We’re coming to the end of June and in the world of cycling, that can only mean one thing…it’s almost time for the Tour! It’s all been leading up to this – the biggest bike race of the year. I’ve got my old mates Tom Southam and Luke Durbridge back on The Race Communique to help me preview this massive race and, oh boy, it’s set to be an absolute banger.
Durbo kicks off this month with PeloChat where he takes us through his TrainingPeaks data from the Tour de Suisse so we can see just how hard the racing is these days. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I am so glad I retired when I did; oh my god the racing is just so brutal in 2025! Some of these numbers are crazy! And hey, Durbs, we all saw you splitting the bunch up with 70k to go on stage 1, so don’t you start complaining about how tough it is out there these days…
Before the Tour de Suisse, of course, we had the mini Tour de France – the Critérium du Dauphiné. This is where we saw ‘The Big Three’ go toe to toe (to toe) with each other. Remco, Jonas, and – of course – Pogi. It was an amazing race, and Tadej came out looking absolutely dominant, but there was a pretty big question mark over his form after a quite frankly pathetic 4th place after the time trial. We know Jonas is still on the comeback trail from his crash back in Paris Nice, so with another few weeks of solid recovery, I think we’re in for an absolutely massive battle this July.
After we discussed the warm up races, we got stuck into our massive Tour de France preview. We discuss everything – the stages, the riders, the moments that are going to define this year’s race. An absolutely chaotic looking first 10 days around Northern France with tonnes of opportunity for an aggressive rider to take shed loads of time, an absolutely brutal end to the race in the mountains (stage 18 – holy sh*t!), a new finish circuit around Paris to make sure there’s excitement all the way to the line, and heaps more! You’re not going to want to miss a single second of this race.
We all pick a rider or two to discuss, so make sure you tune in if you want to hear what Southam thinks of Carapaz and what really went down on that infamous Colle Delle Finestere stage at the Giro! Durbo lifts the lid on how Aussie favourite and recent guest on Life In The Peloton is going to take on the GC in a bid for a top 5 finish.
Next, we get into talking some tactics with Tom. This month’s theme is simple; wind. Southam breaks down how teams can use echelons to break up the race and try and catch the big favourites off guard.
As always, we wrap up with the Communiquiz. Durbo’s leading the way this time with 7 quickfire questions about the Tour de France.
Guys, I hope this ep gets you as excited for the Tour as I am. Crack open a weak French beer, have a nibble on a baguette, sit back, relax, and enjoy!
Cheers,
Mitch
The Race Communiqué is brought to you by TrainingPeaks! Track, plan, and train smarter—just like the pros. Get 20% off TrainingPeaks Premium now at http://www.trainingpeaks.com/litp
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[Music] there we go everyone’s there we go everyone’s just waiting for the show to kick off which way does it need to go there we go got it we have we couldn’t find a word to say it to each other until it was recorded it’s like when people you know film themsel you know or take pictures of stuff rather than just absorbing the moment it’s just like we cannot have a communication without the recording st the thing is we don’t want to waste all the good combo we want to save it for everyone don’t we true now the pressure’s on everyone’s uh i got nothing to say anyway uh i’m on video i remember like i got to remember that every time i’m just like picking my nose and for it hopefully you’re happy with that face she just pulled around you know the lizard the lizard laugh like if you’re listening to this this is definitely going to be a tune in episode for youtube cuz derbo has just pulled some horrendous faces that we’re going to freeze screen and use them for the socials i’m so small post tour of switzerland like this is just not my best self you know let me bar all right boys let’s get into this this is the race communicate welcome everyone our episode number six we’re here pre-our to france this is life in the pelaton production made possible by our major partner matt but of course the race communicate is exclusively being brought to you by training peaks whether you’re an elite athlete a cycling coach or new to the sport get the tools you need to reach your goals with training peaks that’s what we’re doing boys they’ve created the world’s most powerful athlete and coaching software to help you streamline your planning analyze your data and track your progress use training peaks to accelerate your performance goals derbs welcome back to the the race communic education for sport director durbo a flying pro at jacula boys welcome back good to have you on board thanks fellas it’s nice to be back after the flying mullet tried to steal my seat i uh in the last one it was close like me and mitch had to have a really long meeting about should we continue with shane versus you um i can imagine that’s why you look sharp tom like you look at him it’s cuz i shave i very very rarely shave but uh my beard’s decided to turn uh white these days and i’m trying to get rid of it more often it’s a show my age so trying to stay i got that going on the sides here i got to keep it real tight you know it’s like real gray thing going on but no it’s onward i’m scared out of here you you look you look weird actually when you’re not used to it i know but that’s that’s the guy who’s got a [ __ ] broom on his lip but i get the comment when i shave them all off like “oh you look weird grow it back.” but you’re like “well i’ve only had it for like well actually 10 years now.” yeah 2016 was the first edition so boys we’re going straight into it this week um because derbo with pillow chat i want to do something different this week because i want to talk about training peaks but in a bit of a different way i thought well derbo you actually said it to me we could do some analyzing the training peaks race report potentially because you’ve just come straight out of tour swiss and look it’s going to be a nice little segue into um recapping the races with my segment your segment being the pillow chat and to summ tactics with tom sullum the mastermind who uh is doing the steering wheel talking down the radio in the cars but durbo you wanted to get into touris which are freshly off but you wanted to talk about your files the data what you got recorded on your training peaks mate should i hand ball it over to you yep you got to let me do my intro hi it’s luke it’s hello chat that’s really come on mate you already know i mean i’ve been working on it working on it a bit hello chat uh here we go um try just intro it no now without being silly okay sorry yep hi it’s luke der and it’s p chat now but the thing is i come up with the idea i come up with the idea of just like you know when you’re suffering at tourist swiss and i thought you know every single day was was brutal you know uh break took over an hour to go every day and everyone you’re talking to like oh man it’s hard isn’t it it’s hard like every rider like doesn’t matter from gc to sprinter to breakaway specialist whatever everyone was just like oh hope today is not as bad as yesterday and then pretty much the day was as had if not worse than the day before um and anyway i just thought it’d be interesting uh obviously training peaks being our major sponsor so i thought it’d be good to just be like okay let’s go into my training peaks uh let’s share some comparisons to dolphin a to tour swiss um these races are the two major prep races for uh tour to france kind of like the classics where you have torino andriatico and you have parise these are the two big world tour stage races that you know prep for the classics and then you’ve got dolphin and tourist swiss which is the two races for the tour and historically swiss is one of those ones where you do tour swiss and then you rest and then you do the tour to france there’s not much to there’s there’s only a sort of 10 days in between so guys are either push their altitude camp a little bit longer they drop in they do tour swiss and then pretty much everything’s done they just recover now and then whatever it is is going to be what you’re going to get at the tour where do a that gives you an extra week um which some guys like to either top up go back up up to altitude um if something went slightly wrong in dolphin a can potentially work on it you know maybe their little extra half a kilo lose still or there’s certain things they need to work on bit of heat training um that’s where dolphin a potentially gets a few more gc guys than tur swiss does because of that extra week it’s sort of that one’s like if anything did go wrong you have time to fix it where swiss is like if things do go wrong you don’t really have much time all you got to do is just keep your feet up so this year i’ve done about half and half um did you do half the dolphin as well yeah yeah i did half dolphin then then full swiss y idiot um i in my second half of swiss second half of swiss first half of dolphin that is a good combo how am i even meant to get through my segment hang on give us the data do this let’s go yeah shut up and give us the data i was just giving you some background anyway it’s for the people back home you’re the one