Roadman, it's the final day in the Alps for this year's Tour de…
Roadman, it's the final day in the Alps for this year's Tour de France, it's stage 18. Let's give it a 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. Robemen, welcome back to the Robeman podcast. It is stage number 18 of the Tour de France 2020 and it's our final day in the Alps and it was definitely a test and day for the boys of the peloton. Stage 18, just let that sink in for a second, 18, like 18 days ago and include rest days. So we've had two rest days, 20 days ago, we're doing 20 days ago. It's a long time and these These boys have just been riding their bikes around France. They are in every sense of the world, it's one of the most impressive physical displays that we see every year. The contravalence circus around France. I absolutely love it. Today, in Eos, they banish the demons of Bernal, pack in the Tour de France and they put on a lovely display. And honestly, one of the best finishes I've seen to a race in a long time. It was a goosebumps moment with Carapaz and Kiekovsky coming across the road, arm in arm, hand in hand with time to celebrate down the finishing straight. It was class TV. Before I jump in and unpack all the goings on in the Tour de France, let me remind you to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. Patreon is the way that you can pay me for this podcast. It's the way that you ensure this podcast has a future. It's a way to support small creators instead of pumping money into GCN, Amazon, Netflix for small creators to have a voice. And it reminds me of during the COVID lockdown, I bought a lot of vouchers for local restaurants. Because if you don't support small industry, it's going to disappear. Starbucks wasn't going to disappear, but my local coffee shop, there was a chance it was going to disappear. It's the same with all small podcasts. There's a chance they disappear and the way we ensure they don't, it's true mechanisms like Patreon. So thank you to everyone who has subscribed on Patreon so far, it makes such a difference and it means I get to bring you this stage 18 podcast. So if you take one second and head over there now, you can blame me to proggs with beer once a month and it keeps this show on the road. Today's stage, if you wanted to know how hard today's stage was, you just had to look at Pierre Rowland, French Reuter, crossing the loin. As we say in Ireland, the absolute hack of him. He was on sideways. He looked like he'd slept rough for a week. The lad looked absolutely broken. Today's stage started off with, as we've become accustomed, the intermediates print hotly contested because we have this Saigon, Benus, I don't know how could we We choke Trentain into the mix. Again, familiar enough, Benetuk the stage. If you took the stage, we wish. I don't think he will ever be here in the words Alpointe stage and Benetuk it in the same sense. It's Benetuk the intermediate sprint and he's extended his lead to 52 points. Tomorrow, it's fucking all in tomorrow for Sam. Stage 19, I identified this a long, long time ago. And stage 19 is a pivotal one. It's a sprinter stage. Sam needs to avoid catastrophe. You need to be within one or two places to Sagin. If he extends his lead tomorrow, it don't endost it. Sam, we're all rooting for you. We're all rooting for you. It's nice to see Sagin. He's one of seven times. I do like Sagin. I think he's been great for his sport. He's almost transcended the sport. Even if you're to look on Sagin's Instagram, you get a flavor to just how big the guy is. He's 1.7 million Instagram followers, brand deals all over the place, one of the highest the highest paid athlete in cycling. He's a huge name and he's not going away because he comes second in the Tour de France sprints contest. He will be here for a long time to come, one of our great ambassadors for the sport. But come on Bennett in my completely biased fashion. Last year I loved watching as almost as much as the stage after the stage on Euro sport.
