Cav Closes In on Merckx Record
Roadman at stage 10 in the Tour de France and Marc Avnish is closing in on that record. 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. Roman welcome back it's stage 10 of the Tour de France 190.5 kilometers from Albertville, Tavalentz and Mark Cavendish he is closing in the Manx missile is locked he has that Eddie Merck's record in his site he's doing it again and we talk about this all the time it's a recording team momentum mr. M when it's in one place it's just this juggernaut that gathers and gathers and gathers and Cavendish has so much momentum going at the moment that it'd be really really hard to bet against them taking this record he needs one stage to equal the great Eddie Merk's record and he needs two stages to take that record outright. You couldn't write the script for this but if you were writing the script and this was fiction Cav breaks that record on the Sean once-a-lise, while winning the green jersey and then announces his retirement. That will be absolutely epic. Who knows. Before the off today, we did have the great man, Eddie Merck speaking on Machu Vanderpaul. He wasn't all that pleased at Vanderpaul after going home early from the tour and found it a little bit disrespectful. He said, and it's a quote, I couldn't do that. If you start a stage race, it's not with the idea of getting out. Otherwise, you have to prepare for the Olympic Games in a different way. This behaviour does not benefit cycling and then he just kind of throws the knee into his back here with this one. I went to dinner with Machu van der Poel and his grandfather Poulodor. Pupu was convinced that Machu could win the tour someday. Unfortunately you have to say this is not possible. That is just a petulant comment beyond belief. He went to dinner with Poulodor and van der Poel when he was younger and when he said he could win the tour then he thought maybe yeah possible. The lad It wasn't even a pro cyclist at the time. Now he's in the tour. He's held the yellow jersey in his first tour of France for the best part of the fourth week. And now he's like, it's not possible. Look, we know it's possible for Machuvella and her polter wind the tour. Does he want to go away for two, three years, focus on really cutting weight and focusing on stage racing? Or does he want to just keep doing what he's doing? Shredding classics, doing a bit of mountain bike and winning cyclo cross. For me, that's much more entertaining If we see him gravitating towards a grand-tour winner when he's 28 years old, 29 years old, that's plenty of time. I think Merx is maybe feels like he needs to come out with these comments to stay relevant at the moment and you know it's a little bit sad but yeah don't have a call Machu van der Poel, he's a legend. He's only starting and he's a legend. The Lachlan Morton thing is also getting a lot of headlines, I'm not sure if anyone's following it, he's riding the alternative tour and he's over a v1 too at the moment so he's riding all the transfers and the stage is so he's putting in crazy mileage and it's on their Instagram and everyone seems to be getting behind it and I often think these are kind of a you know a publicity stunt a lot of the time but his alt-store has already raised over a 224k for a world boy so go relief and to put that into real terms what he's trying to do is get kids on bikes that's 1700 bikes for young people who are challenged by the barrier of who are young people who are challenged economically true poverty or in places where it's not easy to get access to bikes. So it's the Buffalo Bicycle Trust, I think is the name of the company that is running the trail. And it's the idea that everyone should have access to education and transport on bikes. And 1700 bikes is not to be sniffed. That's a great work from Lachlan Martin on that. He wrote up month one too. I thought it was funny because he said the whole mountain to himself and it felt like a religious experience. Lachlan's got crack, he's good value. He's Donk confused Lachlan with Machu Vanderpaul.
Echelons and Carapaz's Tactics
They're different. Machu Vanderpaul is one of the greats. Lachlan is brilliant for this alternate stuff but he's not in that league and sometimes we can confuse social media likes comments and shares with bike riders who are doing their thing and getting it done winning races, logging miles, collecting accolades. They're very different things. That's not the diminishing what Lachlan's doing but Donk confused them. So today it was a windy day but we heard Cavendish in the finish talking about it was never quick steps in tension to hit it in the crosswinds. It was sort of splitting with Turkey K to go on the crosswinds. Sony Calbrelli the Italian champion punctured at a slightly inopportune time and it definitely took some of his energy to get back. 15 K to go we seen some more splits. At one stage UAE looked a little exposed with Pogacha having to close it, but he looked like he could close it. Easy enough. What's interesting to see with the experienced GC riders when the echelon started and the crosswinds because if you think about an echelon there's two sides to the echelon. There's the windy side and the sheltered side. So when you're coming up to the other arm you want to ride up the sheltered side and then the regressive line that goes back is in the wind providing the shelter. But if you decide not to ride you're going to be sitting on the back of that rotating line so you're not getting a period of shelter. So the easiest thing to do is to ride through to contribute to the overall speed of the group. Sure you gotta spend some time in the wind on the front putting out big watts but overall it's net gain for you because you're getting more time sheltered. So we see the big GC guys and someone who are tweaking this and hats off to Carapas because I've been massively critical of them and I since heard on I think it was Johan Brunil's Lamovita podcast where they were talking about Carapas, and why he's so hated