1.Man, have I got a treat for you guys today

Well, man, have I got a treat for you guys today? Try and guess who this is. He's one. Liège Baston Liège, Milan San Remo. He's one of the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. He is one stage is an all-tree grand tours. The Europe, the Tour, and the Vuelta. It could only be one man. The legend. That is Simon Garens. 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 lung changes? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome roadman, it's the Roadman Podcast. Welcome back. Have I got an absolute cracker of a show for you today? As I said at the beginning, it's a man whose one stage is an all-tree grand-tores, L'Ege Baston L'Ege, Milan San Remo, he's been on the podium in the world, he is a legend of a boy grider and an all-around nice guy. It's Simon Gerns, I can't wait to get into the chat. But before I do, I'm gonna ask all you guys to do me a big favour. Press pause on this show and head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. Got his Patreon, it's how we fund the podcast. We don't have a title sponsor. Your generosity over in Patreon is what makes this podcast possible. So please don't pass the book, don't assume that someone else is going to do it. I'm asking for a small donation towards the podcast, the price of a beer once a month. That makes the podcast possible, it makes it sustainable. And I'm able to bring you world-class guests like Simon Garen's week in, week out. So head on over to Patreon and make that small little contribution. Okay guys, I've pushed it off long enough. Here he is, the legend, the mate, the man, Simon Garrens. Simon Garrens, welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Thanks Anthony. Simon, nice to have you. It's good to be here. Simon, I was doing a little bit of research for the show and I'm not sure how current this is. You were working, are still working in Goldman Sachs, is that Well, no longer working in Goldman Sachs, but that was my first venture outside of the professional pallet on, absolutely. So I started an internship at Goldman Sachs at the beginning of 2019. So I finished racing at the end of the 2018 season, moved to London from Andorra with the goal of getting a job at Goldman Sachs. So managed to sort of get in there to an internship in the Securities Division over sort of six months, which was an amazing experience. And at the end of my internship, that offered me a permanent position into the foreign exchange area. So I took up that position, worked there for sort of further six months and sort of realised that, you know what, this is probably not the path that I want to take from here on. And at that sort of deviated away from Goldman Sachs and sort of started working with a business that I'd previously invested in, which is the service course. Awesome. I want to get out the service course in a little bit because I actually had Christian Meyer on the podcast not too long ago. It's a company I love as well. When you were in the pro peloton and you're sort of the last couple of years where you're turning, I don't want to say 140 and 140 because you still had some amazing results in the last couple of years of your career, but when you're starting to have a boy on life after cycling, where you're starting to read up on on economics, finance, was this something you were always interested in? It was something that I probably became more and more interested in throughout my career, actually. I'm not going to say I already said one eye in, one eye out, or one foot out of the professional pellet, but I was constantly thinking about what came next because as a professional athlete, you realize you have an expiry date in that profession. I was very conscious of doing as much as I could throughout my racing career to give me some opportunities for what came next. And one of those things that I used to do a lot of was charity events and public speaking engagements and quite a few corporate based activities. And that enabled me to build a really strong network in the corporate sector. And that's where I came across this possibility to do an internship with Goldman Sachs. So With that, I sort of applied for an internship position there. I must have done, I lost count, I can't remember now, but it was 20 odd interviews at Goldman's before they sort of accepted me as an intern, which is pretty much part of course there. So I went through that whole process and finally they accepted me as an intern to start the year after I finished racing. So I didn't have my heart set on working at Goldman Sachs from a long way out, but it's something that sort of come about throughout my career as I've become aware opportunity and it was an area that I'd become more interested in so that in a lot of years my career I guess.

