, but they didn't win. And I think a lot of that is a, like I said before, a lot of bottlenecks because no one, no did it racist and finishes that race, finishes that stage, gets it easy. Well, I think that's a part that a lot of guys coming into the sport, you know, the entry-level categories in Ireland we call it category four. I'm not sure if they have four cats in the UK. But they come into the sport, they're so conditioned to indoor ride and choose with training rides where they're making excuses and I better ease off in a group ride and let themselves get dropped because they're looking at a power meter. At some point you just need to draw a line and say, this is a fucking hard sport. You need to roll up your sleeves because you're not going to get anywhere in this sport unless you're happy with that misery. Look, I spent a lot of time with Sean Kelly and and even Sean says that he was just able to suffer a lot longer. Okay, he did the physical attributes, but he could just suffer for longer and I do quite a lot of running with them and I can see that he's 63 years old, he's got 10 years on me and I was quite fit last year in running and I would lift the tempo and lift it and he'd still be there, he'd still be there and that's him just blocking off the... You'll be responsible for the death of Sean Kelly. No, I'll be responsible for having 11 to 100 possibly. But no, it's no seriousness. When I was a pro bike rider, it was probably 25% of science and 75% good out in radio bike. And it seems to be going the opposite way. More people are getting into the science than anything else. And one thing that working with teams and working with individuals, like you see in races, everybody looks at a power meter. So you go out and you look at your power meter. You're on a good day of your producing some good power on the same roads you did last week. But how do you feel when you're producing less power on that road? The conditions change, it can a place where you mind a little bit. So a lot of the time when you go out to do your training, and I know that this is something I've talked about with Steve Cummings, who had some great success as a writer.
Greg Gley, how do you mind the podcast actually lovely man? Yeah, he used to not look at his power in anything. When he was a trainer, he used to look at his heart rate. And that's something that I grew up with. Before power meters was all about heart rate. So he'd look at his heart rate more than anything. And then afterwards, he would look at his power once he was back home, but not look at his power in training. And that's something that is probably more me than anything because it's very difficult when you're out training to replicate the same conditions. So when you're riding, you're doing your training, you're good at this climb and ends like that. The conditions all change, you feel different. But one thing about it is, if you're making it, the effort, your heart rate is very similar. So when you're making these efforts, you're looking at your heart rate, and then you can look at the power files later on, not the opposite way around. And there are times where in training, I've asked the mechanics to tape up the parameters and just go out there and ride the bike and then they can look at it afterwards. I asked the question as well, why a rider still doing six, seven, eight, are rides? Why a rider's doing it? Because the sign says you don't need to do it. And it's getting even longer. Like I was looking at some of Bernal's rides in particular to our lockdown and they were crazy lit. So why did they do it? One, I think it makes them feel better. And obviously, there's a lot of kind of fat burning going on and a lot of long rise to stay leaning things at that. And if you're out in a bike that you're not tempted to do maybe three or four hours rather than six, seven, eight hours. And when you come off the bike, you're tempted to eat more than things at that. So there's a lot of psychological things come into the train. And it's not just about the numbers. People asked me about MTN, Cabrika, I came in and rebuilt that team, and I took a bunch of, I think, underachievers. And I'll say that they had underachieved over the previous years. So they hadn't changed anything physically. I hadn't got these coaching gurus to get them to train harder. They were to train it. The difference is here. That's the difference. And I keep on banging on about it. You can be the fittest rider, the most trained rider, no tactics, more than anybody else. But with me, my weakness was tiredness. If I was tired, I wouldn't perform at the same level. But how do you get riders to switch on to that, as you say, the mindset part? Is that sport psychologist or is it less subtle, is it more subtle than that? I think working with, I don't think you need a sports psychologist they can help a little bit. Steve Peters helped the British Olympic team in that way going through scenarios. I've worked with a sports psychologist before but that kind of pushed it pushed me the can other way a little bit thinking too much about it. I think it's got an individual like possibly a kind of father figure or or a big brother that you can talk to someone that that you can believe in and trust. And you've got that these kind of individuals that are not, you can work in constructive criticism with them. Maybe you did that in the