by movie stars. Carapas went to the movie star in the season, sort of drinks and get together, and he told them he would stay one more year, and he shook hands with them, said, yeah, I'm going to be there another year. But at that point, he had signed for Ineos. So he was shaking hands with the movie star director, saying up on the teammates, saying I'll be here next year, no worries, lads, looking forward to it and it already inked the contract with Inyos. I knew he was a weasel and that's the weasel a shit you've ever come up with but he was riding super well in the crosswinds today and hats off to him for that. Quickstep, it was an old-school textbook lead out. A lot of time we see teams coming up for this lead out and they run out of gusto, they just run out of fire power for that lead out. They come up with great intention because they're watching loads of Eurosport and Hyrule Columbia, Cav Lead, that's back in the day and they try and hit it hard but they run out of power and Quickstep done it brilliantly because they came with just amount of artillery at the right time and it was a thing of beauty. They knew each man in the lead out trying has a separate job. So you walk backwards. So Cav on the day wants to sprint from 200. So his next lead up man is Michael Markoff. So where's Michael Markoff going to start his sprint to bring Cav to 200? So maybe Markov can go from 50 to 200. Now we work backwards again, who's gonna bring Markov to 450, maybe it's Casper Asgrain. Can Casper Asgrain go from 1.5k to 500? And this is how you do it, but each person in that needs to know their role. So they need to know, okay, at 1.5 kilometers to go, the road slightly bends left, and then there's a roundabout. We need to be on the left side of that roundabout. It's not carved that needs to know these intricacies because he can't shield at everyone and say, left it around about right it around about it's too it's too noisy and it's too charged of a situation that'll be lost so each person needs to know their role and quick step navigated is perfect they navigate around about on the right side wind exactly but you know always shelter and calvin the other guy who is true next they knew bends they knew the shortest way true clued in with military precision and we see this with calve at the end when he just acknowledges the team and calve is always so fast i've had friends who were teammates with calve and he said he's the best in the world for it.
Ventoux Looms and Cav's Next Chance
He's such a motivator that he'll stand up in the bus in the morning and say, lads, I can't win this stage without every single one of you guys. If every single one of you guys give me your heart, soul, and 100%, I can get across the line, I can do this for us. But without you all, I can't do it. And it's meant to be inspirational. And again, straight away after the finish, he tanks all the teammates, hugging them, embracing them. And in the interview straight after, he said, you've toured the Flanders winners, you have a world champion, you have all these guys who have won big races, leaving everything on the road for me. I don't absolutely love them today, I don't 150 measures, you need to thank them for everything. Is Cav gone to do it? Well tomorrow he is definitely not going to do it, tomorrow is won for the GC guys again. So tomorrow we are 198km from Sujay to Masalina and we are going up the joint of Provence, Montvontu twice. This is the queen stage of the Tour de France, it feels a little bit muted because we have this dominant sataje, Pogacha at the moment, but who knows what can happen on the roads between there because we go over a force-cac climb on the way. Look, it's hard to get mad excited about this stage and which is bizarre because it's the queen stage. I honestly think there's as much chance of Pogacha lapping the field as it is off Carol Paz or Rigoberto or spring in a surprise and drop them, we'll got you tomorrow. It's interesting, the tour is nearly torn on its head because the exciting days are nearly the sprint stage at the moment to see if Kav can get this record. We're gonna have another opportunity for Kav the day after tomorrow. So hopefully he's no issues with the time called tomorrow. And then we're gonna see him sprint to hopefully equal that record. Roman, please keep doing all the good stuff you're doing. If you're listening to the podcast, screen capture it, wherever you're listening to, take a patreon and tag me over on Instagram, it's roadman.sawyclandfollowmeover there as well, loads of interesting stuff going on, insight into the gravel rides we're doing, heads up on podcasts, bits and pieces like that. Please support on Patreon, Patreon's a lifeblood of the podcast. It's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch and patreon is, we've been running this, we're calling it the model of soundness where the podcast is free. So many podcasters now have the podcast behind a paid firewall like Luminary where everybody has to go and pay a Fiverr. Sure you'll probably lose a large chunk of your audience, but the 10%, 15% of your audience that come across which can give you a Fiverr, it ends up in a very large sum of money. So at the moment we're leaving that on the table and we're leaving that on the table in the interest of soundness and keeping it free for everybody. So those that can't afford to listen can keep listening. But for that to work, we need the people to give something to pay just the price of a beer once a month to keep the podcast rolling and it's free for everyone. Roll man, thanks for listening, epic stage, I'm so stoked to see if Calves going to get this record or not, we won't find out tomorrow, but it is the Queen's stage, month on two and I'll be back then, chat to your old man and ride safe out there. 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 leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guest 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 roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.