Cavendish's Fairytale 31st Stage Win
They say that fairy tales only exist in the movies. I beg to differ. Mark Cavendish has won another stage in the Tour de France. Roman, 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 long chances? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roman Podcast. Roadman, Mark Cavendish has pulled it off. It's, oh my god, what a stage. It's a story, it's a fairy tale. It's the 31st Tour de France stage win for the Manx missile and honestly I never thought I would see this day again. And I know some friends that have recently got into cycling in the last few years and they just don't get their like have. What's the story would have and they forget how prolific he was that he was almost unbeatable. And this is his first win since 2016. And this is a man that if you've followed the story, he's gone through everything. He's had a really prolonged battle with illness that nearly took him off the bike, really plagued with self-doubt and depression and he was very open and public about both those and you just never thought he was going to get back there. And if we remember last year back in one of the Belgian semi-classics where he finishes the race and and the cameraman gets him for a quick word after the race and he balls down and tears, falls apart, saying this could be my last ever boy grace. And then the 11th era intervention by Quickstep and Patrick LeFever took him in and said, you know what, we can give you one more year. And he's most likely riding on, for a minimum wage, minimum world to a rate, wage, which is, I think it's around 100k. And, you know, for an ex world champion and 31 time toward a France stage where, Like, there's an eagle path that you have to park. We're coming back to roid for minimum wage. But Quickstep gave him that chance. And, oh my God, as he grasped it. He started out with the stage wins in the Tour de Torqui. Then I think it was the Tour of Belgium that gave him the confidence. But then we had the drama with Sam Bennett not boarding the plane for the Tour de France and Patrick LeFevre coming out since and saying Sam Bennett's weak mentally. And LeFevre's even been out now and talking about how he's ducking Sam Bennett's wages for the rest of the season. And then you really wouldn't be surprised if he's talking bent at the wages because he needs to pay calves bonuses because calves are on minimum wage, but you can be 100% sure calf has baked into that contract. Some hefty Tour de France stage-wing bonuses. Well, man, I'm gonna unpack this stage before I do. Let's take a brief moment to mention Patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. Patreon is the place you can bully me, point a beer to say, thanks for the Tour de France coverage. And it's how we keep the podcast going. It's this, you know, kind of system of reciprocity where the podcast is free, but in return you, if you can afford to pay me for my work. So the link to that is over. It's in the boil and it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Welsh. So it was staged for the route was red on to foreground. It was staged. It was murdered at the start, boy. The most pathetic disjointed Royalter protest I've seen in a long time with some of the main Royalters, notably French Royalters, like Al Filippe, not taking part in the protest at all. We talked about this yesterday, well what irks me about this Royalter protest and the Royalters talking about the 11th hour saying, can we change it from a tree K to an 8K rule? It's just, it's all so disjointed, fragmented, amateurish, like, there is a Royalter's union and the Reuters pay a portion of their salary every year into this Reuters Union who is meant to advocate and lobby on their behalf.
