THE PERFECT SPRINT EVERY CYCLIST MUST WATCH & LEARN | VUELTA STAGE 3

1.Van Aert's Perfect Stage 3 Sprint

Welcome to laa stage three we're going to unpack all the action from a fast and furious day on the VTA but while I was watching that finish I was wondering did we witness technically and tactically the most perfect Sprint this season by wel fer going to really unpack that in a second but before we do today's podcast it is brought to you by our ongoing partner whoop if you don't know whoop is this is whoop whoop is a wearable health and fitness coach it gives me feedback and insights into my sleep into my recovery into my training my stress why this is important is with a busy lifestyle it really lets me know when I can push with my training and when I need to pull back a bit the benefit from training is meant to be getting stronger not just training for the sake of training and whoop allows me to get a return on my training investment because as I said whoop are a partner for the podcast I have an amazing gift for all our listeners if you head over to the URL join. woop.com roadman you're going to get one month free using this amazing little device as my gift to you that URL is in the description down below it's join. whoop.com roadman if you're looking to take your training up a level for the coming season or cycle cross season it's really really worth it Sarah let's jump into this W fun art Sprint whoa W it was amazing white looked amazing in red as well he hasn't had a win since last February so coming into this would he have been doubting himself oh well had a really difficult season mentally I'd say he had his crash in towards Oris Vander I think that was like 27th of March and he was forced to take eight weeks entirely off the bike from that like his list of injuries are massive from around then he fractures in his collar bone his sternum seven ribs we all seen those videos where he's like screaming in pain on the ground really hard to see or comeback complete today you could have said comeback complete yesterday taking the red jersey but wel has a he kind of has a habit of when he takes the Jersey he wins the day after and yesterday we criticized him a little bit because we said he was sprinting for like a lad who wanted a place on the podium today he definitely wasn't W has a couple of steals and I really want to break down this Sprint because it's brilliant it's absolute genius and I think anyone who watched today stage it was boring for long Parts at today stage but it was worth it because anyone who is a bike racer an aspiring bike racer a kid they need to break down this and show kids that the fastest guy doesn't always win this is why we don't sit people on an indoor trainer and we just race each other and give the win to the fastest person Groves proved yesterday he was faster he proved that the intermediate Sprints that he was faster than w w out T him this is genius so it kind of starts when carpon Arts takes a flyer at about 1.7k to go carpon Earth decides to go for broke and that forces alpus and the conic lead out man to close down that move so they're running out of legs a little more than they would like Groves lead out man he is sprinting and I think this is the first image you'll see Groves lead out man on the front Groves is in his wheel and wel is behind them so what would have happened there is Groves lead out man open out the Sprint full gas but he's a little bit less legs as I said from the carpent Arts attacked and then he will just leave enough space for Groves to get through on the barriers Groves will go through on the barriers it's going to be difficult for w to follow on the barriers because he'll kind of have close the door and you know it'll be a repeat of yesterday but what wel does he piggybacks off the pressure that the conic had after winning yesterday's stage so because they've closed camper Arts down the lead out isn't as fast as it should be so w Springs a little bit early he Springs at about 250 to go so he jumps and he goes around Groves and his lead out man and he Sprints to the barriers I think that's the second image you'll see there he Sprints to the barriers and now what happens is because he Sprints to the barriers but doesn't get daylight he deliberately doesn't Sprint and get daylight he comes across before he has daylight now Groves is overlapping his wheel on the wrong side so Groves is on the left side of W's wheel Groves only clear passage now is down the left on the barriers W's not going to let him pass them on the barriers so instead instead of trying to force his way through the barriers because he knows that's not going to be successful and maybe be a crash he has to pump the brakes kill his speed come around to the right side of w wheel and then start to Sprint again and with an uphill Sprint you're never going to be able to take that speed off and launch it again so tactically absolutely brilliant from it was so amazing and that's the kind of those are the kind of details that an untrained I like myself wouldn't actually see you know to kind of notice that he was Groves were stuck behind W for a moment for a split second he had pump the brakes the over on Wheel that's so genius absolutely well could have taken that flyer you know absolute full gas and totally gaap them so the wheels are no longer overlapping but he came in at just the right point so they're still overlapping and he has to touch the brakes and go and sure as soon as he touched the brakes boom it's a well our stage first since February yeah first