race, maybe you did that, maybe you could do this. And look, I got recently asked a couple of questions about MTN Quebecer. How did the African riders rise up to, Daniel Taeckler-Haminott, and having a polka dot jazz in the 2D France. I was unbelievable. My philosophy was when you've got a bunch of African riders, I'm Scottish, I've got Scottish top on, supporting my national team later on, but as a Scottish rider, you had Robert Miller, Billy Boseland before that, there's always that kind of 10 years of a difference different kind of decades. When I said I wanted to become a professional cyclist, people laughed at me and people put me down. When I went to France, you only last two weeks, this is all I got, it's maybe something Scottish. I don't know if you've got this in Ireland, but as soon as you show down the vision, people want to put you down. Yeah, it's a very Irish thing as well. Yeah, so they want to put you down, they don't want you to see you succeed. But I was determined. And when I first went down to England to race, you get the cycling magazine, you look at it, you see these individuals, the write-ups, the pictures, and you go down there and you see them in the flesh for the first time, you think, are they better than me? Then you go out there and win the race and you think, I'm just as good as them. So my philosophy was, if you bring in the Steve Cummings, the Buss and Haggins, the Sirs Powells, and then these writers, and they're all eating, living on the bus, doing everything together, training together, racing together. There's a spark in the mind of these underdogs that think, I've got two legs, two arms. I'm okay, some of them might be black, but I'm the same as the ride that I'm sleeping in the same room with.
And that gives them confidence because they're doing exactly everything that they're putting the same fuel in the tank, They're training in the same, they're doing everything the same. Why can't I not be successful like they are? Well, we have that can't see me can't be me. I'm not sure if that's prevalent in the UK, but it's the idea that we've Katie Taylor as a female role model in sport. And Katie Taylor is the best in the world, maybe the greatest female boxer ever. So any female boxer can be that. Sean Kelly don't that, like it wasn't branded as can't see me can't be me. But Sean Kelly blew the lid off expectations for Reuters. And we've seen Roach, Chris Yeoyens and Dan Martin, and obviously Sam Bennett, common true and benefit from the ground, D'Kellie pay for us. Well, look at Sam Bennett, Sam Bennett, a way back in 2014, I thought and saw him and I said, what about Sam for MTN, what about Sam? In his another year, he said, and he was right, Sean was right. In his another year to develop. And you find out this year that Sean Kelly, when he's first to a stage at 22, Sam when he's first stage this year at 29. But it took him a little bit longer. But still the same, one in the Green Jersey, one in two stages, one in Sean Salisi. I don't think Sam could believe it, but people believe in him. And I think Ireland believed in it. And we always need these role models. And I bet you, there's a lot of cyclists back in Ireland that have raced or ridden or trained with Sam Bennett thinking to themselves. Well, if you can do it, I can do it because it's set in the bar. It's not, okay, Sam's got a gift, right? Not everybody has these gifts. I didn't have the same gifts as Stephen Roach or Sean Kelly and Anissa or Ados, but I used what I had. I was in an era in the 90s, which was high use of VPOs, a clean side, plus it's very difficult to compete at that level. I had a reasonably good enough career, but it's all about confidence in my mind. A lot of, okay, you have to, you're training. I think when you look at technology, Dave Brailsford came in with marginal gains. All these small things, you put them together, but everybody's caught up now. Dude, dude, dude, dude. Roadman, we're back for the Notre-Rodeman intermission. This is the part in the podcast I ask you to press pause and head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. Patreon is how I fund the podcast. Patreon is what lets me do these recordings every single day and what lets me sit down, reach out to tour to get the biggest names in the sport and get them together for this roadman solo. Your support over there is much appreciated and needed. Okay, let's get back to that very familiar voice when it's missed. The banks that all the teams are using, there's not much in the keep on swapping around. They're all very much the same. The wheels, the tires, everything, the clothing now. And to jump in there on the marginal gains, I actually think what we're seeing when amateurs is, they're just focusing on the marginal gains now, and they're missing the entire rest of the cake. If you want to think of the marginal gains, it's the cherry on top. They're like, hard work is the bit you don't talk about. They talk about the wheels, the tourism, the skin suits. And there isn't that whole aspect of it and you can't skip it. No, you can't skip the hard work. You have to put the hard hours in. And I can remember I wrote the world in 92, and I was writing in Britain. And for a whole kind of five, six weeks, I had three or four criteriums. That's all I had. No other races. It was in Benidorm. Over 260 kilometers, I went there, having done the