Seixy Basque – new episode of KM0 online now

Daniel Friebe was in the Basque Country to witness the week that changed pro cycling – the confirmation that 19-year-old Frenchman Paul Seixas is the real deal. Seixy Basque is an unmissable listen if you want to find out more about the latest sensation to arrive on the scene. This episode of KM0 is available on our free feed for a limited time, before it moves across to our Friends of the Podcast feed shortly. More on that decision below…

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by Lionel Birnie

We saw the future on the Mur de Huy on Wednesday afternoon as Paul Seixas won Flèche Wallonne at the first attempt, something not even Tadej Pogačar was able to do. Pogačar had three unsuccessful tries before he finally conquered one of the toughest climbs in cycling and secured victory in the first of the Ardennes Classics.

Seixas is still only 19, making him the youngest ever winner of Flèche Wallonne – the previous youngest was Philémon De Meersman, who was 21 when he won the first ever edition of the race 90 years ago.

Of course, the Seixas Hype Train published its timetable a long while ago. There’s been a rumble on the tracks for the past couple of seasons and that rumble told us that a phenomenon was approaching sooner rather than later. So far, his arrival at every major station on the route to greatness has been bang on schedule. He impressed on the world stage at the Tour of the Alps this time last year, ‘gifting’ victory to his more senior Decathlon teammate Nicolas Prodhomme after an 85-kilometre two-up break on the final day. Then he looked more than comfortable at the Critérium du Dauphiné in June, and was expected to win the Tour de l’Avenir later in the summer, which he did with a flourish after a tricky week of racing against his peers.

He ended the season with a very fine 13th place in a tough World Championship road race in Rwanda, third behind Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel in the European Championships on another hilly course, and seventh at Il Lombardia.

So far this season, his development has continued apace, demonstrating Pog-esque consistency, durability, resilience and no shortage of panache. Victory at Itzulia was the first WorldTour level stage win by a Frenchman since Christophe Moreau at the Dauphiné in 2007 – almost a lifetime ago for Seixas.

We’ve been speculating since he took second place behind Pogačar at Strade Bianche whether Decathlon-CMA CGM will select him for the Tour de France and the team has said it will make a decision after Sunday’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

With the rumour mill already suggesting a move away from Decathlon may be on the cards when his contract expires at the end of next season – with UAE Team Emirates among the keenest suitors – it seems unlikely the French team will turn down what may be one of only two opportunities to go into the Tour de France with Seixas in their line-up.

The pressure will be immense, but when will that not be the case? France has been waiting for a winner of the men’s Tour de France since Bernard Hinault’s fifth and final title in 1985. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s victory in the Tour de France Femmes last summer captured the imagination and proved that, despite all those years of hurt, the country remains the spiritual and emotional heartbeat of the sport.

First, though, is La Doyenne – arguably the toughest one-day race on the calendar, the equivalent of a mountain stage with the all-or-nothing edge of a Classic. After his performance on the Mur de Huy on Wednesday, there are no doubts about Seixas’ ability to ride fast on steep climbs. There may still be a question mark or two over whether he can stay the distance right to the very end of a 268-kilometre race, but he showed at the Worlds and Il Lombardia that he was almost there and he’s developed further since then.

So, we can anticipate a barnstorming battle between Pogačar, Evenepoel and Seixas, even if there are question marks over Tom Pidcock’s readiness, despite a strong week in the Alps, and Mathias Skjelmose’s top-end.

Arrivée returns on Sunday after Liège-Bastogne-Liège

Tune in on Sunday as we recap the men’s and women’s editions of La Doyenne while the sweat is still drying on the brows of the winners. To make sure you see the episodes as soon as they drop, follow The Cycling Podcast in your preferred podcast player.

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Tolstoy for the TikTok generation

One of the recurring themes of our coverage lately has been professional cycling’s identity crisis and its seemingly perpetual search for a wider audience to help it unlock a rich seam of untapped revenue. For as long as I’ve been covering the sport, there’s been a sense that the stakeholders have been looking over the shoulders of hardcore fans hoping to attract the attention of other sports fans who might not have recognised the beauty and brilliance of cycling.

A couple of weeks ago, in Sweet Little Lies, as we discussed Remco Evenepoel’s April Fool’s Day announcement that he would be riding the Tour of Flanders after all – having told the media repeatedly that he wouldn’t be – we deviated into a discussion about what will, and what won’t, attract a new generation of fans.

The great Remco reveal was hailed by some as a triumph for a dynamic social media strategy, setting the agenda and owning the narrative without having to involve the fusty old mainstream media. Who reads newspapers, or websites, these days, grandad? (Setting aside cycling’s uncomfortable relationship with the truth in the past, it struck me that if lying – even if just by omission – is the best way to grab attention perhaps we all ought to re-evaluate what it is we’re doing.)

Anyway, it has been stated as a matter of fact for at least a decade that attention spans are shortening. Young people are not watching sport. TV audiences for live sport are getting older and many sports have been embracing ways to make their events shorter, snappier and more exciting.

A long-form sport in an era of shortening attention spans?

Road racing is the ultimate long-form sport. By the time Liège-Bastogne-Liège reaches its conclusion I’ll have spent 24 hours watching the men’s Monuments this spring, plus countless hours in the armchair watching all the other races, double-screening during ‘Paris-Adriatico’ week and watching the women’s races on catch-up because of the scheduling clashes. I am fortunate – I can stick the television on and watch all the cycling all the time and get to call it ‘work’.

No one needs to watch all six hours of Milan-Sanremo but the crucial and most entertaining parts of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix were in the middle. The Hell of the North, especially, rewarded those of us who sat down to watch it from start to finish because the drama and tension heightened as the afternoon wore on. It was a truly fabulous race but, if you’d just switched on for the last hour or 90 minutes you might have wondered what all the fuss was about.

If attention spans are shortening and people won’t watch two or three hours of live sport in big enough numbers, the problem isn’t the promotion or the storytelling, it’s the format of the sport itself and if the product doesn’t match the adverts an awful lot of energy is going to be wasted trying to appeal to people who aren’t going to be won over.

Drawing people in via an Instagram Reel or a YouTube Short is only ever going to have limited success in converting interest into engagement. It’s like persuading someone to read War and Peace by showing them a 30-second video. In that sense, modern cycling is Tolstoy for the TikTok generation. Once you’ve grabbed the attention, what next? ‘Settle in, kids, there’s just four-and-three-quarter hours to go!’

This is the question at the heart of the sport’s marketing conundrum. Does professional cycling want exposure or engagement? Does it want ten million fleeting views, or two million committed followers? It can have a bit of both, of course, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that interest converts into a year-round commitment. The media landscape is already teaching us that views earn pennies and engagement earns the bucks, so shouldn’t the sport be seeking to deepen its connection with the fans it already has? After all, more people follow Lidl the supermarket on Twitter and Instagram than they do Lidl-Trek the cycling team.

The Tour de France is one of the most watched sporting events in the world. Millions of people tune in every July to watch the Tour. The race reaches the Champs-Élysées and there’s a sense of loss – like our best ever summer holiday has come to an end. People want the party to go on just that little bit longer. So, given all that, why don’t the same millions tune in to watch the Clásica San Sebastián a week later? Could it be that – like the Masters golf, the Super Bowl, the curling at the Winter Olympics, or the Ashes cricket – the biggest and best events will always attract a huge audience but for a large percentage of that audience, that’s enough?

The Paris-Roubaix paradox

This conflict between interest and engagement was highlighted starkly by Paris-Roubaix recently. From my point of view, moving the women’s race from Saturday to Sunday was a huge backward step. Roubaix ‘weekend’ had established itself in a very short space of time as a brilliant couple of days of racing. It offered spectators more opportunity to see the races up close from the roadside. It put the women’s race in the spotlight on the Saturday and meant we could watch both of them live, (more or less) in full. There are commercial pressures and costs of closing the roads two days running plus the benefits of being able to run the sportive on the Saturday (which doesn’t need the full road closures a pro race requires) but undoubtedly for the hardcore fans the Roubaix weekend has been diminished.

This year, the women’s race was shown live for around 90 minutes – deeply disappointing for engaged fans who wanted to see more of how things were set up and unfolded. Rose, Lizzy and Denny discussed this in depth in the latest episode of The Cycling Podcast Féminin, and it is well worth a listen.

The day after they’d recorded the episode, a French media website PureMédias reported that the French TV audience for the women’s race was up 70 per cent on 2025 when the two races were held on a separate days. In 2025, around one million people watched the women’s race. This year, 2.2 million watched the men’s race and 1.7m watched the women’s race which followed. So, does the sport want exposure or engagement? The fans want to see more of the action; the sport wants more eyeballs to see anything. Is it possible to deliver both?

Paywalls and participation

One question that rarely gets addressed in this debate about how to attract new viewers is that the best way to draw people in is to make the sport more easily available to watch. Paywalls are the ultimate barrier to engagement and so it seems contradictory that so much effort goes into creating free content for social media when the product itself is so difficult, and expensive, to for so many to watch. The sport needs money because races are expensive to host and broadcast. The sponsors want exposure and so there’s a tricky ecosystem of competing objectives and interests to balance. And perhaps this exposes the conceit behind the desire to ‘grow’ the sport. What the stakeholders really want is more money and they think the way to get that is to attract a large audience of people for free and then convert them into paying customers.

I was speaking to our producer Tom Whalley earlier this week and he made the point that participation is the key to all of this. The more people who ride bikes, the greater chance they will become curious about the sport. If the WorldTour teams united to campaign for safer roads, better infrastructure and greater respect for cyclists from other road users it would probably have a far greater and deeper impact than banding together to shuffle the race calendar around a bit or create some events in ‘new markets’. If the professional sport could help to make everyone a cyclist, they would create populations of people who might fall in love with the televised, competitive sport.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Paris Saint Germain play football and, thanks to the wonders of algorithmic social media engineering, on my way home I was served some adverts for the clothing chain, Zara. One of the ranges of T-shirts for children was a collaboration with PSG, designed to get kids wearing the club’s badge and brand before they’re even aware of who Ousmane Dembélé is – and certainly before they can spell Kvicha Kvaratskhelia.

It made me think that the WorldTour teams and their bike and clothing manufacturers should be investing in attracting the kids with things that will appeal to them as kids. Children’s bikes and leisure clothing. Imagine kids riding their Colnago-branded PogBike or the Specialized Remco. Make children’s cycling helmets featuring images of the star riders – turning them into cycling’s Messi and Ronaldo the same way football did. Create a range of children’s T-shirts similar to the PSG x Zara range and create fans of the brands years before they are ready to sit down to watch six hours of racing. There has to be some creative thinking because, let’s be brutally frank here, most of the brands associated with pro cycling are pretty uncool. How many kids have a favourite petrochemical company, supermarket or Middle Eastern state?

