Valverde's Heartbreaking Crash
Row Man, it's stage 7 of the Vuelta España. 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 longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Rolmen, it is stage 7 of the Vuelta España, we are going 152km from a place that sounds like a narcotic ganjia to Balcan de Alicante. It was savaged today to see fans back on the side of the road. For so long we've had fans blocked off, not been able to go on see sporting events and particularly boy graces which we all love but it's amazing to see them lying in the final climb again today warm my little heart a little bit. We raced through Calvary today and it's a place I've been to do a little bit of pre-season training but it's also been a place that nearly every professional in that peloton would have been time and time again the hotel day a month day I think it's called and yeah I don't know if it's cheap accommodation or what brings people back to Calpe. It's certainly not for Royty and the Climes because it's about too dare. Call the rats as a famous one. And you know, the Roy... the Roy there's okay but it does much nicer Roying in Catalonia. I would have guessed it's cheap and there's very little distraction around for the lads. Today we had definitely some drama in the non-racing sense because Bauverde exited the race and he slid off on a descent. It was about 40 kilometers into the stage. He went down a ravine almost and it looked like it could have been really bad. He got helped up by one of his teammates and immediately gone to clutch the collarbone. It looked bad, it really did. And he tried to ride and then he stopped again and he abandoned. And then it was just this flood of emotion and as a bike fan, I actually felt that emotion as well for her. And you're conflicted if you even want to see those pictures of other people. It was like a peeping tom shot. It came true to trees in this sort of secret cam footage of how very they slumped over the boykin emotional. Like he's been such a great champion. I know years back he had the dope and stuff but you know I'm just forgetting to forget on that stuff because if you're gonna have a ban and serve the ban and still have judgment after that I don't know what the point of the ban is so I'm happy to observe him of his sins once he served his ban. to watch him there slumped over his bike and I'd say a lot of the emotion for him was he's probably unsure if this is going to be his last Vuelta at Spania. There's talk maybe he'll ride one more year, he's 42 now which is gives hope, gives hope to us all. He's 42 and he's still riding at the top level. It's only two years ago since he was world champion, don't forget. So we hope he does one more year and we specifically hope he does one more Vuelta. Another one that was strange today, Hugh Cardi abandoned And for no visible signs of illness or injury, I'm not entirely sure what the issue was there. He was toured in last year's Vuelta and he won that massive crazy stage up the Angarlu. So yeah, disappointing to see him there and I'm sure he is disappointed.
Storer Attacks on Brutal Climb
He lost a lot of time yesterday so I don't know, that's gotta be hard to take as well. One of the hard things to watch about Vavirte crash now today is movie star were actually playing their tactics grace. I talked on yesterday's podcast about how they were poised with Tree in the Top 4 to make the race difficult and that's what they were doing. Vaverty was on the attack with Cara Paz when he crashed so it's just yeah it's extra shit. We had big breakup there all today and we had friend of the show, NeoPro, Jay Voying up the break and then the break split and we had Civicov former Tour of the Love and Year winner. We had Michael Storrer, former FBD on Post Ross winner. We had Carlos Verona from MovieStar also up there when it split and they were the tree that animated it at the front and at Stanner we're dealing a lot of damage for the good while back in the bunch and that last 8km climb but the climb really got spicy and where I think it got serious was about 5km to go, turned off the main climb onto this narrow little climb and it actually reminded me of years ago I was out in 10 reef, probably 2015, 2016, I was out in 10 reef training and I found a climb like that and honestly It's the first time, it's first and only time I ever had to get off a bike and walk up a climb. It was just every time I turned a corner it was 15%, next corner 15%. I had no idea where the top was and I was just like fuck this. Foot went down and I was like I'm rolling back down the other side. Never made the top. It could have even been that climb, no it wasn't that climb because it was 10 and a reef but it looked very very similar. So I felt for the lads on that 5k because some of the pitches on it were nasty and Michael Storer animated the front of the race he attacked Verona and Sivikov and he was too strong for them but America how steep that climb was you see in Michael Storer and he was having to do a postman. Do you ever watch a postman getting up the local hill? He can't go straight up it so he has to flatten out the gradients by going a little bit left a little bit of the rise and he makes this wavey motion going up the climb. Storer was like that that's how steep it was I haven't seen a professional boy-grutter at the front of a race doing that in forever. So, Store took it home, a massive win for the DSM man, really pulled the season out of bag for him and it has to be the second most important victory of his life. Obviously after he won that stage four of the Ross into bone-cranner back in 2017, etched in every soikand fans memory. Verona rocked up in seconds, civic off towards and there was no real drama in the group of favourites behind. There was no attack in it, it was just a terrain done a bit of a sorting out. Adam Yates seemed to be riding a bit of tempo for the rest of the group and he just sat on the front and rode this tempo that it was only actually Roglic, Yates obviously Lopez, Bernal, Delacruz, Oinerk Masz, were the only ones who could follow this tempo. Everyone else was gapped off like notably Landa dropped which is disappointed for him after crashing out of the tour.
GC Standings and Sign-Off
Guilla Martin, Carapaz, Vlasov, everyone. Tomorrow we're back into the hills again. So what we have in GC at the moment is it's Roglich, Groch Schatner. He was in the remnants of that breakaway, the Sivikov group and he didn't make the front tree split but he held on and obviously stayed quite far in front of the bunch to move up the second on GC. Only Mr. I was gonna call it the Maglia Rosa. Almost missed the leaders jersey he only missed him by eight seconds that would have been a career defining moment for him so you know a difficult name to pronounce so I'm glad he's not in the red there a gross shot there I wouldn't have liked him in the red for the next week trying to say that name. Oinder Kmasas at 25 seconds and Superman Lopez is at 36 seconds we're into the mountains again tomorrow we're into the mountains again the next day so it's yeah there's a lot of boy grace to be done before the rest day. Roadmen, if you're listening on Spotify, iTunes, all those places, take a second and like and review the podcast. It only takes two seconds, but it really helps the ratings and the deliverability and all that algorithm stuff or so I'm told. Follow us over on Instagram. There's always good stuff going on over there. It's roadman.toyclin. And also, if you're not listening on the podcast, you could be listening on video at the moment, because we started putting it out onto Instagram, TV, Facebook, and Twitter. So you could be listening in any of those places. There you go. We're constantly evolving, roadmen constantly evolving, growing and evolving. Roadmen, thanks for listening to my rambling on this Stage 7 of Vuelta. Enjoy your another mountainous Stage 8 tomorrow, ride safe and I'm gonna catch you up with your dad. Okay, stop what you're doing. It's Anthony again. I want to talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the eight-week challenge. So for 8 weeks I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself, whatever that is. For 8 weeks I want to take you under my wing and I want to personally build for you the customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is going to be laser focused on your goal and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments so don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling and went off and taught I was a really big business man. I came back and I realised I wanted to get into cycling but I knew after a bit to train it alone it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system it needed 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm going to give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used and even the motivational audios I listened to to get back I'm tracking. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio go to www.rodemancycling.com forward slash eight week or check out the link in the bio click that so one more time it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty also.