It's stage 14 of the Tour de France and this green jersey battle that…
It's stage 14 of the Tour de France and this green jersey battle that has me nerves ruined. 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 Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Welcome to the roadman podcast, you beautiful roadman. It's Saturday, so that means my typical inverted commas work for home wasn't as easy today because it in fact is group ride day, group ride day in roadman cycling land. We met this morning, 9 to 30, if anyone wants to join our group ride, you're more than welcome the group ride, it's in Dublin based. So if you're listening to this on the far side of the pond, not really much point in me giving you details of it. So if you do want to join the group right, just slide on into those Instagram DMs. I'm loving the way it is a few of the world tour lads starting to slide into the DMs and just give me the inside scoop, which is brilliant, much appreciated. I was out on the group right today and I was talking to a buddy on the group right and we're talking about the evolution of the podcast and he said he recently went back and listened to an old version of the podcast and he said he just couldn't believe the difference in sound quality in production quality. And this is a segue to Patreon, but it's also a genuine heartfelt thanks to you guys because you guys are supporting the podcast through Patreon and everything we make on the podcast through Patreon is getting pumped back into the podcast to up the same quality to up to production quality. So it's slowly, slowly improved, but every week we're moving that needle. If you'd like to contribute and help us to continue to move that needle, patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch that's the place you do it I've at times I forget this isn't video when I say forward slash I'm making this sort of slash eating with my hand But you can't really say it so maybe I'll just stop down that just seems futile Okay, that's the bit of business done. That's our little plug for how we keep the show rolling how we keep the lights on done Let's dive into today's stage actually before we do dive into today's stage If we're on video at the moment, you would see that my eyeballs are no longer round. They're square. I've been working my little fingers to the bone, building a new site. It's roadmancycling.com. This is not really a plug. It's just a curiosity thing for you to go and check it out. The coaching company was A1C and the podcast was Roadman Cycling and it just didn't really make that much sense. A1C roadmancycling. It was just confusing. I got so many DMs from listeners going, I'm looking for the Roadman culture and I can't find it. So, rebrand the DA1 website as roadmancycling.com. It's pretty cool, there's some cool graphics on there and there's loads of class that the culture offers. There's even a cool 14 day challenge which is definitely worth checking out for the princely so mature Euro because we'll talk about that fully what it is in the other day but I want to get people moving especially during the tour when we have all this excitement, when have all this, you know, pent up motivation and especially after lockdown. Today they had a graphic on EuroSport and they talked about the distribution of workload and Bora completed 79% of the workload today. I wasn't great at maths, I was a past maths man myself but 79 is a big number. Sagan is a difficult taskmaster, he reminds me almost a slaver back back in the day. He works the lads like horses. The reason he worked the lads so hard today was he wanted to drop Bennet before the intermediate sprint and he did. He took it up on the force climb and he dropped the young Sam Bennet. Bennet subsequently got back on. Saigon sent the troops to work again on the next climb and he distanced Bennet for good. They had a little period of Dyson where Saigon's boys were on the front of Saigon and Coe. I'm going to say on Coe because it makes people sound very distinguished. Saigon and Coe were on the front of one group and we had Bennett and Co on the front of a chase group trying to get back in. But eventually the Saagann and Co group went out and Bennett rolled in real slow to the finish and I think he lost 20 minutes or something on the day.
For those kind of new to Tour de France, it actually doesn't matter…
For those kind of new to Tour de France, it actually doesn't matter how much time Bennett loses. The contest for the Green Jersey is a points based classification. So it's the Green Jersey or some people refer to it as the Sprint Jersey. And the way you accumulate points is sprints throughout the day, there's intermediate sprints, scatter true stages and you get points for crossing the finish line. Obviously more points to hire you're finishing placing. Force gets more points in second which gets more points in third etc. So you accumulate points for the entire tree weeks and then the rider with the most points at the end wins the Grand Jersey. And it's a separate contest to the Yellow Jersey and it's playing out to be almost as exciting. And that's why when when you're watching the race, there's all these races within race because we've declined risk classification, we've sprinted for classification, with the GC, with the young rider classification, and then we have a playing out for stage wins, which are very prestigious in their own race. So there's always something to watch on the Tour de France, and it's very rare. I know we'd want shutdown day this year, which the boys wanted an easy day, and they just rolled. But every day you have this combination of these tactics, and it was fascinating to watch a play out today for the Green Jersey initially. And once Saigon had borned up all his men, I think he had Lenny Kamna with him towards the end. But in the last couple of kilometers he really needed him. He had borned up everyone. But the race played out with an amazing piece of teamwork. Again, it's not the first time we've said this from Sunweb. An amazing piece of teamwork because they don't have an interest in the general classification or the Green Jersey. They're purely about stages. So what's done web started down, it's classic shake and bake stuff. The group was much reduced in the Peloton, so everyone didn't have 3-4 teammates around them like we used to. Leaders were left quite exposed. So we had Sunweb firstly send in Teaspinut up. There was a climb with about 11km to