Tour preview and Patreon pitch
It's that time of year again, it's the Tour de France preview. 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 journey? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Roman, welcome back. It's that time of year. It's the Tour de France preview and I'm going to be coming to you daily Tour de France podcasts for the next three weeks. It is the 108 edition of the Tour de France and I absolutely cannot wait. We've so many fascinating match-ups. They're gonna unfold on the mountains, the roads, the highways and the boyways of France for the next three weeks. So it is, as I said, toward a France time, and that can only mean one thing. It is indeed time for the annual Armstrong podcast, ad fest, where he goes live every single day and reads out 45 minutes of this passionate ads about products he doesn't give a fuck about. So that's really what I'm looking forward to as well. Now I do enjoy the WeDo podcast but the ads on it crack me and I know they're back again this year and I will be tuning into it sporadically but yeah you're gonna fast forward those four 10 minutes with the Armstrong podcast. Guys before I jump in and I really dig into this year's Tour de France preview, It's just the time to remind you about Patreon because Patreon, it's what makes this podcast possible. It's what means it's the reason I don't have to do the Armstrong ad fest for the next three weeks because you guys support the podcast. You dig into your pockets for the price of a point of beer to support the podcast. So I'd ask you, even if you haven't subscribed in the past, especially if you haven't subscribed in the past, to dig in and buy me a point of beer that'll cover the whole tour de France and the whole podcast runs off a modulus soundness. There's no charge for it. I can easily put this behind a paid firewall and it costs a 5-room month to listen to it. And you know, you'd make a shit ton of money from the under, but I don't want to do that because there's people out there that love the podcast and can't afford to pay a 5-room month for the podcast. And they can keep listening to it for free because we have a model based on soundness. We have a model that if you're enjoying the podcast and you can afford to spare a 5-room month, jump over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh and make a small donation to keep the podcast Roman and to make a contribution towards the listeners who can't afford to that paid off over a month if we pull it behind a paid firewall like so many podcasts have done at the moment. So many of the good podcasts I listen to now you might get one episode a week or half an episode a week and the rest are behind a paid firewall whether it's patreon or another service. So look, trying to avoid that so please do your part. Well, man, 108 edition. I am super excited about this, but I haven't looked at the course. I'm not super stoked for some of the stages. The first, there's a couple of ways you can read this. The first 13 days, we've six sprint stages, we've two TTs, we've two uphill sprints and a couple of medium stages and no GC battles. Really, if you're to look at that just on paper, but you can't look at these things just on paper because what we have in the first week is We've four days in Britannia in the north of France. And it's not just a terrain, it's a narrow road. So if you're to look at a review that just says sprints there, just two twos, medium, mountain, there's no GC, shake up. But Britannia has narrow roads. So straight away, we're into a situation where we don't have a hierarchy in the Peloton. We've spoken about how the Peloton sets up behind the GC team, whoever's leading that's the main GC team. And then they set up behind that with normally the race favorites team.
Stage one chaos in Brittany
And this is the Peloton hierarchy, but heading into the start of the Tour de France, this hierarchy isn't established. So we have narrow roads, and then we have a bunch of favorites teams all competing for space on these narrow roads. It's gonna be chaos. If anyone has had a chance to ride a bike in Britannia, the roads are narrow, they're twisty, they're windy, they're like rural roads in Ireland, they're the UK, they go up, they go down, and when they come over a climb on the top of the climb, it typically doesn't drop straight down. It sits on a plateau part. And if we see wins, if we see any cross wins, we're gonna see major splits in the first week. So look, stage one is gonna be, it's the most near-vrocking stage on the entire calendar for pro-riders. We hear every time I have one on the ladder on the podcast, he talks about how near-vrocking stage one is. We normally see massive crashes. So tomorrow you're adding into the mix, we're 197 kilometers from breast to learn you. We've four forward category climbs, two forward category climbs, and an uphill finish for 3k at 5.6%. You're going to have Quickstep fighting at the front because that's what Quickstep do with the Wolfpack. They hunt for these type of stages. It's perfect for them. There's so many roiders that could potentially win on this terrain, and they have a team designed to smash the bunch to fucking pieces in those crosswinds. Quickstep we're going to do here. Vanderpol is going to be there. We've already heard from Vanderpol. We know he's focusing on the mountain bike in the Olympics, whether that's, he's not going into his favor. Let's just say that. Pickock looks on paper, a stronger mountain biker. So whether that's wise or not, I don't know. But we know that Alpason and Fenix are trying to honor the memory of Raymond Poulador, Vanderpold's, grandad's, they've