It's stage 2 at the Giro Natalia
It's stage 2 at the Giro Natalia. 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. This podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Roman, welcome back to another Roman cycling, Jiro d'Italia special podcast. As I said, I've committed to doing it daily, Jiro d'Italia, nearly said Jiro d'Italia, the France Jiro d'Italia podcast. And that's what I'm doing. I'm up to day two on this beautiful race. Day two was a cracker today. We had 179 kilometers into the village of Navarro. Roadmen, as always, before I jump into the podcast, let me remind you how we've found this podcast. It's really cool that we haven't had to take on any sponsors in the podcast so far. It's all user-funded, user contribution. So if you want to support the podcast, all I'm asking is the price of a beer. Once a month, you can make that donation over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Welsh. And we keep the show on the road. We keep paying for guests. we keep paying for all the expenses to come with hosting the podcast. Okay, roadmen, we had it south from Turin today for stage two. Felipe Bogana from team Iniels was obviously our overnight leader and he was looking resplendent in pink. It's a confident man that sticks a pink saddle on his bike with a little bit of pink bar table. And here Felipe Bogana, you just get to walk around like your fucking King Kong. And that's what he was doing today. He was peacocking lads in the the Palatone out of it looking pretty, pretty cool. At the start line today, I'm sure if the news broke on the start line, you just always hear people saying that. On the start line today, I heard the news that Sam Bennett won't be renewed in his contract with the Kona Quickstep next season, which is some pretty big news given the success he's had last year's green jersey in the Tour de France, a notable high point in his career with Quickstep. I actually felt like I've seen this one come on Quickstep notoriously, don't have the budget of the bigger teams and Ben has come towards the twilight of his career. Maybe he has two seasons left, maybe he has four. I don't know. It's also a dangerous game as a sprinter, but I feel like he needs that big pay day. He's not going to get a quick step. He's the fastest man in the world on doubtily at the moment. And like UAE, Israel, we know these are paying the big salaries. And he else probably not even thought he'd pay big salaries because they seem to have a just unrelenting focus on GC. So who knows we can get to speculate that about that over the next overcoming months, but it's an interesting story nonetheless. So back to stage two, today's stage two, we had three local riders that were going for the county prize. They were trying to get up their own early. They were gone basically from the drop in a flag today. They were all Italian teams. I'm not even going to try and pronounce their names because on butcher. Well today is race was loosely called the race because for the first four hours it was actually like a club run. It was 29.8 kilometers an hour average for the first four hours which is very very pedestrian by world tour standards. The only things to exoise is before they started to wind up the sprint was two intermediate sprints. One where Felipe Bogana took some extra time bonuses and the other where comically all the sprinters got completely wrong and sprinted for the wrong line. So we have Viviani, Gaviria, Sagan and they just all sprinted for a finish line that wasn't the finish line. And then they noticed a couple of meters, like 200 meters down the road, it was like the actual finish line.
They had to go again
So they had to go again. Sagan was the last day of that group before. I think Gaviria took the points out. But you know what, I wouldn't think Sagan I'll end up ruining that. But what it did do was just people nail their colors to the mast early and say, look, I'm here to sprint for intermediate points. I fancy myself going for sprints jersey all the way to Milan. So, you know, Gaviria, Vivian, and Sagan, that's the names we're looking at for this. Caleb, you noticeably just did not have any interest in it. He just watched the lads. He even said in his pre-race interview, I would be watching the boys are no interest in contending with those intermediate sprint points. And from the wake-out of sprinted, he also had no interest in the contender at the finish line, because it was a pretty pathetic effort for a sprint. But we'll get to that in a second. The last few kilometres had a technical enough run in, few switches around to her Viviani talking about before the race that he would call on his boys' confidence to commit and keep him in position in the front. And they actually did a pretty good job. And in the end, it was a pretty non-traumatic sprint, except for a good various lead-out man taking him into the barriers and the two of them nearly coming down in pretty dramatic fashion. But other than that, we actually had, I think a surprise winner Tim Malie who made what was kind of cool, a W-type gesture for a Walter Weylands because we're on the 10th anniversary of Walter Weylands, tragic passing in Azure on Natalia. And you really feel like it ages you when you're here, it's 10 years since an event like that. Because in