training in my own. I used to do, you know, eight, nine hours training and ride races and ride home afterwards. But I didn't have those races. All I had was criteriums, which is in the UK last year, one hour. So I was having what I did was, I was doing five or six hours and then going straight to the chain gang. And everybody knows that chain gang, it's about 30 or 40 miles riding through and off. So I would do a hilly ride, meet them, saw all over me. They'd be shaking their head at me. And then I would ride on the front through and off, not miss a ton the whole night. And that's how I was training. I was just training harder than anybody else and trying to replicate what happens in races. And I finished the one I was in 92, finished 45th, finished the same group as a certain Sean Kelly in Beyron. And that's one of my claims to fame, that you have to put the hard yards in. But I will say that sports science can show a lot. And now we're seeing even food science. Before you used to have all the writers, this is what you would eat. But everybody's using different calories. So now like a team somewhere and Nico Roach told me this, that over the last couple of years, it's all weighed out and it's all individual.
So it's not a case of this that suits you, it will suit him and everybody's equal and everybody has the same amount. It's all individually chopped up and it's the same with training. You can go and do 12 minute intervals on the flat, but that might not suit every rider. Some might nine, some might do 15. It's an individual thing and you cannot just go out there and this trainer will suit all. But I tell you what, the one thing that I've learned in Saiklin is everybody likes to ride the bike. And if you can mix up the hard stuff, the interval training, you know, the hard stuff with riding your bike, then it breaks up the rides and helps you training because some people will go on swift or the gist of training and do these intervals. That's probably one of the hardest things to do, purely just going into this training. What I learned was you maybe do 45 minutes riding and then you do your intervals. Now you do another 45 minutes riding and then you do some more intervals afterwards. So you're coming back after doing three, sometimes three and a half hours or four hours and you've done some high intensity and you're riding your bike because that helps you mentally. looking at a triple trainer and knowing that you're going to go in there like Chris Huy used to do intervals on his on his walk bike and have a mattress next day on the bucket. You used to go that deep fall off after his interval session be sick in the bucket. So do that. That's actually a good segue to this one because you were in 94 in Motorola and when I think about the evolution of cycling around that period parking the ethics of the EPO and the stuff that started going on around that area. But it was definitely a tournament point around sports science as well. And it marked the kind of in my mind anyway, maybe I'm open to be corrected by it, it marked in my mind the new era of cyclone where we start really dialing in with teaching a Ferrari and what's it like looking back now on that sort of evolution of how riders train? Well, it not only changed the way we were training because we were sponsored by Paula. And, you know, it was all about training, heart rates and things like that. We never had power meters then, but we also had to technology in your ear. We had Motorola sets that, you know, the headsets now that, you know, in every approach. So we were getting information in our ears. We were looking at the training. But Motorola, that team was amazing for me because you had the new riders coming forward and I'm talking about Lance Armstrong, George Henkap in these guys. They were the younger new riders coming through. So they had their own training but you also had Phil Anderson, even Jan Schur and each German from Leipzig with his training methods. So I would train with the likes of Sean Yates, Phil Anderson, Jan Schur, Steve Bauer, these type of guys and learn from them from, you know, I was, I think as a younger writer, I was a sponge taking information, but what I was good at is adapting what helped me. One thing that I, I disliked is doing intervals in the front, but I can do intervals in a claim. Yeah. Because, and it's the same with time trials, time trial in the flat is a whole different thing and time trial in the claims because it's easier to do on a claim because it's easier to get your heart rate, it's easier to go up to that kind of level. When you read a time trial or read it along a flat, I was always having to think to myself, you can write faster, you can write faster. because in the flat I found intervals difficult and what I learned pre-seasoned doing intervals doing it with another individual and I did it with Shawn Yates and we do a minute on, swing over and sit on the wheel of the other individual who was going flat out for a minute. That drags you out. So you've got that big kick to get back into the wheel as well. Get into the wheel and hold out where he's gone because he's on your wheel for a minute. You swing over so you've given absolutely everything for a minute. You swing over, go on that wheel and suffer like a dog. It's the same with the difference between time trialling in your own and that can I focus and pushing yourself