They had a show, an after show called The Breakaway
They had a show, an after show called The Breakaway. They had Bradley Wiggins, the girl who changed her name to like Shenwah or something Dutch. They had Dan Lloyd and they had a great panel of goys. They still have the show, but it's at f**king half, 7. Who watches a football match? And then it comes time to interview Jose Mourinho after the match, but instead of putting the interview after the match, they put the interview 4 hours later. Like you don't care. to put the breakaway on straight after the stage because no one watches the breakaway at 7.30 at night. You've got to be some hardcore Soyclan fan to watch the stage and then come back to watch the breakaway, like the post-race interviews and analysis four hours later and you can't even get it on the channel, you need to download the app and do that. It's absolutely nonsense. Surely their viewing figures are reflecting the nonsense that that is and they're just shocking stuff from your sport anyway. I like a good rant. We carapads and kieikoski and they stole the show today and they had a little bit of a dilemma coming in the road as to who wins the stage because they had such a gap over the rest of the riders behind and the GC battle and pack out at took place in a minute. But I've been in this position before in races and we came in myself and two teammates. Sean McKenna and Greg Swinland and we are coming in for the new bridge Grand Prix 1-2-3 together all the same team, UCD. And we just had a chat and that's how we figured it out. And at the time it was controversial at the time because it was given to Greg who won a lot of races in the past and it was shown as a 20 year old kid and it was a birthday that day. Greg didn't want to give it away. But anyway Greg got to win that day. But it happened with a conversation. We didn't race each other. It was a show of strength on the day. Again it was a show of strength from team Enios today. Yeah, I realize I'm comparing the new bridge Grand Prix in Ireland to a Tour de France stage Don't worry that wasn't lost on me It was a show of strength from the guys today if they race each other Like Brian Smith in commentary talks on nonsense. I was having a go on him yesterday for his t-shirt game I'm having a go on today for his just general cycling knowledge game Of course, they're not gonna race each other for it like it sends such a bad message message to the rest of the peloton that Ineos is fragmented, there's not good atmosphere, the two lads are racing each other, they were always going to come in hand in hand, hugging, high fiving, they're going to be on the front, they'll keep tomorrow, high fiving and hugging. Ineos looks like a team you want to be at, Ineos looks like a team you want to be involved in now, they look at you knighted front and that important to them, especially after Bernalgoin home and all the criticism about Chris Froome not being selected, Grant Thomas not being selected, with Nikola Partile passing away tragically this year. It's a team and a lot of looks this sends a big signal to the rest of the world in Sowikland. So Deloitte for them, when Karapaz is someone who I've been very very critical of and I was happy to see him winning the two guys. Karapaz has been super aggressive last few days and incidentally he has inherited the King in the mountains lead from Pajakar. So Pajakar moves to second in that contest and Carapaz takes the lead and I think Podgecar is going to have to pull off a big ride on Saturday to take that lead back because tomorrow's flat. Unless he's gone for that singular point. So anyone's not familiar with that. We talked about how the sprint's classification works. The mountain one works similar enough. We've four different categorization of climb. We have a cat tree climb, a cat two climb, a cat one climb and an oars category or beyond category climb. So So does it hire allocation of points to harder to climb? And the first rider to cross the summit of the climb is awarded points, second place is awarded, less points toward places awarded, less points. Harder to climb, the more points you get. At the end of the three weeks we tally up all those points and we call that the King and the Mountains contest.
Carapaz has inherited the lead in that at the moment
So Carapaz has inherited the lead in that at the moment. I had a couple of questions in about the climbing style of Carapaz and when it's suitable to to get in the saddle versus out of the saddle. Because you'll notice the carapace is a roider who doesn't like to sit in the saddle very much. And I think the basic, there's a couple of reasons why you would shift in and out of the saddle. One, your ass gets a little bit sore on the saddle. It's reason one. So it's nice to get out and give yourself a break. You're engaging different muscles. If you think about the muscles you need while seated versus the muscles you need while standing, they're different muscles. So it can be good to give one muscle group a break and shift the load when you're out to saddle onto more quadriceps, stuff like that. It gives your back a break, your neck muscles a break, but it's also possible to get more torque down on the bike. So if you're going up in a specially steep section, it's useful. So that's why we see sprinters sprinting out of the saddle because it maximizes torque. Likewise on steep sections of climbs, we see people getting out of the saddle because it maximizes torque. Back in the main palaton which I know you're all eager to hear because that's where the real drama is in almost every stage, it's the GC battle and we had a little bit of a GC, yeah there wasn't much, a bit of a storm and a key teacup to hype GC stuff, we had Mica Landa sticking the team on the front of the race, we were praising Landa yesterday for trying something with his team, it didn't pay off and he got himself dropped but he He tried it again and today a slight change of tactics he stuck two men in the breakaway. And it's a really good idea on these hard outpoint stages, especially into the toward weak to put Reuters into the breakaway. The theory behind this is if you're in the bunch, you're Reuters and someone like Yumbovisma sets a temple, your domestics are getting dropped so they are zero use to you. But if you put them ahead of the race, Yumbovisma are set in a temple, they're born out their own Reuters, your Reuters have a head start on the climb, so they're coming back. So, land that attack, but Walt Pels and he had two Reuters up the road that he could pick up to try and extend that gap. Unfortunately for him, it didn't extend because we've seen Wout van Art, who we've talked about so much during this climb, or during this Tour de France, we had him climbing again and climbing. Like, every day I talk about Wout, but I should call it the Woucho. He dropped Adam Yates and he dropped Rigoberto Iran with the pace he set, which was unbelievable. We had the controversial inclusion on the top of the last climb today, called the Madeline with the controversial inclusion of a gravel road. It was the basis because it's just like the fairness of it. You stick it into the last Alpoint stage. Someone has had a great ride, they've prepared all season, show it difficult COVID lockdown. They've got through two and a half weeks at a tour de France avoiding crashes, minding themselves, climbing well, descending well. Then you're sticking a gravel road. It's highly likely someone's going to puncture. So it's like what do we get out of this? It looked kind of cool on TV, but Richie Porte did puncture and I think for anyone who's a fan of fairness you were glad to see Richie Porte getting back in. And it's just a dangerous on the gravel. It's easy if you've ever ridden gravel, especially on a road bike, it's loose and it's easy to slide out going around the corner. And that's why we see in Roglage taking her up and actually riding away from the entire group on the gravel road. Like a group that included only really big hit her GC guys like Einrich Mass, Landa, Lopez, the Podgecar and of course, Sepp Coos. But we see in Roglage taking her up on the gravel just to stay safe because the chances of crash are huge. And unfortunately Richie Port punctured and he did have to bust his balls to chase to get back in. Richie Port was kind of lucky that the group he got dropped with, the group he dropped out of on the road, he was picked up by a group from, that included Walt, Walt, Walt, Walt of Art and included Tom Dumelan.