When all is said and done, cycling appeals to a type of person, not to a broad, lazily-defined age group. As I said in the podcast last week, when I was 12 I couldn’t stand the taste of coriander (cilantro for our US readers) but as I got older and my tastes evolved I grew to love it. Cycling is the coriander of sports. It’s there for people who like long-form entertainment, history, cultural context and nice scenery. Perhaps cycling isn’t even the most effective gateway to becoming a cycling fan. Perhaps Larry Warbasse was onto something when he mentioned LeBron James’s social media video in which he talked (rather haltingly, it has to be said) about Paris-Roubaix. Perhaps cycling’s most effective partnerships would be collaborations with the LA Lakers, Paris Saint Germain or WWE?

Flèche Wallonne: A teenage winner, and three minutes of action

I’m preaching to the converted here because if you listen to The Cycling Podcast, subscribe to The 11.01 Cappuccino, have opened this email and – astonishingly – read this far, you are already deeply invested in the sport but watching Flèche Wallonne did make me think that sometimes it’s clear the sport doesn’t know the power of what it’s got to offer.

Here we were, watching a teenager take everyone else to the cleaners. Seixas is 19, smack, bang in the middle of the coveted age demographic; the type of person we all have to appeal to, apparently, if the sport is to survive and thrive in this whizz-bang future that’s been imminent for a couple of decades.

The Mur de Huy is the ideal content for TikTok or Instagram Reels. It is three minutes of racing – the first rider to the top wins. Sport doesn’t get simpler or more easy to explain than that. Perhaps the broadcasters and stakeholders should work out ways to capitalise on the excitement of that. Otherwise, if the sport wants to reach different people it has to offer something fundamentally different, moving away from six-hour races and three-week epics because, in its current form, professional cycling will appeal to the next generation of the likes of me and you.

Personally speaking, I think that’s not a problem but, unfortunately, we’re trapped in a hellscape where team owners and marketing people have become convinced that there’s untold riches around the corner if cycling could just reach out and grab them.

Meltdown: Coming soon

Daniel has been busy making a two-part series called Meltdown telling the story of the 1986 Peace Race, which started in Kyiv a couple of weeks after the worst nuclear accident in history happened at the Chernobyl power plant. The fallout from the explosion blew all across Europe and Kyiv was particularly affected. They were washing down the streets to try to mitigate the nuclear material in the days before the race. The question of whether it was right to start the Peace Race, which was the biggest amateur stage race and hugely prestigious for riders from behind the Iron Curtain who were not allowed to race in the West. The first of two KM0 episodes will be released for all next week before it moves behind our own ‘iron curtain’ and onto the Friends of the Podcast feed.

A thank you to our Friends of the Podcast

The media landscape continues to shift and change and if anyone could tell me what the future looks like beyond a handful of Paul Seixas Tour de France victories I’d be very grateful.

For the past ten years, a significant chunk of the revenue we need to run The Cycling Podcast has come from you, our listeners, who have subscribed as a Friend of the Podcast. We have always made a programme of additional ‘special’ episodes in exchange for this support and we are very grateful to everyone who has supported us whether continuously since the early days or on a year-to-year or even month-to-month basis.

As journalists, it is somewhat frustrating at times to put so much time and energy into making a special episode knowing that only around 10 per cent of our regular audience will hear it because it’s behind a paywall. We also accept that for many people, the free shows are enough. For others it’s the round-table discussions that interest them rather than the documentary-style storytelling.

So, we’ve decided that some of our KM0 episodes will be made available on our regular, free-to-air feed for a limited time before moving across to live on our Friends of the Podcast feed. This will give everyone a chance to hear some of the episodes we’re most proud of making and our hope is that existing Friends of the Podcast know that it’s only possible to do this because of their continued support. I hope everyone who enjoys Seixy Basque and Meltdown joins us in thanking our Friends.

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks as the spring Classics hit top gear. This week’s edition of The 11.01 Cappuccino brings you up to date on what we’ve been up to. Here’s what’s online now – and what’s coming up soon – on The Cycling Podcast. To make sure you never miss an episode, follow The Cycling Podcast in your favoured podcast app.

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It’s Coming Home…

This week’s regular episode features Daniel, Lionel and Tudor Pro Cycling rider Larry Warbasse. After a puncture-hit Paris-Roubaix, Larry explains why the riders are prepared to risk flat tyres in favour of using the fastest equipment. Daniel has been in the Basque Country watching Paul Seixas become the first Frenchman to win a WorldTour stage race since Christophe Moreau took the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2007. Seixas was a nine-month-old at the time and despite the emergence of a talented generation in the meantime, including Romain Bardet, Thibaut Pinot and Julian Alaphilippe, France’s long wait for someone to succeed Bernard Hinault has never looked closer to ending. There’s also a visit to Coorevits Corner, and Daniel’s singing… but perhaps the less said about that the better!

Paris-Roubaix

If you want post-race analysis from the Queen of the Classics, Arrivée, is the place to find it. Daniel and Lionel reviewed the men’s race, while Rose and Denny took care of the women’s edition.

Hell of a Debut

The Cycling Podcast Féminin returns with Rose Manley, Denny Gray and Lizzy Banks telling the story of the Classics so far, while looking ahead to the Ardennes races.

Three very different Paris-Roubaix debutants share their stories in this month’s mini feature. We hear from long-time Classics stalwart Shirin van Anrooij, youngest finisher Jente Koops, and Alexis Magner, who comes to the race after recovering from a life-threatening crash last season.

They also delve into the decision by race organisers, ASO, to move the women’s Paris-Roubaix from Saturday to a shared slot with the men on Sunday. And explore in what ways the race’s limited TV coverage could have wider ramifications for the sport.

Also on the agenda: Lizzy’s many goats, cyclist ribs on the barbecue and, hold on, did Denny just quit?

The Unexpected World Champion

New for Friends of the Podcast subscribers, is Rose Manley’s conversation with reigning world champion Magdeleine Vallieres. The Canadian’s win was one of the stories of the championships in Kigali last year and in this episode, she talks about how a 1,000 kilometre bikepacking trip with her dad ignited her love for the sport, about a difficult time at the World Cycling Centre and a world title win that surprised many but not those who’ve watched her development.

Coming up on The Cycling Podcast

Next week
Daniel and Lionel will be back to discuss the Amstel Gold Race, Brabantse Pijl and all the latest news and racing as the spring Classics enter their final phase.

A Spectator’s Guide to… the Ardennes Classics
What’s it like to take a trip to the Ardennes to watch Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. We reveal all – perhaps too much – in the final part of our mini-series for Friends of the Podcast.

From the archive: Lionel of the Ardennes
Check out the two-part Lionel of the Ardennes mini-series, recorded in 2019 when Lionel and Simon spent a few days in the eastern half of Belgium, riding the Mur de Huy and the Liège-Bastogne-Liège sportive. It’ll be bumped to the top of the Friends of the Podcast feed for subscribers on Monday.

Wednesday
Arrivée returns with episodes covering the men’s and women’s Flèche Wallonne. Who will win the Uphill Cheese Roll this year?

Sunday
Arrivée covers Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Will Tadej Pogačar win the oldest of the men’s Monuments for a fourth time or can Evenepoel, Seixas, or someone else stop him?

Sexy Basque
The working title for a forthcoming episode revealing more about the latest sensation in men’s road cycling, Paul Seixas, recorded by Daniel at Itzulia in the Basque Country.

May
Girovagando. It’s ten years since The Cycling Podcast began daily coverage of the Giro d’Italia. It won’t be long before the 2026 edition of the Corsa Rosa kicks off. Join Daniel, Michele and Brian on the road in Bulgaria and Italy from May 8.

by Lionel Birnie

Paris-Roubaix is the ultimate one-day race – the only day of the year when riders will press on to the finish even if they know they are well outside the time limit. Just reaching the André-Pétrieux velodrome is an achievement in itself.

For cycling fans, the Queen of the Classics is an unforgettable spectacle. A day spent in the fields of northern France is dramatic and exhilarating. The things we’ve seen. Riders jolting awkwardly over the hellish cobblestones of Arenberg with two flat tyres, just hoping to make it to the end of the section so they can get a replacement bike. Riders with their faces caked in mud, two pinkish eye holes and vacant stares their sunglasses once obscured. Knees and elbows bloodied and muddied, skinsuits ripped exposing skin the colour of rare steak. The Hell of the North takes riders to their limits and beyond.

Of all the races, Paris-Roubaix is the one that demands a six-hour window in your Sunday. To watch from start to finish is to emerge from the couch late on Sunday afternoon emotionally spent. The tension increases as they ride the supposedly flat roads that lead towards the first sector of pavé and only when it’s over do you realise you’ve been clenching your jaw for hours.

The latest edition of Roadbook is a spectator’s guide, of sorts, for those who want to see the race up close one day. In truth, the rescheduling this year has messed with my ability to offer many practical tips. When the women’s and men’s races were on consecutive days, Paris-Roubaix represented arguably the best weekend of the cycling year. A chance to see different cobblestone sectors, and sample the atmosphere in the velodrome on back-to-back days.

With the women’s race now following the men’s, I am not certain how it will impact the ability to move around from sector to sector. There may be tighter restrictions on traffic.

So, my advice to anyone who is in northern France now is simple: it’s far better to see the races once or twice rather than attempt an overly-ambitious schedule and end up missing it. If you’ve set your heart on making it to Arenberg, Orchies, Pont-Gibus or Carrefour de l’Arbre, make a decisive plan and decide on a fallback if something goes wrong. Seeing the race once or twice on the cobbles and then heading to the velodrome to enjoy the atmosphere as the anticipation and excitement builds makes for an unforgettable experience.

Roadbook, a collection of memories from travelling over to watch Paris-Roubaix over the past 26 years, is available to Friends of the Podcast now.

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Arrivée returns this Sunday

As the dust settles, we will bring you the stories from Hell. Our post-race reaction show Arrivée is back on Sunday, bringing you full analysis of both the men’s and women’s editions of Paris-Roubaix.

Daniel and Lionel break down the chaos and drama of the men’s race as Mathieu van der Poel seeks a record fourth consecutive edition of Paris-Roubaix and Tadej Pogačar aims to become the first man to win all five Monuments in a row.

Then Rose and Denny will take you through every decisive moment in the women’s race.

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From the archive: Mat Hayman’s modern day miracle

Ten years ago, Mat Hayman was 37, a veteran of 14 editions of Paris-Roubaix, entering the twilight of his career but still dreaming of lifting the famous cobblestone trophy above his head in the velodrome.