without powering me just to see where you are. So and right in the team time trial. Because a team time trial is easier to write because you've got other individuals pulling out and I think doing something difficult like interval training is mentally a little bit easier to do with someone else because they always push you on. I think it's more specific as well because guys wonder they do their flat out steady stay 15, 20 minute intervals all off season and then they come into the season and they wonder why they can't really chew on the break because they haven't got that look you were talking about that pop to get back into the way of because there's just been steady stays at whatever treatment or what's they've been doing all winter. It's the same you look at your perimeter on an arrest, you know, 200 metres before the top of the hill and you're at your max.
What do you do to your ease back and lose the wheel? And you have to chase hard down the other side or you just go into the red a little bit, hang on and then everybody can ease these can down. It's the choices and that's where sports science you're trying not to go into the red too much. You're trying to do everything but sometimes you have to go on the red at parks and this is where the tactical side of things come in. If you pop into the red a little bit and then you get and you find yourself in front and you look back and the red are negatively behind you, it's the fact that you've gone into that red where the others have chosen not to go into the reds. So tactically when you've got these numbers, I don't think it's the writer you should be thinking when I get to that number of power That's me. I'm not going any harder But that person that goes into the red was over the top of that climb onto the descent Tries to recover on that descent the other writer starting to write negatively behind then you've won that race because you have taken that that That choice and I think everybody in cycling has got the choice whether they go into the red or not and it's not all about, you know, riding that threshold. Changing gear for a second. I know we're in an era now which I suppose is saturated media coverage, I'll say, of cycling from vloggers on YouTube to cycling websites to people who have huge phones on Twitter or Instagram and then it's, you know, your TV channels as well. And for somebody getting into the sport that doesn't have, they're not immersed in this cycling history and cycling tradition. There's a lot of voices there. Who's the trusted voices that you go to and still admire? Like you work with Bradley Wiggins and Sean Kelly, I would assume they're two of the better voices to listen to in the sport. It's a hard question. You know, you can get to the top of the sport, but and I think a lot of writers that have what I do top of the sport don't really remember or know what it feels like to be in a massive kind of hanging on the back a little bit and it's something that I've shown about the whole time. It says you only know what probably five or six riders in this race. No, you know what it feels like because you were there, you were one of these kind of five or six riders. You don't know what it's like to kind of hang on the back and you know be suffering like a dog all day. So I think, for me, I think it's a collective. Like I said, I'm a sponge. I'll take advice from everybody. I'll never stop learning. I'll learn a little bit from Brian home when I'm talking to him about tactics in the race. I absorb that and I can understand that. The certain things that I hear in when someone else is commentating, there'll be things that are Bradley Wiggins or Pickup. So for me it's not about that's the guru of cycling, that's the person that I think is the person I would go to to learn everything. I think for me I'm educated by a lot of different people and there's a lot of influencers I take nuggets from because I don't think in cycling everybody knows everything. And you know people often say to me, how do you know that tactic is going to happen to race? How do you know? Well I've got 15 years experience and I can know and I brought that experience to the teams and the Tour de France in 2015 and the Mer de Prét Dan stage, we missed a group of 20 and Ed Vaux-Bosn-Hagen and the radio, do we chase, do we chase and I went no, it's not for us to the chase because I knew that I looked at the composition of the group, I looked at who already missed it out, who benefited more to chase and all of a sudden, Garmin came up and chased it down. It saved us from doing anything because it's always a poker game because these things, because I know that Rigo Bertouran on the Mer de Breton is being nearly almost one stage before and they're a bigger team than MTN Quebecer. They'd missed the breakaway, so it's down to them to do it. As a viewer, I get into these tactics, like I've been around the sport, I'm involved in the sport for go to 15 years or so. When I'm watching any race on the TV, I would say I'm understanding 95%, maybe I'm missing some of the subtle tactics, but by and large I'm pretty much now what's going on. But then I chat to, you know, bodies that are just getting into the sport are clients who are just getting started, you know, maybe, I'm talking to real entry level guys, maybe somebody's played rugby for years, never looking for a new challenge, and they come across to cycling. They're used to watching football, rugby. These games are very easily understood, tactics-wise. You get into cycling and we just have this, if you take a tour of France, football, who scores the most goals win. Tour de France, try and explain that to a person who's not into cycling. Okay, so we have this three week race and then we've this one classification called the general, but then we've erased to the top of the hill each day and that's mountains points.
