Pogačar's Decisive Blow and Race Safety
It's stage 8 and that concludes this year's Tour de France. I'm just kidding. Well, I'm sort of not kidding. 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 changes? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roman welcome back to another Roman cycling podcast stage age we've had an absolutely epic Tour de France up to now but over feeling that the epic nature of this Tour de France has just ended. Tage Pogacha, put down we're in the fourth day in the high mountains and he put down what was a performance for the ages and I would say he is already this early into the race struck a decisive blow in the battle against his rivals. I just can't see where the threat comes from and I actually can't really see where the entertainment comes from but I'm hopefully I'm proved wrong. There's just nobody close to him. It was interesting because this morning I was getting ready for my ride. We went out actually with a cool roadman spin in the mornings. Follow me over on Instagram on Robeman.Sidling if you want to know about upcoming spins and cool events and stuff. We're doing loads of good stuff planned. But we had a good spin this morning and we had two groups going out from Clontarth this morning. But just before I went out, I was having a coffee, I was chilling out and I was getting ready. And I flicked on YouTube. It's easy watching Chris Froome's YouTube channel. I threw it on for a minute and he was talking about how racing is getting more and more dangerous. And I don't think that's disputed by any of the riders. It does seem like it's getting more and more dangerous and the pressures are well documented, especially in the first week to take the yellow jersey and what it means for sponsors. It's the chance for a lot of people to get stage wins. An angle that I just sort of, it's pretty obvious, but it just dawned on me as well. These crashes, they are dangerous, so the Reuters want them fixed. But for all the spectators, we need a solution to this as well because the entertainment value is gone out of the tour because there is no rivals to Tajay Pogacha and that's not to say there wasn't any rivals on paper before it started because there was. Primos Roglic has been matching them for the last couple of years and we had that trilling finish last year and the Melton TT where Pogacha took the tour in you know almost famous Fignon Merck's fashion on the last day but we're going to be deprived of all that this year because of the dangerous for a week. So it was much entertainment as you know, those sort of warped spectators that just get off on that crazy crash and as much entertainment as people got from that, it's nowhere near as much entertainment as we would have got from the totality of three weeks and aggressive race and trying to figure out who's going to win this stuff. It's not to say that the tour is completely dead for spectators, there's still some fascinating battles for the Polkadot jersey, the Green jersey. But for me, the yellow jersey is just gone. So today's stage was, as I said, a four-stage in the Heine Mountains. And we had two races within it. We had Dylan Tunes winning out with a breakaway. It was a great ride because Mike Woods was riding super. I didn't think he was going to cut. Dylan Tunes paced himself brilliantly. So his tunes from Izzagara from Woods. Well, Pogachio was fought on the stage. And if you watch the stage unfold, he comes from so far back. He picks up about 10 or 15 lads that were in the break and he must have made up 4 minutes in the last 30k.
Karapaz Cracks, Pogačar Dominates
He has gone unbelievable. He rolled the Columbia on the big ring. Not that is a little bit of a misleading quote. The commentators in Europe were talking about it. He rolled it in the big ring and they showed the close up. He's completely cross-chain. He's in the 24 on the back and the 53 on the front which is going to give you a similar ratio to being in the 39 and probably the middle of the block. So, you know, it's not a crazy statistic. His parody, Road of the would be more impressive, but I don't think I haven't seen it visible anyway. If anyone knows otherwise, ping me on Instagram because I'd love to see what power he wrote. I had said that Pogacha was leader in the clubhouse, so to speak, but now he's far beyond leader in the clubhouse. He is the absolute nailed on favorite and Karapaz tried to follow, he was the only one who tried to follow and he parked himself on Pogacia's wheel as Daviforme allowed Paul's faces for about 15km. Going up the climb and then Pogacia finally launched and Karapaz did go with him. And Karapaz was able to follow briefly the forced attack. Pogacia flicked him the elbow a few times, Karapaz wasn't coming true and it just seems like Pogacia was almost giving him a chance and playing with him and saying, look, I'll polly along, oil tolu, but you have to be willing to do some work. If you're not, I'm just going. And that was the body language and that's exactly what happened because he flicked him the elbow once twice, no response from Carapas, Pogacha accelerated again and look, he put three minutes into him or something in the end. We're