who said “let’s keep it pretty you know basic.” all right let’s do some numbers what what do you say about the people back home you set yourself up there yeah fair fair all right come on let’s go keep it basic come on okay cool cool cool cool cool all right so tour switzerland now this is just generally my week we did gibbigum which is a one- day stage race a one day race prior to tur swiss it goes friday this one day race gibum rest day on the saturday we start tur swiss so that’s a 9 day 9-day block and for me i did 40 40 hours in that 9-day block i did uh 1,600 km and i did 2,736 tss so decent and in that sense i burnt 40,000 41,000 calories mhm um i climbed 22,000 m of altitude and uh what else is the stat yeah and that’s yeah that’s that’s my stat for the 9day block so to be honest probably the most work i’ve done all year hands down um just a bit of a quick before you go too much f further forward just some of those um little metrics that you’re talking about tss um is especially one of them i think kilogjles everyone understands but tss is oh it’s a so training stress score you were literally going to go into it training stress score so it’s a algorithm that training pics has come up with and um they it estimates pretty much what what your what what the effect of the race would be on you um so it’s for example like you would get a if you were to go 100 if you get 100 tss for 1 hour you’ve pretty much just gone maximum like your absolute maximum for 1 hour um which is pretty nearly impossible to do but so for example over a four or five hour stage i might get like a between a 250 to a 350 tss and that builds and builds and builds and you this is why i’m saying 2736 uh tss is is sort of like how they calculate load on the body the effect of the race on the body give us like a really far out tss you know a big day what’s what’s a parude bay you know a world bay would be between a four and a 500 tss right and big big mountain stage is somewhere 350 400 exactly exactly yeah accumulation of those days yeah and if you were to think like a big mountain stage it would be we have here i can show you some stuff here tour switzerland was uh well giving him 370 tss so it’s a nonworld tour one day race is as hard as a hard hard mountain stage of children to france that’s just a comparison like it’s equivalent then we go in and we do only a 4hour stage so it’s quite short and we do 320 tss and then we do a mountain stage another 360 tss and then a 330 330 a 330 a 380 and a 320 so every single day of tourist swiss even though they weren’t all mountain stages were pretty much the equivalent to hard days at the tour to france so what um what just for people to get a bit more context too because i know people are out there have got their own tss’s but you know if someone goes out there and does a tss but their threshold or their ftp is you know 200 um that’s give us give us some quick sort of relative so for example if you have a really low threshold my threshold is 430 watt and then but for example if your threshold mitch is 180 which is probably about correct to know at the moment actually i’ve got i’ve got just a quick quick side note here yesterday i did testing with dr andre lersh um v2 max testing cuz i just i froth that stuff um 10% drop off from 3 years ago when i did it peaked out at 450 that’s all i could get to last time i did it four years ago five 500 50 watt drop off and i was like killed over on the bike it was depressing in in three in three years in 3 years 10% drop off yeah so just estimating your life expectancy i know that’s the scary part about it i was like he was like “oh that’s actually pretty serious i didn’t know what you’re going to say then.” all right oh back to you back to you all right so what i thought would be interesting was we do a little comparison between dolphin and swiss now pretty similar races but i would say most people would think dolphin a would be harder um just because it’s in france roads are smaller um more probably more people do it um leading into the tour but in comparison 2023 dolphin i did uh 35 hours i did 1,300 km and i did 2,120 tss so i go on to tourist switz this year without giving him without the stage race i do 6 hours longer so i did 36 hours um i do a couple of k more so it’s only 13 only 50 km more with and then 2,500 tss so we’re talking 400 tss more than the dolphino with way more calories um we’re going 33,000 calories to 38,000 calories so a lot more work be done um less climbing meters which is also means the overall race is harder cuz when you go uphill you push more watts that’s common knowledge which means you would burn more calories so at tur switzerland we’ve done nearly 3,000 meters less altitude than dolphin a but i’ve burnt nearly 5,000 more calories so just the general speed of the bunch and the the pressure on the pedals is just was just a lot higher at turret switzland this year than it was in dolphin um but this is only a year-to-year comparison it’s not every year is the same but uh it’s just like a just like an interesting fact for people to know that like this is the sort of workload dolphin and swiss is the equivalent of doing the first 10 days of the tour to france i don’t think tour to france gets any harder it’s just the same but for longer you know i take it one step further and i was able to pull up my data from the 2019 tourist swiss so just understand where the pelton’s gone um we did 35 hours that week and tss only 1,833 um kj 2800 28,000 sorry um so it’s a substantially less the speed average what was your average speed d we did average of 40.9 um i noticed 44 yeah so you can see like it’s it’s just much faster it’s much more intense racing and you can see that like 2019 was really sort of before the the bubble burst wasn’t it you think about it preco race so it’s really good comparison there there’s a really interesting thing that pops up on i can’t remember the name of it but it’s on uh on like social media which comp it’s constantly comparing 2018 to 2025 and it has like every race and they take like like the average average power heart rate and whatever data they can find it’s and i mean everything is trending up you know dramatically like 3 4k an hour faster kilogjles again um i mean you can just it’s because we’re now we’re also now getting enough data like year on year that and it’s out there that we’re starting to see these patterns it might have always been like this but it’s only now that we’re starting to go oh wow we’re getting a big enough sample pool to know kind of what’s going on it’s not getting any easier no i mean and the last little thing i thought i’d share was going into the tour we’ll obviously touch on that um with preview and etc etc but these breakaways uh now with pogchar if you stay in the bunch uh vanderpole or pogar is probably going to win so these breakaways is pretty much most of the team’s chances of winning a stage at the tour to france um so forming of these breakaways are which we have touched on in episodes before with tom uh how difficult that is but for an example we had a it’s kind of a ridiculous day um we had first two hours of the stage to form this breakaway on stage 4 um and it was average speed of 54.5 km an hour so it was just we come off this mountain pass to start neutral and then we hit these flat lands and it wasn’t necessarily flat i think we still covered close to 1,800 m of climbing during this period and we were just i literally i stayed in my 5511 for the entire time and we were just tucked into the wheels and it was just it was just berserk i couldn’t we everyone just couldn’t believe it like guys were getting ridden out of the wheel it was single file and uh yeah 54ks an hour and eventually the break formed um and just that just goes to show like when you do turn on the television and the break is is formed it really depends on how you get into these breakaways like for example if you’re a guy who’s committed for those 2 hours and eventually the cord snaps and you get into these breakaways and then you turn on the tv and you might see a non-climber out climber climber you know you get to the bottom of the first category 1 climb or the first cap 2 or something like that and then all of a sudden you see i don’t know yonas rouge uh for example ride neilson palace out of the wheel you go how does that work but because potentially nielson might have gone for two hours to make sure he got into this breakaway where yonas might have you know stayed in the wheels for the whole time and then eventually he just went with one or two moves he got on the breakaway and he was fresh so it’s it’s really important that obviously nowadays with the tour to france you actually watch you can watch actually the whole stage so you can actually see kind of what’s happening but like when you turn on the tv in tur switzerland you know you would be like 50k to go and you’d be like “oh well what happened there?” like how is that climber getting dropped or how’s this person got there it was just that the workload they’ve done prior i mean a lot of these starts i would say in tur swiss i did all time to yearly pbs between five and an hour’s worth of power you know um just to get just to hold in the bungee or just to try and go on these breakaways so were you were you actively trying derbs or were you what was your role in that yeah i was i was on that day that flat stage um i was actively trying um and obviously some of these climbs at the start i was trying to be at least connected to the