Hello you beautiful cycling fans and welcome back to Vuelta Stage 5 A1 Show Special. So another big day on the Vuelta, the first high mountains day, the first time we got to see who has the minerals, who's got what, who lived up to the pre-race hype and who disappointed. We got a busy stage to dissect, so let's jump right in. we do a very special mention to our show sponsor, Missing Piece. And like a child at Christmas at the moment every morning I go down and I check the mail to see if my missing piece, custom chop board has arrived because it's gonna be gangster and I'm gonna feel like an absolute baller. I'm gonna be volunteering for the chop in every single night of the week. A lot of you guys have been messaging me saying you've checked out Missing Piece and how cool it is. We're Delighted to partner with a really custom company from Donegal. Love the Father's On Combat, love the small operation. It has a real sense when you see these products of handcrafted, almost masterpieces. You know, there's a bike brand I love out in Canada, it's Mary Pozzet, it's a handmade bike and those sort of bikes are getting more popular and this to me is the craft version, the wooden version of those sort of bikes. It's the boards, the gift sets, it's unreal stuff go check it out and spoil someone, spoil someone and let's jump right in and dissect this action. So I might start reporting on days where Rigobert or Iran doesn't hit the deck that might be easier. Iran Iran was on the deck again is this his second or third time that he was down so anyone that hasn't had road rash like the commentators are great for trivializing this stuff, especially Kelly because he's the hardest man in the world and you know he's harder than a Rubey Cobblestone. If you haven't hit the deck on a bike before, it's not a nice experience. There's no crash that you come away from, even one where you're superficially shrug it off and say oh that wasn't too bad or you know we trivialize a boy oh it's just road rash. Every time you hit the deck it shocks your whole system like your body is not used to hitting the ground at speed. It's not used to that toll. It's not used to, you know, everything is out of kilter, everything is out of place. Like we talk about cortisol a lot on this and cortisol inhibiting their ability to get into that deep. That is a sleep where we get a lot of that neurological repair going on, that physical repair, which is so crucial day after day and stage. It's like when you hit the body you shock it into a heightened sense of cortisol, your fight or flight is and that is not good and around and hitting the deck with regularity even if he's not getting injuries this is totally affecting his recovery day after day and the latest man to tank for his crush is Phil Berra. Berra helps Berra, how's that how's that? The Bahrain Merida man he tried to throw a bottle and he made an absolute hemes of a ride up near the front of the bunch and he brought down a bunch of people. Speaking of Bahrain Merida if you're to believe rumours, Walt Pels, Eigem Bernal, climbing lieutenants from the tour, his rumour to be on the move there, I don't have anything to substantiate that one, only Oedil Gasp, Wardround to Campfor. The campfor is powerful, what lads say around the campfor, so Wardround to Campfor is Walt Pels is off the Bahrain Marita, I don't know what he's up to here in the Vuelta, but he is going short, it's lucky he has an anchor on him, they talked about him as a whole leader with Teo Gaganhart, the two of them are absolutely brutal the first weekend, mostly a massive disappointment for Team Inyos. They rode hard into the base of this climb and what they were riding hard for. They were riding hard for Della Cruz, who was dropped as well. So I really don't know what's going on there but they are all going muck. Actually what I thought was interesting, he was watching the coverage on EuroSport. The Eurosport player is Mint, that's where I'm watching my coverage. I don't actually have any TV channels in the house. I got rid of TV channels a while ago. I got my Netflix and I got my Eurosport player and that's about it. I don't even watch a lot of Netflix. The only bit of TV I really watch is the Saikal and on TV. If I'm going for a movie, I'd typically go out to the cinema, enjoy the house cinema experience. I have no weekly cinema club with the lads as well, which is Go Crack. I'm getting that Wolf Pack, which if you've heard us talking about Blue Zones, Something we're going to explore. We're going to flick that switch and get into more the Boiohak and Wuhu science stuff.
He just sort of looked. He paced the effort well, he didn't blow but he didn't have enough. As Roch said afterwards, he said, I gave it all on the climb, the others were just at another level and that's not going to be ashamed of. It's very honest of Roch. It's an honest appraisal where he's sitting on fifth on GC, it's not going to be ashamed. I think he looks valued for that fifth on GC. That's not a flooky fifth. He's there, he's looking GC. He is looking exceptionally lean, and he remarked on that as well, but he said, comment to the race that have been years where he's leaner, and he's blown up in the Tour of Week. So it's a conscious decision. He came in to maybe not get lean as previous years, even though he looks super lean. He spoke previously about how he does always have good Vuelta legs, even since he's a kid this late in the season. Interestingly, he opted for no altitude between the Tour and the Vuelta. Very easy to over-cock altitude. I've used altitude tents myself in the past, and I've also run big blocks away at altitude. You've got to be really careful. A lot of people jump into the altitude tent and think it's kind of like a toy. You're playing around with your blood levels. You've got to be really careful on your prerequisites before you go in. You've got to be looking at iron levels to make sure they're in a certain range and you're not slightly deficient. Sloig deficiency in iron going into the altitude test, it'll magnify that deficiency because because the idea with the altitude intent is it simulates natural production of EPO, but iron is a precursor to that you need in that production of EPO. So if you don't have the iron, you end up digging yourself in a little bit of a hole. I know Martin Irvine went out to Colorado for a year as he's healthcare, the former world Scratch Rice champion. and he, I don't think got the altitude brilliant for a London 2012. And I kind of back for it on my bit. But it's something not to be played around with. And even when you're in the tent, I think it's important to, I always got bloods done every second week. And that way, I think if you're to leave them for like three weeks, four weeks, you start, it's start becoming difficult to build. You want to build your own little biological passport and seeing how things are affecting like any good science experiment. You want to change one variable at a time. So you don't want to be going in saying, you know, I'm going to try Kiro Doyer. I'm going to jump into the altitude tent and I'm also going to try that new cream to puff her lactate, like you try one thing at a time and then he signs experiments. So, Nico Knows' body this stage and he knows the effect of it. So, it's interesting that he's opted to knuckle in his lean and give himself that slip in around to get leaner because Nico has got crazy lean in the past. I remember him, as he goes there, where he fell apart in the tour, we get a tour. but eat some crazy eating patterns, back to touching on some of that stuff we talked about, Yanny Brackovich, where he records half the bunch has eaten problems, I don't know if I'd fully agree with that, but I'm not close enough to make a full reaction on it, but I think there's definitely a morality attached to food in the bunch, and it's possibly a chain that needs to be broken, but that's a debate for another day. So I think that's Val Verde laying down the marker today. It's Val Verde Santa Contana, You know what, this is my home race. I'm the world champion. I'm the one with the season, power as your head in the off-neck season. I don't owe you nothing. So that's me speculating that. I also gave you five or eight to the day. I said, you get in my 11th one. You all get in my 11th one now. You should listen to this podcast, makes you money upfront. We had that break. So we had my throw. So I got a hand around my hands and I ever loved me. It was boy or something like that. Or yeah, something like that. I think it was, ball, ball, ball, that's it, boom. Ball, Harada and Madroso. And we saw three boys up front, but Madroso was dropped on the third card earlier in the stage, but he was also dropped a load times up the climb and he was hanging on to the two boys forced Harada into the on all the work. When he did get back up to them, he jumped the two boys straight away, again forcing Harada into the chase. They played the absolute perfect Shakin' Bake. All the way up the climb on Harada, the strongest in the tree. And then in the end, it, amazing TV if you haven't seen him.