Tour de France Ratings Are Down. Should We Be Worried? | GCN Show Ep. 655

Welcome back to the GCN Show! This week, we’re diving into the big story: new data shows that TV viewing figures for the Tour de France are in decline. We analyse the numbers, discuss the “Pogačar effect,” and ask the crucial question: should we be worried about the future of the sport?
PLUS! We’ve got a mind-blowing new double Everesting World Record, a spectacular result for Conor at the world’s biggest race, some good news for all you weekend warriors, and a new Penny Farthing speed record!
All that, plus your best hacks, captions, and comments!

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:38 This Week In Cycling
00:52 Double Everesting World Record Smashed!
01:24 The Big Debate: TdF Viewership In Decline
03:57 The Pogačar Effect
06:08 Should We Be Concerned?
07:55 The Time Commitment Problem
09:32 Tour de France & TdF Femmes avec Zwift Race Wrap-Up
11:25 Cycling Shorts: The Biggest News
11:45 That Police Tackle At The Tour de France
12:53 Alex McCormack’s Incredible Everesting Ride
15:11 Penny Farthing World Record!
15:46 Good News For Weekend Warriors
18:38 Hack / Bodge Of The Week
24:18 Caption Competition
26:47 Comments Of The Week
30:51 Coming Up On GCN!

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Should we be worried about declining viewing figures of the Tour de France? Let us know

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from Imabari on the Shimoni Kaido in Japan. Welcome to the GCN show. Welcome to the GCN show. Coming up this week, the latest data shows that overall TV viewing figures for the tour of France are in decline. But should we be worried? We discuss. We’ve also got a new Everesting world record, a new penny farthing world record, good news for weekend warriors, and a spectacular result for Connor Dunn here at the biggest race on the planet. [Applause] [Music] This week in the world of cycling, we learned that the gravel road up the Stelvio is one of the most beautiful in the entire world. If you don’t already have it on your bucket list now, you will do once you’ve watched Ollie’s video from the weekend. Check it out if you haven’t already. We also learned that the world record for a double Everest thing has been broken. Alex McCormack took over two hours off the previous record, climbing close to 18,000 meters in 21 hours, 11 minutes 40 seconds. He did so on a 900 meter climb at almost 18%. Whilst he was doing it, he consumed 100 g of carbs per hour. With my quick maths, come on. I can work out that is over 2 kg of carbohydrates. That is a lot, isn’t it? A lot. Yeah. Got to have guts to do that. Yeah, I just thought about that joke. Finally, we learned that despite the epic crowds on the roadside in Paris and much of the rest of the tour of France, the overall TV viewing figures are as commented in the intro in decline. So, Professor Dan Vaner posted some data on his LinkedIn after the first and second weeks of the race, which looked a little concerning for the sport and for the event. there was a decline of between four and 7% across almost all major markets in that first week when compared to the 5-year average. Whilst in Spain, that decline was a whopping 28%. Just massive, isn’t it? 28%. Uh things didn’t look quite so bad at the end of the second week, but they certainly weren’t looking rosy either. So again, compared to that 5-year average, only Germany was up by 5%, probably the lip of its effect. France remained unchanged, whilst Belgium and Italy were down, but only fractionally. Of more concern was Spain again and the Netherlands where viewership was down by 18 and 14% respectively. I feel like at this point we should probably point out that Van Wraith has spent his career focusing on professional cycling and TV audiences for major sporting events. In fact, he’s published a number of academic articles on the subject and co-authored the economics of professional road cycling book. So, we can trust his figures. I think now since a lot of our viewers are in the UK and USA, you’re probably wondering how things are there and here. Ree didn’t quote figures from those countries, but ITV commentator Ned Bolton gave some numbers when speaking to Cycling Weekly recently where he said that 600,000 people tuned in to watch the opening stage. By contrast though, 3.6 million watched Bradley Wiggins become the first British winner back in 2012. The steady decline in viewership since then is likely in large part to have influenced the ITV chief’s decision not to bid for rights to the race beyond this year. Their coverage is going to be sorely missed massively. Yeah, it’s been a massive funnel to get people into the sport, myself included. Well, you going to say like pro riders as well. Uh now Wraith doesn’t have concrete figures for the US either but he estimates that audience numbers for the tour to France are in the tens of thousands whilst during the Lance Armstrong era they were often over a million which makes you wonder is audience