And then we've these intermediate sprint points that gather up for a green jersey, but all some guys don't even care about any of that. Some of them only care about winning the stage. And then this one Spanish team just cares about the team classification. They don't care about that. How do we communicate are how do we onboard those new users into this board? I think it's very difficult to do that because even with my experience in bike racing, my motivation is I go into any race and I don't know what's going to happen. I kind of suspect the breaker is going to go away here and there's going to be about maybe 10 or 12 or more or less and this is what's going to happen and it could end up in a sprint. But how many times in the restark to this year's season, have we seen the unthinkable and we keep on saying this, we don't know what's going to happen and all of a sudden you get the breakaway going away, I think the breakaway might go to the end. Borah come up to the front and drag it all back, okay they might not win in the end so you never know what's happening in every particular team, what the tactics are going to be unless you're sitting in every team meeting and understanding that. Oh, and that's for you as the experienced ponders trying to call it. Can you imagine for the rugby player coming in trying to make sense of what's going, because why you concerned with it is we lose a lot of those guys because they come in and they turn on a tour de France stage and they can't make any sense of it and they go, but how can you watch someone just cycling along for five hours? I can understand that seeing Sam Bennett one in his first stage, why is he in yellow? You know, he won't. He's the winner. But I don't think we help each other. And I know that the UCI know we're UCI races now, that were up to, there's only four jerseys. I can remember when there were six jerseys, in some races, you know, more than six jerseys. We were saying this in the Giro d'Italia, it's about seven or eight competitions in the Giro d'Italia. But we're down to four jerseys. I know that a lot of people, I like the pink jersey, I like the red jersey and I like the yellow jersey. But I think there needs to be some sort of consistency to make it easier. Yeah, I agree. If we've got consistency, people will go, and I think it'll be a crime shame to have a yellow jersey as a leader of each tour. But for a layman coming in and going, the welter, Or that writer's in yellow, he must be leading. Or that writer in the jiro, he must be leading. I like the fact that there's different leaders' jerseys. But I think every other jersey, I think if we can get some sort of consistency that will help identify these riders, I also think that maybe some sort of sign towards, you know, I know they give a red number for more aggressive, but I think that they should be identified to the writer that won the stage the previous day. But I think it's so complex when you put, and I go down to your 22 teams together, there's four competition jerseys. There's a race for the stage, there's a race for different points. There's the GC contenders. It's a big education. It's a big education. And I think what we have to do, and maybe, you know, I know some people do videos and things at large. Talking about H. I started last year to write a book or it started this year to write a book and I'm getting through it. I didn't do too much in lockdown but I'm starting to get through it but I've got a proofreader that knows nothing about cycling. That's brilliant. So when I give them that because I want to I want to appeal to everybody and say it and easy enough terms that everybody will understand because it nearly needs a tour de France for dummies To as an introductory text explain what's going on You need an education for sure. It's not all about etchilons and things like that. We need to they have to be educational videos This says the GC contenders, these are GC days and these are the riders that humility over 21 stages has the fastest time. While these other riders just going for stages can lose half an hour one day in one race the next day. Because it just struck me, I recorded a podcast on the Vuelta and I was reflecting back on the last mountain stage in Vuelta. I'm not sure if you remember him. Cara Paz attacked, Roglage was dropped, he was on the back foot. And we seen in the last couple of kilometers two movie star, Reuters, Royden, I think it was Sillard and come back from the early break and mass. I was explaining there's a number of things going on here. One, Dan Martin's dropped. So, mass has the chance of potentially jumping them on GC because I was getting questions like, why are they working for Roglage? I was like, well, they're working to bring mass separate a gath from Dan Martin. And it was just the amount of DMs I got after. And I touched on another couple of points or so it wasn't sure, valid or not.
