Stage 18 intro and Pau police raid
Stage 18 of the Tour de France, 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 long chibs? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to a Tour de France podcast. We're on stage 18. It's the final day in the mountains with two of the most fabled climbs in the Pyrenees to call the tourmallet and Luzardi Den. We started out in Paul, finishing in Luzardi Den, 129.7 kilometers before I jump in roadman just an encouragement and a hint to head on over to patreon Tour de France is common to its conclusion. So please at this point This is where we pass the cap around and say make your donations Patreons how we keep the podcast rolling folks. It's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch There's no charge to listen to the podcast every day of the week. It's covered by users So if you're enjoying the podcast and you can afford to make a small donation just the price of a point of beer Be sound and buy me the price for point of beer over on patreon link is in the bio Also, if you're enjoying it, please like it Review it share it with friends share it into WhatsApp groups all that good stuff because just because the tour is finishing Doesn't mean we're finishing we're rolling on to episode number 302 today. Look, I'd love to hit a thousand It's a few years away, but I don't know. I'm a sucker for a big round number like that. So yeah, it'd be awesome. I've got some cool guests lined up and low to cool exciting stuff, including our full-time staff member coming on board. So that is super exciting news. So that's kicking it off all inside the next month. Paul Tullazarti Den, Paul is a place that just has doping controversies. It wouldn't be a stage starting in poll if there wasn't a police raid and the police raided Bahrain victorious before the start of today's stage. Like they got absolutely nothing apparently they never asked to see a warrant either which was a little bit strange. If I can dig back to my legal knowledge it equals strange when you board someone's bus ask for training and foils and you're effectively season stuff but you've no warrant so we get to be interested if that ever goes to court. Imagine it'll be all just thrown out from fruit to the poison tree. It's illegally obtained. But maybe we'll save that for the legal podcast down the road and let's analyze the snake carlapa sitting on yesterday. I know we covered it yesterday but over on the Twitter accounts, this is roadman's site on over on Twitter. I've been just dropping and Twitter is like life's water killer, it's my brain dump. Whatever's gone out of my brain ends up going out to Twitter when I'm watching the stage because all my buddies are in work and stuff, so I need to vent somewhere so I vent over on Twitter. And Carapas sitting on yesterday was quite controversial. A lot of people were very pissed off and felt it was some sort of gentleman's rule that you didn't sprint if you couldn't work. Honestly, folks, this is boy gracing. It's when boy graces not win friends. and as much as I don't like Carapas to snake. Look, I wouldn't hold that against him yesterday. It's the rope-ed-up. You pull faces, you give it a little bit of tea at her, Tommy Vochler back in the day was a genius for the Lactaur, the grey French Reuter, you pull faces, you pretend you can't ride, and then you bang them, and you try and win the race. And that's what it's about. There's no honor, there's no pride in it. It's win the boy grace. And Carapas tried to do that yesterday. It didn't work. I don't like Carapas for a host of other reasons. But it's not because he sat on yesterday, but look, if you do think there's meant to be honor in this game You know, you need to watch it a little bit longer because it's a game of chess not a game of checkers We seen today this crazy battle for the king of mountains points It's world pool and it's michael wads and their toe to toe and they're going at each other over the climbs And then ultimately it's heartbreak for both them because because Pogacha is just steam rolled him in his victory today, winning at the top of Luzardi then. He also takes the King in the mountains, Jersey. So here's a man who, as I tweeted earlier on, he's not gonna be called on the road into Paris.
Jersey rules and Urán's collapse
He's a white Jersey, he's a polka dot Jersey, and he's a yellow Jersey to keep him warm. The bit I hate about the jerseys is, Pogacha is the rightful owner, and he will stand on the podium and collect all three of those jerseys in Paris. Make no mistake, those competitions are done. all treated him. But Walt Pelt has to wear the polka dot jersey for the next two days. He wears it because he's next best placed in the classification and J.V. Jonas Vindegart he's going to wear the White Riders jersey for the next few days even though he doesn't earn it. It's a bit of salt in the wombs, I don't like it at all. I, you know, not that it refused to wear it because he can't continue to race if he refused to wear it, but it's a bullshit rule that you have someone, you know, it's nearly, you know, it is a tall slap in the face. The big loser on today's stage it was Goldigo Gold, Ligiberto Iran, he was dropped super early and he was dropped in such a fashion and obviously communicated to the director that there was no point in even Higita waiting for him. And again on Twitter a lot of people saw a question on why Higita didn't wait. Honestly you're going up mountains, you're going up Lizzardee Den, I'll show you that one again, you're going up Lizzardee Den after finishing today's race. Like Higita can't pedal for him. When a The rider is done, he's done. He ended up losing over 10 minutes, he pulled the pin and the parachute came out. He gave the camp push him up the mountain, he can't get onto the bike and ride for him. There's very little benefit in drafting on up a climb. You need to have not blown as we see with the quickstep rider surrounding Cavendish setting the tempo, but it's not like Cavendish is blown, he's still riding under his own steam. Rigoberto obviously didn't recover from going deep yesterday where he got dropped as well