size in most non-traditional cycling countries simply a representation of whether or not they have a current champion. That would make sense. It would almost undoubtedly. Yeah, I’d say I’d say it does make complete sense. Yeah, because I’d imagine although we don’t have the latest figures for Slovenia that their figures are pretty good given the Pagatar effect. In fact, back in 2020, they more than double because they had two riders, Rogich and Pagata, going head-to-head and finishing first and second after an enthralling battle. And those figures have remained fairly constant during the Pagata era. Well, he’s certainly up to 2023, which were the latest numbers that we could find. Likewise, when Vidigard won his first tour in 2022, TV2 in Denmark recorded an average of 685,000 viewers per stage, its highest since 1997. Yeah. Why 1997, you might ask? Because another day, Banna Ree, who we talked about on the show last week, was there at the race trying to defend his title from the previous year. It makes sense, doesn’t it? That in countries where there isn’t a rich cycling heritage, interest is going to peak when a rider from that country is winning the biggest bike race in the world. The decline in viewership of more traditional cycling countries might be of more concern though as you’d hope that they are as interested in bike racing in general as in a particular rider. But given the decline in Spain, that’s clearly not true. No. No. And this year was a bad one for Spain at the tour of France, wasn’t it? They didn’t win a single stage and their best place rider on GC was Carlos Rodriguez and he was down in 20th position. So it does seem that even in the core cycling nations, you need a countryman to cheer for in order to watch. Certainly in great numbers, except for France. Oh criy, Connor. I mean, they did win a stage, didn’t they? And they had two rides in the top 10. I’m only joking. The fact that the race is the tour to France probably helps with viewership, too, I’d imagine. Yeah, you’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? Now, the other consideration is the Pagata effect. And by that I mean his strangle hold in the race particularly this year because whilst the individual stage were generally very entertaining. I think you’d agree. I certainly thought so. There wasn’t exactly a lot of jeopardy when it came to the general classification. No, that’s true. I feel like I should also point out I’m not trying to blame Patcha on declining viewing numbers. He’s there to do a job and that job is to win the race. So he’s not going slow down just because it will help audience figures. Yeah, you went quite slow. It didn’t help audience figures either. I think you’re deliberately slow, Connor. But my word, you’re on fire today, aren’t you? Right. The question we now need to ask ourselves is, should we be concerned about what is a relatively small decline in viewing figures? Well, it’s obviously not a good sign, is it? It’d be better if it was going the other way. That said, it’s the general trends over a longer period of time that are going to be more relevant and also how cycling fars compared to other sports. Oh, well, on that subject, I was doing a bit of digging. So internationally, football or soccer, I guess, over in the US, uh, plus cricket, women’s sports, and Formula 1 all appear to be thriving, even though most of those are now entirely behind a pay wall. With F1, a lot of people attribute the success of that sport, that drive to survive series, making it all the more disappointing really, the cycling equivalent wasn’t successful enough to Netflix to continue with the project. And which sports are struggling? Uh, they are well in the US, let’s start there. So baseball and ice hockey don’t have the same audiences as their peak whilst in the UK tennis and rugby have been suffering apparently. So cycling isn’t alone on that front. Are you worried about the cycling kind of decline in viewership? Not right now I wouldn’t say. I mean losing freeto view coverage here in the UK is a bit of a blow as we said earlier but there is evidence to say that more young people i.e. under 35s younger than me younger than you or not? I’m under 35 cy people like your sales are now consuming live sports through paid for streaming services which a lot of people are saying they weren’t before. However, I do feel like cycling is a bit behind the times when it comes to social media activating that and the more modern approach in general. We all know how much influence social media has, don’t we? Another big question is how you convert viewers of a viral video clip into fans of the sport who are then going to be willing to pay a subscription to watch bike racing. I think one of my worries is the time commitment. You need to properly watch the sport. Stages are generally shorter than they used to be. Partly because they’re literally shorter in distance, partly because they’ve been raced to a faster speed, but even then you’re looking at a good couple of hours to