1.We're almost there at stage 19 at the Tour de France, I can see Paris…

We're almost there at stage 19 at the Tour de France, I can see Paris on the horizon, I'm drawn ever closer. 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, we'll give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch, and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Roadmen, at stage 19 of the Tour de France and as I said in the intro, we are almost there. It's been my legs are killing me, my back is killing me from the chair. We've all had our trials and tribulations to get through these three weeks. Today was drama, drama before he off. He had Zeman, a name not familiar to you, but he's the Dave Brailsford version, the Yumba Visma version at Dave Brailsford. He is their director sport heave, essentially your manager. And he's been kicked off the Tour de France for the UCI, have said, assaulting and intimidating a UCI employee. Now if we look it around and see what's coming out of the tour from Reuters, you know, a bit of gossip. A little bit of a DM here. It's very much the case that this UCI official was heavy-handed and a little bit of a prick to be honest. He came to Roglicious Boik after the end of the stage to check it for motors. And he was basically looking, he's not a pro bike mechanic, he's definitely not Roglicious Boik mechanic. He was looking to wrench away at what Roglicious bike mechanic, or a rugglicious bike, and start taking parts off of it, he's heavy handed. This is the bike that he's trust to bring them to the Tour de France, and this ape is just pulling away at it. And, you know, your man, Zeeman just wasn't happy, and apparently he made a number of representations to say he wasn't happy with someone not qualified, taking the bike apart. There had to be more protocol, and, you know, they had a little bit of a French would say a teletet, and it resulted in Zeeman being kicked off the Tour of France, that's one of a number of things today I want to get stuck into because for a transition stage it was actually a very exciting stage. So before we dive into all that let me just give you a little nudge over to patreon.com. Patreon if you're enjoying this tour of France and you want to say thanks for the commentary if you're getting a little bit more of it, bringing you a little deeper level of understanding of the tour, the tactics, the nuances, buy me a coffee, buy me a beer to say thanks and the way you can do that over on Patreon. It's It's a small amount of cash for you. It's a token amount of cash with pubs and coffee shops, not back to functioning normally. None of us are actually have the same expenditure anyway. So you'll hardly notice it coming out of the podcast. But for me, we really will notice it here at the Row Man podcast because it is the difference between life and death. So head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That's where you support the podcast. Sagann, we spoke about him as the great slave master. The hardest man in the world to work for. You taught at your boss, and McDonald's, who had a tough man. If Sagann is your boss, you work every day you strap on that cycling kit. He put the boys to work again on the front today, and I couldn't believe it after the tough few mountain stages and his outside chance. To persevere with this, we cover 55km in the 4th-hour race. that sink in, 55km in the 4th hour of race and insane as Saigon's troops just smashed the race to pit bits again. Saigon was bested by the man from Kirk on shore yet again with Sam Benet taking the points at the intermediate sprint and Benet wrapped up this green jersey in my opinion. I don't know if he's marimatically wrapped it up because the stage panned out with Benus and Saigon coming from all in our place and some Ben beat in Saigon. It's not mathematically a certainty from Moi calculation, which doesn't sound massive because you're going to be still going to win it anyway. But what it does is it reduces Benus chances of winning in Paris and Paris. If you're a first time viewer at Tour de France, we call it the sprinter's world championships. It's the biggest day on the cycling calendar for sprinters every year, de Champs-Élysé. It's iconic and it's what every sprinter dreams of It's arguably as iconic as winning the Grand jersey itself and Ben at what of really fancy that sprint. It suits him. It's huff sprint. It's sketchy sprint. It suits him down. But if you're watching yourself and you're worried about crashing because you need to finish, you need to secure some point to wrap up that Grand jersey.

