Hello, you beautiful cycling fans and welcome back to an A1 show of…
Hello, you beautiful cycling fans and welcome back to an A1 show of Vuelta special. We're nearly there folks, we're nearly there, I can see the finish line, I can smell it and boy am I yearning for us. I've really enjoyed the Vuelta podcast but it's, I'd imagine my sensations are much like those riding that they've enjoyed the race but they're also looking forward to the finish line. We had an exciting stage today and we had some movement on GC so let's jump in and unpack this one. Before we get started honorable mention to our sponsor I've been with us all the way through the Vuelta missingpeace.ie you can check them out for everything from shopping boards to picture frames to your one-stop shop for gift ideas they're on the competition during the Vuelta as well if you can tell us what color the leaders jersey is in the Vuelta you're gonna chance to win some swag from them so yeah I'm gonna I pop the link to them guys in the show description. Yeah, I'd ask listeners if you are considering make that out of purchase, let's finish strong and give them some real value for sponsoring it. And you can thank them for our new crisper sounding audio over the Vuelta as well, because their sponsorship went to buying some new audio recording equipment. But there you go, let's jump in. Gita EF Education won out the day, but let's see how it happened because there's a bit of a purple patch going on for Colombian cycling. I know we've been saying this since the 80s probably, but it really is a purple patch for Colombian cycling at the moment. He Gita had his work cut out. He had 126 with about 30k to go. And that's when the real race and started from behind. Lopez pushed on, he, the strong, only the strong was survived if it was a Darwinian survival of the fittest on that last climb today. When Lopez pushed on, We were left with Vavirdi, Moika and Roglage. Pogakar dropped Quintana, dropped James Knox, nowhere to be seen. Kildaman, nowhere to be seen. They're all back on group three. Quintana and Pogakar formed into a group two and they got a little bit of help. They got a little bit of help on the road as well. A couple of guys, riding true, but really we had Lopez and Lopez was taking the race by the scruff and he made that separation, got rid of pogger, got rid of cantana and then he realized look this is my chance to take the white jersey back but it's also my chance to have a run at Apoleum's bot and not Cantana off it and he had a little go up boat and Cantana looks tired after yesterday so yesterday was a big day and with a lot of riders coming out today talking about just how difficult today was like we had Teogig and from the team, Inyos. He said yesterday in terms of what was the hardest day of the race. It was harder than even the uphill starts in Andorra. So that was pretty mental and pretty. All those 20 minute best powers and I seen some benefits on Twitter as well. Some of his speed, it's his peak tree second speed or something was over 100k an hour which is pretty mad. Oh yeah, before I go on my too deep my Vuelta rant, I gave you the spiel about how I was using how I'm using the A1 Roadman mug to create positive habit forming loops yesterday and I pop the link to get your mug into the description of the show. So if you're listening to this now and didn't listen to yesterday and are thinking to yourself, oh sweet I'm getting a free mug. You're not getting a free mug because you guys responded in your jobs and the mugs are all sold out. I even had a panic moment they were trying in this morning where I was like, oh, these have sold a lot faster then we thought they were gonna and yeah we had to pull the page, the checkout page on them so if you go to that checkout page now you're just gonna see a big sold out.