get a kind of really good idea of what’s going on in a stage, particularly with winning attacks going further and further from the finish, too. I guess that’s where a really really good well put together highlights package comes in, doesn’t it? Because you are right, the only people that have really got enough time to watch all the action over three weeks are those either without a job or a job within the sport. Yeah. I I’ve got a job in the sport and I still Well, there you go then. Yeah, I do know I do jokes. I do think shorter stages could be better though for long-term viewership. I know that we that will offend traditionalists, but we really want to get new viewers through the door. More action in a shorter period of time is surely the way to go. You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? I’d agree with that. To be honest, I think the issues we’ve just been talking about are the same issues that One Cycling would like to address. And it does feel like it might need some fresh eyes and fresh ideas to truly change the sport of cycling for the better. Whether or not One Cycling can do that or indeed whether that project even gets off the ground is another question, but I would really like to see someone give it a try. Yeah, definitely. And let us know what you think. And should we be worried about declining viewing figures? What would you do about it if you were in charge? Let us know in the comments section below. We should probably finish this part of the show by giving a quick overview and wrap up of what happened in the race itself and in fact the first couple of days of the tour to France found a Zift because that’s nine days long this year. So it started last Saturday. Yeah. Today Pagata sealed his fourth title in the men’s race making him the youngest rider ever to reach that milestone. He finished close to 4 and a half minutes in front of Yonas Vinegard. Yeah. And 11 minutes ahead of Florian Lipovich who finished third. Oscar Holly was fourth after a great battle with Lipovitz for both the best young rider classification and indeed the third step on the podium. Ward as most of you know won the last stage and I’m not sure what win was bigger winning that 21st tour to France stage or becoming the first rider in about 2 years to actually drop Pagata on a climb. I think the latter personally I think so too and I think that stage just a brilliant example of like how a shorter stage can be so exciting. Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Because how many kilometers were they actually racing for? 50ish. Yeah. And it was fantastic to watch. It was all just like that portion of it was just brilliant. You couldn’t take your eyes off. Yeah. Same as the first stage of the women’s race, 80 km, but just quite a lot of action all the way through. In the women’s, Marian Boss took stage glory though and the yellow jersey on the opening day in Pumle, but she lost the jersey on countback the following day to Kim Court. The race continues through to Sunday. If you’re only going to make time to watch one stage though of the tour to France fam agg this coming Saturdays. It finishes up the cold madline which is a brute of a mountain. Just before we move on GCN shop promo are special range of t-shirts which we’re sporting right now and these camelback water bottles. There we go. Are still for sale over at shop.globalcycling.com. They are indeed. We’ll put a link to that website in the description below or indeed you can scan the QR code that should be on screen now. And now it’s time for cycling shorts. Cycling shots now. And we’re going to start with news of that takedown of a spectator during stage 17 of the tour last week. Footage of this has been everywhere on the internet, so I’m sure you’d have spotted it. A fan jumps the barriers then attempted to ride and cross the finish line just moments before the bunch came in. His attempts to do so though were thwarted as a French police officer took him to the ground via a well- aimed shoulder barge. I think shoulder barge. Yeah. Slash rugby tackle. It was quite dramatic either way, wasn’t it? It was dramatic. It did. It did seem rather excessive show of force when I first saw it if I’m honest. But I think taking everything into account and being mindful that this is the finish of a major sporting event, it’s justifiable in my opinion. Well, it was just before the bunch came through, wasn’t it? A and B, you want other people to look at that and think, well, I don’t think I’d bother doing something similar. Yeah, that’s it. If you’re allowed to just ride through and nothing happens. Yeah. And like you don’t know the motivation of someone in that situation. No. Exactly. Yeah. The race invader has already been sentenced over in France with an 8-month suspended sentence and a 500 euro fine, as well as being banned from sporting arenas for 5 years. However, it also emerged he’s already been convicted three times prior for similar offenses. So hopefully that tackle and a fine and the suspended prison sentence means it’s his last. Yeah. And as Dan says, hopefully puts him off and trying similar stunts again. Now our main focus this month has been on the men’s and women’s tour to France, but there have also been some incredible efforts on bikes outside of the biggest races on Earth. Alex McCormack is the recent winner of the Atlas Mountain race over in Morocco. One of the biggest and most hardcore bike packing races going. That’s what you told him anyway. I love this race. As we mentioned at the start of the show though, last week he put his ultra endurance talents to good use and set a double effort ever record. Now the stats are mindblowing from his efforts. 