It's stage A's of the Giroletalia, let's cure that intro
It's stage A's of the Giroletalia, let's cure 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 Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman cycling podcast. This is another one of those podcasts where I'm coming to your on location. I am in Jirona, Catalonia at the moment doing a little bit of cycling and doing a little bit of work. And this is falling into the work slash cycling category as most of my life does. Difficult to put into one firm basket we're going to call it road slash cycling. Today we had stage eight of the Jiro de Talia. We started it out in Foggia this morning and it was a stage that started to break away being really really difficult to establish and I want to talk to you about today's stage the tactics that went on how we finished up but before I jump into all that just let me remind you as always about patreon about patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltz because that's how we fund the podcast. That's how we keep the show on the road. That's how we're able to bring it to you day after day up the production quality. Some amazing guests already lined up for post-jure of the Talia and the big commitment to obviously getting it daily during the jure. So if you want to buy me a beer, which I will be happy to consume over here in Jourona, head on over to Patreon and you can buy me a beer over there. The link is in the bio. So, Roman, yesterday Apologies I didn't get as your old daily podcast. I had flagged that the day before there was on a travel day to Jirona And with all the covid restrictions travels a little bit of a nightmare as you can imagine this morning Normally you would flow a Dublin into Jirona, but I have to go Dublin into Amsterdam into Barcelona And then do a bit of a transplant and automobiles to get from Barcelona down to Jirona So took the better part of 12 hours door to door to get here But delighted to be here. Got out today for a short Isroi Tree errors on the Hincapie Loop Which is one of my favorite loops in South England, but a tree are Rooved named after George Hincap. He's so really Deloited to get that in this morning and obviously back for Jiro and then get this out to you guys So today the big news pre-stage was Caleb noon abandoned the Jiro Natalia after winning yesterday today two stage wins in the bag and he's packed it in for this year's 0. Not really much surprise there. I had mentioned earlier in the podcast that we could see Caleb abandon and prepare him for the tour. We're heading into a very difficult two weeks in the 0 and I just don't see Caleb's gonna have to go through a lot of hardship to potentially get a stage win and he's already had two so you don't blame him for packing it in. The break was really hard to get away this morning and if you think about how a break is formed and And if you haven't raced, you probably won't understand how these breaks go because it's not like a Sunday race where it's just, you know, stronger, survive and then they get away. It's very tactical about who goes in the break and the politics of, you know, you don't let somebody in the break that's up on GC, you don't let somebody in the break. There's mountain points available who's threatening a mountains classification lead and the same with sprint classifications. But then you might have little tactical, like political stuff as well. Maybe a Dutch lad doesn't want to let somebody who hates in the break. So that plays out a little bit. But a lot of time how you'll see the brake going is on narrow roads when one team gets to the front. People are happy with the composition. The brake goes clear. There's obviously going to be more lads that want to get into the brake. But when the road's narrow, a team can fan out or a couple of teams can fan out and they can call it's called closing the road. You can close the road, pack the bunch so the bunch is condensed. It's difficult to maneuver around the closed road. So maybe somebody is motivated to go on the brake, but they're sitting back in 20th or it will, but it's time to get to the front because you've typically slowed down as you close the road. The brake is gone and it's out a couple of minutes so it's not worth the effort. So that closing the road thing obviously only walks on roads that are quite narrow because you can't close a four-way dual-courage way.
Today that's what happened a little bit
And today that's what happened a little bit. So we had this cocktail of the race was quite nervous. We had crosswinds, we had rolling roads and we had woahid roads which were very hard to close the roads on. So the crosswinds kept the pace open up but up because the GC guys didn't want to be caught in a split back the road because then Royville's would stay pressed on the gas all day and we're coming to a key stage tomorrow. So this meant the pace was frantic from the off and it was difficult and eventually it did get a big break clear. We break around 15 with some noticeable notable names in a Victor Carprenart our era record holder Nelson Oliver, Guevert, we had Gaviria in there and Victor Lefé, Gavatsy, Nicholas, Ernst, they were all in there so there's a lot of firepower on us. The Gaviria crashy milled himself onto the sentence. We don't often see crashes out of the break like that. You normally associate them with crowd-bunch tents into the flying but nasty enough one and if anyone that knows what they were looking for, the Kelly knew in commentary I was watching on British Eurosport and Kelly knew. Kefiria wouldn't be noticed for his climb and he had the crash and he waited to go back to the doctor's car until a climb on the hardest part of the climb and he went back and he was definitely saying to the doctor don't you worry fam you take your time cleaning up those cuts or you will happily hold on to this car all the way up the climb. The break today was once it went it was always going to stay to the finish because the closest GC guy on the break was at 15 minutes. Obviously Francis D'Gio had a, they really did not want to lose GC today. Like we have Atelier-Valta, not a household name from Francis D'Gio leading the GC and he felt he could hold on to the jersey, he was talking all his pre-regs interviews about how he felt he could hold on to the