The Australian had finished each of those 14 editions, albeit outside the time limit once, and the closest he’d come to winning was eighth in 2012, when Tom Boonen destroyed everyone.

Hayman thought he might have one or two last shots at glory and then, at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in late February 2016, disaster struck. He crashed and fractured his collarbone. With just six weeks to Roubaix, his Classics campaign was in tatters.

But if you never stop believing, perhaps miracles can happen. Hayman was relatively lucky. He was able to train on the indoor bike and put together a programme to give himself a shot at taking part in the Hell of the North. After finishing a couple of races in Spain the week before, he lined up in Compiègne feeling he had nothing to lose. What unfolded that afternoon, when he outsprinted Boonen, Ian Stannard and Sep Vanmarcke on the track, was a sporting fairytale.

That winter, Hayman sat down with Richard Moore to talk through the whole story of how he clutched triumph from the jaws of disaster. We don’t hear Richard’s voice in this episode, just Hayman’s account of the race, but the way he tells the story is a testimony to Richard’s skill as an interviewer.

Ahead of Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, Hayman’s story is a reminder that the race has the capacity to surprise perhaps more than any other.

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Where are we, Lionel?

Paris-Roubaix is a poignant race for me. The 2021 edition, held in the autumn, was the last race I covered with Richard Moore. The 2022 edition, six months later, was the first race I covered since his sudden passing.

Paris-Roubaix had been postponed in April 2021 because of another wave of coronavirus cases and a short circuit-breaker lockdown in north-eastern France. When the re-arranged date was announced, Richard – who had moved to northern France during the pandemic – suggested we make a weekend of it, not least to witness the inaugural edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes.

Simon Gill, Friend of the Podcast David Luxton, and I loaded our bikes into Simon’s Broomwagon, careful not to squash the collection of items Richard had asked us to bring over for him. I remember there was a haggis or two for him and a large box of Innocent smoothies for his young son among the comforts from home.

We stayed in Valenciennes, in a charming guesthouse called Le Grand Duc, which I’ve visited several times since, including last summer when the Tour de France started in Lille.

The day before the race we rode our bikes down to the Arenberg Forest, clattered across the cobbles there and then went in search of another couple of sectors, where Simon sent his drone up to film Richard and I in action. We had a pleasant lunch in a little cafe and then rode back to Valenciennes on a stretch of cycle path. Once we were half a dozen kilometres or so from home we started attacking each other, sprinting to close the gaps, generally messing about like kids without a care in the world. I launched an attack and as Richard countered, I immediately sat up and let him get on with it. Simon and I chuckled as we watched him power away from us, head down, thinking we were fighting to stay on his wheel. When we got to the next junction he’d stopped to wait for us and to catch his breath. ‘Where were you?’ he said. ‘Oh we couldn’t live with the pace, Rich.’

Back at Le Grand Duc over a beer, Simon showed the footage of Richard and I on the cobbles. At the time it had felt like we’d hit them hard, smashing our way across the stones like the pros. The video evidence was somewhat different.

‘Have you slowed this footage down?’ asked Richard.

‘I’m afraid not,’ laughed Simon.

We covered the historic women’s race, recording throughout the day, capturing the excitement and chaos as the riders hit the cobblestones. On Sunday we were up early to get to Compiègne and to the mixed zone where we wished Mitch Docker luck ahead of the final race of his career.

I decided to accompany Simon in his Broomwagon on a magical mystery tour across the countryside in search of the riders. Richard and David headed off in Richard’s car, their plans for the car suspiciously vague.

As Simon drove, I got the race up on my phone and we watched them leave the neutralised zone. Within a kilometre or so there was a crash. One rider down on the ground. An EF Education jersey.

‘It’s Mitch!’ I said.

Simon and I made it to Arenberg, and somewhere else, and eventually the velodrome in Roubaix, tired from a day of map-reading and schedule-checking and thinking three steps ahead. When we arrived at the velodrome, just in time to go into the track centre to see the riders hit the Carrefour de l’Arbre, I saw Richard and David.

‘What did you guys get up to?’ I asked.

Richard’s face broke into that mischievous grin of his. The one that says he knows he’s about to be rumbled but he couldn’t care less.

‘David?’

Richard started laughing.

‘Come on, what have you been doing?’

‘I’ve been working hard, watching the race, keeping on top of things while you’ve been gallivanting across the fields. It just so happens that we also stopped for a very nice lunch.’

After a pause, he said: ‘What did you have for lunch?’

‘Some crisps,’ I said.

‘Oh dear…’ he said, chuckling away as we walked into the track centre.

After the race had finished and people had started to stream away from the track, Richard and I stood on the pavement outside the Jean Stablinski velodrome, the modern indoor track just over the road from its more famous, outdoor cousin. We were recording some final links for our episode and as we did we both became aware, then self-conscious, of two middle-aged men staring at us as they moved ever closer. When they were invading our space uncomfortably, Richard cracked. ‘Excuse me? Do you mind, we’re working here?’

Richard very rarely cracked like this, but these two guys were drunk, lolling about unsteadily, and pretty irritating. They shuffled off, and Richard said: ‘I’ve completely lost my train of thought. We’d better do all that again.’

‘Really? Can we not just pick it up from where we got interrupted?’

‘No, it’s totally put me off my stride.’

In our unused take, we’d been talking about Florian Vermeersch, the young Belgian who’d sprung a surprise by finishing second to Sonny Colbrelli. We’d learned that Vermeersch was still studying history at the University of Gent and had been elected a town councillor in his home town of Lochristi. I had joked that he ought to have a nickname, The Mayor, or something. I was determined my joke would not end up on the cutting room floor and I was ready to deliver it again in our second take when Richard jumped in before me and stole my thunder.

‘What are we going to call him?’ he said, that same mischievous grin breaking out again. ‘The Mayor, perhaps? Is that going to be his nickname?’

‘That could be, Richard. I wonder where you got that idea? Sometimes the perils of having to do a second take means that my jokes get stolen!’

Later on, it was time to go our separate ways. We got into the Broomwagon, Richard got into his car and we were just about to get on the motorway when Richard called us. He’d forgotten to collect his haggis and smoothies, so we pulled over to the side of the road and he collected his goodies.

I did see Richard once more face-to-face, by a strange quirk of fate it was in Watford, my not-quite-home town the following February, when Richard was over in London but travel disruption and childcare arrangements meant he had to travel out to meet me because I couldn’t get into London. We recorded the podcast, with Daniel joining us remotely, and then Richard and I shook hands and said we’d see each other again at Paris-Roubaix in a few weeks.

Of course, tragically, that was not to be the case. Richard died the morning after Gent-Wevelgem, a race that has come to symbolise in the minds of many of our listeners his contribution to the podcast, the cycling media and even to the sport itself.

For me, though, it is Paris-Roubaix that most strongly resonates and reminds me of our friendship and working relationship. In those awful, uncertain weeks that followed the news we weren’t sure what the future would hold, although we were determined to return when it felt right. Having ridden round parts of Scotland with Simon – which was therapeutic in itself and helped to process the grief when it was at its rawest – I felt ready to go to Paris-Roubaix and see how it went. I’d already booked my travel, but I couldn’t face returning to Le Grand Duc – not just yet – so I booked an alternative place in Lille.

All weekend I was struck by the kindness of colleagues and strangers. The first person I saw when I arrived at the velodrome on the Sunday afternoon was Hugo, who gave me a big hug. Caley and others insisted I join them for dinner and, although I deeply appreciated the offer, I preferred to do my own thing. I lost count of the number of podcast listeners who approached me, all of them sensitively and almost tentatively, as if hyper-aware they would be encroaching on my grief, to offer a few words of condolences to everyone associated with the podcast and Richard’s family and friends. It was both touching and quite overwhelming, especially when I was in the media scrum, automatically scanning the crowd of journalists for the familiar figure that stood taller than almost everyone else even though I knew I wouldn’t find him.

If sport is about people and places, then the Roubaix velodrome will always remind me of Richard. We recorded there many times – including during the 2018 Tour de France, on World Cup final day, when Richard could barely contain his delight that England had been knocked out at the semi-final stage.

The episode we recorded that October day, which you can listen to below, was the final one Richard started with the words: ‘Where are we, Lionel?’ Those words, and Richard’s mischievous grin and hearty laugh, will come readily to mind on Sunday.

The 2021 Paris-Roubaix weekend

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by Lionel Birnie

Remco is no April Fool. And yet…

I can’t have been the only person who checked the date yesterday when news broke on social media that Remco Evenepoel planned to be on the start line in Antwerp for Sunday’s Tour of Flanders.

Only in cycling could one of the sport’s biggest stars make such an improbable announcement on April Fool’s Day.

Part of me still refuses to believe the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider is taking part until I see him in the peloton on Sunday but he’s there, on the provisional start list, number 111.

But why is it improbable when Evenepoel is undoubtedly a generational talent who increasingly seems better suited to one-day racing than Grand Tours? Well, because he is relatively inexperienced in the cobbled Classics.

He’s raced the cobbles since he turned to cycling, of course. You can’t race in Belgium without encountering them. He won the junior Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and rode junior Paris-Roubaix, although he finished outside the time limit there.

As a professional, there were plenty of cobbles in the two editions of the Baloise Belgium Tour he won – including Haaghoek, Lippenhovestraat, Paddestraat and the Muur. The Brussels Classic he won in 2021 featured the Muur and Bosberg twice each, and Brabantse Pijl has a few cobbles too.

But he is yet to line up for the Ronde van Vlaanderen. In fact, he is the only Belgian man to have won the rainbow jersey in the World Championship road race who has not taken part in the Tour of Flanders. That will change on Sunday (unless we’re all victims of an elaborate hoax).

In this week’s episode – Double Whammy – Daniel made the point that although Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have been aggressive and mob-handed in many of the Classics so far, they are lacking a finisher. Whether Evenepoel is that man remains to be seen, and I have my doubts, although it feels almost preposterous to say that a rider capable of winning the world title, the Olympic Games road race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège can’t be a factor in the Tour of Flanders.

However, his experience of the intricacies of elite level Flemish Classics is almost non-existent. As a neo-pro in 2019 he rode Nokere Koerse and Bredene Koksijde Classic but that, and the few races listed above, is more or less the extent of it. He’s never ridden Omloop Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, E3 Saxo Classic, Gent-Wevelgem (sorry, another euro in the jar, In Flanders Fields), or Dwars door Vlaanderen. And it’s a big step up from Nokere Koerse to De Ronde.