since February he does like those there was a couple of ramps I think 4 sent uh kind of little lifts on the way up to the finish line and I think white did say after the stage that those are his favorite kind of Sprints but like a few little a little bit of a r completely flash yeah he's absolutely amazing before we go through the entire stage today I just want to have a quick word about comings and goings in the Press overnight um so we've had a little bit of movement movement with people moving teams now this has been in the works for a long time and you know all of these moves are the worst capts secr in cycling but jul Julian Alf is officially joining Tudor Pro cycling so he's just signed a three-year deal for that pro team which positions them really well for tur of France Wild Card invite because they would naturally they're not a world tour team so they don't naturally get an invite so joining taking Julian alip in kind of almost guarantees them a spot it wouldn't say guarantees but yeah they're definitely hand up for it yeah they're hand up for it so he's off there which is absolutely brilliant the next person who's heading to um is heading away is white poles he's leaving bat rain Victorious and he's heading to aana and also news hot of the press is that Ethan hater from inos is going to sedal quickstep so that's quite interesting isn't it and Leo hater EO I'll try that again Leo hater eatan hater's brother that's like a tongue twist he announced his sort of stepping away from cyclings the other day on Instagram which was really sad Leo's a huge Talent as big is eaten talent-wise anyos Rider but he came out and sort of said he's been suffering from really bad mental health difficulties and his only way forward is to walk away from the sport so hopefully he'll be back but that was a really sad story as well so yeah definitely we've had a couple of coms and go yeah sorry Mark Hershey is actually also going to team shooter Pro cycling that's a big one as well yeah so they have they're making a nice Deep Field there okay should we move on to today's stage yes let's have a quick look at the parkour today stage I know we recapped yesterday at the finish of yesterday's podcast it was very similar to yesterday's stage it was 182 km starting out in L LCA and finishing in Castello Branco and we had on it a second category climb and a fourth category climb the second category climb was with 107 km to go 17.5 km long and this is round where I fell asleep we were watching today for I watched the entire thing it was boring Parts well yeah Parts it were quite slow and then the cut four climb of 42k to go 6.4 km at 3.1% average it was very similar parkour to yesterday yeah it was so we did see a breakaway it happened to be the same uh much of the same uh same two teams represent yester two Spanish teams they doubled up today don't they that's right they said they no firep power with two of us now we'll send two from each team and making a fourman break so they were in the break and then we did see uh Kung camper Arts as green try and follow them and you know get in touch with them but that was shut down really really really fast so why would that why would they let the four other Riders go but shut it down completely when camper arts and a few of you know those strong guys were going trying to get across I'll answer a question with a question name the four guys who were in in the break yeah yeah you don't know well mate he's the only one that I know you know I didn't know any the four to be honest and but you know Kong you know camps you know Asen they're notorious engines that's the reason we talked yesterday about how do you put out a forest fire you stamp out the spark you don't want Kong carparts and asra coming together at the front of a bike race because they're just a formidable Trio to join the forward up front and then if you're alpus and the conic if you're wel for Earths viz Lisa bike Team you have a real problem up the road where the break might potentially go to the finish on a day that there's only two days really for the sprinters and that was going to spoil the party yeah speaking of camper he made that really late bit I mean it was kind of like a suicide mission was it do these things ever work yeah like that was 1.7 km to go it was a little bit of a stall and a stall is relative cuz I think the last 20 minutes of the race played out a roughly 64 km an hour average speed which was in insane so to get away from a bunch that's going 64 km an hour you do the M you got to be going fast but those moves do work you typically said I'm working more in amateur races where in an amateur race where everyone's getting ready for the Sprint and everyone saying okay I need to conserve energy be in the right place for the Sprint and then someone takes a flyer the problem is then you've put a decision to Riders so anyone that wants to go and close you down their race is over and amateur level teams aren't as well organized you don't have Lead Out men you don't have people that are as willingly going to sacrific themselves for their friends in a race you know they've taken the Sunday away from their family to go and race a bike it's got to be a pretty selfless teammate to lay their entire Sunday on the line to close down a move for their buddy to Sprint so you see those moves working more often than amateur races but carpent Hearts has to be respected in one of his Vlogs I was watching on his YouTube channel which he posted kind of sporadically but there was one last year where he