2.Isn't it wild to people in me true cycling

But isn't it wild to people in me true cycling? I'm kind of saying both we are speaking off air a little bit on my background law but I do riots these days but like senior partners are firms and if I actually had a went into law I probably wouldn't be able to get five minutes of these guys times but you can go out for a three four hour bike ride and it's almost obviously my level was never anything like your level but to them I'm just ahead of them on the ladder so they don't have a clue if I could drop them on a hill, you know, a hezo be silent errands. So they're looking up to you almost and it's this weird sort of flipping of the normal hierarchy that we see. Well it's interesting, you know, because I think coming from an elite background in cycling and stepping into a corporate sector, you'll be dealing with the most senior people in banking or in sort of private equity or or bench cap or anything like that. And they look to you as an equal because you've achieved at the highest level in your chosen field and that's what they're doing in their chosen field. So you might walk into a room and not know the first thing about banking or finance, but you're okay on their book. Whereas you might have someone that's come through the system in banking or the corporate sector and working that industry for 10 years. So they'll know more about that interest in that 11.0. yet they can't get a meeting. So it's very, it is very different coming in from a different background, but there is a massive level of respect, I think across elite sport and the sort of of Irish onto the corporate sector as well. But you know what this reminds me of, I have a buddy and he just finished doing his PhD for seven years and this is actually a comical story because the period, there's a PhD in history, but the period in history he studied was only actually four years long. So it took him seven years to study a four year period. like he could have nearly lived through that period twice. And, but he came out of it. And one of my friends was saying last week, he's like, oh, but what's he gonna get out of that? Like, and I'm tinking to myself, if you were in me up today, so I'm like, you dropped me a WhatsApp during the week. And you're like, I've this really specific question that needs answering. And it's gonna take seven years of single-minded focus to answer it. I'm like, I have to fucking man for you. That's what I'm talking about. But that's almost what you're talking about because you're a guy who was processing maybe subconsciously a lot of time, a hundred things at once, going into every corner, you're worrying about speed, you're worrying about am I on the brakes too, and what's just my pedal in the right position? I stand marked and found out, we'll chat about that one in a little bit. It's my pedal in the right position. It's both the surface, like it's a hundreds of decisions in every millisecond. And when you take that and you move it across to a business set and a bank and set, That's just so valuable, like your world class are processing hundreds of things at once. Yeah, and I think what they really respect as well is it's all done in a very high pressure environment. You're making split second decisions on instincts, whereas there's a huge amount of stake whether it goes right or wrong. And I think that's what they really love. And they love the fact that there's a bit of grip involved in getting there. You've just got to roll up sleeves on so many occasions, knuckle down and just really get it done. So I think there are a huge amount of parallels between the corporate sector and the Leesport. What's that transition like? So I'm back to real life. Is it a little bit of the grass is green? Or remember for me being on a bus from Toronto to Chicago, and it's like a 10-hour bus ride or something. And I stuffed between two fat dudes going down to a criterium. And like public transport, I was so bad it was. And I got a text off of a buddy saying, live in the dream. And I was like, that's a classic case of the grass is always greener. Did you find that a little bit that you were yawning for this corporate life? But then when you got it, you know, what it actually wasn't what you thought it might be? No, not at all. By the end of my racing career, I kind of got to a point where I thought, you know, I've achieved so much more in my professional cycling career than I would have ever dreamed of. And my best years are behind me. It's time for a new challenge. I'm ready to move on to something else.

