IS GRAVEL RACING GETTING A BIT TOO SERIOUS?! | RDMN CLIPS

1.Gravel's Altitude Arms Race

What I worry about is I chat with you know World Tour guys all the time I'm trying to think a recent like Daryl MP recently uh talking to him about coming to the end of his career and he's saying basically now to be a World Tour writer who's competing in the classics and focusing on the tour like he is you need to either live at altitude or spend the vast vast majority of your time between racist and altitude so he's like it's entirely a young man's game because you can't do it up with a family unless your family's going to live at altitude which as well like Alex there was a chapter last week he chose to live in Andorra with his family but the life is just race gold altitude race go to altitude I don't know I just maybe I'm romantic and kind of like you on this I just don't want that for gravel because we already have that it's like if you want that that's cool but it's already there I mean that's that's what you have to do to compete in a lifetime Grand Prix you know guys you know what the kicker with that is when a certain the chemo on it the the prize money for the lifetime Grand Prix oh it's a headline and it's a marketing stunt in his words the prize money is not what anyone's making their money from so the win isn't as important it's still the prestige and it's making your career it's leading to better contracts endorsements or whatever right and it's it's the biggest thing happening in the US right now you know it's Unbound and let Bill the Grand Prix and a handful of other gravel events that are independent such as your sbts and your bwr California um but you know the the Grand Prix is the preeminent racing scene here you know and so guys and girls who are fully focused on racing like that's that's the end-all and be-all and the Crux of their season you know Keegan is focused on trying to win that thing again and he's getting paid well to do it and I mean you look at how he prepares he has the same mentality as a world tour writer and a lot of the guys in the top 10 do is just race weight training sessions sauna sessions for heat adaptation altitude living at altitude all summer heat training for Unbound it's I mean that's Elite Sport when you start to get to that level and careers are dedicated to that that's it's already there you know but at least with the gravel space there is still the possibility to do it your way um you know what here's my hot prediction for How It's Gonna Change slightly I think Lachlan is going to be out of contract or choose not to reopen's contract with ef sound and lachlan's gonna make more than twice the annual income of Keegan and he's not going to win a race and people are going to say whoa there's a different way of doing it lackland's storytelling but there's no one one way or wrong that's what I'm saying is there's with the way that storytelling and social media and sponsors and all this is like everyone's on this spectrum right you can be more of a Storyteller or more of a pure racer there's not one tried and true way like there kind of is in the world tour you just have to do that right so yeah you can't say that lachlan's right and Keegan's wrong or vice versa it's like whoever you align with like there's people who are fans of Lucky who don't care about Keegan and there's fans of you know Keegan who don't give a about me and they think I'm an over the hill World Tour writer and vice versa you know it's it's so I think in gravel right now there's still room for personalities and you you can align with certain writers that you relate to better I think Keegan could be an AI powered cyclist like he's a cycling version of Chachi PT that he's just unbeatable yeah he's tough to beat right now um so it's and you know and I get it too like I feel like maybe on my best day I could go toe-to-toe with him if I did everything right and the altitude camps but I've had to take that conscious step back and you know like that's not why I came here right which almost makes my job doubly difficult is like I need to hold true to why I came to this space and why I want to do this gravel racing which I still love the racing but it's this deeper relatable inclusive experience that is not necessarily the best thing for just pure race performance and so I'm trying to ask myself to compete against Keegan while doing something that's better for my personality but maybe not better for a race results if you enjoyed this little clip from the podcast you can check out full episodes of the podcast on any podcast platform Apple Spotify or whoever you get your podcasts also you can click up here for another video that I know you're going to love and don't forget to subscribe to the channel see you next day