Row Man at stage 15 of the Giro d'Italia
Row Man at stage 15 of the Giro d'Italia. Let's cure our 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 on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Welcome back Stage 15 of the Hero D'Talia 15 stages 15 podcasts. Actually no it's 15 stages 14 podcasts. I missed the day that I was traveling to Jourona and I'm still out here in Jourona enjoying myself. Nice spinny spinny spinny. That's not even really a word It's a nice handy three hours bin today. Just amazing riding out here. As soon as you get out of town, you're into the hills. And it's just a crazy variety. Couple that with the Mad Cycling history, the place, the climate, lacquercars. It's just like scalelectrics for cyclists, just sticking it together. So every evening I'm trying to just piece together what that route is for the next day. So after the podcast this evening, that's what I will be doing. Anyway, I digress it with stage 15 of the Jiro d'Italia from Gradle to Gorsia. 147 km, and this is sandwiched in between two super important days in the Hui Mountains. The first time the Jiro has left Italy this year, today we delved into Slovenia. Before I dive into all that, let me remind you, as always, about Patreon. the podcast, it'll take you two seconds to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh, buying me to price for beer once a month to support the podcast, it helped fund all the backend posts cost to the podcast and it turns this from a little bit of a passionate soy hustle into something with merit and sustainability going forward. So anyone who's contributed already, I thank you very much. And for anyone who hasn't, please take one moment to make just a small little donation. You need to check out the video on Instagram search. I can't remember his handle name, but search Albert O'Contreur on Instagram and you'll find the video of him watching the finish to yesterday's stage on Zonkelung where his roidor Fortunato won up on Zonkelung and Contreur sort of records the last 600 meters of his reactions to the last 600 meters and he was He was never a roider who was massively passionate. That's maybe not the only justice. He was maybe internally passionate, but he never expressed that in an exuberant way externally. And he definitely does in this video. It's just raw passion and you can see what it means to him to have one of his roiders in a team that's struggling to get a foothold. And there are early force-to-use seasons. It's always super difficult for teams to wrestle with sponsors. and we're going to hear that from one of the bigger teams in a great success story later on. But just getting it all together and him and Basel have done such a great job and to win up Monzon Kalong it must just make all that hard work really worthwhile. We had a massive stack up in the four-seal kilometers today as the break was trying to establish. The break was actually pretty much established and we had Victor Carpernerts and some of his Quebecasas guys in there And the race was neutralized as a result of the crash. Now at the time I was thinking this is unprecedented, it's a racing incident, they need to let it go but I'm just to be honest I was a little bit hothead with those sort of sentiments because they don't stop races without good race and it was the early kilometers but so many people were injured in the crash. We had three abandons including Buckman from Borahansgroft, the highest profile one but apparently there was the volume of people that were injured in the crash. There wasn't enough medical personnel for the race to continue. So they'd ferried all the people to hospitals and ambulances and they didn't have ambulances. So they were waiting for a fresh batch of ambulances to rejoin the back of the race in case there was a subsequent crash, which thankfully there wasn't.
Was a massive, massive stack up
But yeah, it was a massive, massive stack up. Now we're not used to seeing them that early in the race. And I think the race director in hindsight is the right call stopping the race because trying to neutralise it, the Reuters wrong along, it wasn't happening at all for them. The last 15 kilometres just made for epic television today because it absolutely pissed cats and dogs out of the heavens in Slovenia and we had carpenter and roising back from carpenter from Quebeca, Assos and roiser back from Alpason, Fenix and they separated themselves from the big breakaway of the day and they had Torres from movie star, he was with them for a a little bit, he was the fastest that would have treed to be fair, but they knew that and they gave it some gas on the last climb and about 15k to go and got rid of him. What was interesting for me between carpreneurts and roisingbeck, because the last 8km, they only had really 15 seconds on the chase group behind. And at what point in the breakaway does your relationship turn from collaborative to competitive? Because obviously in the early stages of the breakaway, if there's, you know, we're giving an example of there's just the two guys, carpenters and his escapee roisenberg today. So the two boys are away. They're clearly motivated with 200km to go to cooperate. They have a mutual enemy to Peloton and they want to share their efforts to stay away from the Peloton. But as they approach the finish line, we all agree that with 200m to go, their relationship is no longer collaborative. It's torn to a competitive one. It's a straight out competitive one. It's a forceman across