3.Was craving that change. I was craving a new environment and new…

So I was craving that change. I was craving a new environment and new surroundings, that a new challenge. And I definitely got that by working at Goldman Sachs. And I really just had got a huge thrill out of going into a completely new, however elite environment. And I don't sort of look back on my cycling career and say, I wish I was still doing that and think like that. I've just sort of taken sort of one step at a time and I guess and just kept myself really busy really challenged throughout the process. And one thing I've always been adamant on is I never want to get to an environment where I'm not challenging myself or not learning. So I think I'm always going to seek new challenges out and to a certain extent if I get ever get too comfortable I'll be looking for something else. Have you noticed there's been a much of a lifestyle change? Are you having to rein in the diet much? I know you haven't put on a whole pile of waste since you were racing. Is that something that's been hard work rein in the calories? No, not at all actually. Often, I'm just sort of eating a heck of a lesson what I used to. I think I'll probably eat less than half of what I did when I was training and racing. I was always quite conscious of my diet when I was racing and now I just find I can just keep myself so busy that I'll often get to about 3.30 in the afternoon. I think she's having a lunch yet. I better go and grab something to eat. Are you playing around with intermittent fasting or is it almost accidental intermittent fasting? No, it's completely accidental. Completely accidental. However, I'll have a beer or two most nights now. So I'm getting the calories in other places. Look mate, as long as you're not drinking in the morning, it's not a problem. We don't need to talk about it. It's always the afternoon somewhere, mate. Typical Aussie attitude to it. Do you still watch the racing? Yeah, very much so. I'm still very interested to still have a huge amount of friends and whatnot in the professional peloton, whether they're racing or involved in racing. That was my whole world for so many years. I've never watched more racing actually than the Tour de France just gone by because I was commentating for the first time for an extended period at a race. I've watched literally every minute of the Tour de France. Oh, same. I've done a daily tour of Rans podcast. It nearly broke me. I felt like I was riding the tour. I've never ridden a tree-bake race. I can only imagine if I was a star down the podcast. What do you make of Yumbos tactics? Well, I suppose I'll tell you, forcefully, where I think maybe there's a criticism. It's obviously easy to be sitting back here, you know, a month later as an armchair critic. But it just seems like they wanted to control the race, start to finish. They never let that break go and someone else take the jersey. I know we haven't seen that as much in recent years as the Armstrong years and the Scoverer years. It feels like they have to be on every day and almost a times road unnecessarily hard on transition days, days that should have been a big breakaway. Well, you don't say hindsight is 2020, but I'm not going to be too critical whatsoever they're tactics because they had the same to do it. And ultimately they did it. their objective was to go into the final TT with Primoz Roglic on equal time with anybody else in the race and they thought they were going to win it from that point on. So the fact of the matter is they went into that final TT with 52nd over second place. So up until 48 hours before the finish of the Tour de France they thought they'd done everything right and basically had the race in the bag and that final TT Primoz Roglic is putting in a solid on trial, there was nothing wrong with what he did in that day. He was just purely blind out of the water by a better bike rider and nobody saw that coming. Yeah, it was an insane performance from Pugacha. Was there sort of words from your contacts inside the Peloton? No, not I'm saying this common. It was just way out there. Yeah, I don't think anybody saw it coming. His own team didn't even see it coming to a certain extent. You could see the way they were sort of around him leading into the start of that TT, you're at the warm up, he was just doing his own thing, he looked like he was just chilling out, he had his earphones on, he had casual sunglasses, skin circle down, not a care in the world, whereas the cameras flashed across to Roglic there, and he had about a dozen people floating around him, he had teammates pinning his number on, he just looked like a ball of stress.

