Roman, let's talk about La Prima Vera, Milan San Ramo
Roman, let's talk about La Prima Vera, Milan San Ramo. That's cute out in troll! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long-chevages? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Roman Podcast. Roadman welcome back to another roadman, a cycling podcast. The season is properly upon us now, isn't it? I don't really count all those shit races that started the season like UAE or they're just for me, they're not really the start of the season. They're like, they're like friendlies you used to have in football in the middle of the summer, but everyone knows the matches don't start back till you get back to skill. We're back to scale folks, La Prima Vera, Milan Sanremo, the longest race of the year. And one of my favorite races of the year, and we're going to get into talking all about that fallout from it or the gossip that's going on at the moment. But before I jump into all that, I want to remind you it's a fresh week, so a fresh reminder about Patreon, it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore world. Guys, this isn't the bit where I just roll at the start and you fast forward seven minutes true Joe Rogan adds because it actually makes a difference. It supports the podcast and it just makes me smile. It makes me happy when I get a patreon. Right before we jump into talking about Milan San Remo, I've seen a crazy story at the weekend and charismatic, some like him, some hate him, Patrick LaFevre, the owner of Quickstep. A bunch of his Reuters, almost all of his good Reuters, Alafleap, Sam Benes, Kaspar Asgreen, Remko Evan Paul are almost all out of contract or have a clause in their contract they can leave at the end of the season if a certain stipulation is met like higher wages etc. And Patrick LeFerriv is obviously keen to keep all the boys but one of the lads that he's particularly worried about is Remko Evan Paul and you know what I'm actually thinking of Shelvan this week's interview podcast and doing a full feature my predictions for 2021 because I think Remko Evanpol is going to be pretty central to that and we're kind of gone off this idea of the three amigos of Housewives favorite Julian Alifleap, Wilt Van Art and Machu van der Paul seem to be the three amigos that are dominating everything at the moment but don't forget Remko is out injured and he's gonna come back and my thoughts are he's gonna hit it hard and he's gonna dominate a lot of races and I think he's gonna surprise people with the results he pulls out this season and that's even with expectations been super high for this kid. I think he is that good. So a measure of how good people feel he is, Patrick LeFavor said there's been an approach from Bora Hansgrove's owner, Saagans team owner they know they can't guess, they know they're not gonna get Rymco easy off Quickstep. So they've tried to buy the entire team just to bring Remco across. Like how crazy is that they want to buy the entire quick step floors? Just to sign Remco, Evan Paul. So it's, you know, it's still, this one's going to pan out. I'm not sure if it's going to happen, but negotiations are ongoing on this one. So it's going to be super interesting. Okay, let's dive into Milan San Remo because it's 300 kilometers in a one day race. Think about 300 kilometers. I'm going to train and ride at the weekend. and my longest in ages, like 160 kilometers. And that's just over halfway what these guys were racing. It's crazy. But it's one of my favorite races of the year because it needs patience. And we're in this era talking about we should shorten races. And I do largely agree that shorter races make for more excitement. And Alex Dowsett recently had a video saying, why we should have shorter races, but why we should never touch Milan San Remo. And it's just such a classic. It's such a beautiful race. The scenery is amazing. It's like a brochure for tourism in Italy. And then it culminates in the two back to back, just beasts. It just builds up to a crescendo all day, all day, all day. Then we hit the chapreso with 20 odd K to go. And then we hit the poshio with about 8K to go.
It's just that beautiful crescendo. Like if you only need to come in…
And it's just that beautiful crescendo. Like if you only need to come in and catch the last 20 kilometers, brilliant, you're gonna be able to watch and understand the entire race. But if you wanna sit down for six hours, you'll be entertained as well. So the pressure was really on. In my eyes, the tree amigos is on call in them, when they're, which is probably misleading because I'm pretty sure wealth fan art and Machuvander Paul hate each other with that Dutch Belgian rivalry compound, the weather cyclocross rivalry and they'll bring that on to the road. Nevertheless, I'm gonna stick with the moniker tree amigos. The pressure was on the tree boys, big time. And in yolks threw out this bizarre tactic of riding the chappressa and the poshio putting fire power on the front like world time trial champion Philippe Bogana on the front like I'm absolutely fucking baffled watching this who are they trying to set up they have previous winner Michael Kiechoski in the line up but he hasn't shown the sort of form to be able to follow the three amigos at the moment and they have Pitcock who they're putting a lot of attention on, but he's just stepped up from under 23 level and he's only got one podium since he stepped up. So it's not like he's stepping up and he's a Remko Evanpauler. We're like, holy shit, this kid's like lightning. He could pretty much fade away into obscurity this season. Like, I'm not saying he will, but he could. He's definitely not the, you know, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But yet they put Felipe Bogana on the front, right? Did you press her on the Poggio? It's basically like they're just setting up Alifelib's attack, which was bizarre. So Alifelib just whacked it and all Inyos got dropped because they're doing crazy Fred tactics from A4 races. And some surprising people