2.Means you're in a risk-averse mindset and a risk-averse mindset is…

That means you're in a risk-averse mindset and a risk-averse mindset is not the friend of a sprinter who, you know, if you know any sprinters, They're typically not really, they don't have the same risk profile as the rest of us. To go through those gaps at that speed, at that contact, you need a couple of screws loose and the best printers in the world have it, Bennett has it in spades, who makes them the best. But if you switch that off and you start going to preservation mode thinking about that green jersey, that is when he even got in trouble. So I actually not back in Bennett for that final sprint on Sunday in Paris. I think it's going to be Caleb. I think Bennett's just going to be too caught up on that green jersey, which he has wrapped up now, which is a monumental day for Ireland or cycling. Mark now, Loughlin, who coached Sam all the way up. Big shout out to him. He used to coach me as well. There's a lot of people involved in Sam coming up, Sean Kelly and post-chain reaction. It's a big win for a lot of people and Bennett is a super noise lad and hopefully we get I'm on the podcast post sort of France, super nice lad and Deloitte is from finally common of age and it hasn't been easy to struggle. You see these things in your tinkets and overnight success and I had a lot of friends who were teammates with Benitez on post days and he was so close to quitting so many times and he was stuck. So I can basically categorize into Division 1, Division 2, or Division 3 where on post been a continental level which is Division 3 and Benite now was at Division 1. He was stuck at Division 3 for a long, long time and a lot of times he was very, very close to walking away and jacking it early and with injury sickness or just sort of disillusionment and it took one or two real breakthrough moments at a stage winning in sort of Britain. It was just these small moments and honestly it was probably hundreds of signs that said quit and he kept going forward so absolute admiration for the man for that. We had a tragic abandon today with Pottsallberger, one of Sagand's teammates and he got stung by a bee in the melt. And if you look on YouTube, the footage it is terrific. It's like he's after getting this shot by a sniper. He's in a bad way. He gets that, you know, the swelling of the trout passage and he can barely breathe. He was ruined. So he's abandoned the Tour de France. Well, basically the Tour de France is just about complete for these sort of guys because they'll cruise up the TT tomorrow and then into Paris is basically a rest day with a sprint at the end where they'll drink champagne, put on goofy wigs and do wheelies and have the crack on the way into Paris. Yeah, but pots and workers, that's, I'd go to hear that today because you know, you get so close to the Tour de France and it's, to Tour de France final and to drop out like that, it's pretty heartbreaking. Today, we didn't have the break going, it was a break of 12 in the end, and we didn't have a going until 27 kilometers to go in the stage. And then when we did have it, it was very much a fast man marking out of each other. We did some big rollers, classics guys, and then the fast men. We'd like to Luke Rowe, Trentine, who's toured in the Point's Jersey classification, Saagann, Messchek, Benes, Soren Krohn, Anderson, Van Avermert, yeah they were all in there and what we seen was Benes just absolutely glued to Saagann's wheel. He just stuck on Saagann's wheel. I'd say Patrick LaFever is manager, was in his ear saying just do not lose Saagann's wheel. You just shattered them. I say it was very frustrating for Saigon and I maybe have created this but I just feel like there's no love loss between them two. You're very infrequently seeing them exchange in any sort of pleasantries and considering they're teammates for the last few years you would expect some of them to pleasantries and we don't see it so I don't think they're good mates. That would have infuriated Saigon today. That Bennett just glued to him and he Bennett's stronger. Bennett's stronger at the moment. He's able to climb as well as him, but he's able to go up those ramps without getting dropped and he's faster. He's faster and intermediate and he's faster in the finish. It's a great win for the Karakman. Saigon really paid. If we think back across the Tour de France, I'm in reflective mode here. A bit of a somber reflection, but Saigon paid for that relegation. We spoke about that and as much as the romantic, traditionalist, Seidamy, wants to protest and say he didn't deserve that relegation, that there should be a place for for that sort of contact.

3.We covered this and it's the yachts in effect after that horrific…

We covered this and it's the yachts in effect after that horrific crash that yachts is still recovering from. And you're not going to get away with contact. And because of that, Saigon was relegated, because of that, he scored zero points in the day and the day when Bennett scored 45 points. That's been the momentum shift. We talk all the time about that momentum. She's a cruel beast and momentum shift of that day in favor of Bennett and Saigon hasn't got it back. We had Soren Anderson today and he is the story, Cervelo Sunweb, whatever I call themselves is, does Sunweb have been the story of this Tour de France in many ways. They took three stage wins. We've heard she a big breakout rider, former Under 23 World Champion, who's been massively impressive. We've Anderson today taking his second stage win and it goes to show you, like I remember having a conversation with a team out of mine a couple of years ago about how to get into the break. And it's like when you're absolutely in the red, when you can't breathe, when you've lactate, common out your eyeballs, and you think you're going to get dropped. If you want to get into the break, that's the moment you got to attack, because everyone else is hoping. If you if your internal dialogue is saying, I hope no one attacks at this moment, that's when you have to attack, full gas, whatever you have. And if you listen to Anderson's post race interview, that's exactly what he says. He said, following the Trentian attack, he was in the red and he decided to go anyway. Because that's what the cycle is. It's such a barbaric sport. We talk about this all the time. It's barbaric from the crashes and the havin' the endured, the pain, the weather. But this is how you get a breakaway. It looks easy on TV. But you go out in your next local club ride or train and spin, right? As hard as you can, up a hill, fall gas up the hill until you've lactate comin' out your eyes and that's the moment when it attacks. this idea of the quote that fatigue makes carrots of us all. Fatigue makes carrots of us all. It's really true and you really see who the good writers are when you're fatigued beyond fatigue, when your decision-making is impaired, when your legs are just screaming to stop and it feels like someone has your head underwater and you can't breathe. That's the moment to go. That's the moment to dig in. He timed it perfectly and what we've seen was the group behind with with some of the best riders in the world, Van Aver, Mark Trenton, Saigon. When you see these guys behind, they're not gonna cooperate. Ego gets in the way. They all look at each other, I'm not doing the work, or you should do the work, you do the work, and they can't get organized, and that's all you need. That's all Anderson needed, because when you get that 10, 15 seconds, it's so, so difficult to get a group of superstars like that organized into a rotating pace line to get you back. The only hope again caught is teammates. If those stars all had one or two teammates each, you might get the teammates, the lieutenants cooperating. But to get a collaboration between the top guys like that, it's very, very difficult. So he timed that perfectly. And you see, he just rides this beautifully consistent tempo right on the edge, VO2 max power way above threshold. But it's consistent. He doesn't stop. It's constant power distribution all the way out where the group behind, they surge and they stop and they surge and they stop and that's how they lose time. What was funny was Anderson's radio wasn't working. So he was like a kilometer to go and I think he still had a minute and he was full gas pinning it, shouting at the radio, at the TV camera motorbike for a time check. That could have ended in tears. I've seen it many, many times. If you want a brilliant piece of TV, best finish to a bike race I've ever seen. It's too YouTube search for Iliokhoyza, tour of Turkey finish. and you'll see the best finish to a bike race you've ever seen. But it shows you what can happen if you push too hard in the final. You're taking chances and you can slow it out on a corner. You can easily touch a pedal crash and you don't need to take those chances with a minute gap. So it didn't work out bad for him as it happened. He just finished with a bigger margin. But you would typically, if you have a margin like that, start easing off. So you don't take those chances. We're pretty good to see the paloton just cruise and in and the reason we see the paloton cruise and then it's if you're new to cycling you'll often wonder, well, what Pogacha is, you know, he's only 57 seconds down, will he not attack?