4.Their approach was completely different

So their approach was completely different. So yeah, I don't think anybody saw the time problem for Gacha coming, his team included. Is it the COVID year we're in and the strange race in calendar that's highlighting this, that writers are saying to be so versatile now and not that it's in any way a criticism of your career because your career was phenomenal and so you couldn't look back at it and be anything but happy. But is there a party in now tinking, it's got you so versatile, rug with you so versatile, could you have ridden the Flanders, the Ru-Bays and also targeted the Ardennes? Or it seemed to be then especially early in your career it was much more of a focus on specialization where you're picking our dens, you're picking classics or you're picking one week or three week races where we're not seeing that division or specialization now as much. Well I think looking at this year in particular the reason that the young guys are doing extremely well is they're not tied by tradition. They're not tied by the fact that every year I've done a training camp at altitude at this point in the year, I've then done that preparation race and targeted this race following that. These guys going in now don't have that to fall back on. So they're just going in with open eyes, probably a little bit ignorant to what they think they should be doing. And they're performing the number of young stages winners we saw at the Twitter France this year was simply phenomenal. And I guess if I was to give any young writer and any advice as they're entering the professional palletine now, I would say be as dynamic as possible for as long as possible, make sure you have as many sort of skill sets as you can. Learn how to ride the Parve, learn how to ride the crosswind, learn how to ride the mountains, you know, do as many different races because when you sort of become to specialise, you're very quickly pitching told to targeting a certain sort of race, but it's still great to have that skill set. And I think for myself, my first year professional, my first professional team was AG2R and they threw me into everything. I did Tour of Flanders, I did Tour de France, I did sort of a whole range of different races, which was great. But they pretty quickly worked out that what I was good at was the sort of heli type classics, the identity classics. So that's what I've been targeted every year from then on. So by targeting the identity classic was important that I did the tour of last country beforehand and that really eliminated any chance of sort of doing with any sort of serious approach and either Flemish Classic. So that's probably why I missed out on that throughout my career. Because it's hard even to put some of these kids into a box today. To try and put Remko Evanpol into a box, what is your one day rider, is your one week rider? It's just even hard to know. Yeah, it is hard to know. And I think what these young guys coming through will realise is that if they really want a win big, they will have to specialise in a certain area at this sport. As they evolve, you can't be good at everything and perform at the very highest level. You kind of realise, I think these guys will hold a big peak or manage to come up a number of times in their first few years professional, but that will burn them out. sort of look at, say for example, Evanderpull, you know, yet last year he was all over everything. And this year he's probably not at least not performing at the same level because he just tried to do too much of everything. Yeah, yeah, now it's a good point. It's a good point. We're just off the back of Tour de France and obviously you're a man for listeners don't know. You've won stages in the Tour, the Vuelta and the Jiro. There can't be many riders. How many riders have done that? Well, it's funny I know exactly how many riders done it because my co-anchiny across and he pulled this stat out during the Tour de France and there are 99 riders total that of one stages in all Grand 3 or 3 Grand 2s. Actually, wouldn't the title was that high? Yeah, well, I guess these days, I think there was 20 or 30 active current riders that have done it. It's a pretty cool club to be in. You must be pretty chuffed with that. Oh yeah, you know, but I think when you set out to target a stage in the grand tour, you're not thinking about it, thinking, you know, I want to be a member of that club, you just set yourself your objectives and you do what you can do to achieve this. You definitely need to create some sort of cool commemorative jersey now and just turn up a group, right?

