Yeah. So luckily they gave me a little bit of a buffer. So yeah, they could catch me. I can see what Bennett today, and like was it the same for you when I've been at almost, today it was like the day it was in his head, been the cases I've made like this is it. Like all the hard work is paid off for this moment. He was in flood to tears like on the finish line he was saying like you dream of it but you never think it will happen and then he started trying to tank people that have got them there and he just like broke down in tears. He's an incredible rider incredible rider and I mean we're gonna see a lot of big things from him in the future for sure. We're sure a nice first stage win for Ireland right? Yeah he's a good dude I came up racing against him a lot and he came up he raced with on post for a long time and like so many times he nearly walked away. I'm post there like county level and he really struggled to make that leap from county up to pro county and I think he'd probably in his head quit five or six times and just walked away from him and came back and then he just got that move to net up and Jor up to pro county and kind of took off for him when he won that stage at Hora Britain but it wasn't like an overnight success. He worked hard for That's great. That's great. Yeah, it seems like a hard work in kind of nose to the grindstone type of person type of rider and I mean, yeah, it's been through a lot of adversity and I don't know. You know, from the outside, I don't know, but it seems like a really nice guy. I was over in Ireland a few years ago and they were speaking really highly of them. And yeah, that's exciting. And then, you know, kind of neat to be this his old teammate from last year. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't seem like they're the best buddies. I don't know you never say But yeah, it's been an exciting tour to watch so far. Yeah, I mean I watched a couple mountain stages Over the weekend. That was those were awesome. Really cool to watch Who have you got your oil this year? Podge car is gonna catch in me Yeah, I mean he's he's here. He's rather incredible incredible Really the whole level like I was reading a little bit and just about the old race. And yeah, I mean, the level's insane, right? You know, they're growing, they're growing up. I think he, Poggratja, is that how you say this last name? I have an idea. They were, I guess, this is kind of never up the pay resort and, you know, the final climb on Sunday's race, which is just insane. They were going for it. They were fat. And man, they're lucky they didn't crash there at the top going for those KOM or for the time bonus at the top there. How does Project Car have numbers stack up against when you were racing your Sartan numbers you were hitting? I think you've done 6.5. Yeah, I mean, what was it? 6.5? Yeah, 6.5, right? Yeah, wow, it's impressive. Yeah, he's riding fast, he's riding strong. Yeah, yeah. Like, is that stacking up against the Sartan numbers you guys were doing? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. He's, uh, he's, uh, he's want to keep your eye on, you know, in this tour for sure. I don't think they can really give him, uh, much more freedom to, uh, go up the road by himself. Well, cause he's only 44 seconds down. How old is he? He's, he's 21 years old. Wow. But he, he lost 44 seconds. Uh, he's only 44 seconds off yellow at the moment, but he lost 90 seconds in the crosswind day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that'll happen, you know, when you don't have, when you just get, you know, it sounds like you made that first split and then It was I think it was a coming back from a crash or something like that but you know some there were some tricky roundabouts and Just out of position at the wrong time it can just Just really bite you in the butt and that's what happened. That sounds like it happened to a few a few riders there that What's that like you can make that initial split and then you think okay you're gonna make it to the finish with the leaders and then you know you you know it sounds like he had an accident but some people might have just like let up for a second and dripped it a little bit too far back and then you go through a few tricky round abouts you go through a town where it gets really strung out and then it's crosswind and boom next thing you know you're you know you're off.