pelaton so then when we come off the flat then i could move um and for me to stay in the bunch on one of the days that we had i think i did 530 w for 5 minutes and then another day i did 440 w for uh 30 minutes on the climb to make sure i was still in the pelaton to still have the ability to try and be in these breakaways um but yeah so this is sort of the stuff we’re talking day to day well yeah yeah i mean like if you look at the tour in particular there’s a couple of days there i think stage 12 is like 120k before we get to the first climb and we go across that highway in the not highway but it’s that big road we’ve done it quite a few times um from like tarz down in the pyrenees it goes towards tom and stuff super fast bit of road um it’s we got to do 120k before we get to a climb so it’s going to be yeah it’s going to be unbelievable the only way to really make it work is when the course is narrow and you can block the road and this is sort of things but when it’s on a big highway like that it’s impossible yeah right right you’ve done enough now we’ve heard enough of your moaning about tur swiss let’s get into it because you were the one in stage one putting the pressure on at 70k to go you’re the one splitting the bunch what are you talking about you’re on the front stage one splitting the pillow derbo you’re the one causing all this stress true a swiss mate it was early stages saw the unexpected leaders like roman gregoire he took the first stage he held on to the jersey and then look stage five was a turning point when we saw um kevin vakalan take the jersey oscar onley take his first world tour win um winning that final climb up to ki and then kevin vocalon he was for me like the real standout because it was just like kenny carney i didn’t expect he was going to be able to do this he held it right till the last mountain stage stage eight where yah made he crawled back clawed back the time that he needed to win overall dera you were there um aside from the data and the hardness and you splitting the bunch on the front making it hard can you can you give us an insight to that battle and and valan like him yourself what what you thought of him oh he’s always been pretty impressive uh time triers um but i guess to see him climb the way he climbed um was really impressive uh the tourist swiss this year i will say didn’t have any traditional big alpine passes we had maybe one so you’d be i’m not sure for like a gc tour to france situation if that’s going to be a possibility for him because it was quite punchy this tour of swiss you know it was very 3 4k climbs uh 6k climbs maximum um but it was very interesting like the first stage obviously we we got up the road and with with a couple of these guys and it was was awesome we was people were back in the bunch and we didn’t know they didn’t know the break had gone and then that one that’s a rare rare day when you like these days to get a split like that without like most of the guys losing 3 minutes with a big big break it doesn’t you don’t see it much anymore everyone’s so paranoid about it happening you know and teams were pulling behind so it was one of those ones we had a really really hard start like 15 minutes super hard up a climb and we came down onto a valley floor and then it was so out of control cuz and it was guys just going ones and twos and ones and twos and we already had one in the breakaway and i sort of said to ben i’m like i don’t know like what do we do all the gc guys are looking at each other and ben’s just start ben just started yelling me go go go so i attack went across and then maro smith was in the belton he’s like no one’s reacting you just want to say it real quiet he’s like maybe just push it a little bit like no one’s actually doing anything cuz they did they didn’t get the numbers that ben was actually there and then once we got there there was 20 guys and ben just like “let’s go.” and we had another teammate there and we just went and it was super fast from there around the around the lake and uh yeah we i mean we end up holding the pelon off by like i think we gave ben a 2 and 1 half minute or 3 minute advantage at the top of the climb but it was uh it was really cool day it was a really really cool day not often they go that way and not often you get to be part of a day where you can really put the pelon under pressure and um yeah it was yeah exactly well the gc ended up being jada um kevin vocalon from um forgotten his team quickly ikea sorry i was gonna say b&b i wrote those guys off just because they’re outside the relegation zone which can’t even remember their name anymore or oscar onley also they’re also dancing on a bit of uh thin ice as well outside the relegation alone with picnic and our post um amazing ride by ama though like he’s had a year hasn’t he his third world tour one day one week stage race he’s won this year like the third he won basque uh now he’s won sur swiss as well and did he win ramundi maybe did you catch any of his postra interviews no mister he is like he’s he’s got it down pat he knows not necessarily in a good way he knows what he wants to do he gets in there he’s got like three answers and he’s just cool with it like it doesn’t get awkward the interview is just like “you’re not going to just give me that are you?” and just sits there and just looks him down i’m like he’s just like “deal with it.” he’s just like “so what did you think you know how was the race today?” and you know you got to be happy with that yeah i’m really happy with how it all went end off end off like so how about to the tour to france so you going to be happy working in the support of uh you know ta pagacha or you going to go for yourself no i’m more than happy working for tad that’s it go back and watch it it’s incredible it’s really incredible let’s quickly talk about because we need we want to really preview the tour to france here but we can’t do it without talking about almost like the mini tour to france durb you talked about the doof that um the the the physical side of it the the data side of it the race itself but this year it really turned it on in terms of the riders that turned up there we had ted pagacha we had jonas vingore we had also um remco evan napole like these are the three riders that we’ve been wanting to see battle and they were there battling and look the the standouts for me were that you know ted was he showed his superiority superiority towards at the end of the race but after the tt there was a question whoa okay how’s he going to get this back you know stage four he loses 48 seconds to evan and paul slips to eighth on gc it was a little bit uncharacteristic i know he’s not known specifically for his time trolling but there was a bit of a question in my mind anyway around okay how’s he going to chip away at this how’s he going to come back well stage stage six he just waited for a stage or a sprint stage stage six comes to the foot and you know yonas is sending his men up the road and you know he’s he’s got seb cus going up this like oh what’s going to happen here for ga he just goes all right let’s go for it the bottom of the last climb 7k to go rides yonas out of the wheel takes 43 seconds back and that’s it he uh he takes the jersey from there stage seven he was pretty critical about um vizma lisa bike on stage seven vizma attack on the cod the quad of fur and try and rail the descent and beatra sort of isolate him he only had civacov in the valley to pull pog they’ve seen this footage too he goes back gets bottles from the car rides him all the way to the front gives bottles to civikov um he said after the stage they attack towards the top of the col the quad qua defer and then i think they wanted to drop me on the downhill they went a little bit dangerous in the first couple of kilometers on the down and i didn’t like that but that is modern cycling um look he really laid it down again winning that stage and stage eight remco started the attacking and in the end vingard went over the top of pog but pagatra sort of let vingard get second um and when vingard was asked about the finish he said for sure um when pog was asked about the finish he said “yeah for sure today yonas was really strong but also i didn’t want to go too deep um this is when he got the the gap sorry on stage seven um it was super hot and it was a long long climb so lucky enough for me i had enough time to ease up the last few kilometers and recover so like really all the games are starting like i don’t know if you guys saw that stage seven he rode vingor out of the wheel and then in the last kilometer vingard going like full gas to the line pog sits right up and loses like almost the gap almost came back together um vingard he was i hope this race can help me get better um and hopefully i can be even better than the tour that i am now guys lots to take out of that race there was lots to take out of swiss 2 quickly just your comments on the favorites the battles the guys coming into the tour these guys in the pre-races thoughts yeah i mean i think pog just seems to be on another level this year and i don’t know i mean you think about how much he’s won and how far ahead he seemed to be it seemed pretty one-sided from what i was seeing at do um so i think we’re gonna see i think we’re gonna see interesting battle at the tour as to how um vizma come back at that and i’ve got some ideas what i’m going to do that i’m going to discuss in my section coming up um so um yeah i think uh interesting playbook going to