was in a training camp in Spain and he had four two-minute efforts to do in the training camp and he weighed 69 kg at the time and he was doing them at roughly 630 Watts for 2 minute efforts so that tells you 1.7k to go it's roughly a 2-minute effort maybe slightly longer he was going away there at north of 600 watts and the bunch closed them down but he's a proven engine you need to close him down he is yeah I mean look we've seen him do it he got that amazing stage in the tur of France and yeah his story is absolutely super So speaking of inos a few moments go they're bleeding uh teammates at the moment Josh Tarling so I don't know it's Tarling is kind of the darling is he at the moment I think probably because we follow a lot of the uh Brit British press that and he does get a lot of airtime he he is quite popular at the moment how do you think he would have been feeling today after his crash yesterday and his disappointment after the TT on stage one well I think he's popular because there's a romance around harling almost that he feels like one of the local Club Lads who's done well because the that sort of culture that's grown up around time traling in the UK and it feels quite accessible that anyone can go on a Wednesday night and they can race against harling so they can compare themselves to him and go hey you only beat me by seven minutes in the local 10 you know because his times are astonishing so I think that's why he is quite relatable he would have had a very bad sleep last night after coming down he came down if anyone didn't see it about two kilometers to go yesterday as part of the lead out just no one's fault just a racing incident but he came down hard quite a bit of Road Rush from the pitchers I seen afterwards so every time he turned last night he was going to wake with the pain he was lightly going to be sticking to the sheets and pretty miserable but he did look pretty good today he was asked at the starts how he was feeling he said Laura Messinger asked him how is the head and how is the legs and he responded saying the legs are pretty good so from that you can read like that his head isn't in a great spot at the moment his body language was again quite the head down wasn't really making eye contact with the interviewer it was yeah it was it was quite obvious he's feeling quite low it's good to see Riders wear their heart at their sleeve and it's not something that we see a lot from particularly this hangover from sky and in where they seem to be totally you know robots told exactly what to say by their P Spin Doctors so it's kind of nice to see that inos just looks like a depressing place to be at the moment it does that's kind of what we said after we watch watched that interview we're just like oh I don't think morale seems very very high everyone's leaving as well staff was leaving like we you know D Bingham announced he's gone Rod ellingworth gone a while now you know what's going on with Steve cumin he was left out a tour of France you know it seems all over the place like they're losing Riders they're star Riders as well when they should be attracting those type of riders but yeah so going back to the race and I know that you did kind of cover the the Sprint in the final couple hundred meters but what did you actually think of the run in the runin is interesting because it had the super wide roads and wide roads they can be tricky for a lead out because if you think about a narrow road you have limited real estate so you can't go 15 20 wide on a road that's you know one lane wide you five six guys so the main Sprint teams and GC teams normally make an effort to get to the front and then the road is closed because it's only them that have the availability to attack or increase the pace and they're all on the same page you normally see it a little bit more controlled and there's not this huge fight once they're in position they hold position and they ride just as fast as they need to go to maintain that position when we're on the wider roads that can actually just be total chaos because you have the initial fight to get to the front but then there's no barrier to re-entering the front cuz you don't have a geographical constraint like you do with the narrower Road you have no barrier to get into the front only legs and speed so you see people literally launching like 11 1200 watts around the outside trying to move up and because of this constant need to move up the teams who are need to be at the front your visma Lisa bike your Don conic and the GC teams who are trying to position their Riders they have to keep getting faster and faster and faster because the only way to maintain position is speed so you have what we talked about like a 64 km an hour average for the last 20 minutes which is absolute insanity and for me that's just those wide roads they can be some of the most stressful days like on the narrow road if you're in you know P40 with 2K to go you're pretty much pinned there you're not moving up but on this you always have the potential to move up uh when the when the lead out trains for the Sprint teams or the Sprint Riders are getting ready in this kind of last 10 kmers so we see the GC Riders up front they're making sure that they're safe their teams are taking care of them so we saw EF we saw all of the guys who aren't really going to be contended we call efgc now cuz that's an interesting one we'll talk about for tomorrow cuz carop has we've kind of known him more as a stage Hunter recently and now is he here to ride GC he's riding GC