Can he match Tadej Pogačar or Mathieu van der Poel, or even Wout van Aert or Mads Pedersen, when it comes to the dizzying left-right-left-again of the Tour of Flanders? Evenepoel’s bike-handling and descending skills are often ludicrously under-rated – the way some people talk about him you’d think he’d won Liège-Bastogne-Liège on a bike equipped with stabilisers. And yet it does feel like the Tour of Flanders on Sunday might be a case of jumping in at the deep end and getting a noseful of water…

The Belgian drought

We’re so used to focusing on the 40-year wait for a Frenchman to win the Tour de France that it has perhaps slipped under the radar that Belgium is currently enduring its longest drought in the men’s Tour of Flanders. Lotte Kopecky has won three of the past four editions of the women’s race but you have to go back to 2017 for the last Belgian man to win. That was Philippe Gilbert and, although the Flandrians took him to their hearts, he’s a Walloon. The last Flandrian winner was Tom Boonen way back in 2012.

With Mathieu van der Poel seemingly cursed by the fact that he has already won Omloop Nieuwsblad – and no one has ever done the Omloop-Ronde double in the same season – it looks like Tadej Pogačar will be the man to beat on Sunday, although Wout van Aert’s return to something approaching his peak form in the past week will ensure the fanatical Flandrians have someone to cheer even if Evenepoel falls short.

What about Ganna?

We’ve been treated to three successive nail-biters over the past few days. Van der Poel’s bluff and double-bluff, combined with the hesitation among the chase group, saw the Dutchman win the E3 Saxo Classic for the third year in a row. Two days later, Van der Poel was away with Van Aert again – the George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley of professional cycling, as Daniel described them – until almost the last moment at In Flanders Fields, only to be caught as they went under the flamme rouge. And Van Aert was pipped on the line by Filippo Ganna in Waregem on Wednesday as the Italian clinched Dwars door Vlaanderen.

In this week’s episode we credited Ganna with putting in a mammoth turn on the front of what remained of the peloton to finally catch Van der Poel and Van Aert (and Alec Segaert) at the end of In Flanders Fields. Italian observers were aghast that Ganna would sacrifice himself for his Ineos Grenadiers teammate Sam Watson, who finished 17th, well adrift of winner Jasper Philipsen. We were somewhat puzzled too, given Ganna’s ability to catapult himself out of an already fast-moving group, as he did on Wednesday. It was an even more impressive win as he had to swap bikes when his handlebars snapped on the Eikenberg just as Van Aert was making his big move.

At the time of writing, Ganna will not be riding the Tour of Flanders on Sunday. Instead he’ll be at home in front of a giant television, enjoying lunch, and resting ahead of an increasingly realistic attempt to improve on his previous best sixth place at Paris-Roubaix.

It makes sense but it does also highlight the poor record Team Sky / Ineos Grenadiers have at Flanders, especially as they won the first ever Flemish cobbled classic they rode when Juan Antonio Flecha took Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2010. Since then, they have won Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne a couple of times (Chris Sutton and Mark Cavendish), another couple of Omloops courtesy of Ian Stannard, two editions of E3 (Geraint Thomas and Michał Kwiatkowski), and a pair of Dwars door Vlaanderen (Dylan van Baarle and now Ganna).

But the Tour of Flanders has continued to elude them. Van Baarle’s second place to Van der Poel a week before his Paris-Roubaix victory in 2022 is their best result. Luke Rowe was fifth in 2016, Magnus Sheffield sixth in 2024 and Ganna was eighth last year.

It’s a curious world where victory in a race like Dwars door Vlaanderen does not automatically confer at least four-star favourite status for Sunday’s big one, but in a world where Pogačar and Van der Poel have been taking it in turns to dominate, the smart strategy for Ganna may be to sit this one out and hope for a better opportunity in a week’s time.

Roadbook: A Spectator’s Guide to the Flanders Classics

Online now for Friends of the Podcast is our new mini-series, Roadbook, which will complete your build-up to Sunday’s race. Maybe it’ll inspire you to take a trip to the spring Classics next year, or it’ll enhance your enjoyment of the races from the best seat in the house, your couch. The next episode, focusing on Paris-Roubaix, will be released next week.

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Next stop, the Ronde van Vlaanderen

The first time I went to the Tour of Flanders was in 1999, when the race fell on Easter Sunday, as it does this year. On Good Friday, I was in Vitré in Brittany for a relatively new race, the Route Adélie, where the British Linda McCartney team was racing. This is my account of that race written at the time.

by Lionel Birnie

Slumped in a plastic chair in Vitré is Chris Lillywhite, the rigours of his 188-kilometre slog around the rolling countryside of Brittany clearly visible on his face. The former Milk Race winner takes a slug of his drink while the Linda McCartney team’s soigneur, Eddie Wegelius, cleans the grime from his legs.

‘I blew on the last lap with about four kilometres to go. It was hard, we knew it would be, but it wasn’t incredibly hard,’ says Lillywhite.

Mechanic Carl Farrell is loading the team car, a smart, burgundy E-Class Mercedes. ‘Nice quiet day, we weren’t called up to the front at all. Just the way I like it,’ he says with a smile.

For the team’s German rider, Heiko Szonn – formerly of the same Telekom under-23 team which produced Jan Ullrich – it looks like it’s been anything but a quiet day. Szonn, the only McCartney rider to have finished with the peloton, makes his way through the crowd towards the car. Manager Sean Yates extends his hand to congratulate him. ‘My legs were like jelly on the last couple of laps. God, it was hard,’ Szonn says.

This is Britain’s Linda McCartney team acclimatising to racing in Europe, but it could easily be any other division two outfit taking its first tentative steps into professional cycling’s big time. The Route Adélie, round four of the Coupe de France, held on Good Friday at Vitré, is the first of two races the McCartneys will compete in during Easter weekend. It will be followed by the GP Rennes on Sunday, the same day as the Tour of Flanders, which may as well be light years away.

Preparing the troops

Yates has summoned his riders to a team meeting in his room at the Hotel La Grenouillère. It’s 11am, an hour and a half until the race starts.

First to arrive are a couple of the Australian contingent – David McKenzie and Ben Brookes. The others filter in and find space to sit.

‘This is the sort of race I like,’ says Matt Illingworth, who is not feeling well, ‘it passes the hotel 13 times.’

One of the most respected riders of his generation, Yates was a hard-working domestique deluxe who rode tirelessly for Peugeot, Fagor, 7-Eleven and Motorola. In his 15-year career, he has sat through hundreds of team meetings. This is his second attempt at preparing his riders for a race – following the GP Cholet in March – and he briefs his riders well.

The respect they have is evident; they listen to what he says.

‘It’s important we participate in the race and ride near the front,’ says Yates. ‘It’ll be hard because there’s a good-quality field but the course isn’t as tough as the GP Cholet. I know we haven’t had anything like the racing we should have but if you ride properly and professionally all the time you’ll know what to do when you do have the legs.’ Brookes and Julian Winn are told to police the early stages of the race and get in any breaks that go clear. Szonn and Illingworth will take care of the middle and Allan Iacuone, McKenzie and Lillywhite are to save themselves for the finale. ‘If we race properly for as long as possible I don’t mind if we get popped on the final few laps,’ says Yates.

Future looks bright

Chris Lillywhite is one of the most experienced members of the team and has ridden many races like this before. He looks more relaxed than some of the others. ‘I did the GP Rennes ten years ago with Raleigh-Banana,’ he recalls. ‘I remember it being tough.’ Now 32, he has realistic aims for the team: ‘We all know how hard it will be for a British team to ride the Tour de France, but the set-up is right.’

A former winner of the Milk Race, Lillywhite had written off his chances of racing in Europe again and spent 1998 racing purely for the love of the sport with the fledgling McCartney team. Then the plans for 1999 were unveiled, with a bigger budget, better riders and a stronger race programme, and Lillywhite was offered a contract. ‘I didn’t think any of this would come along again and I know I’ll never ride for a big team again, but maybe I can ride for a couple more years with the McCartneys,’ he says. ‘I know me and some of the other older guys are not the future of this team, but we still have something to offer.’

Lillywhite believes the way the Telekom team has evolved over a period of almost ten years is an example the McCartneys can follow. ‘Telekom are one of the strongest teams but they started as the small Stuttgart team and built things up slowly. Back then there were hardly any German pros but now they’ve won the Tour,’ he says.

Final countdown

With less than quarter of an hour until the start, Yates comes back to the team car far from happy. ‘The organisers have paid us the start money by cheque and the bank won’t cash it because we haven’t got an account here. It’s a real pain in the arse because we have to pay the hotel bill in cash, buy petrol and pay the motorway tolls. We haven’t got a credit card yet so we need to be able to use the start money.’ It’s a problem which faces all the foreign teams at the Route Adélie.

‘The Slovenian team [KRKA] has the same problem. At Cholet the organisers paid us cash and I thought they’d do the same here but the guy won’t budge.’ Yates will have to withdraw some cash to sort things out.

Cofidis rider David Millar is full of beans, chatting and joking with his friends, although he is still smarting from his defeat by Jens Voigt at the Critérium International the previous weekend. He turns to his teammate Bobby Julich: ‘You hear that Bobby? They say the time gap Voigt beat me by is the equivalent of two centimetres. Two centimetres!’

‘Forget it man, it’s over,’ replies the American.

Millar greets some of the McCartney riders and asks how things have been going. The McCartneys look pleased to see him: a friendly face in this intimidating milieu. Millar’s confidence – fuelled by his fine start to the season – is in stark contrast to the demeanour of the somewhat apprehensive McCartney riders. They are not joking as readily as they were earlier on; the start is just a few minutes away.

There is just time for adjustments to bikes, a quick check that they have bidons and race food, and the slow roll to the start line.

And they’re off

This is the third edition of the Route Adélie, the previous two having been won by Nicolas Jalabert and Jaan Kirsipuu. Following the success of the 1995 Tour de France’s visit to Vitré, when Mario Cipollini won the stage, the local council decided they wanted a race of their own. A sponsor – the ice cream maker Adélie – was found and the race was born, providing the riders who are spared the cobbled hills of Flanders with some meaningful competition. It also gives smaller teams an opportunity to make a name for themselves. Eight of the 17 formations are ranked in division two, and a further two teams are French semi-professional outfits.

The 129-strong field will tackle five laps of a 23.4-kilometre circuit around the undulating country roads around Vitré before eight 8.6-kilometre circuits of the town itself.

In the early stages, the yellow and black McCartney jerseys are at the front but when the break goes they are not represented. Brookes, the 19-year-old Australian, tries to marshal the move but is feeling the effects of a slight back injury and fails to stay with the group.

The big losers are the Polish MROZ squad and the McCartneys. Almost every other team has a rider in the 18-man selection. Nearing the end of the third big lap, MROZ go to the front of the peloton in a bid to pull back the break. The lead is never more than a minute but they manage to stay away. By the time the race reaches the finishing circuit it is clear the winner will come from the escape.