happen it’s hard to see i think it’s tricky because for example now pog’s been pog wins everything he’s in the media all the time um i’m not sure people are loving pog as much as they potentially were last year um i mean like i don’t know if i like it’s you got to be like i mean people love people at the top to fail does that make sense like once you’re at the top people love to see them be beaten you know and i think a lot more people do you think that’s happening now i i don’t know you reckon well i would say that now for example yonas has a little bit more of a public following that people re respect that he’s just going hard every day and he’s like going for it and people kind of want yonas to be better to be at pogy’s level because then everyone sees a better battle you know what i mean like it’s at the moment like when pogy rode easy to the finish i don’t know if that was necessary it looked i know it’s a game but it was like it was pretty bad i love it i like two hands off the bars and just taking a drink do you remember last year on the climb like in the big big vizma attack i thought it was so cool i was like “oh yeah that’s cool that’s cool i like it.” yeah i thought it was cool too because like even like when they try to attack him on the downhill you know on stage seven then you know when he went when he went to the line yeah he’s like “cool i don’t even need to do that sort of stuff.” and then stage eight he’s like “cool you you want to you want to get second that’s fine i’ll just roll in you know third um that’s fine there was no sprint for it.” and yonas was looking for the sprint it does remind me very much of the old armstrong or sort of battles back in the day um and that sort of psychology in it as well as you know the physical pretending to be stronger than you really are um or you know showing your strength it’s it’s quite an interesting battle my question is though was jonas bluffing right is this the right word not bluffing but like is he still coming up because you got to remember he’s still coming back from not the most perfect prep crashing parise coming up this race going to put him into the prime position like ideally like i hope i hope that does happen because if pog just rides away like he did here you know we’re going to be in for this race you know for second um at the jurro last year that we saw so you want jonas to to be going up a step and you know pogy maybe staying where he was it’s going to be pretty interesting i still don’t understand how remco can still pump them all in the tt like he’s obviously not the same level when it comes to climbing and watts and stuff like that cuz he obviously gets dropped on the big mountain passes but as soon as he puts put him on a tom drop bike like pogy does it so easily he drops them all so easily watts wise and he pretty much does that to everyone all year round but then as soon as you put remco on a tt bike it’s just like you should know that it’s slippery like you should know the whole pogy’s pogy has like so much money behind him he has so much aerodynamics behind him there is no question that the same work that remco does and pogy does it’s there shouldn’t be a comparison it’s not like a uae don’t care about times no way they have an amazing error has it got to do just also with the way you fit on the tt bike like you’re so little and you know like he’s both not they’re both not big pog is not big like you know what i mean he can’t be like he’s not talking a ghana versus a remco we’re talking two small climbing light figures and i i think it’s just awesome like it just you as soon as you put ramco on the titty bike it’s like he just smokes them should he ride the tt bike in the road race then it’s crazy it is crazy bike change bring back the spanaces i say um should we talk about the tour quickly well not quickly let’s just just do a a a run through of the tour i’m not we’re not going to go through every stage we’re not going to have enough time but the tour kicks off on the 5th of july it is not too far away tour kicks off on the 5th of july 3,320k 52,000 m of elevation seven flat stages six mountain stages six hilly stages and two time trials one of them is an 11 km uphill time troll it’s going to be interesting and the first week is all about i guess and you guys can tell me a bit more about this southern i’m assuming you’ve gone through all the stages much more detailed than i have but the first week for me looks like a real opportunist stage actually quite dangerous for gc often you they’re up in the north they’re starting in le the grand depar hasn’t last in le since 1994 2001 was when the tour to france started the last time in the north of france and we’re doing a whole lap of france we’re not going outside of france that’s the first time it’s happened since 2020 so there’s a lot of things are going back on the first week salem i want to talk to you about that it looks like and when we say the first week the first 10 days all in normandy around that area it’s it’s going to be dangerous for gc man it’s sprint stages opportunista skies punchy climbs thoughts about that first 10 day tom there’s an absolute ton of time there like for gc riders absolute ton and i think um the way it’s going to be raced it’s going to be unavoidable that someone like pog is going to be sprinting in some of these finishes uh which means yonas needs to do it which means gc riders need to do it vanderpole’s obviously going to be in the mix remco is probably the least suited to a lot of these finishes but then he’s got the tt on stage five where he should in theory take yellow um but then there’s traps like all over that first 10 days um i think honestly it’s like most of the race is going to happen there or a lot of the race is going to happen there a lot i think it will be people are going to come out of that far far far away from the gc already stage six for me is a real standout in the first week um it is the stage from bayou to via normandy and that is a stage starting in kevin vocalon’s hometown so watch out for him and where it’s just a lumpy tough day it’s kevin vocalan’s the new stevie williams isn’t he like steviey’s injured and mitch has just benched him and now it’s like the kevin vocalan show i’ve gone deep there’s plenty more to come out about you know where he lives like you basically you’ve got his hometown birthplace his school he’s spoken to some of his friends from school just to catch up you’ve gone through his old interviews was i wrong about stevie williams if you got on the stevie williams wagon you were on a good train i can smell them when i can smell them they’re good i mean vocaline’s already won a tour stage he’s been second in fleshwon i mean it it’s not as long as he’s not an overnight success he’s you all of a sudden call him a stinky frenchman now too you can smell him bal on do we need to rewind to his stage stage two victory last year ep epic stage win in italy into bologna what was the climb called there the san luca san luca attack in the breakway just launches off the front epic epic that break was nuts when it went i don’t know if you guys remember but it literally was the first like it just went immediately out the blocks and everyone started turning on the flat and there was a a 2 m gap and nobody could close it and it just balan was rode on the front of that break and that’s the only reason from day one yeah yeah so stage stage six is one to look out for him have i mentioned that is starting in kevin’s hometown which will be interesting kev oh kev kev kev um kev fast forward to the second week and stage 12 is the 11k mountain tt um guys thoughts about this it could be different another shakeup for you know for the gc men it’s not going to necessarily suit what we were just talking about before remco evident pole because you know he’s now got a climb so do maybe question for you is he better when he’s just doing a tt client we had a we had a we had a uh tour of to france pretty similar in 2018 and the last of the 10day block was the cobble stages john dean cole one um it was a really gnarly paroo bay stage and we had 10 days up there it was murder as well and and it was really technical first 10 days and all the gc guys were like there was guys off gc guys had had amazing 10 days i think we had i think we had adam yates in fourth place on gc but for example you have the week before the tour you you’re sort of resting up and then you have 10 days of just absolute carnage which is exactly what we’re going to have this year the tour and with the tt and all this stuff and then all of a sudden you have a rest day and then you’re into the mountains and i reckon it’s day one in the mountains that these climbers no one’s touched a climb longer than 5 minutes for like two weeks now more than two weeks and all of a sudden you have these huge like actual big like people have bad days like a lot of gc guys have bad days and uh because they just haven’t done the climbing and it’s just like it’s a really funny one cuz we had adam on fourth on gc we were like perfect we’ve got through this 10 days job done now it’s the climbing now go do your thing and then the climber goes the first climb and has a terrible climb and all of a sudden you’re like oh my god we had this 10 days of stress and i think that’s takes so much out of the climbers or gc guys mentally to get through this period that they think the tour to france potentially is like if they got through that period without any problems it’s over and now we’re now