Stage 20 of the Tour de France, we just watched history, we just…
Stage 20 of the Tour de France, we just watched history, we just viewed possibly the greatest sporting performance ever. One of the greatest ever Tour de France stages, I'm absolutely speechless. Let's just kill the intro. The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long chances? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast I'm absolutely shook. I don't even know where to start for this podcast In my short podcasting career, you know scratch that I've been podcasting a wet week I've been watching cycling basically my whole life. I've never seen anything like that I've been watching sport my whole life. I've never seen anything like that. If you missed today's time trial in the Tour de France, you missed one of the greatest sporting days of all time. How do I even begin to unpack? You know, just before I even get started trying to unpack this one, because I forget with all the drama, let's get the business part out of the way. It's been an absolutely phenomenal podcast and I'd like to take this opportunity to just say a heartfelt thanks to you listeners who have contributed over on Patreon. The Patreon support has been rolling in through the Tour de France. It's been awesome and I really do appreciate that. The podcast keeps kicking on after the Tour de France. For current patreons, I do appreciate your continuing support. And if you haven't subscribed over on Patreon yet, please buy me the price of a point once in a month to say thanks for the work creating this podcast. You can do that on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. And that ensures the podcast keeps rolling around for who knows maybe a tour of Welter, maybe of Welter or Jiro this year. And definitely a tour of France next year. But we'll be back to our regular five days a week with guests already confirmed for next week. So I can't wait for that. Guys, I'm actually shook. I've got goosebumps all the way through that time trial. We had the only time trial in this year's Tour de France and we've finished up La Planche de Belfie, the iconic climb. And I have to be honest in the start house I was thinking, Rog is just gonna run away with this one. He experienced a Tony Martin pinning numbers on, it just went to showcase how close-knit that Yumbo Vizma team is. We'd pog atcha, like just chilling it wearing a pair of casual sunglasses on the tour boat, skin suit down and just looking super breezy, like a young kid without any worries in the world. I figured that Paul Gatchar was going to go out hard and give Roglich a bit of a scare. All the lawyers have an earpiece in their ear, so they're getting relayed live GPS times from their director and especially coming through important time checks like intermediate time checks. So we had a 57 second deficit to make up and coming into the base of the Planche de Belfis that deficit was back to 30 seconds and that's where I expected Roglage to just open the tanks and what we had there we seen was a bike change. Most of the big GC guys opted for this bike change riding the aerodynamic time trial bike for the first half of the stage and then the second half being the climb up the Planche de Belfis, change into the less aerodynamic but more comfortable and efficient bike on the climb to a traditional road bike. Now we did see quite a slow change, not too crazy, quite a slow change from the mechanic of Yumbovism compared to Pogacha. We've since heard Alan Poipier the director of UAE talking just how much detail they went into rehearsing this stage, you know from tree records to paste efforts to even the time in these bike changes so they left no detail uncovered on this.