5.Be like, oh, you dudes don't have one of these

So be like, oh, you dudes don't have one of these? The cool commemorative jersey? I'll have to find out exactly what number I was and just put some random number of my jersey. Doodoodoodoodood. It's our little intermission, it's that moment in our weekly long form podcast where we just take a second there we appreciate the quality of the words we're getting from Simon Gerns today. And as a mark of our gratitude we head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony, underscore Walsh and make a small little donation for the health of the future of this podcast. Hope you're enjoying it so far. Now, let's get back to the action. We're just finished at Amazing Tour and we touched on it with Pogacha and Rogloch and I head to head by. Like, I'm so lucky with the podcast that I get the chat to the likes of yourself and other world tour writers, folk or into entertainers. Everyone has such a special, almost love-hate relationship with the tour. Would that be fair to categorize yours as a love-hate relationship with the tour? Oh, absolutely. And one thing I say about Tour de France is, you know, the Tour de France is, you know, it's either going phenomenally well or phenomenally bad, but there's never an uneventful Tour de France. I think, yeah, I broke bones in a number of tours and I had some fantastic successes as well. So you're either at the very top or you're at the very bottom, it feels like the two others, ever just an average tour. What makes us so special? What gives it that pressure of cochra feel? Is it just the extra media attention or is there something just inherent in the history of the tour that just gives it that special place? Well, I think it's just the extra emphasis that everyone puts on the race. You say the result of Tour de France is worth three times that of any other bike race just about. There's pressure from the sponsors, there's so much more hype within the teams. There's obviously the massive crowds on the roadside and the media attention that goes with it. So, yeah, I guess the Tour de France is really a race that can really make the riders career. There's one lovely moment from the Tour de France, and I actually haven't heard you talking about this before, but I'd love to know what was going on in your head. And I don't even know if the moment the people of Huylotte very much, when you passed the jersey over to Darlinpe, you were in the yellow jersey, a special moment in any rider's career. And I guess the natural impulse for a bike rider or any athlete is to just be selfish and wanted for another day, but you actually passed it over willingly to a teammate. It was such an amazing moment and I don't know you from Adam. It's the first time we've talked today. And I almost feel like I know a little bit about your character because of that gesture. Well, I was in a pretty unique position at the Tour de France at the honour of leading the race. And I was in that position largely because of the support of my teammate. So I was the guy that was able to finish it off. I was the team leader on the right days. But I thought, you know, I was in a position and I sort of worked out that I could have potentially kept the yellow jersey for four days as a total. I was never gonna take it all out of Paris. I was never gonna win that tour of France. I thought, what, it's not really gonna change my life, Marchif, I'll wear the jersey for two days or four days, but I'm in a pretty unique position to be able to change the life and the career of a teammate and a close friend of mine. So that's when I sort of plotted the plan I was going to to sit up after a couple days and let Darryl sort of go past me in the finish of the stage and take the jersey And then give him the opportunity to work for a couple days as well. So I just thought it was a Jess a right thing to do to thank him for his sort of tireless work that he'd done for myself and for the team Never occurred to me that it'd probably never been done before in in the Tour de France and it's probably and definitely never been done since. I don't think it's been even done in a fucking local stage race. Yeah, I don't know about that. The atmosphere with the Aussie guys, I've had Matt White on the podcast as well, and Matt's a great character. Was there something special with Orica? Like there's got to be a special bond between you and Impy to make that gesture, but was there a special bond in that whole team? There was at that point in time. Yeah, definitely. It was only the second year of your team, and we had a fantastic group of guys that was a bunch of sort of older Aussie writers at that point in time that I really looked up to.