now it’s good but like that’s not how it works you know like it’s it’s it’s funny cuz for them it takes so much mental energy to get through that period cuz they’re constantly like racing for every inch so for a gc guy this year it’s uh a bit of a nightmare so i’ll put it similar to 2018 so what are you are you talking about the the mountain to te after the rest day or are you talking about um stage 13 because that’s also a monster to aspen um i reckon first mountain test not potentially tt still watts but like first mountain test yeah 13 is an absolute brutal day um and then you know to move on from there 16 is well it’s sort of like your hockey stick stage where you got the flat stage quite a of it’s a vela stage actually is maybe a better description um perfect stage for a sprinter or likes of myself fatman of the pelaton i like to call it um get to the bottom of the climb ftp rip pull the rip cord and head up von two um and then look stage 18 for me is a really massive day that’s just it’s disgusting that stage it’s so good this stage horrible it’s so st is just i’m really not looking forward to if i am going boys you make me feel really nervous once you go past corvel it’s like that last bit of cold have you been down the cold you done the cold you would have done the other way wouldn’t you dubs on the bike path and then you descend down the bit that we go up this year past the airport two years ago we did coder laws it’s the hardest climb of my life they’ve done the tormallet and then they just put the motorolo on top of the tormale at the end so hot well the thing is you’ve als you’ve also got um the two climbs before you’ve got the maline and you’ve also got the um the glendon glendon before like two epic days two epic climbs it’s 5,800 m of climbing in 171k this is such a big boy the last bit of the climb the last 6k of the climb as you guys were saying is 18 to 20% average the last bit so you’re going up the the bike only summit road [Laughter] turbo’s got it’s this is so good like but this for me this could be the achilles heel in pagacha 2020 primos drops him and it looks like um pagata was i mean that rogalich was going to seal the sorry primos drops him it looked like pagata had the tour uh prim primos had the tour sewn up but pagata came back in the time trial when he went up the plunge del belelfie and then 2023 um vingard drops pagatra as well and he loses um 6 minutes so this is in the last two attempts up here this is pagata’s one climb that he doesn’t love let’s see let’s see how that works i mean you’ve got those two days at the back at the back end of the race that for sure that you’re going to see okay we’re going to send this guy here and do this and try that and then it’s it’s so hard though the best guy is just going to do it i think we’ll see yeah it’s we’ll see insight from tom there the best guy will do it i can’t wait to hear that on the radio yeah guys the best guys the best guy is doing it right now on that stage yeah well he won’t be i guess he won’t be wrong race radio [Laughter] lastly i want to come to like we’ve missed heaps but these are the the thing the stages i i’ve seen and and i really picked out is stage 21 oh paris say can’t forget paris now um it’s stupid this is so good finally it’s not it’s not man it’s so stupid because like why it’s i’m just i can get so angry about it like i’m so angry about it because like why would you have like everyone say like there’s two battles you got your gc guys and then in the bunch you see these like sprinters that just like absolutely destroy themselves to get to the finish like it’s impressive they have like when we’re talking about 180 ftp some of them might actually have that and they get through the tour to france cuz they’re just hard bastards and then you get to cuz they can race on the world championships of sprinting charms and then you just give another stupid stage to vanderpole or venard or pogy and and there’s just racing just it’s just like come on what about what about us watching you don’t want to see you guys roll around and have champagne and all that i want to see carnage and racing hardcore racing because every single day we provide that for you free and then you just want one day just like one day to just roll along and just have the parade and like everyone and then a big bloody lead out sprint down the shan which is gnarly and then you know and then you see a sprinter win and it’s like that guy man like well done he got through the mountains and he got the stage win of his life well before before i want to hear from tom i should explain what you’re talking about because we haven’t actually said what is going on if no one’s seen the route they don’t know what the hell we’re talking about there is a 1 kilometer climb now added to the circuit on the shamsis they’re going around and it’s a 6% climb it’s called the montate monte mont they had it in the olympics and um the last time comes with about 7k 7k to go uh so it’s just a perfect launch pad three times up this climb 7k to go it’s going to change the whole last day so pissed durbo we’ve heard is pissed sm i i i can i think it’s i do feel like it’s a little bit gratuitous to be honest with you it’s like ah it’s is is it ne do i love that stage procession no not at all does it have to be no but um i think having that particular stage the way the guys race now is just like you’re just going to be frazzled like it’s it’s yeah i can understand there being a lot of uh um yeah pissed-off bodies in the in fast forward 6 years from now when you’re back here smoking a cigar watching the tour with me in melbourne at seaglo that doesn’t exist anymore i i i watched the parade and it’s quite good so when i watch the ziriro for example they have a bit of a parade before run and then it’s just a chance of commentators talk about everyone’s had a big jurro they they film through and they go this guy you know this guy and this was you can still do that for like you can still do that for 140ks yeah but what’s wrong with sean le man what is wrong with sean le it’s like iconic yeah we still doing that i’m just annoyed but you know let’s not worry about that all right let’s let’s talk about favorites um we’ve we’ve already mentioned pagatcha you know if he doesn’t crash really he’s set up he’s got the form the question around yonas fingergar is you know is his form building are we going to be able to see him and what are the the satellite riders looking like you know at the end of the day uae have got two more climbers coming in from the team that they ran at um at dofane so you know ya is coming into the into the mix and adam yates adam yates of course simon yates will be lining up for uh vizma lisa bike so that is another card that they can play there tish bern will be there as well so but then it leads me to down the line a bit and this is a question for you southern richard carropaz had a fantastic jurro let’s go to that moment what happened there uh what stage what stage we talking about in particular anything uh anything specific when the gi was lost yeah i mean 20 and like he played the game we all know what how cycling works right you got to be prepared to lose to win it was pretty clear that um you know in our opinion what the play was going to have to be um you know that del toro was going to have to ride after yates or lose euro and he just never did it um i mean richie was pretty frustrated at the time um but that was the just the the game he had to play because it wasn’t that del toro didn’t have the legs to follow richie because he followed him when richie put in every move i think he was just hyperfocused on richie i felt like uae were almost a bit like pogs kind of destroyed their tactics a bit because normally they’ve got they get to that point and it’s like all right it’s it’s done now um and it was just a bit i mean the guy’s young he was focused on second place i mean yates did that he did a really really good opening tt the first tt there it was like he was like 10th on the day or something like that um so he was obviously good and he wasn’t the last couple of days before that rich like richard only gained like 20 seconds or 15 seconds it was never that much so as we saw it yates and richie were as close as each other right to to the win so like different engines in terms of like richie would get the the gap because he can be punchy but we we hadn’t done a climb more than sort of half an hour prior to that and then you do this massive long you know in estra it’s just like suits yates he probably falls into yates’s hands probably than more than richard but i would say there was no fault of richards it was actually uae’s race that was lost like i’m just interested know that you were there we we we pushed richie to speed so uh what we did do was when del toro wasn’t pulling civikov was 40 seconds behind and we made had richie go fast to stop civikov coming back to force del toro to be alone to do the work so we doubled down on that like it’s like no no you’re going to have to do it or you’re going to lose the race and i think that was the the i think it was actually a good play if del toro road for example because actually you guys did a fantastic job at the bottom you literally destroyed uae which the last days before uae had like stepped it up and nik had just come to life and he was there to pace everyone and and adam was there and like they had such a strong team but you guys went from the bottom like absolutely berserk that to be honest by the time