What's the stress levels like tighter on the day like that? Crowds, crosswinds are nasty. Especially for the climbers, especially the pure climbers. Yeah, constant battle for position. I mean, you're never not fighting. And when you're not fighting, you're basically giving up. Because you have to be always fighting to stay up front. And if you lose that focus, you're going to find yourself at the back and really spit out the back soon thereafter. Crossrooms are just nasty. They can just rip a peloton into pieces. Like today. In a few minutes. In a few minutes. Yeah, you know, I missed today's stage, but you know, it sounded like it could potentially have been really bad, but it sounds. Just saw me in a town today. I saw it like they went in. Oh, really? It looked like every couple of minutes was a new town. Yeah. And you go through a town. It's all protected from the crosswinds, right? And then you leave that little village, you know, and if it's pretty exposed without a whole lot of like big trees, boom, you come out of the town and it's full on crosswind, you know, no coverage from buildings or some trees, anything like that. You know, it sounds like they were right on the ocean. Like Bernie Oizel is talking about today. He said he's just not a fan of this year's Tour de France, or he just thinks it's too stressful. Like he said, today's day, it was unnecessarily stressful. didn't need to bring it true, like 50 towns or whatever he brought it true. Like he said it ends in a bunch sprint anyway, so like why put the Reuters at risk? Yeah, I mean I would agree with them. They put the riders through a lot, through a lot for sure. You know, in the first week they could have probably made stage one a little bit, kind or was that stage two with the stage one where everybody was falling? Yeah, it was also kind of a complicated stage. That was up called as was that? Yeah, you know, some of the early stages could, I think, could be a little bit more straightforward because, you know, you have almost 200 riders, all fresh, you know, everyone has the chance to be successful on stage one. So everyone's like, just rare ago. And so I feel like they should make stages a little bit Less complicated, a little bit more straightforward, less roundabouts. It's hard for the peloton to just go through that. Go through so many of those early in the race like the Tour de France. I guess we're seeing the last few years as well. I'm not sure what you think about this. Did GC Reuters have a lead out trying to keep their guys safe? The sprinters have their lead out trying going, so it's just extra people fighting for space on the road. Yeah, yeah, and you know if it was a little bit more straightforward, you know some of the teams with GC riders would feel okay kind of drifting back a little bit letting the sprinter teams kind of control it a little bit, but you know when it's When you're just fighting to stay up front because it's too dangerous to be you know 20 30 40 riders back like It's just chaotic and it creates a lot of stress I mean, my last role was like what, 2004? And yeah, I mean, I remember bobbing heads with Lance and his team back then, because I was on phone app, we were trying to stay up front. They didn't like it, that we were trying to stay up front. Everyone has their lead out trains. But that's in the first week. How much ego is there and going to test our strong floating around without fighting for position. You know, there's a bit of that. You know, some people feel like they deserve to be up there more than others. Some people feel like the other teams don't deserve to be up there. And you know, there's a bit of that is a bit of hierarchy. But at the end of the day, it's a it's a by grace. So like I seen Nicholas Roach from some web is doing his obviously Irish. He's doing an article every day in the local newspaper here. Nice. But he was talking about Janssen of Yumbo-Visma, like completely fucked them out of it's the other day, like calling them a prick and then Roach went up like 5k later to apologize and say look obviously we had a misunderstanding and your man just fucked them out of it again. Oh really? I was like the balls on this kid because Roach is quite a senior rider in the Peloton Yeah, you know, I don't know.
It's been a long time since I've been in the professional Peloton, but yeah, it gets chippy. It gets chippy. Everybody's stressed out. Everybody's got a radio in their ear and everybody's director is telling them to get up to the front, you know, stay together as a team. And the road is only so wide. The road can only fit so many people at the front. Do you miss it when you're sitting there now? Watch it on the TV? What's that? You miss it now, sitting back watching on TV? Is it kind of hard to watch? Oh, no. It used to be a long time ago. It was hard to watch an ad anymore. No, I appreciate them. All these incredible riders. Yeah. Just the let me. I feel like the level's, the overall level is that much higher than back when I raced. I feel like the riders are that much more professional these days and focused. Yeah, I guess you guys kind of brought it. It's a lot of fun to watch. I'm enjoying it again. I took some years where I really didn't like watching or at a hard time watching it. But yeah, a lot of years have been just incredible. I guess you guys kind of ushered that era of real professional cycling. Like I know it's always pro, but that really going on preparing, like shedding waste, real focus on numbers. That's ever since your area, it's just been, like definitely building on that, building on that, building on it every year, nearly. I mean, maybe so, I mean, we stayed really focused and trained really hard and I believe back in my day, like not everybody focused that much and really dedicated themselves. But I feel like today, I mean, you know, those secrets are out. You gotta stay focused, you gotta train extremely hard, you gotta rest extremely hard. And now everybody seems like they're doing that. Everybody's training with a lot of specific work training, less coffee shop rides, and people are, and nowadays you can't really hide, right? You gotta send in your training data too. Like your coaches and directors and all that. So like, you know, whatever are some of our favorite work, whatever, like the 40, 20, everybody's doing 40, 20s these days compared to, you know, back in my day, not many people knew about 40, 20s. What do you like as a coach, daughter? Are you pushing your athletes pretty hard? We like to push our athletes hard, but yeah, also rest hard, certainly. And, you know, everything in moderation, like most of our athletes, I'd say are like weekend warrior types and have busy day jobs and families. The most important thing is having fun, having fun, getting healthy. So yeah, we try to have a lot of balance. But yeah, certainly when it's time to train hard, when they're rested and ready to go, yeah, we haven't worked really hard. It's like, we were talking about, about how you colorize yourself as a social writer these days, but isn't it cool that you still have such a nice relationship with the boy? with the boy because I know I've chat to some ex-pros and some of them don't have that relationship with the boy anymore. Yeah, I understand. I mean, I think everybody kind of go, once you retirement's hired, retirement for professional cycles is hard. And you go through so many years where you're just living and breathing the bike. And then you get to a moment where it's time to hang it up. And some people just fall straight into a job and other people not so much, you know, like me or and yeah some people really just hang up the bike and think they'll maybe pick it up in a year or two years and some people you know it's been whatever a decade later and their bike is still dusty, you know. I hung up the bike for a little while and I think it was good for me to just to kind of take a few steps back and then kind of came back to it on my own terms and yeah I really enjoy it now and look I don't know I mean now I'm like I like bike touring like bike packing which is probably shows my age yeah I'm getting out getting out getting out. I'm all over that I'm looking for a gravel bike at the moment. Yeah oh yeah it's but you know yeah gravel bikes are the way to go I'd say, you know, for anybody who's never done a bike tour, these days they call it bike packing. I'd say give it a whirl. Yeah, I'll have to try to get you over to Ireland where we're thinking about hosting a gravel race.