until he's not R GC yeah exactly well they still want to keep him safe until they get him into the mountains anyway so I guess keeping their captain safe but then today yesterday we had a safe zone of 4 km so for people who are new to this basically means that if there's a crash within 4 km of the Finish Line you will get the your time will remain the same am I your time of the group you're when to crash will remain the same so yesterday was for 4 km today was for 3 km was this kind of safe zone so you do see the GC or sorry those teams that aren't contending the Sprint drop off a little bit then a small bit but not much because you still the bunch can still split and there's time like you don't all get the same time just because you cross the 3K safe Zone and the commentators kind of make it seem like that a lot of time but the if there's a split in the bunch the time is taken from the front of the first split to the front of the second split so you know today you have W for art is the front of bunch one but if someone lets a wheel go in P20 the time is taken from w f art to that person that's let the wheel go so one small Gap you could end up losing 4 seconds or 5 Seconds just for two three bike lens so you still need to stay up if you're a GC rer you can't totally relax in the last 4K and the commentator is always going of make it seem like oh you know it's 4K to go it's safe Zone we're all getting the same time it's like it's not really like that okay no that's really really interesting to know so moving on back on to White do you think he's going to try and hold on to this Jersey tomorrow cuz parkour tomorrow is very different no not a hope uh we'll go through the Parkour in a second but no it's just it's way to hilly tomorrow so now I think his time in red is over and yeah good old run for him and are they going to try and keep it within the team I don't think that would be the plan I think you won't see a concerted effort from seus to attack AR Keen uten Brook where to believe they're joint leaders but I don't think they are joint leaders we'll see U Brook's been riding well but I think you'll see SE racing the GC guys he'll race rogl hard he'll race caraz hard all these guys and if the Jersey comes it comes it's not something he'll try and avoid we all know the viman Lisa bike they're not afraid to take on responsibility so he won't be shunning that Jersey you know he W have well to overall last year he's here with one of the stronger teams you know Dylan Van Bar's obviously been a loss but no he definitely won't be trying to avoid taking it but it won't be something actively they're going to race and see where the racing takes them how are the sprinters going to feel looking into go home tonight well see can get over a lot of this stuff and he also has that Advantage look maybe Kaden Groves will do it and Corbin strong some of these guys and try and go in the break the only reason they're going in the break it's not to try and win a stage it's to give themselves like a 10minute head start on the climb interestingly I interviewed cavendish's coach today probably won't be released till after of wealth at this stage uh vasilius and he worked with Cavendish initially when Cavendish signed for quick step back in the day so what would that 2022 2020 22 I don't know year escapes me or he was analyzing data there all the big teams now are working with data scientists and he was looking at the data Cavendish from his very best like his most winning years when he was winning four or five stages as turle France those years he wouldn't have made the time cut with the way he was climbing in modern cycl it's changed that much so we talked about so much Cav's preparation leading into tour to France this year people were like why you sending Cavendish to tour of Swiss there's no Sprint opportunities why is cavish away an altitude Camp that's going to dampen all the speed in his legs they had to do that to get him through the time court so so much of having this just preparation was actually just making the time court and then the last month leading into the tour they got back to focusing on sprinting wow yeah so it's gone so fast yeah that is going to be an amazing interview Anthony came in to me after it ended and was just like oh my God my mind's completely blown the information I got and you know the Aver cyclist can use those training techniques to get better themselves okay so will we go and have a little look at the results for today so the stage win went to W as we know delighted for him second was Kaden Groves third was John aburi and he's from that team that have been very very aggressive esal esadi they're Basque team Bas team super well-known team they've had great riders for the years Sammy Sanchez and guys like that both they haven't been on the scene as much pulling out these type of results honestly looking through some of the top five and six like I don't know who some of these guys are which is mad but they're Spanish Riders it's their race they've been training all year for this and yeah like they're they're getting their name out there they're getting their kid out there that team uh use Catal use Kad Anthony am I I'm sure that um but I think that they might have got the most combative team today and they well deserved it because there was one or two of their team members basically in shot for the entire day they got a lot of air time and you know that the team gets 3,000 for the for that prize drinking money for drinking money and they have a fanatical fan base as