214 km covered to make up the 17,732 m of elevation gain. 15,13 calories burnt over 21 hours and 11 minutes. That is a lot of food, isn’t it? And if you want to know what sort of mindset you’ll need to beat that double evering record, Alex apparently listened to just five songs on repeat for the entirety of the ride. You are joking. Yeah. You said it was like he was pretty stoked to get the record, but it was pretty boring one to get done, which is like five songs. Alex, it’s like mix it up a bit more. Did have you has he told you which songs he listened to? Alex messaged me. He said which songs he he listened to. Okay, I’ve got the playlist, the five song playlist. Um, I don’t recognize any of the names. We’ve got something from Anthony Smeirk, Monster Florence, two from Monster Florence, actually, John and Roy and Deca. Um, I don’t know if we got the right to do that. Have we not? No. What we could maybe do is just mute the show at this point and then you can try and gather what the music’s like by our dance our Yeah. So this is anton smearcing and um yeah that’s enough of that kind of I like it but I mean that’s a how many times did you listen to that? Well I don’t think it matters how much you like a song. I think if you listen to it for that long on repeat you’re not going to like at the end particularly when it’s associated with what must have been a lot of suffering. Yeah, it’s a 17minute playlist. So, Christ, I mean, you can get more than five songs on an old Sony cassette Walkman back in the day. Uh, right, let’s move on from the dancing, shall we? Right, sticking with world records, there was another that was broken last week in the world of penny farings. to the Canadian Lisan Wilmont broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest female top speed on a penny farthing 25.92 K miles per hour. Miles rapid on a Perry far 10 km/h too much. And she did 1 kilometer in 52.75 seconds. Yeah, that’s fast. I would not want to go that fast on a penny far. H you don’t want to, nor could you, I suspect. That’s very true. Moving on. and a piece of research I spotted during the week actually whose results I think you’ll all be glad to hear. Weekend warrior workouts can lower your risk of early death. This is in relation to those suffering from diabetes. So the study analyzed over 55,000 people between the years of 1997 and 2018. Those who got all their weekly recommended exercise completed in one or two sessions were 21% less likely to die early from any cause and 33% less likely to die from heart disease. Yeah. Um, and that’s compared to those who didn’t exercise at all. So, the conclusion, I think anything is better than nothing. But that is so true. I have to keep reminding myself of that. When I find myself with less time to ride or work out than I’d anticipated, better to get something done than nothing at all. Yeah, 100%. An update now on Amy Hudson aka Amy Cycling Adventures on YouTube. You may remember that we spoke about her a few weeks ago on the show. She sets out to ride the whole of the men’s tour to France route plus the transfers to raise money for shout who provide a 24/7 tech service for people struggling with their mental health. Here’s the update then. Not only did she smash the riding part which is amazing, she also smashed her £10,000 aim. So as we record this, she’s got £70,000 raised for that charity. An incredible accomplishment both on the riding and the fundraising accounts. Yeah, that is amazing. mode on Amy. Right, a quick bit of Zift news now because they’ve just unveiled a limited edition Zift ride smart frame to celebrate the tour to France’s fan Abbe Zift. Yeah, there are 124 available or at least there were. They were released on Saturday. So 124 being the number of kilometers of the final stage. I’ve got to say they look fantastic. I’m I’m not surprised you said that, Connor, because I’ve got a question for you. Yeah. Did you design these bikes? No. Why? How come? Well, you know how come? Because they look remarkably similar to your Orbeeo Orbeeo design, should I say, from just what a couple of years ago was that? Yeah. You know what? It actually does, doesn’t it? And the amount of grief I was given from my design there. And the Zift designers clearly have good taste because they’ve gone with my approach and I love it. I can’t believe how similar they are. Uh