Guys and girls, it is stage 11 of the 2020 Tour de France
Guys and girls, it is stage 11 of the 2020 Tour de France. Controversy is afoot. 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 and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Welcome back to another Roadman podcast, you beautiful roadman. How is everybody getting on today? Yesterday we had a historic day for our cycling with Sam Benes joining that list of Irish legends crossing the line force to take the green jersey and to secure a historic stage win. Even the president of Ireland, Mr. Moigle Dee Higgins tweeted out his support yesterday evening for Sam and what an amazing day it was. So many people have a role to play in Sam's win and just one comes to mind for me and I reached out to him yesterday with a private message and it's a former coach of mine, he coached me in Sam around the same time. Martin O'Loughlin and Martin coach Sam for many many years so it should be very proud, it should be very proud of the impact he's had on Sam and his role in our Soitlan. Today we have had some controversy because just as I come on air Mr. Peter Sagan has been relegated to last place after some antics in the bunch sprint. I'm going to get into that in one second. First, just a reminder that this podcast is brought to you by patreon.com. Patreon is how we fund the podcast. It is entirely user, listener, user listener funded and that's how you can go and you can make your contribution to the future and the longevity of this podcast. If you head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltz as always I'll pop the link in the bio and that's the way you can buy me a coffee, buy me a beer if you're getting any value from this podcast and make sure that it continues to stay around. Okay, so today's podcast I've so much to get through and I want to be consistent with my sort of short form nature in this. I wanted to recap a couple of things from yesterday. Roglic has clarified that World Fun Art actually wasn't allowed to sprint yesterday. He said it was a big challenge yesterday, it was a very stressful stage, everybody did a perfect job to keep me safe. Wout was needed to do a lot of work and hence he wasn't allowed to sprint. That just cleared up a lot of the controversy as to why he didn't go for it in no way it takes away from Bennett's win. Bennett was faster than Wout Van Arte again today, so put that onto bed. The people are saying that it was sort of a half victory because Roglic wouldn't let Van Arte sprint and Van Arte's a faster man. I completely disagree. Van Arte's a faster man, maybe it's certain finishes, not yesterday's finish. And again, not today's finish. Another Irish man who was in the wars yesterday, Sean Kelly in commentary today, said he looked like he had a fight with a bear and that was our very own Nicholas Roach and Nicholas was encouraged by medical staff to actually finish up the race yesterday. They said no you've had enough mate like it's it's your time to pack it in and he was just absolutely insistent. Most boy croaters are insistent it's a quality that I think is unique enough to boy croaters they're absolutely insistent that they're going to go on and Nico said no no this is in his he has a daily article in Irish newspaper here at the moment which I hope Nico forget not on after a stage no no I don't have a concussion I insisted I didn't hit my head it's just my arm that's bleeding she said get into the ambulance it's over I replied fuck no it's not over I'll finish the race and I'll see tonight it took me a while to convince everyone to let me continue but there was no way I was going to abandon the Tour de France, not like this on the side of the road. If I can't ride, I'll stop, I said, but I need to get back on the bike. Nickel, you legend. Cycling that just breeds these hard man stories and if anyone's saying the pictures of Nickel from that crash, he had the chain ring marks on his arm, which looked horrendous. Yesterday was a cool stage for many reasons. I was also joined by Tuyler Hamilton, which was amazing to get insight into his 2000-3 Tour de France stage victory. just to get an insight into those emotions and also distressing the nervous energy of the crosswind days for the GC contenders.
Love having guests on like Tyler but I have to be honest that I also…
I love having guests on like Tyler but I have to be honest that I also love the infrequency of the guests I'm getting on. I think if I had a guest on every single day I wouldn't enjoy it as much. As my mom used to say, I remember this one, my mom used to say when visitors come over or something on a Sunday, She said, oh, it's great that the visitors came over. And everyone was like, yeah, yeah, she's like, it's great they left as well though, isn't it? It's a real Irish thing. Give it a one hand, take it away in the other. But, and that is so true for the guests from me. I love having them on, but then I also love taking the mic back and getting to have these full, full chats with you guys. Today was an interesting stage. It was merged by one crash, one of the Astana Reuters. I think it was Le Cenco, had a very bad concussion and he's left the Tour de France. Concussion is something that's, we're getting an increasing awareness of concussion and concussions in jobs. And I know I've been a victim of crashes that have had concussions in the past. And previously we used terminology, which wasn't helpful. Like always only had this bell wrong. And trivializing it like that. But I think with the spade of suicides in American football and the suicide notes, one, high profile one where he shot himself in the head and he instructed autopsy to examine his brain and he said he shot himself in the heart and instead of the head to leave his brain intact for studying because he believed that multiple concussions through his career had actually caused the depression which ultimately led to his suicide. So we've had a number of cases like that which I know now has refocused our attention on the severity of concussions and the Tour de France medics took no chances today. The action kind of started in earnest today when it was Potsoborger from Borahansgroft tried to upset the lead out trains. The kind of quick step had a good grasp at the lead out train. The Saigon's teammate Potsoborger hit out with about 6k to go and two of Bennett's boys jumped on them, two of his lieutenants, Aisgreen and Jungles and they hit out and it did upset the lead out trains. It looked for a while