As the race nears its conclusion the crowd lining the narrow streets of Vitré swells, attracted by the prospect of seeing the riders every ten minutes or so. And as the crowd grows the publicity girls get to work, handing out free Adélie ice creams to all and sundry, despite the light showers which fall intermittently.

Daniel Mangeas’ commentary grows more fervent and the crowd cheers. At the back of the peloton, Szonn is hanging on.

Post-mortem

Szonn finishes with the peloton, Lillywhite just behind. The other six abandoned on the finishing circuit and were already back at the hotel.

Yates is pleased that two of his men made it but the frustration of not getting a man in the break is obvious. ‘I told the riders how important it was to show themselves at the front and I had hoped they would get in any big moves that went. I don’t want to be like those directeurs who sit in the team car shouting and screaming when our riders don’t get in the break, though. They know what I expect but I know it’s not as easy as that. I used to suffer like a pig for the first ten races of the year so I do know what it’s like.’

Julian Winn, a stage winner in last year’s Prutour, pulled out with a couple of laps to go. Back in the team’s wagon, parked outside the hotel, he reflects on the race. ‘This was only my second race of the year. The first one was the GP of Essex and then this. The difference is mind-blowing but I learnt a lot today.’

Farrell, the mechanic, is washing the team bikes ready for the following day. Four months ago he was working in a bike shop in Forest Row, Yates’ home town. Now he is preparing the bikes for a professional cycling team. “I heard the team needed a mechanic and when I was offered the job I jumped at the chance,’ he says. ‘Sean said it would be hard work and he definitely wasn’t wrong. Today went okay but I’m just waiting for my first cock-up. I know one day I’ll get it wrong but Sean is cool about it.’

The riders head to their rooms to relax. There is time to reflect on the race, before attending another lesson at the GP Cholet on Sunday.

* * *

Postscript: After the finish, Szonn put on a long-sleeved jacket and leg-warmers and announced that he would ride the few kilometres back to the hotel to warm down, perhaps throwing in a little loop to fully shake the lactic acid out of his legs. Later, I arrived back at the hotel to find Yates leaning on the bonnet of the team car. Szonn still hadn’t returned. ‘He should be back by now,’ said Yates, later still. This was before GPS cycle computers and Szonn didn’t have a mobile phone with him. It turned out he’d ridden in the wrong direction, got lost on his little loop, and spent the best part of two hours trying to find his way back to the hotel. ‘Ah well,’ said Yates, deadpan. ‘It won’t do him any harm!’

This article first appeared in Cycle Sport in 1999.

by Lionel Birnie

After a detour via Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milano-Sanremo, the spotlight falls once again on the cobbles, bergs and freshly-ploughed fields of Flanders for the first time since Opening Weekend.

The Flanders Classics have resumed with the rebranded Ronde van Brugge, although having watched the men’s race on Wednesday I still think the Road Furniture and Cycle Paths Demolition Derby would be a more appropriate name.

Over the next ten days, the excitement will build to fever pitch as we approach the Ronde van Vlaanderen via the E3 Saxo Classic (Friday), In Flanders Fields – From Middelkerke to Wevelgem (Sunday), and Dwars Door Vlaanderen (Wednesday).

The second part of Roadbook, our quasi travel guide series, is online for Friends of the Podcast now. It features Simon Gill and I talking out our adventures in Belgium and pulls together some of the things I’ve learned from the past 25 years crossing the channel to watch the races.

Here are a few tips if you’re planning to make a trip to any of the Flandrian classics this spring.

Where to stay?
Gent (Ghent) is my favourite city in Belgium and it makes a brilliant base for all the Flandrian races. It’s a busy university city with great bars and restaurants and plenty of other things to do while you’re there. Brugge (Bruges) is smaller and much more touristy but well worth a weekend break and is in easy reach of the coast. Another popular destination for us over the years has been Kortrijk (Courtrai in French), which is very well located for E3 Saxo Classic and Gent-Wevelgem. During the Lionel of Flanders trip in 2017, we stayed aboard the Bootel Ahoi, a boat-hotel (boatel?) in the river Leie, which was great fun. It’s also only a short-ish ride to the velodrome in Roubaix and some of the Paris-Roubaix cobbles. If you are interested in the military history of Flanders, head to Ieper (Ypres). There’s the In Flanders Fields museum and they play the Last Post at the Menen Gate to remember the fallen every evening at 8pm.

What to eat and drink?
It may not be the most aesthetic looking dish – in fact, it sometimes looks like it’s swilled out of the back of a sewage lorry – but stoofvlees, or Flemish stew, is delicious. Tender chunks of beef in a rich, beer-based gravy that goes perfectly with crisp, lightly-salted French fries. Another popular stew is waterzooi. I am not all that keen on the traditional fish version because I am not a big fan of river fish, but the chicken alternative is great. Race day wouldn’t be complete without something from the friterie – a bratwurst, or some other grilled or deep-fried meat with chips and mayonnaise.

Belgium boasts hundreds of brilliant beers – my favourite is Orval, although it’s not Flandrian as it comes from just over the border in Wallonia. Like the climbs, check the percentage before clipping in to avoid an unwelcome surprise! If you are driving, or cycling, or just want a booze-free weekend, there are more and more alcohol-free versions. I can recommend the Leffe 0.0 and the Affligem 0.0.

Where to ride?
Every time I watch the races, my top ten list of favourite climbs changes order. I’ve been lucky enough to ride them all over the years but my top six cobbled climbs – in no particular order – must be the Muur at Geraardsbergen, the Oude Kwaremont, the Koppenberg, the Paterberg, the Kemmelberg and the Molenberg.

Flanders is great for cycling. There are the hills and cobbles of course, but the cycle paths are everywhere and keep you off the busy roads. The bike is king (or queen) too and generally has right of way at roundabouts and other crossings and intersections.

If you’re travelling over for the races, there are organised cyclo-sportives. The Tour of Flanders one is incredibly popular – perhaps it’s got too big because if you set off at peak time it can be frustrating getting caught in the bottlenecks on the climbs. Simon and I accidentally gatecrashed the Gent-Wevelgem sportive during our Lionel of Flanders trip and that was great fun to join for a few kilometres, especially the gravel Plugstreets.

Alternatively, check out Cycling In Flanders to help you plot your own routes.

Best race for a first-timer?
If you’ve never been before, I’d recommend making one of the smaller races your debut experience instead of the Tour of Flanders. De Ronde is brilliant, of course, but the crowds are huge, the road closures make it tricky to get around, and many of the key climbs are dominated by marquees and VIP areas. When the race falls on Easter Sunday, as it does this year, it can be exceptionally busy.

Opening Weekend is a great place to start because you have two bites of the cherry – Omloop Nieuwsblad followed by Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. Alternatively enjoy a long weekend taking in the E3 Saxo Classic, which takes place on a Friday when lots of people are working, and Gent-Wevelgem (sorry, it’s going to take me at least three years to get used to calling it In Flanders Fields – and another three to remember to add on the From Middelkerke to Wevelgem bit!). These two races have quite different characters and cover a lot of varied terrain giving a real impression of the subtle diversity of the Flanders region.

The cycling museums
There are two outstanding cycling museums that are well worth a visit. The Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen in Oudenaarde celebrates the history and geography of the race, and there’s a great cafe next door. Last year, I visited the Koers Museum in Roeselare with Hugo Coorevits. The museum has been recently renovated and upgraded and it has a fantastic array of cycling equipment and memorabilia across three floors.

• If you are a current Friend of the Podcast subscriber, you can listen to Roadbook now. To sign up, go to thecyclingpodcast.com. An annual subscription gives immediate access to a back catalogue of more than 300 episodes made over the past decade or so, as well as every new episode of KM0 we release in the coming year. Your support is invaluable too because it keeps the show on the road.

The Lionel of Flanders

Is it really eight years since Simon Gill and I recorded our slightly haphazard, freewheeling five-part series, The Lionel of Flanders? The title was the suggestion of our producer Tom Whalley. The series took us to the three races which lead to the Tour of Flanders. They have shuffled the running order since, and Gent-Wevelgem has changed its name, but the series remains one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done for The Cycling Podcast. We’ve moved it to the top of the Friends of the Podcast feed this week for any new subscribers who want to listen to it for the first time, and for any long-time listeners who want to revisit it as part of their own build-up to De Ronde.

Of course, it’s an especially poignant weekend for everyone associated with The Cycling Podcast, including our listeners, because the Monday morning after Gent-Wevelgem will forever be associated in our minds with the sudden passing of our co-founder and dear friend, Richard Moore.

Four years ago, Richard had covered the race for The Cycling Podcast, witnessing Biniam Girmay’s historic victory. The following morning we received the devastating news that Richard had died. The support of our listeners then, since – and especially at this time of year – is hugely appreciated. Last year, Friends of the Podcast Charlotte Elton and Stacy Snyder made a trip to paint Richard’s name on the road at the Baneberg – which was picked up by the television cameras during the coverage.

If you’re watching the race on Sunday, join us in raising a glass to the Buffalo when they reach the Baneberg.

Online now

Bread of Heaven
Daniel Friebe and Larry Warbasse added an additional layer to our Arrivée analysis of Milano-Sanremo once the dust had settled on La Classicissima. And Hugo Coorevits returned to look ahead to the cobbled Classics.

Winner Winner Trofeo Binda
An early contender for best episode title of the season courtesy of the March edition of The Cycling Podcast Féminin. Rose Manley, Denny Gray and Rebecca Charlton welcomed back Lizzy Banks on her much-anticipated return to the show.

Coming soon

Monday, March 30
We will be back after the weekend to recap the Belgian Classics E3 Saxo Classic and In Flanders Fields (aka Gent-Wevelgem), where Mathieu van der Poel and Mads Pedersen are each aiming for three in a row. We’ll also cover the Evenepoel v Vingegaard v Pidcock v The Rest battle at the Volta a Catalunya. Listen out for that episode on Monday.

Sunday, April 5: Arrivée
We will have our instant reaction episodes covering the men’s and women’s editions of the Tour of Flanders online as soon as we can after the finish next Sunday.

• Subscribe to The Cycling Podcast in your favourite podcast app to ensure you never miss an episode.

The father of the Mortirolo: Carmine Castellano 1937-2026

We were saddened to hear that Carmine Castellano, who was race director of the Giro d’Italia from 1993 to 2003, died this week aged 89. Castellano took responsibility for devising the Giro route in 1989, working under Vincenzo Torriani, who he later succeeded as race director. Castellano ‘discovered’ the Mortirolo, which featured in the Giro for the first time in 1990 and has since become thought of as the original ‘super climb’. The road, cut through the forests in the Italian Alps, supposedly roamed by witches and brigands, is one of the most feared climbs in cycling.