anyway, if there are any left by the time this show goes out, you can pick one up for £900 or $900 or £850. All right, I’m going to finish cycling shorts by congratulating Connor here. So, we had an inwork GCN league over on Vevel Games. And not only did he win that by a margin not not even Pagatcha could be capable of, he also finished 184th out of the 30,000 people that took part this year. Thanks, mate. I’m truly honored. I’ It’s just been a brilliant 3 weeks for me. I mean, that must be your best ever result in a grand tour, isn’t it? Not quite. I got 135th of the jury. Oh well, better luck next time. Next up, it’s time for hack/bodgege of the week. This is where you can get involved each and every week by going to globalcycling.com/uploer where you can upload your photos and or videos of your own hacks and bodges or those you’ve seen out and about. Uh, first up this week, this one from PD. 3D printing is not always a hack. I was too tight to buy the genuine Canyon outfront mount for my Wahoo. And with access to 3D printed design, I printed my own. Unfortunately, all I had was ABS. We’ve just looked this up, can’t we? Didn’t know what ABS was. Uh, which isn’t really appropriate for the long term. It snapped through the bolt holes and I needed to get through the rest of my Italian cycling holiday. and a couple of zip ties worked perfectly. I can almost hear S anguish from holiday right now. I plan to take them off and replace the the mount when I get home. I think this is a hack. Yeah, absolutely a hack. Absolutely a hack. The only dangerous thing with it is it’s such a good hack that you get lazy and fixing it when you got home. You just Well, this is always size point. It’s a hack if it gets you to the end of your ride or your expedition or whatever you’re doing. If you leave zip ties on for even more than 24 hours, I think in his opinion, once you get home, it’s a bodgege. So, let us know how how long did the zip ties stay on for. Yeah. Very good. That’s a hack. Yeah. Hack from both of us. This is from Ash in Alsace. Luggage rack fixed with a foam mount. This morning’s commute was interrupted by my luggage rack loosening the bolt that fixes it to frame. I used the clamp part of my phone mount to hold it to the bike for the last couple of kilometers. Well, immediate hack for me for using for putting goubbins on your bike for for what? Yeah, there’s there’s enough going on here for Connor’s taste. But yeah, I think this is a great hack. I mean, it’s got you got you to work. It’s got the rack working. Same sort of thing as the first one, isn’t it? Something happened whilst Ash was riding. He found a solution that allowed him to continue on with his ride, presumably them just putting his phone into his pocket or in the bag that this is used or mounting. So, I’d say that was a hack as well. Yeah, that’s a hack. genius like that like that. So far so good. This is so much easier with you than with Sai. I mean he’d be debating for a good 5 minutes more just yet. I just love the guy. No can surf sent this one in. Shimano solution. This summer I’m studying teaching in the University of Japan where the cycling is truly world class. Naturally I brought my road bike a 2025 Tre Demani. Within the first couple of weeks, however, the proprietary seat post clamp started slipping, causing me to lose about a centimeter of height after just an hour of riding. I found myself stopping to readjust the cell three or four times per ride. Uh, the Trek shop locally order replacement parts, but they wouldn’t arrive in time for an epic weekend ride that I’d got planned. Not willing to miss out and fed up with the constant stops, I decided to improvise. I crafted a shim from a discarded beer can using children’s safety scissors that I picked up at a local shop. uh secured it with red electrical tape. Function over form. It may be ugly, but it worked. The shim held steady over 340 km across three rides with only minimal slippage. Eventually, the new clamp arrived and was professionally installed, resolving the issue. There you go. I mean, it’s a great hack. Tried and tested. This is tried and tested. Uh the only thing that I would say is that the last time I tried and tested this was with an aluminium frame. I’m not sure I’ve ever used it on a carbon one with carbon seat post. Have you? I haven’t actually tried the tin can method. I have fully super glued. Have you bonded a seat post in yet? Yeah, cuz I am rather big, Dan. And that doesn’t go my way in life sometimes. Uh, well, they’re following a bit of a theme, aren’t they, this week in that all of these hacks, and I’m going to call this one a hack again, have allowed these people to continue doing what they wanted to do on their bikes whilst another solution was in the offing. Yeah, it looks fairly well done this one. It’s nice and smooth around the corners and it’s obviously got you your ride done. I’d be gutted if I was missing out on a ride because of mechanical. So, yeah, fair play. I give that a large parts of my recent