After almost 6 hours of racing, 250km in Imla, we've crowned…
After almost 6 hours of racing, 250km in Imla, we've crowned ourselves a new world champion. Oh yeah, it's the Housewives' favourite, Julian Alathalip. Let's cure that intro. The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long chances? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman Podcast. What a weekend of bike riding we had. It was World Championships weekend and it's always an amazing day to veg out on the couch straight after your ride and you'll soak up some of the best athletes in the world. parents strips off each other. This year we've done it around Emmala and today's Road World Championships crowned a fitting victor. One of my favorite riders, we've dubbed them on the podcast, mainly because my misses as a soft spot for them, the housewives favorite Julian Alaphilippe from France. What a fitting victor and I think he's gonna represent the Rainbow Jersey brilliantly over the next 12 months. Before I dive in and pack, what actually turned out to be quite a controversial road race. I'll tell you why in a second. Let's just briefly mention Patreon, because Patreon is what enables me to bring you this podcast. If you head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. All I'm asking is to buy me the price of a beer once a month to say thanks for the content, thanks for the podcast. If you're getting some value from it, please do that. And in return, I will give you access to the secret podcast episode once a month. Head on over to the Patreon link, it's in the description and all the details about what's involved in that secret episode will be revealed. So we had a race today, nine laps of a circus and we had those two climbs we talked about in the preview podcast, the Chima Galasterna and the Masalano climb. They were both sticky, quite difficult climbs and actually what made the climbs so epic was the organizer in Imla. I'm not sure if they heard a helicopter or a drone but the footage on the plateau across the top of the climbs, so I'm at the best cycling camera work I've ever seen. So if you haven't had a chance to look at that, go back and check it out, the region of Imla was just showcased beautifully and if Covid ever fucks off and lets us travel again, it'll be one of the places on a very short list for me. The race was dominated today by a 7, well when I say dominated, with respect to the lads in the 7-royter break. They weren't biggest names in the sport and they weren't very likely to stay out there. So they were kind of let out hang there until. So if you're not, if you maybe, you know, off the back of the Tour de France, a lot of people are coming to one day racing and watching it for the first time. So typically the custom in the world championships is you let a big group, sorry, not a big group, you let a group of riders up the road who are non-treatling. Guys who we don't believe can go on and bring it to the finish line because remember it's a 250 kilometer race. So if you don't let a breakaway go, attacks just happen all day and it just becomes an insanely difficult, unsustainably difficult day. So what happens is attacks, attacks, attacks, attacks until eventually attack gets sufficiently organized in a group that they get some separation from the main peloton and they get themselves up the road. And unless it's a group with big horsepower and race favorites, the guys in the back in the the bunch aren't typically too worried about it because everyone has numbers and like the French team. The French team took it on themselves to bring this race back together. So they stuck their boys on the front and their boys are a lot stronger than the boys in the break and eventually that gap gets whittled down. And really the big race started after the French had brought that back and we had, I used this, I don't even know how to describe this man, We had Pagacha, the Tour de France champion 22 year old, fresh off his win of the polka rock, white and yellow jersey in the Tour de France. We had him going on the offensive. We had him smashing it.