ue would get back to del toro it would be too late so that’s that was probably the perfect tactic and it was because then del toro was isolated and but the thing is i think at the end of the day del toro just lost the race i mean it’s crazy to think that like he’s so young and like i think at the point he was thinking yeah i’m just going to you know be this a bit confident but like oh man surely he’s got to be fair amount of regret now was there any was there any like so i heard that there was a bit of malice between them there was some kind of you didn’t help me stages before so if i’m not going to win you’re not going to win because for me there there was a point where clearly yeah cool i’m not going to let richie go because he’s my biggest threat and yates was only whatever 10 seconds 15 seconds up the road at that point but when it blew out to a moment where i was like well you know what you’re going to lose the race before i do like why wouldn’t del toro just go you know what i’ve got to commit here where was there was so many points where he could have committed m i mean you like you know yourself what it’s like when you get in that mindset when you’re racing as to like you get your focus changes you’re not seeing the picture and it’s like no you know what [ __ ] you i’m going to do what was the ds is there for that’s what i mean that’s what i mean that’s the role of someone who’s outside of it to give that picture um which i think we had we we knew what we were doing and i don’t know what other people were doing on the date and you know like i don’t think richard could have done anything else like honestly opposed to just riding him like riding del toro to the win like it was like “well dude i’m not going to ride you to the win i’ve already won the duro before you’re the one who needs to win it.” i mean richie when he did put the big move in he got really close the first time but he also knew it’s like i’m not going to take you all the way there and get hit myself you be the last bit and i’m going to recover and del toro wouldn’t do that it’s like okay all right well then when it was really interesting that day because like how in the end shout out to simon yates like how cool was that like how good is sport like eight years ago on that climb chris froom did the exact you picked it in in your prediction i listened to the podcast and i heard you call it i know i just wanted to go back and let you guys know that but uh no it was just it was so cool and then also but also jumbo what a what a day they had too tactics wise like they’re not there simon had a hell of a day went across like it was like for me i was goosebumps thinking about it but like it’s just one of the best best finishes to a bike race that i’ve can remember ever was so good tour to france can what’s carropaz going to do richie i mean um he we obviously went all in for the gc for the for the jurro and that was quite a big project um and the tour’s coming off the back of that so we’re going to have to see how um you know he’s recovered well he’s trained well um going for the gc again is out of the you know out of our thinking at the moment um if he rides a race like he did last year then you’ve got a guy who can really you know pick off one two stage wins things like that and that’s that’s massive you have to look a lot at what’s going to be left which is kind of um you know the more that that it pitches up this kind of vizma the whole of vizma versus pog gc battle and then pog like reasserting his dominance on some days using his team in the mountains it takes up a lot of opportunities for people um so you have to look at what’s you know i think those two top steps of the podium lockedish down and that also takes away like it consumes a lot of the stages the hard stages because break formation takes so long becomes a gc race day after day so finding those days you know for richie is is is yeah it’s going to be the game roglitch coming back thoughts is he past it done all right remco he’s not he’s not past it he’s just not he’s done yeah i heard it you guys your words i’m the one bringing him up is he past it um their team their team is essentially a jurro skeleton you got um j going back danny martinez you got tracknik um they got lipawitz going as well um who’s been very impressive so it’s a good team but is rogich the leader i mean yeah i guess well rodick roick is the leader but like roger lick is the leader because he demands the leadership and i think that’s the way he rides and i think the team actually rides better when they have that focus around roger and then if that’s not necessarily the case then they have had quite good record of when roger is not there anymore or does not perform to that point they actually go on to win a stage or you get pelazari or you get lipovitz step up and i think lipovitz and pelazari don’t necessarily want the pressure of well i know lipitz lipovitz especially doesn’t like the pressure of having that full gc around him so if it’s better that’s around roger and if he’s not performing then lipitz is there to pick up that i think that’s the way they’ll structure it i’ll be amazed if if if rogic comes out of that first 10day block in in shouting distance remco uphill time he’ll win the tt and he might even win the up i don’t think he win the uphill tt but i mean he’ll he win it i would say yellow jersey after the tt i think tc what about our aussie ben o’ conor the shift across to jaco um you said “you set him up well at swiss but i sort of expected a little bit more after talking to him.” um he’s on the pod uh last month and thought he would have been a little bit higher at swiss durb you could give us any insight is it still building to the tour um off the altitude block his first race for a while thoughts about him for gc i think swiss uh like i said before there was actually no big mountain passes um and the day we did have one big mountain pass ben was actually third on that stage obviously almea won alone him and onley came to the line and onley beat him in this well jumped him at the finish and he was third then after that was really punchy um benny’s benny’s you know proven gc guy but has proven that on really really hard long mountain days he continually plugs away really good at high altitude um so i think swiss in the end was perfect for him because did a big long altitude block pretty much did all these mountain passes thinking that we’re doing swiss and normal swiss and then you go to swiss and it was just like you know 54ks an hour average really punchy alfalit was right up there vocalon uh gregoire um it was just it’s actually just too punchy for him i think and then so he got gapped a lot of the time and then on these really punchy climbs and then he’s pretty much just stayed the same to the finish so he was end up seventh on gc um so i think to be honest the race itself wasn’t leaning towards ben connor i think he’s in great shape probably better than what it looks like on on pro cycling stats at that end of that stage race um for everything we saw there was nothing like alarming um and i think we was all positive uh to come to the tour so i think you know for us it would be a you know a big objective for ben to be in that top five um and i think he i think he can do it um he handles his bike well you know he he also gets time from attacking right if you look at he gets time from attacking he did it in swiss like he’s got a nose for it which is interesting vela the va he did it as well when he sure that he actually was fourth he that day so yeah he’s got a nose for it so even if it’s like the first 10 days aren’t perfect perfect perfect perfect gc wise his race isn’t going to be over ever for a guy like that you know and that’s the things we like about him is also that every day he comes in and he is actually looking for the opportunity looking for when he can go and he’s not afraid to go to lose it like he’ll he’s happy to lay it on the line and and go after it so yeah i think a top five could be good for him um like i said it probably be coming from like a more opportunity style of racing rather than maybe a you know fourth best fifth best climber every day five left ben’s the last one to get detached i don’t think it’s probably going to be like that it’s going to be a bit more like ben got 10 minutes one day you know in a breakaway and then you know what i mean i think that’s going to be sort of how it’s going to go but that’s sort of how you’re going to have to race as tom alluded to before when you’ve got the big two guys with carabaz as well like richard could easily be top 10 on gc just by racing the way thomas is explaining you know um couple more honorable mentions just to leave the tour before we move on we’ve been it’s been a big episode vanderpool writing his fifth tour um it’ll be my fifth tour he said in the first week there are chances for jasper um philipsson and me hopefully i can win another stage i’m sure he will if not that then the shamsis will be perfect for him derbs um and van he’s back to his best i know he’s coming in to support there but it was good to see him back to his best and i think he’ll be moving around again and look i was pretty um last little honorable mention for me is alflete um thought he was moving really well at true to swiss and given that first 10 days for me that’s got ella phalippe of old written all over it and he’s looking like alfa phipe more of old from true to swiss so i think he could be um really good really good um for this