Thanks to everybody for getting your mug
Yeah thanks to everybody for getting your mug. Yeah no days, I know a couple of you guys are email saying you missed out and you want them for presents and stuff. I have no day when I'm gonna get the next batch of them in. Maybe it's not mugs next, maybe we go with some sort of cool tea. You know what, we might even do a t-shirt. I'd love to do it almost like a crowdsourced t-shirt design. Like design the t-shirt, not the t-shirt that I want, but the t-shirt that you want. So we might do something like that in the coming weeks or months, but let's get this Vuelta podcast out of the way first. So we had Lopez dragging a clear. Nobody was too motivated to help him. Roglic, really ask yourself, like why would Roglic bother helping? So he just rode there. He rode through the odd time to just, I'd say to break them a knot near just when it was easier on a tail, when the easier to ride them to sit on. Mike again, he was just happy to be there and he wasn't particularly riding. Valverde, I'd say would have rode but he would have looked like not the nicest man in the world if he had a road. So I think, you know, I call that nearly the Valverde dilemma today because the gap is at 38 seconds on the plateau over the top of the last climb and Valverde's dilemma is just to finish today, so to Valverde perfectly. Does Valverde royad and he closes the gap. It's 38 seconds. If he had a cooperative with Lopez, the two of them would have closed the gap. But if he royads, he distances teammates, Cantana, who starts today's second overall, and Lopez is taking chunks of time out of him. So that was the Valverde dilemma, and Valverde, like an old pro, he'd done the politically correcting, despite his own personal ambitions, and he sat on and didn't write. Now, I, yeah, I don't know. I'm torn on this because, yeah, he done the right thing, but I actually think Quintana is gonna lose the podium anyway. I think Quintana is cooked, and I just don't see him holding on to that podium. Like the gap between Quintana, excuse me, a bit of cough going on at the moment, he heard me yesterday and today. The gap between Quintana and Lopez. Quintana's a 3.31, Lopez is a 4.17. It's not huge. I can't do fast mats. If you can do fast mats, you are a legend and you have my undying critical acclaim, but I can't so I don't know what that gap is, but it's not that big. It's not very meaty. Actually, on a side, nobody outside the Vuelta. Anyone checking out that stuff about Veenekorov, Veenekorov, they're apparently, He could be looking for up to six months jail time for his fixing of liaison liaison. It's alleged to be paid 150,000 euro to his breakaway companion. I think it was club Nive for the win and they have a nail to the transactions or they're very transferred money from the count. He claims it's from a property deal. So yeah, look, you know, his dirty in more ways than one. So yeah, I actually, that happens all the time in cycling but it's just me you know such an unlikable character I'd like to see him getting done. He's just not good for cycling. I don't like him around cycling. He's an unrepentant doper and now he's back in charge of a team with young riders like Lopez and he's just toxic I find. This sport is better off without guys like that. There you go, that's how you like that for sitting on the fence. Lopez looked super strong today. He was in a League of his own today. He pulled that gap clear, like the gap between the Lopez group, which contained race leader Rog Litch, Vavardei and Rafa Mica. That gap went out to over a minute, I think just over a minute.
They were only dropped with 40k to go and they were riding behind as…
They were only dropped with 40k to go and they were riding behind as well. They were riding behind a corporate behind and we had Lopez pretty much single-handedly pulling that out to a minute. So that was pretty impressive. In the finish we had Gita, time to zip up the jersey and celebrate for AF education. It's been a tough, tough, well to for AF education. If I had like Hugh Cardi out with a bad accident, TJ Van Gardren out again, bad accident, then they had their team later in Northern Columbia in Rigoberto around. It needed a really nasty accident so speedy recovery to Rigo. You know he's punctured long I've been there and and that's a really horrible injury, broken ribs, these are broken clavicle, almost identical injuries back at the end of the 20-20 or dances and it was ridiculous, it was so painful and I actually talked about walking away from the sport for a good dent, just the risk to reward just didn't make sense and that's why I stopped racing the bike full time as well. Both, yes, video recovery to rig on and a Gita winning today, I'm sure it'll be a small consolation I'm lying in his hospital bed if he's still in the hospital, but a constellation nonetheless, especially his compatriot from Columbia, that's pretty cool to see. We had Roglage winning the sprint in for a second, which was for me a little show of dominance to Vavarda. He still has legs that he's not weak and we're not seeing the repeat of the diminishment of power that we've seen from Roglage in this whole week at Azure Italia where he just completely fell apart collapsed and then we'd Valverde rapping out in third place One minute later. We had that pogger car grew with Quintana and that was yeah pretty catastrophic for Pogger car because the GC now looks like Rogliche