4.No, he won't attack on a finish coming in like that because it's all…

And no, he won't attack on a finish coming in like that because it's all about energy conservation and it's anytime you expend energy you want to ask yourself, okay, is there a chance I can benefit from this expenditure of energy and what's the probability of me benefit and what's the loyalty benefit I'm going to get like how big a time gap I'm going to get and what are the chances of me getting that time gap. So on a flat finish like that, Pogacha could go full gas, expend a load of energy. Yumba just put three four guys on the front and easily close it down. So he's wasted a shit ton of energy, very little chance of him getting a big gain. So it just makes no no sense for him to do it. So that's why we typically see this just agreement and a neutralization where guys just ride in across the line, easy to so much for the terrain on the day, it just meant there's so much firepower left in the peloton that the firepower just neutralises itself. We have it all to play for us still. Tomorrow's mountain stage is absolutely epic. It's stage 20. It's 36.2 kilometres from Lour to La Planche de Belfie. La Planche de Belfie, it's a category one climb. 5.9 km long at 8.5% average. But we have pitches above over 20% on the plunge to Belvie. We've seen it the last few years. It's an epically hard climb. But we have the Tour toit love for grabs. We've Roglic Pogacha Lopez. The big one is Roglic Pogacha. Pogacha is a very very good time-trouler. This could go right to the water. I don't think it's the nail-boyder I had talked about where if Pogacha was getting 10 seconds here, 20 seconds there. I don't see him beating in Roglichway more than 30 seconds and if I'm honest I see Roglich taking the stage but in mechanical at puncture it's all up to play. The king of the mountains is super interesting because they're actually using a Strava segment from the bottom middle of Planche de Belfie to the top of the Blanche de Belfie. So it's not the whole time trial. It did a war, it's points for the mountain classification. So the mountain classification gives points for forced over the top of the mountain. But on a time trial it's the time from the bottom of the climb to the top of the climb and whoever covers that the fastest gets awarded to the maximum amount of points. So Carapaz from Inyos and Pogacha are neck and neck in the King and the Mountains contest. But Carapaz is not riding the general classification, he's way down. So what that means is it's a 36 kilometer time trial but only a 5 kilometer climb. So Carapaz can ride the first 25 kilometers and just cruise into the bottom of the climb fresh and then go full gas on the climb to get those points to get the fastest time you can on the climb discard in the forest half of the stage whereas Pagacha has to ride threshold and above for the entire 36km because he needs the time for the overall so you know what I think Karapaz is going to take the king in the mountains and the white jersey for a young rider is still up for grabs as well I think cycling is the only sport in the world where a young rider is 25 you know in Sakura 22 you're nearly past it and cycling you know it's 25 still the young rudder which is cool to see that today's stage finished out anyway with Anderson solo victory epic mezges winning the bunch sprint for second or the break sprint for second and Jasper Stuyven bringing it up for a toward guys we're inside of Harris we're almost there tomorrow is the big day tomorrow's the day you want to be catching the tail end of the time trial so they go off in in reverse general classification order. So you're gonna see Roglachev last, Pogachov second last, Lopez off, toward last. You wanna be catching the last five, six guys. That's where all the drama's gonna happen. You don't need to sit and watch it all day. That's it for this stage. Review folks of the Row Man podcast. Before you head off for your ride, before you head off for your back to work, I would encourage you to jump on over to patreon.com. Make that small little donation. Buying the appointment beer, buying your coffee. just say, Shappau, thanks for the tour de France, well done. Guys, I'll see you on the road, right safe out there, roadman.