There was actually a point where I was thinking, oh my God, can this…
And there was actually a point where I was thinking, oh my God, can this man be this good? This is actually ridiculous. He went away, but it actually turns out it was a soft and up process that he was working for his buddy, his friends, second in the sort of France, Primo Sruglich. And he was there really as a complete softman up for him in today's race. And that was going to the tactics you send, Pogacha long. Once you send Pogacha long, what's going to happen? The race has to respond because you send them long and you don't respond. He's just going to run away. We've seen it in the Vuelta last year. We've seen it in the tour this year on the stage, I've of a call to parachute. He's eroded a decline. He's eroded in time trial. So he'll get that separation and he won't see him again. So when Pagacha attacked Belgium had to spring into action and they had to start using, I talked maybe about how Belgium mightn't have a united front that it's possible that Belgium might have had leadership problems. And there was no sign that the two big deputies, Teaspinutes and Greg Van Avermert, they went to work on the front and and they went to bringing Pagacha back. There was no problem whatsoever with that. Pagacha was closed down quite easily in the end. And then the attacking starters, the attacking starters on the last client. And we eventually had a group of six, making real separation for themselves. Mark Hershey, toward the front stage winner, attacks the only people who can follow our Wiltfan Art from our world champion, Inio Sroyderciekoski, stage winner, the two are all. So Jakob Fugelsang and Roglage. And what's interesting is all bar fugel sign from that group wrote the Tour de France, which may be answers that question that we were wondering. Because this is at the business end, this is after 220km of race. We often wonder is this the tour of good preparation for something like this, is a week in between a long enough rest. But this largely answers your question. The guys at the business end of the race all wrote the Tour de France. So it does seem like it was a positive. Now I know it's difficult to draw a conclusive correlation from that because the most talented Reuters were sent to the Tour de France and if they had arrested and not done the Tour de France, the composition of the break probably would have been the same as well. But yeah, it didn't seem like it don't have Julian Alaphilippe any harm when he went over the top of that group of six and got separation over the top of the final climb. And I'll have to leave those, he threw the bike, he fucked it around corners and threw it down the descent, held at 9 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, back to 10 seconds and we had this last 12k of just drama where it was tuned and thrown, is it possible to get him back and then we had a point where it just seemed like the wheels were coming off the chase behind. This typically happens because you've one rider fully committed up the road, you'll be an alaf leap and then back the road you have five riders who are coin committed but then there's two things they start looking at. One, Wout Van Art, one of the fastest finishers in the world is in the group. So they think, well, I'm going to get second if I leave Alaf leap up the road because he's going to win. But if I work with Wout Van Art, he's going to win sprint and my best chance is second anyway. So my best player here is to maybe soft pedal and gamble a little bit, make Woutfaunar do a ridiculous amount of work, and if we do catch Alephleep, I now have a chance, because Woutfaunar is tired, Alephleep is caught, I'm actually racing for the win. This rarely turns out to be a good tactic, the only time we see a rotor like that who's fully committed up the road being caught is when we see cooperation from all parties behind. So this is where we have the interplay of trade team versus country. We have Reuters from different countries behind, Wout Van Aert, Hershey, Kiekovsky from Poland, Fugelsang from Denmark, Roglage from Slovenia. We have these Reuters behind, but also, they're on trade teams. Roglage and Wout Van Aert, roid for the same trade team. And Roglage has just had Wout Van Aert doing unbelievable work for him for three weeks around Is there a little bit of reciprocity going on here?
Is where the start of the drama unfolds
Well, this is where the start of the drama unfolds. We all know how the race panned out. Alifeliep wasn't caught. The group behind showed some level of cooperation. Look, it showed some cooperation, but when you're watching on the TV, you just don't know how hard rotors are going on through. And if they were fully committed and the Belgium TV have really picked up on this. But for me, I'll get to that in a minute, that drama between Wout Van Eart and the criticism of Rogliche that maybe he didn't work hard enough for Wout Van Eart that he owed Wout Van Eart after the Tour de France and he didn't pay that back. I'll talk through what the Belgian televisions are saying on some Belgian expros, but you can only do what you can do if Rogliche is on his hands and knees after 240 kilometers racing. There's fuck all he can do on the last 10k. You'd have to have legs to do it. But first, I think it's worth no. The race finished as Julian Alifleap, Woutfernart in second place, Hershey in third place, an amazing third place for him. Cave Cofsky Ford, Fugelstein fifth, Roglich sixth, and then Bling Matches winning the group behind for seventh. So I didn't get my prediction right. I think I had predicted Woutfernart, Mike Woads, and Bling. They were all there, they're about Wout second, Bling seventh, Mike Woads fourteenth. Look, you win some, you lose some Hershey, was a great each way bet if someone got him. I have to say I didn't see her, she put allofally. Just looking on the way he finished it toward a France, I wouldn't have taught. The bookies didn't