In 2019, Daniel made an episode of KM0 called Il Mortirolo, which you can listen to on our Friends of the Podcast feed. It features Castellano talking about how the Mortirolo became a part of Giro d’Italia history.

Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast

Stacy Snyder’s 2026 Classics-themed cups will go on sale on Sunday (March 29) from her Etsy site. There will be a collection of around 50 mugs and cups available from 10am US East Coast time, which is 3pm UK time (4pm CET).

by Lionel Birnie

When it comes to the spring Classics, we get a lot of emails from listeners asking for travel tips. Over the past 25 years or so, I’ve travelled to all of the races with Simon ‘The Photographer’ Gill – most of them multiple times – and so our new mini-series for Friends of the Podcast subscribers is a meandering collection of things we’ve experienced and tips we’ve picked up over the years.

Roadbook: A Spectator’s Guide to Milan-Sanremo is online for Friends of the Podcast subscribers now and will be followed by similar episodes focusing on the Flanders Classics, Paris-Roubaix, and finally, the Ardennes Classics.

If you’ve never been to the great one-day races before, hopefully the series will inspire you to make a trip. If you have, maybe the episodes will enhance your enjoyment of the races to come over the next six weekends.

Here are some tips for spectators planning a trip to La Classicissima.

1. Make Sanremo your base. Easily accessible from Nice if you’re travelling by air or rail, Sanremo is perfect for a weekend break, especially if you are taking a bike. By all means go to Milan if you want to see the city, or watch football at the San Siro, but on race day you want to be on the Poggio waiting for the race to get to you.

2. If you’re taking a bike, you can easily ride a lot of the course. Either roll out from Sanremo, starting on the 23km long cycle path – pista ciclabile del Parco Costiero della Riviera dei Fiori – which hugs the coastline, then turn round and trace the race route over the three capi, the Cipressa and Poggio. You can do as much or as little as you like. If you just want to ride the last 100km of the course, take the bikes on the train to Spotorno and then ride back to Sanremo. If you’re there long enough, it’s not too far to the Col de la Madone, near Menton over the border in France.

3. If you are there for a few days, visit the medieval village of Dolceacqua or the ‘ghost town’ Bussana Vecchia, abandoned after an earthquake in 1887 and repopulated by artists and bohemians in the 1960s, now home to cafes, restaurants and craft shops.

4. Visit the Mercato Annonario di Sanremo, a large market packed with artisan bakers, delicatessens, butchers, fishmongers and fruit and vegetable stalls. If you are self-catering everything you need is here – fresh, vibrant, top quality local food.

5. Take a stroll round Sanremo’s ancient heart, La Pigna, a network of intricate streets that resemble a pine cone, hence the name.

6. Enjoy a post-race drink in the Piña Social Club, a cosy bar nestled in the ancient streets which feels like it’s the town’s best-kept secret hidden in a wine cellar.

7. Eating out, we particularly enjoyed the Ligurian cuisine in A Cuvea and La Porta Verde.

8. On race day, pick a spot and wait for the race to reach you. We headed to the Poggio early, had lunch at a pizzeria and soaked up the atmosphere as the excitement built. Hopping from point to point hoping to see the race multiple times struck me as almost impossible given the road closures and the speed of the peloton.

• Listen to the episode to make the most of your trip. Thanks to Friend of the Podcast Alessio Punzi, who lent us his apartment for our trip and compiled a list of places to see, including restaurant and bar tips.

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Simon’s photo of Van der Poel on the Poggio descent

In the Roadbook episode, Simon Gill talked about the thought process behind his stunning image which captured Mathieu van der Poel in full flight on the Poggio descent in 2023. Having waited on the Poggio all day, Simon knew he had one opportunity to tell the story of the race in a single frame and this was the result. Prints of this photograph are available from Simon’s website and would grace the wall of any cyclist’s office or pain cave.

Buy Simon's Poggio print

Paris-Adriatico or Tirreno-Nice?

As The Cycling Podcast’s newly-appointed Head of Mediocrity it falls upon me to write about Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. Before I do, I want to make it clear I love both races even if they start slowly.

After the excitement of Opening Weekend and Strade Bianche it does feel like the WorldTour season has been jammed into reverse when the two point-to-point stage races first get underway, especially when the weather is poor, as it was for much of the week.

The opening time trial of Tirreno-Adriatico felt very low-key, with a sparse crowd and sad looking traffic cones marking the turning point of an underwhelming out-and-back course. Italy still looked half-asleep and my mind drifted to thoughts of closed ice cream shops, cafe owners using those long metal poles to poke puddles of rainwater off their faded awnings, unidentified sea things in pale, greasy batter for lunch and grumpy waiters who only want to take cash.

Paris-Nice is the same, but in French.

However, both races offered drama, even if the weather didn’t brighten significantly enough in France to justify the race’s nickname, the Race to the Sun. There was an intriguing team time trial which put Juan Ayuso into the yellow jersey. Unfortunately for the Lidl-Trek rider, he crashed out the following day as Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s club sandwich helped catapult Visma-Lease A Bike’s Jonas Vingegaard to a stage win and the race lead. Vingegaard was imperious whenever the road went uphill and the time gaps by the time the race reached Nice were more like those you see at the end of a Grand Tour than a week-long stage race. Even the disappointment of the Queen Stage being shortened to 47 kilometres because of the snowy weather, and a peculiar final stage minus the Col d’Èze that finished out by the football stadium rather than on the Promenade des Anglais, failed to lessen the sense that Vingegaard had put down a serious marker for the season ahead. Certainly he is miles ahead of where he was this time last year, when a crash at Paris-Nice disrupted his spring.

Meanwhile, over in Italy Isaac Del Toro delivered again, calmly plotting his way to an assured overall victory and refusing to panic even when Giulio Pellizzari pinched the leader’s jersey from him for a day. Mathieu van der Poel looked ominously brilliant, winning two stages ahead of Milan-Sanremo; Michael Valgren delivered the good news story of the week with his first win for almost five years after a terrible run of injuries, Tobias Lund Andresen continued to demonstrate his improvement and Jonathan Milan delivered his expected stage win, although we’ve since learned that illness will keep him out of Saturday’s Milan-Sanremo.

I love the week of Paris-Adriatico, or should it be Tirreno-Nice? It’s a work-from-home dream – I put the TV in the office on and watch both races back-to-back – although the race organisers could co-operate a bit more to stagger the finishes so we can see a bit more of whichever race finishes latest, which is usually Paris-Nice.

However, the clash of two important week-long WorldTour stage races looks to be increasingly unjustifiable in a world where sports are competing for attention with so many other forms of entertainment. From a sporting perspective there’s no easy way to tell the story of either race. Generally speaking, the riders who have their sights set on Milan-Sanremo tend to go to Tirreno-Adriatico, but not all of them do. The general classification specialists are split between the two races. Matteo Jorgenson, who has won the past two editions of Paris-Nice passed up the opportunity to complete the hat-trick, riding in Italy instead where he enjoyed second place and, if Daniel is to be believed a series of culinary crimes that surpass putting pineapple on pizza. What could it be? Lasagne burritos?

The best rider in the world, Tadej Pogačar, didn’t ride either race, which arguably made them more compelling spectacles, even if Vingegaard’s winning margin was Pog-esque and Pog’s understudy Del Toro did a pretty decent impression of his team leader.

While it makes no business sense whatsoever to schedule the two races against each other, I really like the fact that between them, Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico are the pieces of a bigger jigsaw puzzle. We gained some clues but no definitive answers. Considering the two winners, Vingegaard and Del Toro, are likely to be the hot favourites for the Giro d’Italia, who has the upper hand after that week of racing? On the face of it you’d have to say Vingegaard because of the winning margin, but Del Toro was pushed harder by a stronger field on more dynamic terrain.

Would any other sport split the attention of its followers like this? I suppose golf is similar in that it has competing tours and the best players all come together for the majors. But if we were devising the WorldTour calendar from scratch tomorrow there’s no way anyone would rationally schedule two such important events against each other.

As much as I enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet week of cycling, I tend to reach the final day with my mind somewhat bloated, struggling to digest what I’ve seen. A whirl of Visma-Lease A Bike, UAE Team Emirates and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe jerseys set against a slate grey sky, racing through sleepy towns and villages witnessed by a sprinkling of spectators snug in their winter coats.

It got me thinking perhaps there needs to be a radical change. Maybe the two stage races should be run one after the other with an overall teams classification based on performances across the fortnight? Or maybe there’s an even more radical format which could really capitalise on the fact they run concurrently? Two races with one classification? A combined points race? Of course all this would require ASO and RCS to co-operate, and the UCI and the teams to agree with a shake-up, but it does feel that the clash which divides our attention and dilutes the storylines is become less justifiable each year. What are Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico actually for? Are they are merely training races for the Grand Tours, an early hit-out for the GC riders, or prestigious events in their own right? At the moment, no one seems to really know.

The Pogačar debate

Last week’s discussion about Tadej Pogačar’s dominance and whether it is robbing races of intrigue and suspense provoked some interesting reactions. Below is a sample of the comments we received by email and via The 11.01 Cappuccino.

The suspense is what draws me to cycling – I want tension until the line, the unlikely breakaway success, and Grand Tours where the top 10 is undecided until the final mountain day. This is what makes the sport so interesting, so dynamic, and so engaging. When all the variables, and unknowns, are sucked out of the race – so is my attention – Rich

I’m not going to say if I find it boring, exciting or somewhere in between. Because, simply, there are no right or wrong answers. If that’s how we feel, then that’s how we feel. What I will say is I thoroughly enjoyed the chat – Michael Holden

The only thing more boring than Pogi at Strade is the debate over whether Pogi is boring or not. I agree 100% that he is boring to watch on TV but absolutely thrilling to watch in real life – Tom Baker

Well said Daniel. Who remembers 1956 Roger Walkowiak, 1966 Lucien Aimar, 1976 Lucien van Impe. We are in the presence of cycling history, greatness, humility and grace and excitement from Tadej. They’ll be sorry when he’s gone – Ian

Bang on Lionel. It’s your favourite movie played over and over and over again – Dion

I really enjoyed the debate between Daniel, Lionel and Brian on this week’s podcast. I know it’s a theme you’ve covered before, but it is probably one of the most salient topics in professional cycling at the moment.

I’ve been following cycling for a long time and have witnessed many eras, and I love watching Pogačar win. When I tune in to watch a race he’s going to take part in, it’s in the hope that he pulls off something spectacular, again, and wins.