the line. It's full gas. But what's interesting is, where you're on the spectrum, that switch happens. We're around 8km to go today, we're only 15 seconds, which was a small enough gap to the chasers. They made the decision to turn it from collaborative to competitive, and we rarely see it switching to competitive that early and still surviving to the finish. I would have typically said the lads would have been better off served, riding into the last 2km, then assessing the gap and starting to play games. They started super super early. A mistake in my opinion, but looked they stayed away and in the end it was Carpurnarts had a little bit too much for his escapee companion from Albus and Fenix. I think he just fucked up the sprint. It just looks like he started it too early and had too much sprinting to do. I think he had better legs than Carpurnarts and it was interesting even as tactic in the last few kegus carpurnarts attacked and Instead of closing the gap straight away, he elected to give him a 10-boy cleanse and just sit there 10-boy cleanse. This is strategically very clever because Rosenberg is... Rosenberg, sorry, is... 10-boy cleanse behind, but carpenters fully committed. So the gap is, although they're, as we referenced that, collaborative to competitive, although it's now competitive and they're full gas, he's still getting a bit of an air-o-advantage from being 10 boy clans back but their gap to the chasers is being extended so it was really nicely played it's worth watching the last 3k to see how that was done but it didn't work carpreneurts came back together looked for the world like it was going to be rising back to those carpreneurts in the end and it's actually a win i'm super happy with it i know kabekka assas have won three times in the last five days but it's a team that i really love the ethos of the team like carpreneurts afterwards in the interview he said the word you bum too I am because we are the South African world and it's their team ethos and their team, their team that's fought really really hard to stay alive and they have a noble corpus. They're trying to poke children in Africa on bikes because they believe that a bike in a child's life can change his life and they're really struggling to do this.
Their team owner Doug Reuter who's meant to be a good guy and I know…
Their team owner Doug Reuter who's meant to be a good guy and I know he struggled to keep the team together this year. He's been massively rewarded this cheerlet tally of a tree stage wins already and he's hunting for the sponsor for next year and you know cyclin's it's a tough business at the moment so you know we'll see if he keeps it together or not but it was brilliant to watch today and Carpurnaerts is you know I've talked all week about how I'm really warm into Bernal but Carpurnaerts is my favorite writer in the bunch to watch him in interview he's just he's great value from money. He's the world there or record holder and he is absolutely brilliant. So let's talk about tomorrow because tomorrow is 17 minutes later the peloton rolled in today behind the breakaway and there was only one reason for that because their eye is firmly fixed on tomorrow the Dolomites. When we take it a year out of the Talia Rose epic TV advertisements like the world's most beautiful race in the world's hardest race in the world's most beautiful place. Everything's shot in the Dolomites. The GC battle, the Queen's stage, it's tomorrow. We're one more day from the second rest day, both the GC guys are going to do battle tomorrow. The stats on tomorrow stage, they're melt water, it's 212 kilometers. Now, thinking about We're in the stage 16 tomorrow, it's 212k stage, there's 5,700 vertical meters. You heard that right, 5,700 vertical meters getting tomorrow. Four category one climbs, narrow sense, we've got the Chimo Cup at the highest point of this year's year of Natalia coming tomorrow. A lot of tomorrow's race is going to take place at over 2,000 meters of altitude. you know what that means when the body gets over 2000 meters of altitude, processing oxygen, oxygen to the muscles, it gets really difficult. And there's a certain type of human, the new type of human, the better type of human who is just really, really good at this. Adam Yates is living up in Andorra and he's trying to get better at it. But it is, this is the playground for one man, Egan Bernal. Adam Yates is living up in Andorra trying to get better at it. Egan Bernal was born at this altitude. I expect Egan will run out to put the final nail in the coffin of his GC rivals tomorrow at both 2000 metres and bring it home for a team in Eos this year. Tommy will tell we have no change in GC today but we're going to have a massive change in GC tomorrow. I'm absolutely looking forward to it and honestly on just such an Egan Bernal fanboy as this year all goes on so definitely wishing them all the best for tomorrow. Thanks for joining me, congrats to Victor Carpernarts today, Yobunto is a worthy team It's a worthy cause and great to see them bringing home their turd victory in five days. Roadmen, ride safe and I'm gonna chat to you tomorrow. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the Roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is gonna be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's Masters, Beginner, Advanced. There's Mail Plans, Shopping List, and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio. That's roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.