tour to france boys should we get some tactics it’s been um it’s been a good rap southern tell us how the tour to france is going to be run mate let’s talk some tactics well what i wanted to do uh discuss in uh this episode’s talking tactics uh was the effect that the wind might have on the race this year um echelons in the tour i think there’s like if if you look at um the opportunities that another team would have to unseat pog if you’re going to go hard early you want to keep as many people as possible for later in the race obviously to do other things to cause problems which means you need to do team actions um the obvious one i mean stages 1 2 3 and four there’s all open sections north of france will the wind blow won’t the wind blow um if we go back to and i was trying to find like examples of because it’s it’s not that often it actually splits in the tour with the wind there’s a lot of stress about it there’s a lot of stress and i think a lot of the times and you can correct me if i’m wrong durbo like the prepared the preparedness of the teams the preparedness of the ds’s who are all sat at home like me now seeing all of where it might happen causes like that big bubble effect you know and everybody sits there which then means that you hit the open sections as a block and you just can’t accelerate enough to get the bunch lined out which means there’s very few opportunities for things to happen the one time it did recently happen uh i think it was inos split it in 2020 and pog lost uh 1 minute 15 that day um we went through a series of three or four roundabouts and we had a slight cross tail and obviously like the speed that we’re doing after that is is super high which i think there was another instance in 2019 where we were on the wrong side of it with rio um it split we lost a minute and a half on the run in there but it’s it’s infrequent but the stress of it and the threat of it and the possibility of it are going to define the first four days of the tour definitely and then chataroo lava those stages as well there’s there’s a lot that can happen there and there’s so much to be gained by splitting it as a team and having four guys still with you that can then take that down to stage 18 down to you know the pyrenees the alps and so on and so forth so that has to be a major play for teams that want to do it so because a long i mean at 15 for example when pogy lost i think at the year that he he won that tour eventually but he was like alone young rider jersey he was like frustrated but pogy even though poggy does poggy things pogy can’t pull back a group of 30 in a crosswind regardless like it doesn’t no one’s that strong so fabian’s probably the only one maybe maybe um anyway but yeah you know what i mean like if you’re looking at major gains for a team uh vizma for example like okay we’re going to this day on the crosswinds is more important than a mountain stage for us because we can actually take say we take a minute minute and a half two minutes there’s easily enough on a crosswind stage if you go to the line they did it in uh parise also um split it in the crosswind they were riding the front jorgensson got this huge gap between the other gc guys and it was just it was done before even got to the mountains so they’ve actually got the team durbo just to mention that they’ve actually got the team they got afeni they got bonoot campernards and jorgensson vanard like it’s it’s actually a more of a rule sort of team if you want to call it that yeah yeah well that’s the thing you take these big boy crosswind experts like i said it’s actually more important than a mountain stage because if uae just ride it doesn’t matter jonas is in the line he’s either good enough or he’s not good enough but on a crosswind days these big boys like afeni like he can have like he could potentially win yonas the tour to france you know it sounds like that but like you always put down a set cush if he’s going to be there in the mountains or not like afeni or venard could be more of a player more of a than for yonas than sepkus and if you’re doing the team thing then septus is probably going to be there which means that he comes in so to play later on which is what you also it if you think you’re going to need numbers later on the best way to do it is to be moving as a team how hard that is to do i don’t know whether the wind’s going to blow don’t know there’s certainly plenty of opportunities um so i think even if it doesn’t happen the like the defining fatigue as well of the stress of those days cuz even if it’s 12k an hour still everyone’s going to say “let’s be on the on the right side of it.” you know let’s just make sure the stress of those days if you’re a gc guy is going to exactly like you said derbs is going to have an impact when you come to riding up the hoic cam and you know whatever else later on so i think they’re going to be like that the opening let’s say five nine days of the race because stage 10’s a different case a different matter are going to be the thing that eventually decides h how the race is won and it’s going to be from start to finish i would say those days like really interesting um you’re going to see a lot of probably the bunch on tv riding in a massive block um mhm at high high speed which then terminates any chance that any of these small you know um second division two free rider brakes get because the speed’s so high you basically can’t stay in front of it and they they’ll rush in um to a certain point there’s quite a few narrower roads in britany and normandy again that’s like a proper gc day um the circuit there stuff can happen so i think those those from basically stage you know from from stage one till the last 7ks to go stage 21 derbs and another the other thing with the wind is good point there tom is that actually like you said the rush you mentioned the rush and the bubble and the the road being blocked is that once the bra say brake goes off the car two or three guys you know they get out there no one actually cares about the breakaway anymore they’re just worried about getting through with their gc guy so so for example the rush into these towns it the road is blocked and everyone is if you’re in position in a gc team you’re actually like elbows out holding the road establishing your position you’re no longer chasing anymore so say for example you’ve got a alperson potentially not doing any gc and they want to bring it back for the stage their workers cannot actually get to the front they want to work they want to ride but they’re not allowed to go to the front because they’re blocked out and they might have been riding for a little bit so they’ve lost all their punch in their legs and we all sprint past them into a town to be safe road goes completely blocked which is happens all the time on the tour i’ve done it before when you’re trying to ride you’re trying to bring the race back for this stage to win this stage and you can’t or uae because they’re just trying to be safe and you’re just like “get out of the way i’m trying to pull the breakaway back.” and they don’t care about the breakaway at all they’re just worried about if pog or yonas are in a good position but that can also like it happened at the dofphane i think it was doofane yeah it did it was dofphane where the brake came really really close before the narrow turn onto the climb massive rush into the climb and then the right teams were there who didn’t care about the break and they stopped and then it stayed away so there’s actually like even if you have 15 seconds in that break people that narrow section and it’s long enough you’re still in with the shot um it’s going to be i mean i make it quick but it’s going to be the defining sort of feature i would say of this year’s race it’s up in the north of france everybody knows it it’s not been there for a while um and uh yeah it’s it’s it’s going to be a a big stress what did you say uh about uh on the colder laws the the best rider will win yeah that’s right the strongest ra is doing it the strongest ra is doing it not in the first week the strongest team will be doing it i don’t know if uae is going to take vish or plet or some like people like that but plet i think plet is on the start list um i mean the start lists aren’t final yet so it’s locked i’ve got the locked in start list wait till wait till gianeti gets hears this podcast and he’s like well hang on a minute didn’t know it was going to be windy into the crosswind himself so it really yeah in there well navarez well novak and plet ef ef are only going with four riders um carropaz sweeney powerless and healey we’re just going to go for the mountain tt with the sween dog and that’s it we’re only sending four the dog the dog’s bloody going in he jesus of course he is boys just quickly let’s do the last bit about the tour before we get into dervos quiz it’s been a big one but always going to be a big one in june these episodes one rider to watch boys who’s going to be at the tour tom i’ll go lipitz lipitz one sentence why third do roglitch might just you know do a roglitch thing and not be in contention and opens the door for him i’m i’m really interested to see if he can take uh remco for that third podium spot i think it’s a really interesting battle over a much more mountainous course than big sentence big sentence lots of commas one right at well before we actually broke it broke down i wrote this a while ago but carropaz i’d written him down in the in the group i don’t know if you see like a