Mike Woods takes mountains jersey
It's stage 14 at the Tour de France and the Canadian Mike Woods has pulled on the King in the mountains jersey. 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 on this podcast, give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman Cycling podcast. It's stage 14 today. We rolled 183.7 kilometers from Carcassone to Quillan and we had had three category two climbs and two category three climbs with the call the San Luis top and out about 15 kilometers from the finish. Not sure what the official tag you put on these sort of stages is medium mountain stage, transition stage. Whatever it was, it was a super day for the Canadian Israel startup nation rider Mike Woods. And you know, for me, this is a brilliant one. I love seeing Mike doing well. Mike is a guy who's been guest on the podcast and he's also a lad who I used to race against occasionally when I was in Canada. He was riding for our team out in Quebec, Guernaud, when I was riding locally for our teams like Jeff Fuul and my buddy Real Deal's team. And great to see my goals in well. Like I had him on the podcast and we reminisced about races we'd done at the same time together and where he just lit me up. But now to see him lighting up the very biggest stage in the world. It's just brilliant to watch and although I didn't find today's stage massively entertaining, the battle for GC being over is killing a lot of the drama and with the Cavendish record thing which has really kept the public's attention. But stages like this and the little victories are the little pieces of entertainment are so important for the momentum of this race and Mike Woads has such a huge following because he's such a nice guy came into the sport late from running. Notoriously not the greatest descender in the world and unfortunately that came to the fore again today when he hit the deck. He was leading the 14 man break with some real engines in there like Mateo Katano from Quickstep looked so strong but Katano had to swear of to avoid him and a few orders were caught up. But Mike Woz was in a fierce battle today with Walt Pauls for the King in a mountains point, Quintana didn't make the break, Quintana just seems to have these two speeds on and off. When he's on, he seems unplayable, when he's off he's just pointless irrelevant, he does nothing when he's off. And that's what he was like today, he needed to go. The break didn't go for 100km today and Quintana sitting back with my cup of tea in my hand on the couch, it's easy to be the Saturday morning quarterback and say what sure to happen but if you don't have legs you don't have legs it looked like it was easy for cantana to follow the walled pelts move when that break was gone but look you don't have legs you don't have legs it was a very aggressive hundred kilometers of race and it speeds over 50 kilometers an hour to make that break happen and UAE were kind of absent at the front of the race but that seems to be don't confuse that with weakness because that seems to be their MO at the moment and when it matters they're coming to the front in numbers and they don't know that again today. A few people kind of remarked online today, another guest of the show, Willie Smith remarked, that you know maybe Pogacha wasn't looking his very best today and he was pulling some faces that we hadn't really seen since he was on Vontu and maybe they might have tested him and I thought that he was gonna be tested for a little while we seen Stephen Kreuss like hitting the front on that last climb of the day.
Pogačar's untested dominance frustrates
Howdy might have been trying to tee up the Dutch rider, Johnus Vindigard, but it never really happened. And Pogacha was under no real test today, despite him not looking super. That frustrates me at times with the GC battle. We have these designated GC battle areas like Vontu, and that's where we see the battle, and we don't often see teams being dynamic and taking it up on medium mountain stages, transitionary stages, occasionally we see it in the crosswinds, I feel like if Pogacha is going to be unceded, someone is going to have to show some sort of outside the box tank and you need to be a little bit dynamic, just rolling into the base of the hardest climbs and any else sitting at the tempo. It's not going to be Pogacha, we need to try something a little different and I understand that there's been 14 days of hard racing and again it's easier to see this stuff from the comfort of the couch than it is to act on it. But maybe just you don't wait for one of those big bottles. You know you set a new battleground but it just needs something to spoil this up and the Popo gotcha under a little bit of pressure or stress. It's not that I don't like Popo gotcha. That might come across in a lot of the podcast that I'm not a fan of Popo gotcha. That's definitely not the case. I am a big fan of them but it's It's just anyone who's so dominant. It's just ruining the entertainment. So today's day finished with Buck Molima going on the attack over the top of that last climb and that last climb was the call of the San Luis. If you're taking notes for your holidays, go check that one out. It was the finishing climb today, roughly 17k from the finish and it was the second category climb and it's a pure ad for the French tourism board. It's unbelievable. We booked Moloma dropping his breakaway companions of that climb and soloing into about a minute and 20 lead. Moloma from Conrad, from Haggita, Woods and Omar Fraley. Now we did have one big move on GC today with that break on, that 14 man strong break because in that break we had Guillow-Martan the cycling philosopher and he has leapfrogged up almost seven minutes. So he's up to second on GC now believe it or not. So it's Pogacha from Guillaume Martain for Rigoberto Oran and Jonas Vindegard loses his position on the podium. Tomorrow we're heading to Andorra and one man who is already in Andorra is Lachlan Morton. He's reached Andorra and he's gone into the Pyrenees on this alt-charity tour he's riding at the moment. He'd be a bit of company today, teammate Jimmy Wheel and another Australian made of his Ron Dennis. I'm sure they lifted his morale when they rolled with him for a little bit. He's over 4,000 kilometers down in 160 hours at the moment. A quote from he said, my toes are very cold, but my legs are good. I'm sure once the sun pops its head out, I'd be very happy to. He's riding in sandals at the moment because he got himself a good fashion World War II trenches case of trench fort. So the man is a shadow of his former self and you'd wonder, brilliant for publicity, a lot of the world tour guys in the Tour de France at the moment, tweeting about her and commenting on it. But you would wonder what long term this is doing to Lachlan Morton as a competitive bike rider or is that period of his career set. It'll be interesting to see how he bounces back. What his comments are about being used as, you know, nearly a side show, freak show for publicity and charity.
Andorra preview and Patreon support
It's a worthy cause and it's attracting great attention which is brilliant but he's also an ambitious bike rider so to reconcile those two I think can be difficult at times. We'll best have looked at Lachlanmore and he's a stage, if not more, ahead of lads because we're heading into Andorra tomorrow. We're starting out in Cirei and we are riding 191.3 kilometers and we're finishing in the state capital of Andoracal Andorra La Ville and I've been looking off to spend a little bit of time in Andorra at a camp a couple of years ago and there's not a flat road in Andorra. So that's really summed up tomorrow's paracore because we have three category one climbs and a category two climb all in the last 100k of race in tomorrow. Expect to see Cav who cruised inside the time limit today contesting that sprint at 66.9km tomorrow. Cav just looked after himself real well today and in the forest 100km before the breakaway went, he was surfing wheels, surfing wheels. As the The pressure came on to forge the breakaway. Kav decided it was time to conserve energy, sit up a little bit, cruise then with a group about 20 odd minutes down and the time cut was 40 minutes, so no danger in the time cut today for Kav. Roman, please continue to support the podcast. It's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch, boy me the price of a point of beer once a month over there to support the podcast. How you do it, even if you don't have a patreon account, it takes about 15 seconds to check out and boy me that price would point the beer, just head on over to Patreon, and it's gonna charge you once a month until you decide to cancel. That supports the podcast, and it means that it's free for everyone to listen to because we have this model of soundness, where I don't put it behind a paid firewall, that I'm being sound, that I'm getting it out so, because many users can listen to it as possible, but in return, if you can afford a fiver a month, please contribute, that to the podcast, stays free for everybody, and also follow me over on Instagram, on roadman.sidelin, share the podcast into WhatsApp groups, like it review at all those things. This isn't just lip service because we're not a GCN, we're not a Euro sport. These things really, really matter. So please continue to do that and support the podcast. And thank you very much for listening, roadman. Enjoy your ride and I'm gonna 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 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 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.