think that he was up there, but he just seems to be able to deliver that kick in the teas to people when they're on their limits. He knows how to attack. But, without fan art, the big star had showed a heavy pre-race favourite. He's after pulling off something that not a lot of riders have pulled off. He is the second rider only in history to win a medal in the time trial and the road race in the same year. The two orders are Big Mig, Miguel Injurin, one of the greatest riders of all time, and Abraham Alano. So he's in good company, but listen to him after race, he said, I think it's too early for me to be proud of it. I came here with high expectations and a tire to accept two silver medals. Nevertheless, I was beaten twice by guys who are stronger guys. That'll make it easier to accept but I'm aiming for wins. It's been an exceptional year I think I've had really strong legs but I'm gonna need some time to be proud of it. I think that's fair enough. I think it's the nature of the athlete that you're not gonna be proud of second straight out the bat. Let's move across to this drama. Roglic was really happy with how to raise pam now for him and Pogacha he Taught they wrote great together. He remarked that they're not one day specialists. We raced it. We raced it well. I'm super proud of being part of it. And I'm even super proud of the great result. But the drama kind of started when the Belgian Federation president tweeted, that's Tom Van Dam. He tweeted not to be confused by Jean Claude Van Dam, for just throwing down beatdowns, more of a 90s reference to Kung Fu and martial arts. Probably has no place on a cyclone podcast. You're thinking, But that is what you get on this cycle in podcast. Right, that was a random digression. Tom Van Dam. Tom Van Dam. He said, I love Philippe owes Roglich two beers for his work in that chase group. He tweeted out, as if to say that Roglich was off pedaling and that he wasn't un-rubled because of the work that the work that worked on for three weeks from around France. But Roglich said, look, we just did everything we got. It was five strong riders working together, but Julian was the strongest in the race It's normal in the last 2k you start thinking about other medals, but before that we worked really well together I think everybody had been on the wheel at the top of the climb, but it was impossible. No regrets the strongest in the race won Sorry that was what they worked on earth talking about how we can't have any regrets on that, but it was Vanart's The media coverage from Sporza That's where they started talking about that held a suggest that Wout shouldn't ride another meter on the front of the bunch for Roglich ever again.
Wout fanart said I understand the question about Primo sport he did…
Wout fanart said I understand the question about Primo sport he did everything he could of course we spoke I think he was on the limit it says a lot about the victory of Julian we were just five strong guys and we didn't bring back one second until the last 2k he was just the strongest rider. Roglich came back on this and he said we're teammates I would have loved for a while to become world champion. Obviously I would have loved it more than Alif Leib, but it was on my limit. I couldn't even sprint anymore. All the four other others were stronger than me and I had to close a gap out of every single corner. I gave it everything. And I honestly just believe that. You can't look at things in isolation. We need to look at Roglic's character. Roglic, you know, he's the guy who lost Tour de France on La Plaid Belfie and he still had the class to go and find his buddy and give him a hug and congratulate him for winning the Tour de France. He's a guy of class, he's a guy of dignity. I believe that if he had a chance and he had legs that he would have sacrificed himself for his team mate, Wilk van Erart and repaid that favor. But then you get back to the other question of, you know, what's the Slovenian national team? And this is why the world is such a confusing race. If you're the Slovenian national team director if you're Pargacha who set him up for this attack if you're Yani Brackovich and mezchek who worked all day to keep him in position and he rides to finish full gas for Wilt Van Art and gets dropped. And Wilt Van Art becomes world champion are they celebrating? No of course they're not celebrating and toasting them. So it's a funny game that he filmed himself having to play but it's the game we see our cell we see Pandel are played out every single year in the world championships and that's why it is just this bizarre melting pot of tactics on top of, you know, tactically what is quite a confusing sport. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that Rog Litch, if he knew he couldn't win on the day, but he had legs to help out with fun earth, he would have helped him. I just don't think he had legs and I think the Belgian president needs to shut the fuck up that he's just what's he on about like he's that he's no just does not class about it your president of a cycling federation have some class and don't be tweeting out derogatory stuff about a great champion like Roglage there we go folks that's my my top and he's worked on it anyway start of a week road man I hope you have a great week get plenty of bike riding in for me of course the national championships are at the end of this week finished off basically my training on Sunday yesterday But I'm looking forward to now having a little bit of a taper and I'm gonna chat to you guys over the course of this week In the run into it bringing a plenty of exciting topics and then as you're of the Talia preview Come next Friday Roadman, thanks for listening. I'm gonna chat to you all tomorrow 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, training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's a 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 that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day