6.There's some really young talented guys sort of coming through and I…

There's some really young talented guys sort of coming through and I was sort of in the middle sort of really hitting the peak of my career at that point in time. So it was an incredible atmosphere, incredible culture within the group and we all got along extremely well, we all really worked hard and we committed on the day. So it was a very special culture at that point in time. Did you and Bling Machu's bump heads a little bit or was that blown up in the media more than it was a real team sitting inside the team? And Matthew and I never really bumped heads as such but it was just a really poorly managed situation from the team. The team was very good at hedging their bets on riders and I think we were both at a position where we were very very well aware that to win any race at the highest level you need a full support of a team. You couldn't go and win with half a team but the team was never really prepared to commit to one or the other. Whenever they could go in with two options they went in with two options. When they could go with three they went in with three and that wasn't something that I agreed with but I tolerated. It wasn't something that Mackey's agreed with and he was very vocal about that. So there was never any really budding of heads between Michael and Di, but what played out in the media was he was extremely unhappy and I was on the receiving end of that a lot of the time. Yeah, it's always a funny one because outside looking in, you just to see everyone's compatriots from the same country that it's all happy families inside, but you're two very similar Reuters and I guess it's ultimately down to management, how would it be so I'd because I assume your objectives are set out to start the season and his objectives are set out to start the season. Yeah, listen, I think I would say that we weren't very similar writers but we had similar objectives and there are different personalities where it's sort of always a quite well established right on the team. I'd sort of created this ambient and this culture and this group of guys around me, I know exactly what I needed to win at the highest level and he was a young ambitious guy and he wanted that leadership position within the team and he was quite vocal about that. You come at the king, you best not miss, that's the same from the war. Yeah right okay. Carol talk to me about your favorite win, you've won a lot of boy crisis. My favourite win for me is my win in Liaison de l'Eas, in 2014. I guess as a statue of the race you put that on par with some other victories that I've had or the sort of France and stuff as well. But for me that was a special victory because I worked so long and hard in that race to get to a position where I was in a position to win it actually. I think took me in my first three editions of the Liaison on the Age even to complete the race. I let alone finish anywhere near the front, but it was an event that I targeted every year. I got better and better over the course of my career and by 2014 I had the condition to compete with the best guys. I had the right team around me so it was a long, long preparation and the perfect storm on the day that they didn't have me to win. I wasn't rooting for you that day. I'm not going to lie to you as a proud Irish man. I shed it here for Dan Martin that day. Yeah, I think there was probably a few Irishmen that drowned their soror and Guinness that night. Talk to me through it. Can you remember Dan Martin's crash? Do you think you had him regardless of the crash? I'm sure he says he had it. I actually never talked to him on it, but I'm sure he was going to say he was about to open up and had it. Don't want to second guess what you're saying? Yeah, I'm sure that he thought he he had the race, but I wasn't too concerned about where he was at that point in time He he was a former winner of Liège. So he knew what he knows what it takes to win that race But I was sort of very conscious of the efforts he put in in the final kilometer The attacks that he'd done and how hard he'd worked to get the little gap he had off the front So I wasn't too concerned with the gap he had at that point in time. I thought we were still going to catch him by the line. And I think pure the fact that he dove his pedal into the ground on such a big wide open corner always shows that how fatigued he was at that point as well.

7.Think if you ask, Dan Martin, you probably thought he had it in bag

But I think if you ask, Dan Martin, you probably thought he had it in bag. Yeah, I know Dan's that Neil is a resident there in Toronto where you are at some moments. I know Neil definitely thinks that Dan had it in the bag. Yeah, Dan, Dan as well. I'm sure if you'll ask Danny, you'd probably say the same thing. It seems like a proper like nearly junior mistake or as you say, someone who's super fatigued. Oh yeah, but I think, you know, I'm not going to criticize Danny's got an incredible power march. You know, he's got some awesome wins. He's been consistently one of the best bike riders in the world for a number of years. But yeah, at the end of the moment, you can see that it's quite easy to make a mistake. And some races fall a while away, so I'd like that. I've had some really frustrating second places and sometimes it all goes your way and you get the win. Did you watch Leaja the weekends? Yes, I did. I did. What a crazy finish. What a crazy finish. Great race and coming into finish out is basically the best you bike riders in the world at the moment there, do get about for the win. that was a super exciting final and it looked like Alephaly P who just went in just that bit too cocky. He struck me out as a lad who was just a little bit too arrogant in the last kilometer. He just seemed a little bit excessively choppy. I know he's a little bit of a choppy rider anyway but even before the crazy deviation I think he chopped them. There was a weird chopping movement coming out of the last corner. Yeah, so he was all over it because obviously very concerned about her and rightly so. I think if he hadn't thrown that hook there in the final sort of couple hundred metres, he would have wrapped him up in that sprint. And ultimately he got rubbed for even the second place where he crossed the finish line, but it was probably just as well he didn't win because to have the win taken away from like that would have been even more frustrating. But yeah, I think he looked as though he was just like you said, a little bit desperate, a little bit cocky and ultimately paid the price for that. Are you a believer in the course of the rainbow jersey? Oh, I wouldn't have mind that curse for a season. Me neither. It's one that as a curse I'd quite happily take but no, I'm not a believer in that at all. Talk to me about your sort of investments for want of a better phrase. You're involved in service course to help with Brown Hexer? Yeah, that's right. So I've got a number of different investments. I try to be a success. Well, I'll raffle them out. I'll have to fuck it over to the Goldman Sachs coming out here now. Yeah, no, I'm not going to rattle them all out. You've been trying to be a fairly diversified with my investment portfolio. But I do have a couple that's in the cycle related industry. As you mentioned, Hexare is one of them. Another sort of startup brand that are producing an ergo called Mooverti and the major one is that the company that I'm most involved with is the service course. So the service course is one I'm obviously very passionate about. As you mentioned, you've had Christian Meyer on the podcast, so I'm sure you know all about service course, but I believe it's a really exciting business with the huge growth prospect. So I'm happy to be supporting this. Yeah, I love service course. I love the idea and we see it as well in a lot of our listeners and clients. They're busy dudes and their time is more valuable to their money in a lot of ways because money is a replenishable resource. Their time wants to expand that they're not getting back to box off and ring fence 10 days for a cycling trip and to go to your own or to go to Lake or whatever. You want to know that you're riding the best routes in the area and you want to know you're staying in the best hotels and you're getting the best service and I think that's what service course does really well. It brings that kind of pro treatment to amateur athletes. Yeah, that's right. So as the name alludes to the service course being, it's a really holistic cycling experience and the business, you know, we do everything from custom bikes to, you know, you're tripped to clothing, to food and beverage in certain locations. The USP, the Biz, it's invested in and it's run largely by former professional cyclists. It is a very cool business. We're doing some really exciting stuff. Sticking your Goldman Sachs hat on and your investment hat on, do we have a problem with the current sponsorship models in Saitland? it nearly seems like philanthropy, rather than sponsorship in a lot of cases for our title sponsors?