jersey and Francis D'Gio and manned up Like for Pino they haven't been doing, they have to do him much riding because Pino shit. And he abandons, or he starts crying every year in the Grand Tour. So we haven't had much Grand Tour riding on the front of the bunch to do. Oi Flag that I think David Godot was a better GC rider for them. But you know, this kid is stepping up, Valtya is stepping up and he's wearing the Maglia Rosa. And he's wearing it well at the moment. So coming into the final we had two races playing out we had the one as we normally do in the breakaway and we had the one for the GC guys in the bunch. Now the one for the breakaway they knew they had the stage so there wasn't having to commit all the way until the finish to stay clear to the break. They knew the stage is there so what you have is this internal dynamic playing out in the break where it's trying to guess it's almost like playing a game of cards. You're trying to figure out each other's wealth of strengths and weaknesses. You don't have to be the best climber in the world or the bunch, but are you the best climber in the breakaway? Are you the best form in the effort in the breakaway? Do you have to go on a downhill? Can't one go? Maybe you can go on the downhill, but he can't corner too well. So all this stuff is kind of playing out and they're sourcing each other out and Victor Carpenter's was world-era record holder, wanted to get clear. He didn't fancy himself on the final climb. So he wanted to get clear. He tried again and again and again. And he finally forged a clear with Carboni from Bardiani and Carbon Arts. And he would have combined quite well and then Carboni dropped Carbon Arts with about three kilometers to go. And it looked like Bardiani were nailed on for a victory that would have been a famous one for the Italian team. But Victor Lefey, 25 year old Cofedus Reuter, sprung from the early break and he had diamonds in his legs. He was super strong. past carpenters, past carboni and took a famous stage victory for Kofus. It's 11 years since Kofus have had a win in the Jiro d'Halya. They don't come that frequently but they're the longest standing team in the peloton so it is super to see them getting the win. Back to road we have the second race and you know for me the more exciting one. I love the GC guys and Israel's the art of the nation. They kind of kicked it off with about 10k to go down Martin pushing for for that podium place, he's obviously feeling good. Then we had EF taking the Roberto Betheol who came in as co-team leader, the Tour of Flanders winner taking the rub for Hugh Cardi on the front.
Then any else came over the top of Martin is and Moscone for a burn…
Then any else came over the top of Martin is and Moscone for a burn out. But honestly it was going to reload but no shots were fired. It was a little bit boring in the end to finish from the GC guys. Nothing too massive happened. They sort of study jutter down most of the mistakes were dropped the big GC guys were left and they stood each other down they stared each other in the face like they were at a box and way in and they said you know what we're gonna lock it up till tomorrow because tomorrow it's an important GC day tomorrow there will be gaps so all the focus is gonna be on that now and also Remko Evan Paul Remko's in a lot of the media attention has been on Remko this week the cameras love him social media loves him he's you know the great hope of Belgium he's on the front the Belgian press today, maybe the first Belgians in Zeddi Merkis to take pink in the Jiro d'Italia. Remk goes in completely uncharted territory at the moment, he's never raced more than seven days, so how will he respond? I don't know, I don't know, any of the answers without him being out of party power, sticking on a lot of money, but tomorrow is definitely going to give us a clue as to how Remk goes. You hear a lot of guys who've raced, the grand tourers talking about, you just need to get into the fourth rest day with a grand tour and then you sort of rest with Floyd's So the rest day is the day after tomorrow. So let's see how he does tomorrow and gets into the rest day So today we have that famous victory from Victor Lefebhe 11 years as I said since coverless last win a great one for the 24 year old and the podium He looks about 11 as well So I can't believe how young he looks But Cavazzi was second and Nicholas aren't was towards that leaves us with a GC That is unchanged atelier Valte from FDGA is still leading the race with a cumulative time of 31 errors already you'll know if you're riding 10-15 hours a week how long 31 hours is. So he's 11 seconds clear of the great hope for Belgium, Rimmko, Ebenpaul, Brannal 16 seconds, blast off 24 seconds and Hugh Cardi in 5th to 38 seconds. I've been saying as the days went on, this GC would be something to actually reflect of what we're going to see in Rome two weeks from now. It's getting there, Valtier I don't think is going to stay there for much longer, they'll be shuffling around, god knows who goes where, but Hugh Karity, Vlassov, Bernal, Evan Paul, wouldn't bet against four of those guys being in the top five. Tomorrow is a stage you do not want to miss, we are starting off in Castel, the Sangro and we're finishing up Campo Feliz, and that is 158 kilometers and the final of it is the difficult ascent up to the ski station, at Campo Feliz. Bunch of categorised climbs, it's actually the same cumulative climbing as today, but it's all just packed into the last half of the stage. Campo Feliz is a difficult climb and we're gonna see splits on GC. Remko, Bernal, Vlasov, Hugh Cardi, Dan Martin, they lowered the gones today, tomorrow we forward them. Roadman, thanks for listening too, I suppose what you would call a roadman, special podcast from Geronnet, I'm out here, I've only booked the one by Floyd actually but that in no means means I'm moving here, I'm gonna stay for a week, maybe a little bit more so I will keep you posted day on day as we go. Roadman, thanks for listening, I'll chat to you again 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 Kickstarter 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 guess walk out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's the 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.