Carapaz's left movie star last year and led to believe it wasn't a brilliant split. I'm like, I'm sure there's no love last year. So Larry might have a bit of extra foreigner's belly to ride a little bit harder. And you're potentially banking a favor with Roglage, one of the stars in the sport. It's like when you add all those tree together, It's a powerful motivator for movie star to ride on a hell of a rug glitch. But the amount of DMs on Instagram I got, the people just, they couldn't even understand the four-screes and never mind the second two I was speculating on. I was like, whoa. But how are they watching the race? Like where are they getting their enjoyment from if they don't know that that's going on? Do you know what I think? I think we need to look at the UCLA points as well. We have the array for the possession because the settlement of points and all the teams been points to stay in the world tour. We have to look at that. Indeed, it's gone by, it was all about finishing on the podium. That's all about finishing on the podium. Whether you drop down to ninth from sixth doesn't really matter. But now with the point system in Saikland, the higher up the ladder you get, the more points you get. And it's all about points. And okay, there's prize monies as well. But we could definitely look at that. There's not a big difference between between six and 10th. But you hear all the time, even into the last stage, we saw the rider from Astana trying to go on the podium, trying to go for the bonus sprint, because he's sitting on the 11th. And blast off wanted to get some second bonus to pop over Valverde and Moby Star would have none of it. So it's been happening for the last decades or even more that riders get paid a little bit more. There's a bit more kudos about finishing in the top 10. And I think we have to get back and strip it all back too. It's all about the podium and get everybody racing because like you, whether it was for, and you're right, counterparts, I think the Moby Star will want to caterpise to stay. Moby Star, I've been known for doing these type of things as well, but then again, if it's just a race for the podium, then Carapace got a lot closer. But yeah, I think there was no love lost between Movistar and Carapace that day. It was in the best interest to do it, but I think it gave them that added push to make sure that Carapace, after saying adios to Movistar under not great circumstances, you know, that's kind of payback for the liteners down. Yeah, I'm sure they had a good gig of a lit in or that night about that. Last question and I'll let you go, Brian. If you're looking back on your cycling career, on talking, pulling this director sporty into a rider and you get to whisper back in young Brian's ear as he's starting this whole journey again, what advice would you give to yourself back then? I think that the old saying is, if only I had a non-nuts, I'd have had a better career. I grew up in Saiklyn. I enjoyed Saiklyn too much. There's a lot of times I used to think about Saiklyn too much, and not just throw caution to the wince. You know, in my mind there's two different raiders. A raider that thinks too much, and a raider that just breaks strength and ignorance. And I look back at my career and have a few issues. I wish I had just attacked and forgot about trying to work things out and just attacked. And I've lost a lot of a one-on-one and it's as simple as that. And that's how I won my first British title, but I was told to do it. I think throughout my career, if I had just used a bit of brute strength and ignorance and put myself in the game, either probably one more and that's probably a wee bit advice and it's probably come out on this meeting with you that you can look at the numbers, you can look at the science here, look at everything unless you're prepared to just go out there and do it and suffer like a dog then you're not going to have that success and I think that's something that I learned from from cycling that any team and individuals I work with now, I just say I don't care if you lose, just go out there in one. And one in the circumstances came in my land sign removal where Evo Boson-Hagen was there in the front group and it was important for the team for him to finish in the first ten because that's where you get the UCI points. But I'm a unbeliever of do not play safe, go out there and try and win. And he did, and he attacked, and he was off the front and he got brought back and had no points. Okay, we had to be able to consequences of, you know, the team owner going, we get no points from that race. Why did they go in the attack? But the riders like racing, you don't, you know, when you grow up as a kid, you go, well, daddy, I want to go and ride around the park. No, you go, I want it erased round the park.