and just following the pieces today. Lusarti Den was at the scene today where we seen any else just taking it up again and T.O. Gagan hurt. I thought he was gone home. I thought he was gone home like two weeks ago. He takes this turn on the front and it was a big turn and he looked good but he is at a disappointed tour de France from winning the year of the Talien. You know I don't everything he can win a flooky round tour but it was a little bit of a flooky around Tori Wan. He didn't go in his favor and I don't know a lot of stuff went this way and he just hasn't built on that for this Tour de France. He hasn't been an asset to any else at all over the course of this Tour de France and you know it's disappointing because they went in with knowing the Pogacha and Roglitch were going to be very difficult to beat so they decided to have like a four-pronged attack with T.O. Gegen representing one of those prongs and you know it's one of those prongs that just didn't go too well. Now I I know we had crashes and stuff in the first week, but look, Vinegar had crashes, Pogacha had crashes, you know, they all had crashes. I don't know if the Snake carapas had a crash. Dan Martin didn't do a bad ride today, another man who I talked went back on his holidays two weeks ago, but he got up on the fifth on today's stage which was a good result in a disappointed tour for Dan Martin and Israel's startup nation, still without a win. Rafa and Moika came out yesterday we talked about and he wanted to mention that the team was strong, that the team could do good work and that's what he's done again today. He came over to top of Tio when Tio was setting a good tempo and he set a better tempo, ripped a bunch to pieces. Pogacha goes off that we've seen it two days in a row now. One extra man could follow today that was Cepcoos. So Cepcoos, JV, the Snake, Pogacha and Eunert Mass was calling a Yo-Yon. For me this was the contentious part of the stage. It's you have this group now with seppkos, vinegard, carapas and pogacha. So JV is the only man that has a teammate in there, seppkos. And sepp starts setting a tempo. Why is sepp setting a tempo here? The only thing I can rush, the only rationale, as the why seppkos is setting a tempo, is that pogacha and carapas are a little bit more explosive than vinegard. So he was afraid that if they go like Harappa's when he went yesterday and Pogacho was able to follow and Vinegar got gapped ever so slow he had to diesel his way back up that maybe he was happier with a higher tempo that they wouldn't be able to attack off that's the only reason that come up with but honestly it was the that's the rationale of a madman because seppkos had a very like it was gift wrapped it was gift wrapped with a nice little fucking bow in it and not only them bows you stick on one of the real complicated ones that you default.
Pogačar seals back-to-back Tour wins
It was gift wrapped for sepcos today. Sepcos, Pogacha, Vinegar and Carapaz. Sepcos sits at the back, wacks it, who's going to chase? Vinegar is not going to chase, he's his teammate. Pogacha's not going to chase, he absolutely hates Carapaz after yesterday and he's a four-even-a-half-minute lead and Carapaz is going to be super looked into chase because we've seen yesterday he's not a man that likes to to expend energy and he's in that battle for a second toward place to win the guard. So if he chases he'd be worried about vinder guard coming over the top of him and I'm losing it more time. Seth Kuzk was nailed on to take a second stage win after he took on backing and Doris. I was disappointed to see that although I was enthused but a number of hairpins in the last kilometer. He'd six hairpins in the last kilometer just aesthetically it was quite nice to see. When you couple that with the fans on the hill, the fans back after all the covid restrictions last year, the fans are back, they're passionate, they're having priorities again and it's brilliant to see. Today's stage, it finished up with Pogacha, he's on the speed, he's the champion elect for the second year in a row and we're seeing these comparisons already with Merx, you know, honestly we were saying this sort of stuff about Bernal two years ago as well saying this could be the start of 10 years of domination and we've seen Bernal hasn't had the follow on that. Pogacha has followed through, he's backed it up, but back to back Tour de France wins, so shout-out to him. He will win in Paris on Sunday, bearing accident at this stage. Jonas Vindegard, who didn't even expect to be riding GC, is now second on GC. Cartepaz, the snake is, I'll give you the time gaps as well, so Jonas Vindegard's It's 5.45 back from Pogacha. Karapaz is at 5.51 because Vinnegar took some extra time bonuses today. So he's about six seconds back. Beno Connor, the only right of his life for Ausidosir Sithran. He's at 8.18. Look, he's not going to challenge for the podium. But he might hold on to forward because look, we've flat stages on the TT coming up. Wilko Kilderman is up in the fifth because he's the big winner today after Rigoberto around taking the Sionai tablet and disappearing out on the top 10 Wilko is at 8.50. Today's stage Dan Martin got in fifth place that's the only notable difference we'd for Gacha when Jonas Vindegard, the Snake, Einrich Maas and then Dan Martin. Bogacha he has it all at the moment. Green, not green, he only doesn't have white, polka dot, yellow. Tomorrow we get back to that a bottle for grain, it's stage nine day in, we're back on the flatlands. I do expect, I'm gonna nail my collars to the mast, I do expect Cavendish to break the Grey's Eddie Merk's record tomorrow and make it his fifth stage win of this year's Tour de France. Roadmen, we'd be watching with basic breasts. It's the only bit of excitement left in this tour. I'll chat to you then and ride safe. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join I argue the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart 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 guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's masters, 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.