who were able to follow. Obviously we have Alifelib gone, Machuvehnderpaul is able to follow and Woutfana aren't able to follow. But then we have Caleb Heun able to follow, which is massively surprising that Caleb is married to a girlfriend Cork which gives it that Irish connection. We have Sagan able to follow which was brilliant to watch because we haven't seen Sagan at that level following those moves for a couple of seasons. We've Yasper Stuyven able to follow. We've Michael Matchus able to follow and a couple of stragglers holding on. We don't have Sam Bennett able to follow. He just didn't have a leg. The camera just didn't even lag on him. He was just out of contention early. Now I don't think that's a great setup for Benox. He's one of the race favourites Julian alla Philippe there, Lee's Bennett fairly exposed. And boy I love the end of this race is because it highlights for me the difference between racing on Zwift, racing computers and real life. Timing matters, tactics matter. The strongest man in the race doesn't always win and we see that off the bottom. We see alla Philippe and he gives it the beans over the top and everyone's on the limits and they're getting back on to the scent. Pickock makes a fast enough descent coming down and we're just about to have that regroup and then everyone's just about to say right I'll save my breath a little bit and boom we've yasper stove and full gas all in he knows he's not as fast as the guys there he knows he's definitely not as fast as Caleb you and Machuve under Paul work fan art guys who can win big bunch sprints but he goes he goes full gas like his life depends on it now there's a choice behind nobody has teammates and this will be the benefit of having a teammate because if you have teammate at this point he will jump on a sword for you. He will say you know what I'm gonna do my beautiful role here I'm gonna close this move down it will mean me burning my last match and I'm out of the race but I'll close the move down to set up my teammate but we don't have people with teammates so we have the favorites looking at each other and they're all so closely matched. Wilt Van Earth, Machu Van der Paul, there's nothing in it between these two guys so nobody wants to blink forced because if Wilt goes to chase Machu Van der Paul doesn't chase, without blinked. Now he's used the energy to close this gap. Machu van der Paul just gets to soften the wheels and because they're so so closely matched, now he has the tactical edge.
Now he has conserved a little bit of energy where without has…
Now he has conserved a little bit of energy where without has expended energy. So they all blink. They look at each other and one other man pops across. Soren Krown Anderson, we seen him in the Tour de France last year winning stages. Brilliant rider. He He pops across to Jasper Stuyven and we have a two up front. Hesitation behind, attacks, stop and attacks. Nobody wants to use energy. But at the time they realise if we don't go now the race is over, the race is already over. Jasper Stuyven, wait, wait, wait. As the guys behind open up their sprint, he opens up his sprint. But he's got a head start. He's got a head start of 24, 50 metres and he pulls it off. The Asperstuyven pulls off the biggest win of his career and you know what, Trek are a force to be reckoned with. You just need to look at the celebrations in the Trek team both after and I've had Alex Kerish on the podcast, I've had Ryan Mullen on the podcast both from Trek, Sega Freido. The atmosphere in Trek seemed brilliant and there's not a lot of teams with that real bond and unity in the world tour at the moment. That Trek atmosphere, there's no standout stars, yeah sure you can point to Mads Pedersen, world champion, Vincenzo Nibali, but they're all around a similar level. We don't have a Wout Van Art, a Machu Van der Poel who's just head and shoulders above the rest of their classics teammates. So what that makes for is great unity and you just don't know where their threat is coming from. And I see Trek picking up more and more big wins because the power of the team, teamwork makes the dream work and it's going to be super interesting. You know what, I've The basis of the start of the podcast, whether I should scrap an interview this week and do a full prediction podcast and I am going to do that because I've lulled a quirky predictions that I've shown money on in patty power and I just yeah look we don't want to see a Chris Froome winning six Tour de Francis in a row it's not exciting we love the underdog we love that story and I have so definitely some quirky little picks this year that's going to surprise you guys but that was Milan San Remo were fully into the race and season now, like the classics are upon us. So I absolutely cannot wait, like party rubies, my personal favorite race of the year, so if you don't know party rubae or if you haven't watched it before, you're in for a treat. The one day race is as opposed to the grand tours, everything happens in one day, it's just all out there, explosive finished in one day, there's no real patience needed and party rubae is brilliant because it punctuated along the entire, you know, I don't know what distance it is, 250, 260 kilometers, but the entire race is punctuated by these gravel sections. I went over and watched the Tour de France riding the Pari Rubé course a couple of years ago and oh it's just beautiful to watch these gladiators and they're been thrown into this Roman cathedral again where it's, it's medieval, these cobbles, like you ride through cobbles in your local pedestrian street in your city center, It's not the same. These things are epic. They smash your boy can half and you hit them So there's a skill to ride them and it's brilliant to watch Folks, we're back into the season. Roadmen. We're back into the week. I'm an a chatty again tomorrow 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 or check out the link in the bio that's roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.