8.Don't think you need an investment cap or a golden cap, but it's a…

Oh, I don't think you need an investment cap or a golden cap, but it's a tax cap to see that. You know, it's been talking about a lot over the last, I have many years that it's not a sustainable business model. The fact that cycling is run purely on charity and on sponsorship. It's not sustainable in any way. And you see that with how quickly teams come and go. and I think it's never been even more highlighted this year, the fact that so many writers took such a large pay cut purely based upon the fact that the charity of their sponsors, their income dried up, so they needed a bit of a break from the sponsorship. So ultimately the teams and the writers got big pay cuts. But yeah, it's not sustainable. It's not something that he's going to keep going on forever and ever, particularly as the and budgets of softening things continue to increase, but auto-nevisolution forward. But it seems like we don't help ourselves. Like I'm a massive cyclone fan, obviously, and I want to help out these sponsors. I don't know what half the matter, like CCC, NTT, I have a fucking clue what these things are. It's almost like we're just not helping ourselves with this whole thing, and we're not focused on giving a return on investment to sponsors, which are a business hat on now, service course. Like I'm sure you would write a check for our 200, 300 grand, no problem, to be a big part sponsor in a team, if they were bringing you more than 200, 300 grand, revenue return. But there's no connection between return on investment on investment. You talked about what these sponsors are. It was a bit of a running joke, and I had with Anthony, who I was commentating with it, to reference, we try and find a bit of time each stage to talk about what the different sponsors were. And we would get a huge amount of the audience saying, oh, thanks very much because I had no idea what the clinic was. For example, or what you said CCC is. And so it's really relevant platform to talk about what these sponsors are because otherwise the name is just quite simply lost in the color of the jersey. But you're right, there is no return in investment by the publicity for these companies. So unless the teams can kind of really find a way to give value for money for these sponsors. You can kind of see that as ones will come into the sport, they'll get good value for a year or two. That value will fade away and they'll drop out in response to something else. But because I can see it where Mike Lyons are, I would say a soft core, cyclon fan. They'll watch the Tour de France, starting to age up and kind of watching a L'Eis, your Rouba, your San Remo. But like they're not watching the Binc Bank Tour. Like they don't know who won the Binc Bank Tour. they don't know even though the bank bank tour exists. But in the bubble of professional cycling, race results are the most important thing. It seems like we need to change that nourishment from race results are the most important thing to, yeah, race results are important, but it's also important that we give a return on investment to sponsors. Well, cycling is a very traditional sport until fashion, the fact that so many teams just see race results as the best return on the investment for sponsors. And, you know, there are certain sponsors there that they're not interested in results, has master interested in the press, and that's why you see so many teams just doing out there and just seeing and signing writers with a hard profile that are just prepared to attack and things like that. And other teams, they're 100% focused on results, and they're not really interested in doing anything else while we. So there is a real mix back there. It's actually just to finish up on that topic. It's why I love the backstage pass that you guys were down. all of a sudden, an EF education are doing a quite well at a moment. You feel a connection with the Israeli, and all of a sudden it's Rafa as a brand, doesn't seem as pretentious because you can see, you know, Lachlan Morton going off doing a crazy gravel event. I don't know, it's bringing it out to the masses and making it a little bit more accessible. Yeah, I think when you look at what, you know, with the backstage pass of that, with the achieve early days. It's not something I would really pay close attention to these days, but it really enabled the cycling fan base to connect with the riders and show the human element of the sport too. So I think just bridging that gap really sort of draws a lot of people in. And I'm not sure how much extra value that gives the sponsor, but it definitely creates a great engagement with the fan base. Gail, let's finish up with a couple of rapid for questions.