Me and a buddy of mine were wrecking the roof the moment. So we're going to host one, trying to get a day for a but next summer sometime as long as COVID goes away. So we've definitely try and get you over for that. Be a bit of fun. All right. I'll ride in in the group pedal. Last question on Tour de France, Tyler. Yeah. This year, what I've noticed is, Yumbo are obviously taken over the mantle from Skye trying to control the race. But when it's got super hard, we've seen all the leaders really isolate. When in previous years, we're kind of used to seeing Skye, which still haven't Froome, Thomas and maybe Walt Pels or something still there. Hey, Anthony, you cut out for a second, but I think you were saying that in previous years, yeah, we saw kind of a team train up there in the mountains, but now when it gets super hard, it's, yeah, just individuals. Yeah, it's like the top guy from each team. Yeah, we're seeing that this year. I don't know. I think it's kind of fun that way. It's a little bit more exciting. Anything can happen, right? Everyone's really fending for themselves and it's really mono on mono Okay, so it's making the race more exciting call your call your podium. He was a Roglic Oh gotcha is that a say and It's gonna be third It's gonna be third I'm going to say, Quintana. Ooh, big call. What do you say? That's not bad. I think that's a good prediction. Yeah, I think it's good. I'm going to go for the win. Roglich second, I'm Pogacha toward. Okay. I think Bernal is going to come forward in third week. Yeah, I just kept hearing people talking about how brutal the third week is in the tour this year. And so I went and looked at it yesterday online. It is pretty brutal. And Bernal is going to, I think he's going to be doing really well in the high Alps. I think his hometown in Columbia is like whatever. It's over 2000 meters. So, you know, he'll probably excel in the high, high mountains. but yeah, he's got a good team behind him, that's for sure. It's got to be interesting. Tyler, you're a legend. Yeah. I appreciate you joining me again for a little brief Tour de France catch up. Hey, good talk, me man. Keep up the good work. We'll talk to you soon. There we go, folks. It was awesome to catch up with Tyler Hamilton. I hear his thoughts. He gives an insight that there's few men on the planet can give us about the Tour de France and about Sowaitlyn. I love the way, Tyler. He's such a laid back casual dude, but make no mistake, the words that come out of Toiler's mouth take very such weight. It's not a random cycle and pondered on GCN, talking about stuff, it's experiences that are learned by hard work, miles, hitting the deck, stressing the peloton. So it's just absolutely brilliant to get his insight. I always love catching up with Toiler. I recorded a full feature length episode with Toiler a couple of months ago. If you haven't listened. That's definitely worth going back to check out. Guys, thanks for listening to today's Tour de France podcast. It was a big day for Irish cycling. Tomorrow we are going stage 11 from Chateleon Plage to Poutier. It's 165 kilometers with one category for our climb. So we can expect Sam Bennett to be daira daira belts and defending his green jersey again. Just a gentle note, guys, if you haven't done so already to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. Patreon is the place you can go and support this daily Tour de France podcast puts massive strains on everything financially. So it's just getting those little contributions in makes such a difference to the longevity of this podcast. Thanks for supporting us and I will chat to you again tomorrow. Enjoy the day.