week ago so i’m going to go carropaz purely because you know fire in the belly after the jro what i saw him do last year um two stage wins you know was one or two two one one jersey jersey yeah so yeah i think uh i think he’ll just be exciting you know you guys rode incredibly to get him into these breakaways last year i remember and um yeah it’s it’s good guy to watch um did he kept missing the break didn’t he and had kept just kept missing it kept missing it yeah the whole pelon was like getting the breakaway just got him in there so we can leave us all alone i’m going to go with um kevin vocalon oh really that’s a surprise didn’t didn’t expect that i don’t know if you know he’s won a stage won a stage in the tour last year great ride at swiss and hometown he’s he’s going to be exciting hometown stage six so yeah kevin one stage you can’t miss tom i’m going to go with stage 10 it’s the it’s a really tough stage there around clement fond it’s got uh a whole heap of second category climbs in it it’s uh the first day that like a lot of these breakaway guys are going to go for which means it’s going to be it’s going to be absolute carnage um tough tough day durbo one stage you can’t miss murder baton i just really want to see which stage is it oh [ __ ] i actually don’t know what stage is on stage seven or six or six i think six um you know actually that stage they’re starting in um kevin vocalan’s hometown stage six anyway i just he for that stage it wouldn’t be bad but i reckon it’s just it’s the only time you get to see a climb that’s just short enough that pogy versus vanard versus vanderpole versus vocal gregoire um you know it’s just like it’s a really cool icon it’s kind of like an amster gold classic finish sharon sh used to go up there like sort of like a classic rider versus a climber and yeah it’s always incredible to see how far and the run you run into it like you run into it you come in straight and you just go straight up into this iconic climb that they’ve done on the tour for from generations so uh yeah be to watch most i’m going to go with the queen stage stage 18 the colder laws um we’ve already spoken about that so do not miss that one 5,800 m of climbing durbo you’re going to be loving that one one thing you’re most excited about the tour southern what is it well uh i’m most excited about the tour um i’m just going to go with the shanise stage 21 such a good such a good route revamp i’m so glad i don’t have to watch these guys drinking champagne enjoying their life anymore beautiful that that and kevin vocal riding out of his hometown towards murder britan that’s it nice turbo uh i’m going to go with uh if i get selected finishing that’s the one most thing i’m looking forward to perfect up that climb get up there the last time into the shamsa leash 7k to go time 7k to go i’m loving my thing i’m most you know what the time cut is i had a little look i did a preview of what it might be for that hang on give me a sec i’ve got it somewhere okay while you’re looking it up my favorite thing is going to be seeing a good oldfashioned battle royale again um i grew up watching lance and yan battle and i’m loving the pog yonas battle that is back on so hoping yonas can come up a notch and we can see a full-on battle royale southern what’s the time cut between 14 to 12 minutes der slow and fast schedule it’s not much at all it’s short stage and it’s a um number it’s what’s it called category one so you get hooked on the first time out do not they’re not they’re not going to cut anyone they would i’m going to i’m going to be there in making sure that rule is enforced at the end don’t you worry southern i mean turbo have you got a quiz for us i do the two quizers already here we go let’s do it short one seven questions two of the fronts related okay rapid fire now i’ll tell you beforehand if we’ve got a b and c or it’s just first to guess it because some of them are easy and just going to be real rapid okay right let’s do it so first one is an a b and c so don’t answer until i’ve given you the a b and c how many call no can you guys shut all your windows about two at the front got to shut them all down mitch i know you’ve got one there i don’t have any windows all that stuff i’ve said is off the top of my head i haven’t done a computer all right how many kilometers do the cyclists ride from start to finish at this year’s tour to france okay we got a 3 320 km b 3,38 km and c 3,450 km c b southern 1.3,338 km all right god my research was wrong this is just a straight up when you know the answer yell it out right who does the race red scod superb belong to you mean christian prud there’s so many of those red ones yeah but it’s the only the only red one the race race director right right does he actually does he is that his car it’s his personal car yeah he drives it yeah he drives it in traffic in paris his wife drives and he stands out the roof doing this there’s like there’s a car seat in there it’s all crunch chips and everything hasn’t cleaned it it’s just feet marks on the middle of the rear seat mud from his feet all right sorry about that all right well mick actually already answered this question before so you guys should know it and this is just jumping straight away so tom’s got two points this year’s tour to france they traditionally take detours in other countries will we leave france this year no give it to mitch because you already got two points i said it first anyway well you because you said it earlier in the show you can’t count that no i said it then and earlier so that’s two points it’s two all the the record will show two all the record one two it’s one two three question three zero but anyway this is a b and c we got wrap this up come on quick rapify how this is anc so after i’ve done it how many years has scod sponsored the tour to france a 22 b 15 c 10 a we’re going to go b tom got it three three points to one all right how many this is a also a b and c how many times has yonas finished to second to pocket chart in all races so since they’ve been racing together how many races have they has puggy one second junior races as well or uh 11 year yeah under 23 yeah as well but that didn’t happen just to let you know they went didn’t go one two in in lavia uh all right so we got a 15 c 17 what happened to b oh no sorry b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b 17 and then c c9 i’m going to go with c9 b mitch 19 times on first and second thought it was 18 rivalry highest rivalry out of any rivalry in cycling wow good question like even like the vlami merks you know you name it vanderpole walpard like it’s more than that cyclross but it’s definitely more than lance yarn yep i guess they only raced a tour really yeah exactly but it’s like that’s a lot of times eh 19 times what about gregoire and and vocal cycling’s greatest rivalry mitch docker and casey monroe or something like that um okay who here do we have how many wins has quickstep got since or inauguration this is abc right since they started the team how many wins have they had now the other day it’s a bit of a getaway giveaway at the dolphin a they had shirts made up about it but it’s more than that now just say b c answer the question i’m not really going to do it all right so is it a 1,00 b 1002 or c 1003 b i’m just going to go with c because i know it’s not 1,0003 so yes suck it manet manet won the two belgium races and meria won in belgium no no meria won two oh it’s it’s up it’s it’s changed cuz when i did this quiz it’s 10,04 so no one gets to the go but no i got i got the quiz question right that’s all that was presented that’s true that’s true i mean it’s just current like i had to update i did it like two days ago anyway who was second to stevie williams at the fleshwon valon last year um this is a jump this is a i think you should this should be this should be a jump in question just throw out your number straight away because it should be you should know it how many mountain stages this year’s tour 64 docker well done six have we got points update here yet i’m pretty sure tom’s still winning four four3 to me i think okay tom’s got four m got all right final question final question so we got the most tour to france stage wins obviously we know that’s mark cavendish who is third chipo pog no all right i’m going to have to do a little who am i he’s french he’s french oh is it he’s won the tour bernard you know the badger i don’t have another um hit me on the old stuff sm’s got no idea about the old stuff he just needs the current day stuff current draw at the moment i mean you guys might shake hands and that might be it well done boys two quiz masters can’t can’t define them there it is yeah look at my hand cocked the ball in the finger last night keeping wicked can’t see it not a nice lucky lucky you put the old keeping wicked at the end of that all right community quiz for the week that’s been a good one boys boys it’s been a great one a big thanks to our major partners in the podcast map of course and our partner here training peaks it’s been great analyzing the data with you durbo boys som if you’re off to the tour durbo if you find out in the next few days i’ll raise a glass to you and hopefully see you durbo hope to enjoy stage 18 but more specifically enjoy that climb on the shumps thank you see you boys nice that iconic music in this episode was composed by none other than the legend pete shel cheers mate [Music]
1 Comment
Great insight,hope the wind blows,agree with Durbo regarding stage 21.