I totally understand Lionel’s point-of-view – sporting events need drama, storylines, upsets, underdogs. In almost all scenarios I’d agree that watching a dominant favourite win repeatedly doesn’t make for a great spectacle. Yet somehow, with Pogačar, it’s different. Whilst an individual race might unfold in a predictable way, each race feels like it’s just part of a much bigger and more compelling narrative.

Would Daniel feel the same way if, instead of Pogačar, it was someone unlikeable, or, maybe worse, dull? I don’t think I would, I think I’d have been watching Strade Bianche thinking ‘please, not this guy again’.

Instead, with Pogačar, the feeling is almost the opposite: you tune in hoping he does something outrageous. His dominance doesn’t remove the spectacle, it is the spectacle – Christopher

Arrivée is back for the spring Classics

Our post-race show Arrivée returns on Saturday with episodes covering the men’s and women’s editions of Milan-Sanremo recorded as the dust settles and released within a couple of hours of the podium presentations. We created Arrivée in spring 2022 when we realised that the energy and urgency of our Grand Tour coverage was missing when we recorded our Classics reviews a few days after the races. So, we aim to record as soon as possible after the winner has crossed the line, when the excitement is still fresh and the takes can be delivered hot.

To make sure you never miss an episode of The Cycling Podcast, follow us in your preferred podcast player. That way you’ll receive a notification as soon as a new episode goes live.

Tune in on Saturday to find out who won the races – and how they did it.

Arrivée episodes will be online after the races on Saturday.

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by Lionel Birnie

We had a lively discussion in this week’s episode Goodnight, Siena about Tadej Pogačar’s dominance after he sealed his fourth Strade Bianche victory in five years. Considering the SlovAlien – (c) Daniel Friebe – didn’t take part in 2023, he’s unbeaten on the white roads of Tuscany since 2021, when he was seventh.

The statistics are staggering. In those four editions, he has spent 228 kilometres riding alone at the head of the race and his aggregate winning margin is five minutes and 45 seconds. Enough time to win a couple of Grand Tours in four days.

There is no doubt whatsoever that we are witnessing greatness. Considering the strength of competition and the depth of talent in the modern WorldTour peloton, we can make a cast-iron case that Pogačar’s achievements already eclipse those of Eddy Merckx.

I hope the discussion between Daniel, Brian and myself was a bit more nuanced than the binary Is Pog Boring Or Not? There’s a subtle, but important, difference between saying that the men’s race at Strade Bianche lacked intrigue and suspense and coming to the conclusion that Pogačar is boring or that his dominance is killing the sport.

For a start, Pogačar is far from a ‘boring’ rider. He races with panache and a smile on his face. There’s something charming about his persona on and off the bike. The trademark tuft of hair poking out of the vent of his helmet may have been absent on Saturday but the carefree attitude it seems to symbolise was not. He rides with the confidence of knowing that he can do more or less what he wants on a bike. He looks glorious in full flight too, the embodiment of perfection on two wheels.

Nevertheless, Saturday’s Strade Bianche as a spectacle was predictable. We didn’t see anything we hadn’t seen before. In fact, you could say that was merely a repeat of 2024, when Pogačar attacked two kilometres further from the finish. That’s not to say the race for second place was not fascinating in its own way.

Our discussion continued when we retreated to the dressing room for half-time oranges between parts two and three and we more or less agreed to disagree. In fact, we were wondering whether the debate about whether or not Pogačar’s dominance is boring is itself boring – especially as we touched on a similar subject early last autumn when the Slovenian pulled off back-to-back long-range wins at Il Lombardia and the European Championships. However, the reaction the episode provoked suggests it’s a subject that interests as many people as it divides.

And that is because it gets to the heart of answering the question: What is professional sport for?

For many – the race organisers, team owners, sponsors, broadcasters and wider media – it is a business. For the fans, it is entertainment. For the riders, it is both a job and a passion.

Daniel’s point that viewing figures for Saturday’s Strade Bianche hit a record high shows that Pogačar is good for business. Brian’s point about the crowds in Siena was also a good one. A lot of the tourists were already there, the bike race drew them into the Piazza del Campo for a glimpse of a rider we may well come to think of as the greatest of all-time. Pogačar is cycling’s Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods and Lionel Messi all rolled into one.

Popularity and profile track a bell curve. Pogačar’s exploits at the Tour de France, the Classics, the world titles and the sense that he is rewriting history in front of our eyes means that his popularity is approaching its peak when it comes to the wider public. People who perhaps watch a bit of cycling throughout the year will tune in for him rather than the race. Mauro Vegni’s comment – “There was Pogačar and that was all I needed. The race was on everyone’s lips from the BBC to the New York Times” – perhaps reflects less well on the sport than he thinks.

On the other hand, some dedicated cycling fans who have been following his progress since he won his first Grand Tour stages at the 2019 Vuelta a España and have sat through four similar editions of Strade Bianche, feel the novelty has worn off a bit. They are equally entitled to crave something different, or new. As I said in the podcast, there are certain films or songs I go back to time and again because I love them but that doesn’t mean they are all I want to see or listen to.

And so we have to reach the conclusion that multiple things can be true at the same time. Pogačar’s exploits are extraordinary and can be gripping – and yet I have relatively little interest in seeing him win a fifth Strade Bianche. Certainly I think there’s more sporting merit in seeing him win Milan-Sanremo or Paris-Roubaix for the first time.

Pogačar can be good for business – attracting new people to the sport or encouraging the bike-curious to take a deeper look – while being bad for drama, suspense and a sense of engagement in the moment while an afternoon slips away as he time trials to the finish line.

Star quality has always elevated and then transcended sport, whether it be Merckx, Armstrong, Cavendish or Pogačar. But interest can be fleeting too. Many of the people brought along purely because they had an interest in Armstrong drifted away when their idol retired and then fell. I certainly agree with Daniel’s point about the ‘vacuum eras’ where it can be hard to know who the best riders are. I am certainly not yearning for a glorious era of mediocrity, despite what Daniel and Brian suggested, but Daniel also knows that interest can evaporate quite quickly when the stars fade. The case of Jan Ullrich in Germany and perhaps to a lesser extent the British boom around London 2012 and the Bradley Wiggins Tour win are examples of that.

Perhaps Brian summed it up best when he said that, like beauty, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. We all watch and follow sports for a range of different reasons and we’re all entitled to enjoy whatever it is we enjoy.

Pog-proofing the Poggio?

This is the bottom of the Poggio, photographed by Friend of the Podcast Alessio Punzi at the weekend. Access is barred to all traffic – even Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel. There are no plans to make this a gravel section for the finale of Milan-Sanremo but in true just-in-time fashion the resurfacing work is cutting it fine ahead of La Primavera next Saturday. However, a fresh, smooth surface and the right conditions could mean a new fastest time on the Poggio next weekend.

Classic specials from the Friends of the Podcast archive

Over the course of the spring Classics, we’ll be delving into the Friends of the Podcast archive to move some old favourites back to the top of the feed so new subscribers can discover them for the first time and long-term Friends who want to listen again can find them easily.

This week we go back to spring 2023, when Simon Gill and I travelled to Sanremo for La Classicissima with Italian-based journalist Herbie Sykes. During the four-part series, we discover the history of the race, ride the famous climbs and then, on race day, wait for the peloton to reach us on the Poggio.

This mini series precedes a new episode for Friends of the Podcast, which will be out early next week – a mix of travel tips and tales which might inspire you to take a trip to the spring Classics if you’ve not been before.

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by Lionel Birnie

In an era where so many races can be summed up by simply saying The Best Rider Won, it was probably not a surprise that Mathieu van der Poel dominated Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. In this week’s podcast, Poel Party, I described it as being a ‘paint by numbers’ victory, decided largely by one moment on the Molenberg. Rick Pluimers of Tudor Pro Cycling slipped on the greasy cobbles as they came round one of the bends on the twisty-turny lower slopes of ‘mill hill’. Van der Poel, although well-positioned and alert, nevertheless had to rely on his peerless cyclo-cross skills to avoid Pluimers as he hit the ground. With Florian Vermeersch already pushing on at the front of what was left of the peloton, Van der Poel seized the opportunity and from there it was all fairly predictable. There was a sense that Vermeersch and the other passenger on the Van der Poel Express, Tim van Dijke, would probably have little to respond with when the Alpecin-Premier Tech man decided to make his move, and so it proved. A lifting of the pace as they went through Geraardsbergen, an acceleration as they approached the steeper section up near the chapel on the Muur, and he was away, adding another race to a near-complete collection of spring Classics on his debut. One Omloop, one win.

Meanwhile, over in the Ardèche, the latest journey made by The Paul Seixas Hype Train was a non-stop service all the way to the finish line, with no room for any passengers. A few months ago on these same roads, the Next Bernard Hinault was the best of the rest, trailing more than three-and-a-half minutes behind the Current Tadej Pogaćar in the European Road Race Championships. Seixas was the bronze medallist that day and at the weekend he decided to see what it was like to try a Pog-style solo escape. In truth it was a bit Pog Lite, because in the Euros last summer the Slovenian took off 75 kilometres from the line. Seixas made his move with just over 40 kilometres to go.

It was, though, an impressive victory considering the riders he left behind – Jan Christen, Lenny Martinez, Matteo Jorgensen, Mattias Skjelmose and Egan Bernal were all around two minutes behind, Ben Healy more than five minutes back.

His performance has done nothing to calm the excitement and anticipation of a Pogačar v Seixas showdown in the gravel at Strade Bianche tomorrow (Saturday). Pogačar has won three of the past four editions, with a combined winning margin of almost five minutes, and a total of 150 kilometres spent riding solo at the head of the race. (A quick corrections corner from me, keeping up The Cycling Podcast’s proud tradition of achieving at least 60 per cent accuracy: In this week’s episode I said that Pogačar had yet to experience any setbacks or misfortune at Strade Bianche, somehow overlooking the dramatic moment when he careered off the road and into a field when he was away with 2023 champion Tom Pidcock. Perhaps it’s because Pidcock did the sporting thing and eased up to allow Pogačar to get back in touch that meant the jeopardy was somewhat reduced in my mind but it’s true to say that while it’s been a peerless unbeaten run – he didn’t ride in 2023 – it’s not been flawless. Not quite.)

So while that offers hope to his rivals, of whom Seixas will hope to be one, the fact that UAE Team Emirates are also set to field Isaac Del Toro, who has been collecting Italian one-day race victories the way a child collects Panini stickers, swings the pendulum back in Pog’s favour. Since last March, the Mexican has won Milano-Torino, the GP Industria & Artigianato, the Giro della Toscana, Coppa Sabatini, the Trofeo Matteotti, the Giro dell’Emilia, the Gran Piemonte and the Giro del Veneto. His victory in the UAE Tour shows he’s climbing very well so he will be a valuable ally, or decoy, or Plan B for Pogačar.