like they might stay out but they So reel the end with about two kilometers to go. And the sprint started, but it was into a headwind that had kind of started and it stopped and it started. And in the end we had a blanket finish. We had Caleb, Saigon, Benes, Woutfannart in that order. Caleb forced Saigon seconds, Benetord Woutfannart fort. A boycho from Caleb, done it on the line. And you can see from his interview after he talks about it, he wasn't even sure he got it. what you're doing is you're looking down. So bike throw is if anyone's not familiar, it's that just in the middle of your sprint as you're just done and you're approaching the line, you're just extending the bike out like Superman position and pushing it as far away from you as you can and in that way you are just pushing it in to forward a little bit and just maximizing your chances of getting the bike across the line first and that's what Caleb done and that's ultimately what got him the victory today over Sagann and Benes. The sprint was crowded, it was crowded all over the place and Peter Sagann got really really boxed in in the sprint and Sagann doesn't take getting boxed in lightly so he manufactured space for himself. I delays this podcast by half an hour getting it out after the finish because I knew the commissaries were gonna come down on this. I don't necessarily agree that they should be coming down on it I I think there's a place for a little bit of contact in the sprints, but in the wake of the ground awake and the yachaps and crash, there was no way they weren't coming down on this. Saagan came up the right side along the boards of Woutfannart and used his elbow and a little bit of his head to manufacture space. There was no space for him to sprint into. So he got his front wheel level with Woutfannart's back wheel and then he used his head and his arm at 60, 65 kilometers an hour plus to open up space and push him to the side but that has a knock-on effect of pushing everyone else to the side. These are highly, highly skilled boy-crowders and that's why I'm borderline tolerable of this contact but there was just no way it was going to be allowed today.
In the wake of the Jakobsen crash, Jakobsen is seriously injured still
In the wake of the Jakobsen crash, Jakobsen is seriously injured still. He's a seriously sick man. He's paralyzed vocal cords still which haven't come around. They heard Patrick LeFevre talking about last week. He lost all but one-two in his head and he had an inordinate number of stitches. I think upwards of 30 stitches in his face. So it's horrendous the aftermath of the injuries for Yacobson. So the commissaries were always gonna come down hard on the forced deviation from lying in a sprint and they did and Saigon's been relegated to last place in the Peloton which means like I don't like to celebrate another man's downfall but it really means Sam Bennett is nudging closer and closer to this green jersey. Tomorrow the intermediate sprint is before the climbs. Really Sagin needs the intermediate sprints after the climbs but I would have thought after today's stage before Sagin was relegated I would have said he was marginally favored to take the green jersey. Now I think it's got to be Sam. It's got to be the man from Kirk so we're rooting for you Sam. There was two things that caught my eye, there was just a complete touch of class and if we tried to extend this and our citizen example for our Reuters of lower levels, it'd be a brilliant example. And one of them was Benus yesterday when he needed Saigon's wheel in the sprint. He just literally tapped Rigoberto around on the hip. He pointed at Saigon, said, I need to get through this gap, I need Zagans wheel. Rigal moved out of the way, Bennett got his wheel, no fuss. How often have we seen crashes in A4 races where guys are just frantically trying to grab a wheel of the faster guy and they're trying to go through gaps that aren't there and it causes huge crashes with really bad consequences. It's just such a beautiful lesson in class from Bennett. Second today, another example in class, it was at the back of the lineout and the Francis de Jourroider had decided he couldn't hold the wheel anymore or that it wasn't possible or he was unwilling to hold a wheel at that speed. So he just moved slightly into the wind, letting the rider behind him up the sheltered side and then he extended their hand beside him, behind him and just gave him a little help in the hand, a little sling back onto the wheel. It's a nice gesture to say, you shouldn't have to expend additional energy behind me because I've chose to call an end to my day. And it's just in order to touch a glass. And that these pros are full of it. If you watch them, often the commentators talk a lot of drizzle. and you know some of them are brilliant Sean Kelly but almost think about how I was trying to bring you a six-hour long podcast every day. You end up talking an awful lot of dribble. So what I like to do is watch what the rotors are doing rather than what the commentators are saying and you learn so so much. Tomorrow we have stage 12. I'm kinder like and pronouncing this stuff in French although I'm probably miles off. I'd love to get a native French speaker to send me a voicemail on Instagram and actually let let me know how this stage is pronounced. Shiv-a-nay t'Sar-l'on, and we're covering a whopping 218 kilometers tomorrow. Tomorrow is a day for the breakaway day. I'm gonna go out on the limb, and I'm gonna make a prediction for tomorrow. My favorite rider in the Peloton is Mr. Thomas DeGint from Lotto. I'm calling Thomas for the win tomorrow. We have two forward category climbs, and we've one-toward category climb. And importantly, for Irish fans, our fans are Sam Bend. We have an intermediate sprint before the climbing starts tomorrow. A day filled with controversy where Sagan was demoted to last place in the Peloton. It was brilliant, nerve-wracking TV in the end for the bunch of sprints. Thanks for listening and a reminder also to head on over to patreon.com on channeling this Do It Now because I have it written straight in front of me and it's empowering me for my productivity list every day. Do It Now. Do it now, head on over to patreon.com forward slash Antony underscore watch your support It really is necessary now during the Tour de France more so to never with the everyday nature of it Thanks for the support and and I'll be back and chatting to you about the Tour de France again tomorrow. Thanks for listening