Come on, I want it erased. I want it erased. And all these young writers They just want it race and it's brilliant. So the father of the latter you get you take that race and away from them You do this and you do that It's the same now at the high level All these writers want to do is race and I think we've seen a little bit of that with what the likes of Carapas Roglic, Dan Martin, they just take a ride. Yeah, I forget you there are racers The thing about Pagacha was in the last week of the two, he had to change and he had to change because you look back at the Pyrenees when he was racing. He was in the stage, the Pyrenees Serbs. He was racing and he loves racing. He loves attacking. We love seeing that as a pundit. We love seeing all that. But in the last few days before the time trial, he just had to follow. You've just fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, saving that for the big effort. Sometimes you have to do that. But we'd like to see racers. And I think I made that comment about the Vuelta right from the start. We're in for a race because we've got Carapaj, Roglic, Dan Martin. We've got racers. And that's why I think the Vuelta was so great this year. Because people were out trying to race each other. And that's what we want. The people are willing to race with each other. That's that's entertainment and that brings people to our sport. Not people that want to go put the team on the front because it's a rider moving in the fifth place and we want to keep that fifth place. So we have to look at our sport as what's more entertaining. The points staying in the world tour, I think the world tour is a slippery slope because you hear that the African team NTT may be writing 8 million euros. 8 million euros. That's like a second division team now. They're not going to have the budget to be able to do a whole race program and have the same amount of riders, but they want that one of two license because it guarantees the minute every race. We have to look at all this and think that's not right. What we want is the best teams and the best races with the best riders. We've got too many, it's too day-lutted. And I think we've seen a glimpse of that over the last three months in our sport. We've seen a lot of the best riders at the best races. And a lot of other riders, and I think that's been more entertaining. I think we have to learn from the last three months and try and replicate that. Because the only time that the best riders at the top race seems to be at the Tour de France. Because it's a phenomenal goal to use, and so it's looking back and replicating that, like you said. Brian Smith, I could end up yapping to you all night here at Sahelan. Thanks very much for your time and thanks for joining us on the summer. Well, what is thanks again? So that was one of the interviews from this amazing performance, so much that I keep talking about the roadman virtual performance. So much first of its kind, Brian Smith was kind enough to share his insights and it was great to be able to pull this out and host it on the podcast for you. So if you want to get access to 30 or 29 other interviews like this, all you got to do head on over to roadmansomit.com and some of them are super tactical that won't play well on audio because they're slow-cho presentations about aerodynamics, nutrition, fasted caribroids, sports psychology, etc. Roadman, thank you for listening and I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow. Roadman, before you go, I've got an important announcement to make because over two days and the eighth and ninth of December I'm gonna speak with 30 of the world's leading fitness experts and I want you to join me free of charge from the comfort of your own home. This is the first ever Roadman virtual performance summit for aiming to bring together the best minds and fitness and they're going to share with me their secrets for biohacking your physiology, melting away body fat and smashing your cycling goals. Would you like to learn their secrets? It's easy. All you have to do is register for your free ticket over at www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. That's www.roadmansummit.com www.summit.com forward slash freeze. The link is in the bio.
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