getting you so become fun, we all have an idea where we were when something like that happened. And the thing that that was 10 years ago, it's like boom, blink of an eye and the time has gone. So Tim and Lee rolled away and a great one for our apples and phoenix and you know they'll be absolutely delighted with that. They're really stepping up and chilling. They're a lot more than the Machuve under Paul Schaldis is. So a great, great way in from the Belgian. We had Jacko Nizolo, the European champ coming in second. Interestingly, it's his 10th second place finish in Jiro Natalia. What's that saying? Always the broids man, never the broids. With Viviani coming in third, we're grown away again just back after a nine month ban, which I think is ridiculous by the way, that nine month ban. I don't even want to get started on that one. Grown away, it's the Torah Palania sprint down here one where we see those horrific injuries to Yachobson. Grown away can actually didn't do that much wrong in that sprint. We see this all the time. We see every single time Buhani sprints, it's worse than that. And Grown away can get a nine month ban because the UCI again just been so ridiculous and out of a touch. They're banning the consequences and not the conduct. The consequences are a boy product of the conduct. You need to ban and impose penalties on conduct, like Buhani sprinted, not Grunewegen sprinted. It happens that it was a tragic set of circumstances that led to those injuries and it's not really, but it's not annoying one ban. So absolutely fucking ridiculous that was. So Grunewegen's back after nine months, so to roll forward after your force race back after nine months is pretty damn impressive so he should be very happy with that. We had Saigon sprinting quite well, it was a sprinted suit, Saigon really worked, he's great at home position, few twists and turns, a bit of bumping and grinding on the way in the road. As I said, Caleb was nowhere near to mix up Caleb back in tent. Just he's a rotor that doesn't do that bumping and grinding too well and just boxed out and yeah it was a tough one to move up in the final once you get into it last 3-4k there was no move enough especially if you didn't have teammates around you.
Tomorrow the rolling Duro Natalia circus rolls on I imagine the…
So tomorrow the rolling Duro Natalia circus rolls on I imagine the Reuters are doing a crazy bus transfer I are still going traffic as we speak but it's 190 kilometers tomorrow stage three starting in Bella and finish in Canal. We are a rolling stage I would classify this one as not a day for the sprinters like Caleb. Actually having said that Akhaylep got over to Poggio in the Chappresa quite well in Milan San Remo. So potentially he could get over this stuff, but I don't know, Jojan on today's display. We have a toward category climb, a two forward category climbs. It feels like a Saagand thing where it's going to get rid of the big sprinters. I don't see Nizolo, Viviani, Grunewegen commented a line. Really depends how hard Bora make it for Saagand. And with the transfer, you know, saga that this Venice transfer is gonna throw up, I see the room or mail start to suggest that Sagin is maybe gonna go to Quickstep and Venice going to Bora. That's where we're going to come for it. Anyway, bro, man, tomorrow it's stage three. Enjoy that word in the early, early stages of this year. But the heroes are raised, I just absolutely love because for a long, long time, I really got into the hero And then our national race here at a Russ starts normally around the 20th of May for eight days. And I used to always miss the last week in a 0. So I missed some absolutely epic battles in the last week in a 0. So obviously no Russ this year, no Russ last year. So I'm gonna, you know, as much as I miss in the Russ and it's shit to not have a Russ, one positive of that is I'll get to see the last week in a 0. So I'm definitely excited about someone else's stages. I picked out yesterday like the gravel stage, stage 4s, our first uphill finish, Zonkalung on stage 14, and then the second last stage with that 4800 meters of climbing. It is going to be an epic cure to Talia. Thank you for joining me for the daily podcast. It's in all good podcasting places because I've got a good few DMs, people who watched it on Instagram or watched it on Twitter or Facebook and saying like where do I get the podcast? Because I want to take a whip me in my ear. You can get the podcast that's on all those places, SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast search, roadmap, cyclone podcast. And to support the podcast, the best thing you can do ordering the Patreon at the very start on the patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. Best thing you do is tell your club mates, put it into WhatsApp groups, tell your friends, share the love, that's how we grow the podcast. So it's much appreciated, roadmap, and I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in. 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 going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the 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 a master's beginner advanced. There's meal 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 roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.