Because of the earlier tempo that Yumbo Visma set, they actually…
And because of the earlier tempo that Yumbo Visma set, they actually dropped Uran and they dropped Yeats. So that meant Dumelan was in loin to move up quite a bit on GC. Now I know Yumbo Visma aren't roiding for a top 10 for for Doomlan, but if it's there for the take, and you take it, top 10, the Tour de France, the still prize money, it's still good going. So they actually decided to ride the World of Honor and Doomlan, Whitrichy Port, to bring him back across to the front of the race, which was nice to see. And we always talk about this race, but in a race, and you nearly need to look when someone attacks, you nearly need to be looking at the GC, and knowing who that affects, because with Iran dropped, and Yates dropped, who had the incentive to work in that group. Like why did they not just roll into the finish, sporty style and saved her energy? Well, because Mica Landa was standing to gain, he started the day in seventh place and he's standing to gain two spots to move up to fifth. So we see in Bahrain, Marita hitting the front and rolling into the finish. And that goes back to my point of the importance of putting men up the road. Cause these two boys were in the break. So now when they come back, they're with the GC favourites. They would never in a million years be able to hang with the GC favourites, but now he's able to put them to work in the very final kilometres at a stage and they're able to get a GC advantage move up two places. Now unlucky for a 80 and a Iran, but that's the way it goes. Bahrain have been rewarded for that great road yesterday where they stuck the team on the front and the great road today by sticking men in the break. So yeah, it was a totally enjoyable stage on a number of fronts because with the battle for the King of the Mountains. With the stage going on where we Karapaz and Kiakovsky, they were briefly joined, they had Hershey and a few others up there but there was drama with that. And then we had the GC stuff because we too up the road with Karapaz and Kiakovsky and there's three, the top three on the stage get bonus seconds. So another lovely tactical piece to see coming into the line was with a big group and Pogacha or any of the other GC guys could potentially have taking bonus seconds on the line for finishing turret on the stage. Roglic caught a sprint but he had a chance that maybe he'd lose to one of the guys and wouldn't get the time bonus. So instead of Roglic wasting energy sprinting for it Roglic just puts to work the best bike rider in the world and he has a whisper to Wout and he says Wout, do so forever mop up to her place on the stage. Wout wins the bunch sprint by two seconds. So that's the importance of having a team and what a super team, Yumbov Isma have been this season. Incredible stuff. So on the day we had Kiekovsky who rolled across the line just ahead of his teammate Karapaz. I'm not even calling Kiekovsky the winner. It's a joint win for Kiekovsky Karapaz with Woutvan Art taking toward place, what a rider, what a man. So GC is unchanged with Roglich leading GC, 57 seconds ahead of Pogaccha and 1-27 ahead of Lopez. Tomorrow it's a sprint stage. The whole of Ireland needs to be cheering Bennett on for this one. It's stage 19, 166 kilometers from Borgon Bresse to Campagnole. It's gonna be epic. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm gonna be we're drawing close to the end of the tour of France. I'm gonna be sad I'm gonna be sad to see it go. I've enjoyed this little conversation that we've been having and yeah it's part of my routine now and I've really enjoyed it. So I will be sad to see it go but we've a few more days to enjoy before we start crying too much. In the meantime, please do drop me a thank you for the Tour de France podcast over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch and you know what, you know what, I'm going to be back tomorrow. Chat you then and right side for old men.