As a climb starters, and I mentioned this during the podcast during…
But as a climb starters, and I mentioned this during the podcast during the week, everyone's going to jump on the bandwagon now, which you know, you heard of first, Rob Man. I foreseen this, and I was saying to you, this could potentially be set up as a Finion Lamonde 1989 time trial. On that day, obviously Lamonde gained the big advantage because he chose for I think the first time ever to use an aerodynamics set up against the more traditional French fignon who opted for a road bike set up and Lamont, you know, we all know what happened there ends up winning the Tour de France. But I just foreseen that impenching time here and there and now I'll hold my hands open say when he didn't take time on the big mountain finish two days ago, I thought that's it. I never foreseen Pagacha putting in this amount of time into Roglich. I thought he needed to be clipping away 10 seconds here, 10 seconds there and then he he might be in about 30 seconds. He had a 57 second marriage into overcome going into the stage, but at the bottom of the plant, the wealthy, he only had 30 seconds left. And you could just see anyone that knows boy grace and you could just look at Roglish and you could just say, it's not right. His cadence was way too high and we always hear about high cadence, high cadence for efficiency because it transfers the load from the muscles onto your heart and lungs, your cardiovascular system. But there's a point of diminishing marginal returns. And if you're riding a cadence of like 110, you're not turning a big enough gear, you're not generating enough power, you're getting rock in your hips, you're getting rock in your shoulders, and we could see that with Roglich. He looked weird on the bike. You don't see Roglich getting out of saddle for very long. He's not Alberto Contador. But we were seeing Roglich out of saddle for 45, 50 seconds at a time, and then back to this crazy fucking no-power cadence. Bogacho was strung all the way through. He was strung until he hit the bottom of the mountain. He said he couldn't hear anything in his earpiece and then he just went and he gave it full stick from bottom to the top. Pogacha is not 22 years old until Monday and now he is the Tour de France champion. He is the Tour de France polka dot jersey champion after the spatching carapas. He is the Tour de France young rider classification winner. It's 1969 since somebody won all three of those jerseys, a core stop in the great Eddie Merks. I don't know what to say. I'm 22 years old. I think it's the greatest sporting performance, definitely the greatest sporting performance in cycling. I think what makes it so special is we all love to see an underdog coming back. I'm trying to think, I was looking enough to be out in Europe 2000s. France played Italy in the European Championship Final. That amazing gold and gold winner coming from a gold down. That was phenomenal. Man United in the European championship final against Bayern Munich, the two late goals. There hasn't been that many in sporting history, comebacks like this. It's insane. One thing that really well me up. Roglic is a champion. Roglic is a Grand Tour champion. He had a bad day and he's finished second in Tour de France. Obviously not ideal for him or the team going into this. We had that absolute ape of a commentator on Euro sport. Carleton Kirby talking about how Roglic is humiliated. Zero class and it's horrible to see that absolutely zero empathy and zero class towards a great champion. And we've seen on the finish line what a great champion Roglic was because he is devastated. His world has fallen apart. He went into this as an overwhelmingly hot favorite And he has the class, he has the emotional intelligence to go over, find the young, trying to partner, country made it his and give him a hug and say congratulations.
That's a hard thing to do, but it's just a marketer man
That's a hard thing to do, but it's just a marketer man. And as much as I loved watching that drama, I just, it's heartbroken for Roglich. Like we'd all heard that story about, that I told you last day about, you know, saving up to working shitty jobs to boy his way on to his force team and you know we just I think all of us connected with Roglage over the last three weeks and he hasn't had one crack in him or the team over the last three weeks and to have such a bad day on a day where Pogacha had such a good day oh it's just it's a heartbreak for him it's absolutely heartbreak and Yumbovizma The world's such an amazing race. From start to finish, they controlled the race, they kept them safe, they rolled the climbs, like we'd wout van art today. Like he was top five in a mountain time trial. The best boy-crotter in the world, best all-around boy-crotter, wouldn't be surprised if we see him win in the world next week. But Yumbovism have to be absolutely heartbroken today. UAE, you know, they rolled a different race. They didn't have that burden of leading the race. They didn't have the team to do that either, if we're gonna be completely honest. We have Arru, who is the weakest-minded individual in World Soiklin at home, watching this race now when his teammate is after winning the Tour de France. We Christoph, who won the opening stage, who wore the Yellow Jersey. Christoph, if you're going to ask me for a pick for tomorrow, he's more in bed for tomorrow, but they didn't, UAE never had to take up the front of the race and do the riding. But that's not to take away from what they don't to keep