life where if I’d had a mechanical, I was quite happy. I remember races, you know, when when you laugh, wish I had a puncture out. Just puncture. You never get it. Always happens at the worst moment. Uh, three hacks from three so far. And we’ve seen the last one, and I’m going to tell you, this is a massive hack. Check this out. So, this is from Hackman. Uh, toilet’s bedroom. We had our children switch rooms, so two would be in the bigger bedroom. They didn’t really want to move. So, the hack here is decorating their room however they wanted to get them excited. It’s a very good hack. I’m going to keep that in mind. My six-year-old son has got into professional cycling, especially the tour. So, he wanted his room tour to France themed, and this is the result. The photos are panorama. You can see all four walls. Shout out to my parents. Their grandparents are putting in most of the work. This is a double hack, isn’t it? Let’s firstly describe the room to podcast listeners. Uh, so it’s got a tour to France flag hanging off the top part of the wall. Uh, there’s a green section of wall, there’s a polka dot section, and of course, there’s a yellow section, too. It it looks absolutely fantastic. And the dream here, Connor, is that as you read out towards the end, they didn’t even do it themselves. Harkman got the parents to do it. The grandparents. That is the ultimate hack. Oh, man. Yeah. Brilliant. What a great job they’ve done. Yeah. Four hacks from four this week. There’s a silhouette of the silhouette of the cyclist on the yellow is brilliant. Yeah. I couldn’t have done it any better. I bet the kids absolutely love that. So, well done to you slash your grandparents. Right, it is time for caption competition where you send in your best captions for a photo of our choosing with a chance of winning the coveted GCN Camelback water bottle that you see right here. Now, last week we had a photo of Prim Rock who um fashionably unfashionably didn’t wear any socks. Apparently, unfashionably, we were told last week, or I was told by Sai, skinny jeans and ankle socks are a sign that you’re a bit older. I mean, as you can tell, I’m not one who pays a huge amount of attention to fashion. But I find it very weird ankle socks. Yeah. I just He was losing power. I’m I’m not as tall as you, but I am quite tall. I always felt like longer socks made your legs look not quite as long. Personally, I think shorter socks do look better if you’re shorter in stature. Did we ever find out why he wore that? Did he like lose his socks and forget them? I’ve got no idea. I think as much as he pretends that he doesn’t want to be in the headlines, I actually think Primos does quite like to make the headlines. Anyway, regardless, we’ve got a winner. And the winner is Eastston Brown, who put, “Everyone loves Primos. Bless his little cotton socks.” Oh, there you go. There you go. Good. Get in touch, Eston. Yeah. get in touch on Facebook with a message to Global Cycling Network with your address and we’ll get a bottle sent out to you. Connor has just told me that he’s got his own caption ready for this week’s photo. Uh, which is this one of Tamman Allen after his second stage win in the mountains of the tour of France. So exhausted he sat down resting against the barriers uh with his bike by his side. H So I will get you started and then Connor will get you even more started and then you can put your captions in the comments section down below. Uh, Mine’s short and sweet. Success to barrier. Yeah, I get that. It’s a good one. If you don’t get it, it’s a sort of reverse of barrier to success. Color’s got a good one. Here you go. Yeah, the DS just kept playing the same five songs in the radio. Please make it stop. It does look That does look exactly how I would think someone would look if they’d spent 21 hours listening to five tracks on repeat. I’m pretty sure it’s a torture method. It’s like must be, mustn’t it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe it’s very meditative. I want to know if he’s ever going to listen to those songs ever again. Yeah. Uh, anyway, we’re going off topic. Get involved in the comments section down below with your best captions and we will pick a winner this time next week. Very shortly, we’ll let you know what’s coming up on GN this week. First up, a few comments from last week. Starting with three from underneath last week’s show. Uh, Philip Jongan, reckon that’s how you say Yong yen yung yen yung yen. I’m not the person to ask Dan. Um we were speculating about why it was called champagne gravel. Uh they said it can only be called champagne gravel if it comes from the champagne region of France. If it’s anywhere else has to be called sparkling gravel. I thought that was genius. Gary meanwhile thinks it was the folks out at SBT who coined the champagne gravel phrase. He thinks Jonathan Ben socks and cows size hang-ups are legend. Well, I sent saw a video from my gravel ride on Saturday because uh rode past quite a large herd of cows. Really? Yeah. Thought you’d