9.Who's the best rider you ever road with

Who's the best rider you ever road with? Road with? Yeah. Or against? With as a teammate. We'll go against as a follow-up question. Okay. With as a teammate. That's a great question. I don't know. I've raised with so many great guys throughout my career and guys that were really good at different parts of the sport. You know, you know, get off the fence. I was teammates with Chris Froome. You can say he's been one of of the greatest, you know, going to a ride of his generation. So you could say that, you know, Chris Froome was probably the greatest in that thing, but he wasn't that great when I was riding beside him. Yeah. Now I'll take Chris Froome. He's one of the legends of our sport. He did tough day to weekend, but no doubt he's going to bounce back strong. Right. Best rider you've ever ridden against. The best guy ever raced against. I had some of the greatest battles with Alejandro over a very day personally. You know, we were, you know, I would could sort of target a few races each year where I could compete with and sometimes beat Belvedo. But he was just at that level all year long and he's been at that level for about the last 20 years. So I'm going to say he's probably the best at all race against his competitors. He's an absolute legend. Forget your balanced investment portfolio, folks. If you get down to the bookmakers, I'm a bit unvavirated each way in every single race he's in. It's the most solid investment you'll ever make. Yeah, probably less so now, but definitely there up until about a year or so ago. So I know this is particularly relevant because I get a lot of TMs from parents of young kids asking what I encourage them to push their kids towards cycling. If your son comes to you knowing what you know and all the ups and all the downs of a career in professional cycling, is it a path you'd encourage from? I would not disengage a bit. It's not something that I would push my kids into by any means. My little boy loves football. And he is completely obsessed with football at the moment. So I'm more than happy for him to follow his passion and really get into that. If you've been terms to cycling in a few years time, I'll definitely support that, however I can. But ultimately, you just want your kids to be well-rounded and happy and not so much So I focused on one thing from the real early age. So Emmett, it's been a pleasure watching you for the last decade. And it's definitely been a pleasure chatting to you over the course of the podcast. If anyone wants to follow up and keep tabs on your latest stock tips, your latest service course, kind of kind of square going to get in touch with you. I guess that my social media handles at Simon Garren's, it's the easiest way to get in touch with me. So it's one of those things that I don't give as much attention to as I probably should, because it's a great way to keep in touch, but you can generally come back and be quite social media. Yeah, it's all linked up, Gary, on social media in the link to the podcast below if anyone wants to follow. Simon, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for taking the time to chat. No worries at all. Thanks, Anthony. 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. The challenge is called the 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 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 the master's beginner advanced, there's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through 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.