Pogacha safe, to keep them fed, to keep them watered, to get changes of clothes for them all week. That's no mean feat. So we shouldn't be dismissive of UAE as a team and say, you know, he don't have on his own. He absolutely did not do this on his own. And he was the very force to acknowledge in the interview the role that his team played. Do we see Rogloch back at this level ever again? With this chance to grasp a Tour de France ever again? I don't know. I really don't know. We've so many young riders coming through. We love see last year we'd burn all and I'm sure he's gonna be back hungrier than ever. Now we've got you, are we just, are we gonna look back at this? I think Bradley Wiggins talked about this and he said, there's maybe these big pokes more to now, but if you fast forward 10 years, potentially we're standing on the precipice now, of precipice, you like that, it's a big word. Not often you get to say the word precipice in a sense, but that's the magnitude of this day that I felt it was normal and okay to use the word precipice. You know, there's pubsoy being done. If you said the word, prepisis, you'd be stabbed. So I'm just happy to be able to say the word precipice. So we are possibly on the precipice of Paul Gacha having a decade of domination and also looking back and saying, you know what, he's the greatest writer of all time. And I don't know, right here, right now, it seems difficult to bet against that. It seems difficult to bet that he's not gonna go and surpass Eddie Merck's Sean Kelly. He know all the greats. I don't know. Maybe it's the sentimentality and the emotion today, but It's just it's 22 22 and he's they're winning the fucking tour de France He's after winning the mountains. Jersey the white Jersey and the yellow Jersey in the tour de France at 22. Oh my god Honorable mention today to Richie Port as well who put in the time trial of his life I think he finished joint second or maybe you know a diva ward Tom Dumeland second by milliseconds so third place but a 34 years old to step up onto the podium Lopez I was critical at Lopez for having a head that shaped quite like a Doper's and you know I was glad the same slide down off the podium and a 34 Richie Porte moving over to Innyo's next year it's potentially not potentially it's definitely his last chance ever to lead a team at a Grand Tour so delighted for Richie Porte he's a real nice guy one of the noises guys in the peloton and everyone seems to have a lot of time for them.
If you're a betting man, like what odds would you have got on Pogacha…
If you're a betting man, like what odds would you have got on Pogacha winning today's stage and topping the podium, winning the Tour de France and Richie Porte on seeking Lopez for the podium. But yeah as I say with the young kids coming through, I just don't know if we see Rugglet having this chance again. It's tough to say but I don't know. I'm actually on the emotional forum. Like what do you say to him tonight? The Yumbovisme team dinner tonight is gonna be a sour occasion. Like they had such an amazing race, almost the perfect race. But isn't this why we love sport? It's just anything can happen. That's it. It's the greatest performance in history, the greatest stage in history. And we got to watch true with today. I feel truly blessed of what's true with today. But got just one today's stage, 121, 1 minute 2021 headed Tom Dumland the former World Time Trial Champion Richie Porte at 121 as well. This race is over. If you're new to cycling you might be wondering, tomorrow is one day to go, couldn't not all change. No, the race is over. Tomorrow is a procession into Paris. It's essentially a rest day for good junks of the day, a roll in tomorrow and some of the guys leaving have a beer to noise. They'll roll in tomorrow casually into Paris and they'll put on some wigs, they'll chat with their mates, they'll drink champagne on the way in, racing will be completely neutralised as they roll in and sort of pray it like fashion. And this is the custom in the Tour of France and it's one of the idiosyncrasies why we love this sport. And then when they get to the Champs-Elysé they will race and you know still potentially Pogacha could have a crash, she could have an incident. It's unheard if it hasn't happened but there is potential for him have a crash in it. In some of the barn accidents, Pagacha has won this year's Tour de France. San Bennett is the green jersey in this year's Tour de France. The polka dot jersey goes to Pagacha with a Foyt young rider's jersey going to Pagacha. Tomorrow what we have is not a stage. We have a sprinter's world championships. Once we get on to the Chauncelese, with the oleps of the Chauncelese, and this is the big day out for the sprinters. It's the one they look forward to it all year. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna say that UAE are just gonna avoid a wave. A wave of the party they're gonna have to noise. Oh my god they're gonna avoid a wave of optimism and positivity and Kristoff is gonna top off. It's over the France for the ages with a win tomorrow. I'm shocked of Goosebumps. Go watch the replay watch the replay again watch the replay again. It was a phenomenal day in cycling. Thanks for tuning in to the Royal Man podcast and please jump on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch and make a small donation to help keep this show rolling. Flabbergast, chat to you soon, Royal Man. I'll be back tomorrow for the last stage in the Tour de France. Viva la France, what a champion we have, Tajay Pogatar.