like to see it. Science got me nervous about cows. I was never nervous about them before. Now every time I go for a herd of cows, all sizes. Well, I understand the nervousness, but then I sometimes see farmers just stood in the middle of loads of cows and think, well, if it if they were that dangerous, surely farmers have been getting killed left, right, and center. Anyway, meanwhile, underneath the protein video, which is where I asked uh three world tour team nutritions, actually, I got that wrong. One of them wasn’t from the world tour, but from UNO X, James Moran, but regardless, all experts in their field. Uh, working guy U812. So, thanks for this down GCN. To anyone who wants to see a new pro team cooking video, EF Education just released one on their team cook doing a day’s work yesterday, a day of eating at the Tour Front stage 17. Must check that out. Um, obviously we have both eaten during grand tours, but at this point, especially for me, it’s quite some time ago, so quite interested to see exactly what they’re eating at this point. Yeah, Chris Van Bugenham 871 said, “Lundry drying on a lampshade hackle bodgege.” Just a necessity, isn’t it? at the Sword of France. This is James Moranavino X. And in the background uh of his shot, there was not pants thankfully, a t-shirt draped over the lampshet. It’s one of those rare skills you get as pro cyclist is figuring out where to dry your clothes in a hotel room. Yeah. Do you know what I was asking him as well about because it used to be the case that the chefs would make lunches and dinners or breakfast and dinners, let’s say, for the riders during the race, but the staff had to just eat the hotel food, but they’d wait and there’d be a massive rush at the end of the riders eating if there were any leftovers, vultures coming in for the better food cuz the food can be pretty bad at some of the hotels that you end up in a grand tour in France especially. Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky to have a chef in Spain as well and I was very thankful for it. Oh, it’s so good, isn’t it? So good. Meanwhile, what we learned said, “Is Dan doing a lot more videos because he’s been blackmailed again?” I hope so because I like blackmail and Dan in videos. Well, very kind of you to say. Thank you very much. In answer your question, no, I wasn’t blackmailed. No, under Ollie secretio video, which was really magnificent. Actually, this has been sent in by GMA Duga. Danielle is a perfect image of a Legion commander under Caesar during the GIC wars. Suntansed, calm, confident, strong, and hard as a rock. Ollie, you rock, too. He was cool, calm, and collected. Yeah, wasn’t he? My goodness. Uh, Burke Burka, but this video shows very clearly why gravel blew up. No cars, spectacular nature, light bikes. Yes, you can do it with an XC bike, but weight does matter, and even a budget gravel bike is pretty good for this. I love this video. I fell in love with gravel because of GCN the ice in the video years back. That was with Sai, wasn’t it? And this just adds to it. Nice one, Shon. While the cycling that looks totally stunning, added to the list. Thanks for putting it on our radars and thanks everyone involved for making this brilliant video. Is the GPX file available at all? Asking for a friend. Well, if you do go to Ollie Straa, he’s got it listed in his roots if you want to check check that out. Check one out. Yeah, he has got it over there. We probably should have put the link into the description below this video or below that video as the case was head to Ollie Straa and you’ll be able to find the GPX if you go there. Uh right then coming up on the channel this week uh we do have a video on Thursday but we can’t tell you much about it. Uh it’s a new bike which is embargoed until that day but stay tuned because you’re not going to want to miss that one. Then on Saturday we sent Andrew Feather to Alp Dues and you all know what that means. Yes. You went there to try and beat the record. Make sure you watch that one as well because it’s going to be very very interesting. I know that for a fact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to say for them, but I don’t want to reveal too much. Um Yeah. Then on Sunday, we’ve got Mountain Biker versus Roadie. This is our new recruit Fergus over on GMBBN, our mountain bike channel. And he takes on a local crit race with Alex. Alex tries to coach him, doesn’t he? Yeah. And I’ve heard Alex is going to there’s going to be a role reversal soon. So, Alex is taking on an enduro and I’ve heard the course is actually pretty spicy. So, I think Fergus might get some revenge. Well, don’t give away too much from the Well, no, I don’t. Revenge for what kind of Well, yeah, mate. I’m just assuming you not seen it. You don’t see how far Alex goes like. Uh, right. Thanks for watching everyone. I look forward to reading your comments about declining Tour to Front’s viewership on TV and what you would do about it. Uh we’re back again this time next week. So we’ll see you then.