go, it was a cat-four climb, it was 1.4km long. Sticky enough at times, but we had Teaspinut attacking there. Lenny Kamna from Saigon and Co has recovered his massive commitment from him, but that's the last death of Saigon's troops. he has to cover Tees Benuis now Sagan's exposed. Now we've a cat for climb with about nine kilometers to go sorry five kilometers to go and that's 1.4 kilometers long and again we're starting to see attacks we're starting to see Hershey attacking this time out so he Benuis the first time we'd Hershey the next time and a couple of other non-somewhere riders got out as well like the Gint and Alaphilippe but what this means again is Sagan is now forced to close stuff on his own so he's no teammates to do the work for him anymore, so he has to close it on his own. And the last attack when it came was from Anderson from Sunweb. He attacked with about two kilometers to go. Sagan has no teammates left, he's so close to the finish line, he's unwilling to do all this work himself because it'll amount to not be getting to the finish line after doing the work, he's not gonna have a sprint anyway. He elects to stop work and there's a hesitation in the bunch. people look around thinking okay who has two teammates here who's an interesting sprint and confidence took it up in the end for consonae but it wasn't enough and they weren't organized enough and they didn't get organized fast enough and i think when you're talking about two kilometers to go the amount of time it takes a team to communicate a message and get organized that's vital in the end we had Anderson staying away for an amazing teamwork victory so we'd be newt Hershey and den Anderson the turret attack turret time lucky for the team It's their second stage win in the race and no one would be rigid. It was great to watch this play out, this shake, bake and bake again. Anderson for the win, the bunch sprint happened behind Mesges from Michelton Scott. Consonie was toward, importantly, Saggam's fort. He lost a little bit of legs because he had to close them gaps on the way in. But Saggam's fort means he got 19 points when he's highly his intermediate points again. He's after chopping a good 20 odds, 25 points or so. I would have been able to lead. So it's going to be super interesting. Stage 19, I had a look ahead.
Stage 19 is very, very crucial for this Green Jersey contest
Stage 19 is very, very crucial for this Green Jersey contest. We're going to keep watching it. Play out. Ben has talked about, let me get this. Ben, a quote for you, talking about yesterday. He said yesterday was a hard, hard day. Much better today than yesterday's sensation was. Yesterday I was dead. This morning I was a new man. In the intermediate sprint I saw what border we're doing. They were trying to harm me so I let them go but later on I missed one kilometer on a long climb and that's where I lost my chance. It didn't take a lot out of me. I felt well after it. Of course I want to thank all my teammates for the excellent job they did today as always I'm better shaped than yesterday. I was afraid not to come back from yesterday's effort because when you go too deep on a tour of rans stage normally end up paying for it but today I'm a new man. I hope tomorrow is an easier day. Benity a legend, keep hanging in there completely in partial piece of podcasting from me. Look, as an Irishman, we all want Ben to pull this off. But Saigon, as big a people say, Saigon's ego is as much cash Saigon reportedly making $5 million a year from his contract alone with Bora, the highest paid boy grider in the world. That's not to mention his endorsements. For a single lad, living in Monaco, there's a lot of temptation around and Saigon is reputed to live the good life at times and that's the thing with this whole crazy season we're having. You just don't know how people are going to come out of lockdown. So Agand does look to be getting better and better and better. But for all that temptation around Sagand and those stories around his personal life and you know parties on yachts, he's putting in the grind. He's not giving this green jersey away without a battle. It's his green jersey and he's going to fight this all the way and honestly we could see this one playing out on the Sean Salise. If we even get the Paris, now just talk about, you know, this ore raid around Paris and potentially not bringing the race to the airport. It looks like mainly speculation at the moment. I got a number of DMs speaking of oil speculations. Are you worried about the two Slovenians in terms of the implication being are you worried there might be a positive dopant scandal in the works? Like the two lads have shown unbelievably consistent. It's not like they've come out of nowhere. It's not like, you know, they were getting dropped last year and they ordered all of a sudden come out of nowhere. Like, I have a thing back to Pajakar's, well, the last year he was phenomenal. This is quite a natural evolution, I say. I hate those stories because they're just so lazy. Anyway, tomorrow we are going, we're going for a big one. We're going stage 15 from Leon to Grand Columbia. We have the horse category, Grand Columbia to finish tomorrow's stage. It is 17.4 kilometres long. It's an epically hard climb. I've ridden this one myself in the past and it's super super difficult climb. GC is going to pop. Are we going to see Poshikar make that step? Look, it's for, I don't even know, like, like, Bernal, if he's going to make a move, he needs to come back into the GC tomorrow. He lost 30 seconds yesterday. He needs to make that move now towards clone a little bit of time back. It's going to be epic TV. I'm going to add a minimum. I'm going to catch the last hour live and I'm going to try and get the highlights of earlier in the stage. But yeah, it's one of those ones you could fully just avoid sitting on the couch and watching tomorrow all day on the couch because it's going to be epic. Guys, thanks for listening to another roadman podcast. Don't forget to check out roadmancycling.com. I'm going to leave the link in the bio. We call it bio, we call it description, I don't know. Also, don't forget to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. Buy me a price of coffee, buy me the price of a beer, tip the cap as the French would say, shop ho for the work during the Tour de France. Guys, thanks for listening, right safe out there, I'm going to be back tomorrow for another Roman podcast.