not talking seconds here. It's insane how much time he's putting into him and Carapas can time trial. So look, I don't know where the rivals are coming from. MVP never really contested today. He hung on maybe a little bit longer than some expected, but we've seen the power that Yellow jerseys give riders and Machu van der Paul represented that brilliantly. And it's been a dream for us week for Alpus and Fennec. They obviously won a stage with Tim Malia and to have van der Paul in the jersey as a four debutante team from second division, what a performance. So they, you know, if they don't do anything else for the rest of the tour, that's absolutely phenomenal from them. World fan art fought a little bit braver, I would say. And he was on and off virtual later on the road until Pogacha really put the foreigners on in that last sort of 10k-ish and then he started fading from it. But he put up a real big fight and he's still second on GC. So GC at the moment and you'll see what I mean by this is a one horse race. Biring accidents or injury or illness. Pogacha, Wokefan Earth is at 148 and considering he can't climb for shit, He lost about four minutes today, more maybe. Le Cenco in third place is at 4.38. We're only eight stages in, folks. He's at 4.38. The Yumbo Visma Lad Vinegar who smashed himself today in a pretty bad-looking crash finished with a lot of the favorites. He's at 4.46. Rigoberto Oran is at five minutes. And I would say Carapaz, probably the closest to Bogacci in the mountains? He's at five all one. It's a little bit depressing for two weeks of bike racing left that he is so dominant. I don't wanna wish the lad any misfortune, but we need a bit of misfortune. The only slight chink in Bogacci's armor is his team aren't brilliant. And there's still some good riders there, but they're not brilliant. We could see some big breaks going up the road, but are they gonna get like with a hilltop finish tomorrow? So tomorrow we are starting in Cluse and we're finishing in Tiguez. It's 144.9 kilometers, five categorized climbs with our first summer finish.
Stage Hunters and Tomorrow's Hilltop Finish
And at the 21 kilometer climb at 5.6%, we're gonna see Pugatja taking more time again today. And you can forget about the guys who can climb with them like Garan Thomas and Roglidge because they're completely out of it or they were dropping the first climb today, so they're so far down. We're almost running to a funny situation where you could see everybody deliberately trying to lose time because they want to have a chance at a stage win. I ruggled to cut a thought on longer today, I would assume, but he's maybe gone, if I lose enough time, I'll get a stage win later in the race. Like if we'll lose another four minutes or so tomorrow, which we'd expect he will, you're looking at Luchenko, if nothing changes his closest rival at 4.48. So it's crazy. Luke Rogue to give another perspective on the Peloton and life from the back of the Peloton put out a tweet that definitely got me laughing today. He said, got dropped after 4k with 90 others and never caught back to the front of the race. It also rained all day, lovely, jovally. So he's on kind of a guided tour of France where he's It's like a platinum sport heath that he was on today. Roman, I'm looking forward to tomorrow because it's a hilltop finish. We only two days in the Alps this year as well, which is noteworthy because if we were four in the Alps, you know, Pagatr could be a first one to ever win the Tour de France by over an hour. Roman, do all experiencing everyone's share and stuff and like and stuff, so please keep doing that because that really helps everything. It helps drive sponsor awareness towards us. It helps the whole ecosystem grow. So if you're listening to it anywhere, screen capture it, tag me over on roadmanethrobeman.cycleon on Instagram, like the podcast, review it wherever you're listening to it and head on over to Patreon because Patreon's how we fund the podcast. It's the heartbeat of the podcast. So head on over there and buy me a pointed beer even once a month, even just for the duration of the tour, if you like, just to say tanks. That's how we fund the podcast and make sure it gets out to everybody because I want everyone listening to it because you know what? I can see from the stats that it's getting more and more popular as the months go on, but I don't want to deprive access to people that students and the likes, you know, smelly tax-dodge and hippie students. And I was one for long enough for myself seven years in undergrad, seven years total between undergrad masters post-grads. So I know what it's like to be busted for cash like that. So you're helping those people out as well. So I don't put a behind a paid firewall. Roman, I am looking forward to tomorrow's stage. yourself in for some more pogachat for your works. Thanks for joining in and right 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 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 the 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 the master's 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 the boil, at roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.