Cavendish equals Merckx, Eddy's response
History has been made. Mark Cavendish, 34, Tour de France, Stage wins. 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 Walsh and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Welcome back to this historic roadman cycling podcast because today on stage 13 of the Tour de France, Mark Cavendish, the manx missile, he has grabbed his fourth win of this year's Tour de France, no mean feat in itself, but also this sums up a total of 34 wins from Mark Cavendish, making him the joint most successful stage winner in Tour de France history with the great Eddie Merckes. What a sensational day, what a sensational result, what a sensational career. But Eddie Merckes, I didn't feel was as, I don't know what I was hoping, we all have this image of how we expect or hope a great champion will behave. And there's no doubt Eddie Merckes is the greatest boy-grider I think when you ask anyone who knows cycling, you ask cycling men, cycling people about the greatest rider ever, Eddie Merck's name is going to come up time and time again as the greatest ever. But I was maybe hoping for him to just have a little bit more humility or a little bit more, you know, just say, yeah, Mark's a great rider, Chappal, hats off, Mark, but instead he came out with this and here's a quote, I want 34 stages by winning sprints in the mountains. Oh, sorry, by winning sprints in the mountains, in time trials and going on the attack on the sense. Let's not forget the five yellow jerseys I've got at home plus the 96 days I wore yellow. Does that not seem much? Naturally, I'm not trying to play down what he's achieved. Also, because he's been through a difficult time and he's falling in love with cycling again. There's a great message for young people in sport. I don't know Eddie, you don't need to point out how great you are. We all know how how great you are. You're the greatest cyclist ever. Let other people say how great you are and just you celebrate Mark Cavendish's amazing achievement of 34 stage wins. Because if we want to get really nitty and gritty about who has 34 better stage wins, there's definitely an argument you could make that Cavendish has one 34 road stages. Mark's has I think in excess of 10 TTs in there which I don't know are they real stage wins like there's some team time trials and some individual time trials I don't know that's not a debate I think Merc should have got into he should have just taken the high ground and said welcome another great champion here we go today stage 13 the lead out again was just spectacular from Quickstep it was one that could have easily gone so wrong because the last four kilometers was just filled with street furniture, twists, turns and mike on Markov. He's just he's a safest hands in the house. If I have a baby I want mike on Markov delivering that baby. He is a safe set of hands and I feel like now the pressure is completely off Cavendish.
Pyrenees time cuts and crash chaos
Thirty-three stage wins, one short of it going into the Pyrenees where there's potential to miss time cuts. I feel like there's a lot of pressure on. He's equal to record if he doesn't make the here in the east, which incidentally I do think he will make the parent in the east. If he doesn't make the parent in the east, he is the joint most successful rider in Tour de France history. I think equalling the record is a lot more important than getting the record outright. That said, I can't remember Calvin Dichmin on this sort of form ever, so I expect he will make the parent in the east on the time cuts unless we see something drastic. Tim de Clercam down a pretty bad crash today, and it was a huge crash today. anyone saying like 60 kilometers to go or 65 kilometers to go, there was gravel on the road, on the corner and a ravine. And like, I'm not joking a proper fucking ravine. And there was no advance warning to the Reuters we've heard Matt Goyce friend of the show. Matt's gone nuts that there's not an advance warning. Cause Simon Yates is he was riding the throw off our stage wins, we're moving into the Pyrenees and he was doing for preparation for the Olympics. He's obviously he's out of the store now, so he's not going to win stages, but his Olympic form is potentially jeopardized. We're four withdrawals today and three of them because of that crash. What I can't get is, I've been a spectator at the Tour de France, you go there and you're on the road, I don't know, two hours before the race comes past and you're drinking and stuff. But it's a constant stream of traffic from marshals to policemen to organizers to a full parade, kind of like the fucking Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, goes past, forced and then the Reuters come past. There's literally 400 vehicles have gone past the spot before the Reuters get to it. How are they not radioing back to the team cars to say you have gravel corners on and they weren't? So this isn't me hypothesizing that the Reuters didn't know about this. They've come out and said they didn't know about these dangerous corners. The teams ahead, The team managers weren't relaying this information because they weren't giving this information. For me, this is all so bizarre and another massive crash in a tour that you'll be remembered for a couple of things, definitely the cavernous record. I think the cavernous record in this tour is more important than the GC battle because Pogacha has basically ruined soiklin, he's that dominant. He's so far ahead of the rest of the GC guys that the GC battle is mute. So this tour since the end of week one has been about that record and Cavendish. Sure, we might get some exciting racing in the pair of days, but I just don't see GC really heating up the race for the podium. Let's be honest, the race for the podium is a bit shit. Do we really care who comes second and tour or maybe that's just me being Seneca bastard, but I only care about watching that race for the win. It never excites me going. Is Rigobert Thoran gonna get on the podium? I just don't care.
Stage 14 preview and GC outlook
So GC at the moment, look how dominant this is. Pogacha is leading it and Rigoberto runs a 518 with the lad from Holland who is good so we need to learn how to pronounce his name. Vinegar, Jonas Vinegar, 532. If there's any Dutch listeners, maybe send me an Instagram on roman.soycling. Send me an Instagram with the pronunciation of the on this vinegards name because I'm definitely butchering it. Carapaz is at 5.33, Beno Conners at 5.58. Just don't see much going on the top spot. You might see a bit of juggling from 2 to 5. I feel like the pressure is on tomorrow. Tomorrow is at 168.9 kilometers and we're starting out in where we finished today. Car Casa None to Quillan and it's a spicy enough day. We're up and down all the end of forecast is very hot again tomorrow. We're seeing Reuters putting all these packs down the back of the jersey. We've got three second-capped climbs and two toward Calgary's climbs tomorrow. Today you're gonna have to get up the road. There's so many teams who've got absolutely nothing out of this race so far. Sponsors are getting on them, DS's are getting on them. They need to get something out of this. They're gonna be aggressively going up the road tomorrow. It's gonna be a very very hard day to control, Pogacha and the UAE lads just need to be alert to not let a huge group up their order and not let a group would anyone in the side the top 10 up their order. Should be straightforward enough for them but with so much up and down and that heat you just never know but so many teams have got zero out of this race and they need to get something out of this race not just looking at Francis the show because they're one of a number of teams who've got nothing out. Hopefully we've now crashed tomorrow because the race is getting decimated by crashes and There's so many lessons I think safety wise we can learn from this race and hopefully after the race we pause, we exhale and we reflect and see what these lessons are. But I think today it's all about one thing, it's all about one man, it's Mark Cavendish, the Manx Missoa equaling the great Eddie Merckes' record of 34 Tour de France stage wins. Roadmen, I'll be back tomorrow, ride safe and I'll chat to you then. 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 a faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, 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 roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.