well like The Basque fans are insane and they love that team more than anything wow because a lot of the sponsors of the team are Bas a lot of the ERS the team or Basque I know I'm not sure if they're still riding orb but they used to ride orb which is a basque brand as well so it's really like ingrained in the culture wow okay yeah no honestly they've been very interesting to watch I love how how they dig in just another quick uh fun fact on the fees or the prize money for the intermediate Sprint today the team that win it get 500o and the commentators were giving out about it saying that you know L wela don't really believe in inflation because over the years it's remained at around 500o plus if you're to win an intermediate Sprint in the charot of France you get ,500 Euro so Lala have a little bit of catching up to do okay so GC we still have white fer behind him we have Brandon uh magnotti who's 13 seconds behind and Matas vak from Little track he's 15 seconds behind then we have Stefan Kung and Eduardo affini but this is all going to change so much over the next couple of days yeah no 100% so let's have a look through uh tomorrow stage or do you want to run through from reaction from yeah quote from white white said it was a very special Victory to win my first in the vaa and it's been a difficult year it's been a while since I could raise my arms that makes it much more special to win again today looking back at when I wore won in the tour I was wearing yellow that was in 2022 that was one of the best days of my career too and today in the leader Jersey of the valta is something to be very proud of too and today was White's 10th stage win in Grand tourist so well done W you're absolutely amazing welta starts tomorrow the welta starts tomorrow I think so Placencia to Pico valoras it's 167 km interestingly there's only a small bit extra climbing there's 500 M extra climbing tomorrow than there was today and we call today a sprinter stage and tomorrow is an out now GC stage that's because of the distribution of those alt meters tomorrow it's all really packed into that last climb the climb does start early tomorrow but that's not you know uncommon for welta espia there's a category 2 climb and a category one climb boat inside the first 54 km and there's bonus seconds on the next climb after that which is a category 3 climb but really the peak over lauras is it's where we seen Roman B winning back a few years ago that's where it's at it's 14.6 km at 6.2% average grade but that doesn't tell the story the toughest part of the climb it comes from these cement ramps in the final 4 km so we have 500 M at 20% and there's meant to be really bad like drainage traction ditches on the road all the way up this but the three kmers leading into that 20% section are averaging 15% so this is absolutely Savage you couple that with the forecast tomorrow for extra heat it's meant to be up over 30° tomorrow it's 30 today I think 32 is the forecast tomorrow that's the thing we're heading you know deep it was heading Inland in Portugal today you could actually see the fire brigade the fire Services out and they were had the big water cannons and they were spraying down the Pelon as they passed through so they were getting ahead of the peleton every couple of kilometers and spraying them down and it's just going to get War yeah it's going to be it's going to be kind of 40° next week looking at parkour for tomorrow I think a break has a chance I think we could see two races a race for the stage and a race for GC the Cat 2 and the cat one climb both inside the first 54 km if it break goes clear in that if break it goes clear on a climb it's forc clear it's not let go clear so it normally has a lot of strong guys in that if we see a 10 to 15 man break going clear they definitely have a chance to get to the Finish then we're going to see fireworks on the final climb because you can't get up a climb that steep easily hopefully it's not a block head wind on it we're going to see some action all the favorites are really within 30 seconds if you should are you're looking at from rogl to sep Coast they're all contained within that 35 second Gap who's your who's your pick for tomorrow so yeah it's you know what you said caraz there I I do think kopaz has a chance tomorrow and I think he might get a little bit more leeway than the likes of SE like just looking let me pull back to GC like I don't see MN holding on to second place I definitely don't see Stephan Kong still been up there you know Jay VY could move up in 13th uh you know he's gone super well TI gagen Hart in 24 I can see him moving up as well Timon arnsman you can see him moving up I think it's going to be a battle between Almeida RIT sepos and caraz and for me caras is going to get a little bit of rope with the other Lads looking at each other and going to take a stage win any hope for Yates because Yates and Almeida apparently are joint joint leaders as well so yeah I don't know Almeida went home from the Tour of France early Yates had a full tough tour to France so they're joint leaders but I kind of suspect the Yates is going to be in support of Almeida but who knows tomorrow tell a lot yeah I can't wait for tomorrow tomorrow we'll tell a lot folks thank you for tuning in to a welta live podcast we're going to be back again tomorrow where the real welta starts in the meantime there's another video up here which I know you're going to love and click down here so you're notified when we go live tomorrow so you don't miss the stage see you then