even changed the case. We suspect Vanderpold's only going to last a week in the tour before going and resting for a difficult Olympics. So we know he's all in, especially for these Britannia stages, and they really suit him. We've Alaphilippe, who is made for these. We've woutf an art. He's just recovered from surgery on his appendix. We don't really know what his form is like, but he's going to be there and there about. Then we have the GC guys. We've Ineos, with four GC writers that are all going to be at the front. If Saagan, all these guys are all vying for road position on these narrow stages for the first four days. So my prediction for tomorrow for stage one is absolute fucking chaos on the road to Britannia tomorrow. I think it's going to be a crash fest. I think there's going to be splits all over the place. Looking ahead and looking forward on that for the next three weeks, like who are we fancying as the favourites? very difficult to look past last year's winner, Pogacha and last year's man who was robbed at the very last Primos Roblitch. Both of them in scintillate informed this year but any of us are coming with a forefront, the tact with Grand Thomas, Carapas, Richie Port and Teo Gaganhart. I'm potentially looking forward to seeing a little bit of infighting between those and seeing. They haven't named it out now later. For me it suits Thomas. If you look there's over 50km of TT, there's some long climbs but not super steep climbs. Richie Porte just doesn't look like he has the minerals I think is best place in the Grand Tour's fifth. Teal Gagan Hart can you get a flooky jiro win? I don't want to say it was a flooky jiro win but he definitely didn't go in as one of the fucking, it was a flooky jiro win. Teal Gagan Hart had a fucking flooky jiro win. We've Porte who is not going to win GC, he never has and he's never shown to be a GC rotor in a grand tour. Top 5, he's a good rider but he's not going to do it. Teo Fluke win. Carapaz, he's strappy as fuck. For me it's Thomas' the leader there. I don't like Carapaz. I don't like him. That's that movie star documentary and the power of that. But I see Thomas as the leader there but there's potential for infighting.
GC contenders and sprint picks
Movie star are common with a big lineup. We've Inrich Mass, we've Superman Lopez and we've the Evergreen Valverde. Like, would you get better against Valverde rolling a top 10 on GC? It'd want to be a brave man. Something I'm really excited about is Francis de Jue and they've moved away from their insistence that he will be an owner of GC-Man and they have David Godot who I think will do a great ride. EF Education, another man who's been a complete bottle job when it comes to GC is Rigoberto Iran. Rigoberto Iran is in good good form so he could spring a surprise. I don't see him stepping on the podium but maybe a top five for Rigoberto Iran. Sprint is wide open with the absence of Sam Bennett. We've got Bob who hasn't been on his top top form for a few years. Caleb Yoon, Cav, Sagan will wilt when art get involved. I suspect probably not on the afterman of his appendix operation, but who knows? Look, there's so many fascinating match-ups and stages to come both definitely one of the highlights to look out for is Von 2 twice in a single day. The first four days for me is fascinating because on paper for the non-purist, cycling fan, you look at this and you might say sprint stage is medium-mountain stage is rolling stage is or whatever other shitty little tag they want to put on it. But that is hard, hard racing. Britannia is super hard racing. Anyone that's raced out there knows how hard those roads are, how exposed those roads are. Never had an easy race in Britannia. The thing I'm most interested to see this sort of France is Chris Frum and how he performs in this new role as road captain and we did a full podcast last week talking about that. Because when you think about road captain, you don't think about what Frum, his talents, and road captain especially in these first four days, could be required to sacrifice himself very early for the greater good and then battle against the time cut and it's not something we've ever seen from them. They're fascinating match-ups all over the place. I'm going to go out on a not very steep limb and say my podium is in no particular order Roglich, Pogacha, Gran Thomas and I'm going to say the old man by Valverde is going to spring a surprise and get a top 10 finish out of it. Row, man, it's going to be an epic three weeks really looking forward to it. Do me a favor, follow me over on Instagram. It's Rowman.soiklin. I'm going to be putting up Instagram stories, talking about the tour, little competitions, bits like that over on Instagram stories. Also, it really helps when you share the podcast, share with club mates, share with teammates, them now, we're doing it live for the next three weeks, every stage at the Tour de France. Share, share, share it. And if you're listening to it on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, wherever you're listening to it, like it, review it, all that good stuff because that really helps. And of course, jump on over to Patreon and make that small donation over on Patreon because that's the lifeblood of the podcast. Roadmen, it's going to be an epic three weeks and I absolutely cannot wait to have you along for the journey with me. Until tomorrow, chat down Roadman 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 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 through 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. at roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.