Roadman, let's talk about Rong Vomblandran, the Tour of Landers
Roadman, let's talk about Rong Vomblandran, the Tour of Landers. That's Cute out in Tro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman welcome back to another roadman cycling podcast and happy Easter to one and all I was tempted to not bring a podcast today because it's a bank holiday. But I wanted to bring a run von Vlander and tour of Flanders sort of review podcast because I love the race it's one of my favorite one day races of the year probably marginally just behind party rubay which now is confirmed as a postponement which is shit. I really love Flanders though and I wanted to get sort of the reaction to while it's still relevant. So hence the Bank Holiday Monday podcast. Before I dive in and talk about Caspar Asgreen, World Fanart, Machu Vanderpaul, let's first remind you about how this podcast is funded. It's entirely funded from your user generosity and I beat this drum a lot and if you're a regular listener I'm sure you're like yeah I know I get it. it's not this dispassionate advertisement reading at the start of a podcast. It's a call to action to support the podcast and make it sustainable going forward. We're over a year into this podcast, experimented the moment and gave our take. We're pretty much five days a week for the last year. And that obviously takes a time goes into that, but there's also a financial cost. We haven't reached break even yet on the podcast. So if we can please keep hustling and dig deep to the tune of a point of beer once a month, that would be awesome. The link to support the podcast and by me that point of beer, it's down below. It's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. Thank you legends. Right, let's jump in. Casper Askreen, the conic quickstep has shocked the world. It was an absolutely epic finish to run Van Vlander and finishing in Utenard and it was the comic quick steps 8 victory of Ron von Vlander. That is pretty impressive from quite a low budget team but nobody would have really bet against the comic quick step before they started the race. They have this amazing strength and numbers, they have this wolf pack mentality, they have a one for all and it's team spirits that were not seen anywhere else. We're seeing glimpses of it and maybe they'd be the next best. But for me, the kind of quick step. They're just everywhere. They're like any kind of break goals, there's two kind of quick step in it. It's brilliant to watch. The race was heavily billed by myself included as a tree horse race between Woutfaneur, Machu van der Paul and Alafleep. They're like the tree Amigos. But it actually didn't pan out that way. When the race got down to it, Kasper Asgrin, fresh off his win in the E-tree last week, to 26 year old, he was climbing as well as Machu Vanderpaul and better than everyone else. I would actually say, Clem's slightly better than Machu Vanderpaul on these short kickers and we'd 19 of them, these super steep kickers, like up to 23% at times on cobbles. He was fair and really, really well on this and you could see it early in the race and he's going to be there in the shakeup.
Hurried home from training and I got the last 80km of it, we're…
I hurried home from training and I got the last 80km of it, we're pretty much all together with a non-treatening breakup throughout and every ramp we went up I was like, A screen looks good, A screen looks good. I'm going to come down to what we'd A screen, Machuveander Paul, Wout Van Art, Alafleap. And then it's split. We had a couple of them, McLaren, Barram, McLaren guys, Dylan Tunes was there. And then it's split and what shocked everyone was Casper A screen looked to be the favorite and not Julian Alafilippe, which is brilliant communication from Alafilippe, the world champion to be humbling enough to say, you know what, I'm not on a good day, Casper's on a better day, it's all about you buddy. So they set it up and engineered it in such a way that Ascrean got clear with Woke Van Art and Machu Van der Paul. Next climb comes up, Woke Van Art is exposed and he's dropped leaving the two boys up front. I was absolutely sure coming to the finish line, the match of Annapal was going to win by 4-5 bike lengths. But sprinting at the end of a relatively flat stage where you're cruising around the bunch all day and sprinting at the end of Ron von Blandren after 254km, they're not the same thing. And that's exactly what this showed. Asking in force of Annapal to the front so he came from a favoured position but he wasn't getting much of a draft, you know cruising in the road, it's That's 34, 40k an hour, they were playing a little bit of, you know, look over the shoulder, slow down. So it was a low speed sprint, but tired legs. And when they opened it up, it was close, it was close, it was close. And then Vanderpold just broke and Asgrace took a really, really famous win. Savage win for the 26 year olds, we dubbed the human motorbike. And one of the legends of the sport for the last 10 years, Olympic champion Greg Van He picked up toward place and he came in and that's an important win because he's I think he's 36 years old, 35 years old and he's been handed a tree year contract from as he does air and he seems to be in this sort of dual leadership role with his training partner, Oliver Nason and at times a lot of both good riders they can't seem to figure out who they're working for. So they're getting left in the final with two strong riders there and not knowing who to prioritize and a lot of time they're trying to protect two guys and getting left with nothing. So it was good to see them actually getting a result. It's been AGT or best result of the classics. Podhiem and Flanders is nothing to sniff about. I think we're going to see Casper ask screen more and more at the forefront of the classics. We're only winding up into this classics campaign. Don't forget, we've have semi classics against and the E3 saxos but the big classics, it's only been Milan Sanremo and Tour of Flanders so far. The most farcical thing again that happened was the UCO, yet again, just being absolute clowns. Michael Schauer from AG2R takes a water bottle from his cage to troll the spectator, some of which are children on the road as a souvenir and needs to squalify it for later on. The absurdity of the UCO at the moment just knows absolutely no bounds.
They can't get any good press at the moment for these sort of stupid…
They can't get any good press at the moment for these sort of stupid decisions. As much as I've advocated and said to UCI, I've done an amazing job of keeping cycling going during COVID when a lot of other sports have shut down and they should be commended for that. It's been brilliant. They've just been far-scoped, some of these littering the qualifications and the stupid ones around Super Talk and aero positions that we talked about last week. Something else I taught interesting at the weekend as well was Peter Sagan. For me, I expected him to dig hard and team owner as a dink that came out during the week saying he'll have to reconsider Sagin's contract and if he's valued from money next year and talk maybe not extending. This is the chip on the shoulder I felt that Sagin needed. I felt he had a chance to enact revenge to say like fuck you I'm still the best and he lost it. He didn't, that didn't materialize. I sure it's not for want of efforts if rumors to be believed he's had a difficult winter. Call COVID really disrupt the training. So he's not in optimum shape, but I felt like that ship might have been enough to get him a podium, but it wasn't to be. He's out of contract at the end of the year. His current salary is reported to be around 5 million euro per year. It's hefty. And to be honest, he's not looking the same bang for a buck return on investment at 5 million euro a year that he once was. You know what? Two three time world champion, two time Tour de Flanders winner, seven-time Green Jersey winner. I just don't know if that's still there, if the hunger is still there, money does strange things to Reuters and if the hunger, the fire can go out. I'm not sure if that's happening with Saigon a little bit but I hope that he uses this negative publicity as a chip on the shoulder and he comes back angry to prove himself again because for me Saigon on his day, he's every bit as good as Machia of Underpaw, Woke Van Earth, plus you mix in the greatest showman in Boy Grace and Let's Not Forget That. It was an absolutely brilliant Ron von Vlander and totally enjoyed watching it. I hope you enjoyed it. Wherever you got a chance to watch it, I'll be back again tomorrow, old man. Thanks for listening. 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 Kickstarter 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 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 roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.