Lane with a 250 lead He's extended that over Valverde because he beat him in the sprint and he got extra bonus seconds Contana's a 3-31, Lopez now is 4-17 and pulls back on the white jersey, PocaCars dropped to 5th at 4-49 and James Knox has dropped the spot to 12-40-40. He's in 9-0, I've lost over a few people but they're just kind of my favourite riders I'd like to see do well. James Knox said today, Knox said today the first climb was absolutely flat out. said and then Astana hit the second climb fall again and he said he couldn't follow. He said it was a filthy day out there. Took forwards, took forwards. Yeah I feel from him. If ever I thought there was a man clean it's James Knox you can see the fatigue on his face day after day. It looks like it's wearing wearing tan on the lot. We have our other shelf sponsor on this is ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels are a legendary bunch of folks who are company that's grown with all organic taking in no venture capital and I know someone who played that Doyce a few years ago when we tried to build our app. It's a nasty murky little world of venture capital so to scale to the level they have and serve the amount of customers they are without taking on that money just goes to show you how good the product is and Dave loyal brand ambassadors it's amazing you got to check it out if you're you know If you have any call for having your own website, for designing your own web pages, for running email marketing campaigns, it's a one-stop shop. Check it out, it's legendary stuff. It's accredited for much of A1 success and it's ease of use. So, good guys out there definitely were checking out and they're hooking you up with a 14-day free trial. Tree trial, tree trial? I don't know what that is. Try and say it fast, tree trial. Difficult one to say. It's like saying, try and say this good blood, bad blood. Try and say that 10 times really fast. It just goes good blood, bad blood, bad blood, bad blood, bad blood, bad blood, bad blood.
Impossible, try. That's one of them random segues that are more used…
Impossible, try. That's one of them random segues that are more used to on our full featureland podcast episodes, which will be back next week. I absolutely cannot wait. Topics we're gonna discuss, I have absolutely no idea. I'm just head down, grab ankles until the end of this Vuelta and then I will lift the head up and start figuring out getting guests, getting new show sponsors all exciting times. We had Teoh Gagan Hart talking about how difficult it is in the second half of the season for him to hold weight, which is a strange one. I would have thought for the pro go is they race so much that it would be easier to hold weight in the second half of the season. He said his power number is as good as they've ever been and he's tried really hard to hold weight but it's just not happening for him. So that was an interesting one. We also had Mitch Docker after stage talking about Hijit as Wayne and commented how much of a close group they are. He said Hijit is a great guy and he's a funny guy as well. And he gives a lot of the credit for today's Wayne to the realms and speech from the DS, the Smorn on the bus before they get started asking Hijit to step up. And it is such a purple patch for Columbians at the moment. We obviously had Bernal Wayne in the tour who's not here with us in the Vuelta. Well like we've run who's been up there in the tour, I know he hasn't you know contested this because of his bad injury but we have Lopez, we've Quintana and we've had Gita all pretty much at the front of the Boycrakes today which is and every day which is pretty it's pretty cool it's almost as cool as that Fili T-Short the Bradley Wiggins was rocking in commentary today on EuroSport. I'm not sure if anyone watches the Vuelta on EuroSport it's very good coverage is brilliant. The EuroSport player has to be one of the most frustrating things at times. It's brilliant that we can get on the man's cycle. Don't get me wrong. But they have it labeled as the breakaway EuroSport and you click into it. There's not a sign in the breakaway. It's not there at all. Likewise, you click into some things. They'll run out halfway through the show. They're a time and of these things. It's obviously all automated and no one checks it. and it's terrible. I'm not usually the sort of right, strongly word complainable, that's what they'll be getting soon. Yeah, can't cancel it but how do you watch the site and otherwise. Weather forecast looks amazing for the A1 ride on Saturday so if anyone's around Dublin region, pop along, just show up, we're leaving from the food room, 9.30 am in Clontarf, get there for about 9.15 for a coffee, EZ6570K ride, social, phone, you know we're an online coaching company so it is nice to physically meet up and build that out wolf pack even once a week. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow it's a sprinter's day let's see what Sammy Bee can do it's a hundred and sixty-five K we're a cat tree right out the gate tomorrow so break will go on that cat tree can bore and bring it back our quick step minded or is the Jakobsen cuckty look pretty cuck yesterday it's a breakaway or it's a sprint depending on fatigue levels. It'll be an interesting one. I'm looking forward to it and then we've won more climbing day on the way to Madrid. Let's be having you. Only a couple days left. Stay strong, stay strong. Chat you soon.