Caleb Out, Cav Targets Green
And the best they can do is come up with these last men of protests, like it's pathetic, it's embarrassing for the Reuters, that this is what they're reduced to. I just hope they can get some sort of centralized voice together, you know, these roots are announced months in advance. Someone can go on wrecking the roots, they can make appeals or representations on the Reuters behalf about stage finishes and it becomes a little bit of a collective bargaining process. So, Reuters feel like they have a little bit of say into it because we need to balance entertainment with Reuters rights. And that's how we can do it. Some advanced planning, not the morning of what we dwelled on that a lot yesterday. So, we won't go back to it today. He says, as he recovers the exact same topic. So, the big news this morning was Caleb, you didn't take the start line. Arguably the fastest man in the race, Cavendish will probably say what I was after today. Caleb didn't take the start line today after a broken collarbone in that tussle with Saigon yesterday. Also, Roglic posted a picture this morning on his Instagram and he was looking like a mummy bandaged head to toe and one would wonder how Roglic will recover for tomorrow's stage five TT because that's going to be very telling. The drama sort of started late but early indication. If you've seen Cam's body language when he went for that intermediate sprint with Michael Markoff. He took the intermediates sprint in much the same way that Machuva and Rapal the other day took the time bonus at the top of the first time up to Mordebrizzania. When van der Poel went for that he went with like a lad with porpoise like he had a plan. He knew he needed the time bonus. He knew he had the legs for the stage. For me this was what Cavendish done today. He went for that intermediate because he knew if he got the stage he was going to take to Green Jersey and that for me really signals his intent. We had Brett Van Moore and if anyone cast their mind back to I think it was the Dauphane. This lad is a lot of roiter and he's a long-range mugger of stages and he mugged him that day in the Dauphane and he almost done it again today. He got caught with 200 metres today, he was solo after springing out of the break and nobody got organised and Quickstep gambled and they left it late and it was really a big turn from Alifelip. I was the catalyst at about 1500 meters to go because you know Brent van Morra, I think he had a minute of like 7k to go or 4k to go like he was like they're eating a chance. He had a real chance and But yeah, when the sprint starts is Cavendish he had to sprint he had to check left He had to check Roy's and I actually think he wins by more if he doesn't have to check left and right But you can see by his body language. I've sprinted like a man who was all in absolutely all in for all the fucking marbles he went in for that sprint. It was insane the commitment he showed and it reminds me of how a guest on the podcast and all team made a mind who I just love chatting with him Ed Ville and I remember just it's one thing that's always stuck on my mind because Ed was a guy who just brings it every single training session every single race but he had this mantra he used to always repeat and it's not it's not his but it's just one he's kind. He got to get up every day and earn it all over again. And when I think about Cavendish today, I think about someone who's won 30 stages of Tour de France, Olympic gold medals, world champion, one of the most distinguished careers ever in cycling and then to come back with that all-in attitude for today, it was just an absolute fairytale.
Drama Builds Ahead of TT
Like, you couldn't be both happy for Cavendish. Just when you couple in the transfer drama, the illness, the self-doubt, the depression, Bennett saga. It was crazy, crazy. And Bairi, these crashes, like the drama, they've added to the drama, if we're going to be honest. But the drama in the tour has been insane. We're only four stages in. Like with the Raymond Poulador, you know, Marzia Vanderpaul, winning for his granddad. Alifoli taking the four stage. Now, Cav, like it's phenomenal. So Cav took the green jersey today as well. So it's a double celebration. Nasar Bhuhani, most hated man not only on this podcast but in world cycling takes seconds. Michael Machu's come playing friend of the show comes in toward Sagana who crashed yesterday but he is indestructible. He crashed yesterday didn't even let go of his bars. Bounce back up walked over to Caleb I thought he was going to kick the head off Caleb. I think he taught better when he's seeing how badly Caleb was hurt but he looked like he was ready to scrap and throw down. But he's back today, no one's even talking about his crush. Like he crashed at 64k an hour plus, the man has made him a hug and he just bounced off the ground and he's fine today and he gets fought. He's gonna be very hard to beat for that green jersey because he's so consistent. We no change in the overall standing obviously because of the sprint day. But now what is interesting for the rest of the tour is, we talk about this a lot on the podcast. It's Mr. Momentum and Cavendish has the momentum. Quickstep is a team with morale, quickstep is a team with momentum. Cav is tree stage a short of Eddie Merck's record. Like would you bet against Cav taking that record? I absolutely would not. The interesting thing for me now, heading into tomorrow, tomorrow stage five, and it's 27.2 kilometers from Sean J. to La Vela. It's a fairly flat individual timeshow. How did you crash Reuters cope? How does Grand Thomas get on in that aerial position tomorrow with a separated shoulder? How does Roglic with all that road rush go? Like everyone's hit the deck. Pogacha hit the deck as well today. It's very, very interesting and telling stage and this tour is just drawn up drama after drama so far. As little bit late getting the podcast out tonight, I was doing a local Chris and a few lads came down in the local criteria, including one of my training partners, Jeremy Morphy, so speedy recovery to all the lads who came down and I chatted it in the sick bay. It's not a nice one to be on a sleep with Road Rush. Roadman will be back tomorrow for the individual time trial. Chatty all day and ride safe. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the Roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is gonna be the catalyst for making it faster and making it 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's roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.