• Our Strade Bianche episode will be out on Tuesday as I join Daniel Friebe and Brian Nygaard to review the action in Tuscany and look ahead to what Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico have in store. In the meantime, let’s go back to 2022, and the first of Pogačar’s hat-trick of wins with an episode called A Postcard From Strade Bianche recorded by me and Simon Gill.

Points mean prizes

One thing that Van der Poel’s win in Belgium and Seixas’s win in France may have had in common is that, at a certain point in each race, the focus of the riders behind may have switched to the battle for UCI points when the balance of probability suggested the outright victory was off the table. Fourth place at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was worth 220 UCI points. Second at the Faun-Ardèche Classic was worth 170. To put that into context, a WorldTour stage win at Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico next week will net 60 points. The disproportionate awarding of points for one-day races, and the way it incentivises sitting tight and racing for second or third (or even sixth or seventh) instead of going all out to try to win the race, risking tumbling out of the points altogether, is one of the quirks of a system which can be seen to reward caution.

Certainly, since XDS-Astana made it blindingly obvious they were racing for positions and points rather than wins in a bid to avoid relegation from the WorldTour last season we’ve been viewing some of the races a little differently. Sometimes it can be hard to see what is unfolding in front of us, a little like looking at one of those Magic Eye pictures. There’s a subtle influence on tactics too. Teams who are trying to score points can scupper the plans of others who are concentrating on actually winning. The difficulty cycling has is conveying the points-chasing narrative in a way that engages and entertains the viewers without detracting from the race for victory and the top step of the podium. I watch almost all the available televised cycling all year round and I can’t tell you off the top of my head how many points fifth place gets in any given race. It’s got to the point where I now have a copy of the UCI points system handy when I’m watching.

At the end of last year, Daniel’s Trapdoor trilogy, looking at the battle for points and the WorldTour relegation and promotion fight, provided a series of fascinating insights into how three teams – XDS-Astana, Cofidis and Uno X – went about tackling the same problem. In true podcast tradition, that trilogy became a four-parter with the release of Daniel’s ‘heated debate’ with EF Education-Easypost sports director Tom Southam this week. In truth, it was less a heated debate than a thoughtful exploration of the competing incentives and opportunities stage and one-day races offer the teams and it is well worth a listen. Trapdoor: Drive To Survive is available now for Friends of the Podcast.

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Vingegaard hopes to reach the sunlit lands

Last year, Jonas Vingegaard crashed while leading Paris-Nice, lost ground on the uphill finish to La Côte-Saint-André and pulled out of the race before they reached the Mediterranean. The crash disrupted his spring and he didn’t return to action until the Critérium du Dauphiné in June, arguably hampering his preparation for the Tour de France.

In his absence, his Visma-Lease A Bike teammate Matteo Jorgenson won Paris-Nice for the second consecutive year, joining Jacques Anquetil (2), Eddy Merckx (3), Raymond Poulidor (2), Joop Zoetemelk (2), Sean Kelly (7), Miguel Indurain (2), Laurent Jalabert (3), Alexandre Vinokourov (2) and Max Schachmann (2) as the riders who’ve won the Race to the Sun back-to-back.

Jorgenson is turning down the opportunity to win three in a row next week because he’s set to ride Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico instead, so it’ll be a good while yet before anyone comes close to equalling Kelly’s record of seven in a row. The Irishman’s run of wins in the 1980s, and the history of Paris-Nice, is the subject of a Friends of the Podcast episode I made a few years back, which I’ve bumped to the top of the subscriber feed for anyone who wants to delve into the background of the race before it starts on Sunday. It’s called Paris-Nice And The King.

As for Vingegaard, overall victory in Nice a week on Sunday may be less of a priority than getting through the race unscathed. We’ll get the lowdown on his first race of the season from our own Great Dane, Brian Nygaard in next week’s episode.

That’s enough train puns

We had the Van der Poel Express and the Paul Seixas Hype Train but one rider who deserves a railway-themed nickname more than most is Matt Brennan, who bounced back from a crash in Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to win Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in impressive fashion. Brennan is still only 20 and it doesn’t take The Cycling Podcast’s cracked and misty crystal ball to predict big things in the very near future. He was born in Darlington and rode for the Stockton Wheelers club so I tried out the nickname The Locomotive in this week’s episode.

The first steam train to count members of the public as passengers was Locomotion No.1, built by Robert and George Stephenson in 1825. It ran on the Darlington to Stockton railway and was capable of reaching speeds of 12 miles per hour. I accept Brennan is a bit quicker than that but The Locomotive (rather than The Locomotion, which sounds like a Kylie Minogue song) fits perfectly.

Bearing in mind my previous attempt at giving a rider a nickname was il sanguinaccio volante – the flying black pudding – for Simon Yates, which got mentioned in the Belgian press and on Sky Sports, I think this one has a better chance of catching on.

Stick to cycling

And so to the title of this week’s edition of The 11.01 Cappuccino. As I waited to record this week’s episode with Daniel and Rob, I saw a video on social media of former world No.1 tennis player Daniil Medvedev, who was stuck in Dubai as airspace in the Middle East shut down following the escalation in conflict in the region and the US-Israel strikes on Iran and Iran’s strikes back at Israel, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others.

Medvedev and around 40 other players and officials who’d been at the Dubai Duty Free ATP Tour event, were stuck as flights across the region were cancelled. In the end, he was driven seven hours into Oman, stayed overnight and then flew to Istanbul and on to Los Angeles, arriving in time for the Indian Wells tournament.

It struck me that had the escalation in violence across the region happened a week earlier, when the UAE Tour was reaching its conclusion in Abu Dhabi, a few hundred riders, team staff, media and officials would have been similarly stuck, wondering if they could get out of the region by some route to make it to Belgium in time for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

I didn’t mention this in the podcast because, well, it was a hypothetical scenario that didn’t happen, and we try to steer away from speculation at the best of times. But it did make me think about the delicate dance a lot of professional sports are engaged in when it comes to money, power and sponsorship.

Back in 2006, I went to the Tour of Qatar, which was run by the Tour de France owners, ASO, on behalf of the Qataris who were paying the bills. It was the fifth edition of a race which lasted until 2016 and it had already established itself as an appealing alternative to the ‘traditional’ early-season stage races in Spain, the south of France and Italy. The weather was good, the roads generally good quality and free from parked cars and pesky residents trying to get to the bakery while the peloton was approaching. The logistics were simple and borderline luxurious, with a week spent in one very nice hotel. I was working for a magazine at the time and the costs were largely covered by the race organisers, who wanted to ensure media exposure for their client. If we’d been prepared to go to Paris we could have travelled on the charter flight free of charge but we chose to pay our own way to Doha from London. Nevertheless, I was aware that the organisers were providing our bed and breakfast and, no matter how objective you think you are, that thought always occupies a tiny part of your mind. Should I be here, doing this, this way?

In our defence, the magazine probably wouldn’t have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of the year’s editorial budget on covering a mostly inconsequential race in the desert and it’s always better to see a place and experience it before forming any opinions.

I asked to speak to a member of the Qatari organisers and on the last day, as the race made its way up and down the corniche road, we sat in an empty grandstand and I asked about Qatar and the state’s plans in sport. Qatar was already hosting major tennis and golf tournaments. From my hotel room window way up on the whatever floor it was, the only grass I could see was the perfectly manicured hotel grounds and the golf courses. He said that cycling was just the start – the vision was to host Formula 1, the Ryder Cup, the World Athletics Championships, the Olympics and football’s World Cup. I must admit, I was extremely sceptical about any of that happening but over the next two decades Qatar has hosted all those things except the Ryder Cup, which is a golf match played between the USA and Europe, and the Olympic Games. I asked what it was about cycling that appealed and he said that it was a sport that had deep roots and prestige in much of Europe. Although he didn’t say that cycling was relatively cheap and desperate for investment, that sentiment was left between the lines, it was clear that the Tour of Qatar was part of a much longer strategy, a small event that would help nudge Qatar’s name and reputation into the minds of people further afield, bridging the gap between an idea that seemed outlandish at the time – hosting the World Cup – and reality.

And, as we’ve seen, other states in the region have done the same – the Tour of Oman, the Alula Tour, the Abu Dhabi and Dubai Tours which have evolved into the UAE Tour that’s on the WorldTour today. And, of course, there’s the team sponsorship either directly from, or underwritten by, nation states – Bahrain, UAE, the Alula bit of Jayco-Alula.

Of course, any truly global sport should be free to go to all parts of the world, to grow its fanbase and develop commercial opportunities. The Middle Eastern states seeking to expand into tourism, finance and commerce and other industries to mitigate against the eventual decline of oil and gas, were always going to see sport as a fast-track to power in the region and prestige beyond it.

Sportswashing is a catch-all phrase that’s come to cover anything that might have a bit of a whiff about it once you peel back a couple of layers but whenever a company or country sponsors anything it’s doing so for one of two main reasons: to broaden or deepen its profile, or enhance its reputation. To be clear, most of those states I’ve mentioned have been the target of Iran’s missiles, and we must always be careful to separate the general population from the rulers, but they are also authoritarian or autocratic to differing degrees, and they fare poorly when it comes to Amnesty International’s assessments of human rights. While we’re talking about the Bahrain Grand Prix, Qatar World Cup, or the potential Saudi investment in One Cycling or Pogačar’s latest heroics, we’re not talking about the realities of those authoritarian or autocratic regimes, human rights, freedom of expression and association, or the right to simply be who you are, or in the case of the UAE the ongoing situation in Sudan.

And there’s not one standard being applied here either. Russia is still (mostly) banned from international sport, although its athletes will take part in the Winter Paralympics shortly. Israel and the USA are not banned despite being seen as by some as aggressors. I suspect, in the unlikely event that there was a serious move to take the World Cup away from America there’d be bemusement from some and uproar from others. The definitions of war, aggression and defence shift and change wherever you are in the world and whichever direction you’re looking in.

The reason I mention all this is not to pick sides, or suggest what should or shouldn’t be permitted in professional cycling but to insist that we can’t keep pretending that having only one side of the conversation is sufficient, because it’s not.

Without getting into the details of who owned and funded the team, the fact is that ‘Israel’ as a sponsorship entity has effectively been removed from the sport as a result of public and commercial pressure. By default, Israel’s right to have its name in the peloton has been taken away, whereas the UAE’s has not. Is that right or just? I don’t know the answer to that, and it’s not for me to decide, but the wider point is that no one in charge of the sport is prepared to have that conversation either.

There’s a yawning chasm at the heart of the sport which has led to a near-total abdication of responsibility for deciding who gets to play the game. It seems that everyone’s money is good enough until someone has to stand up tall and answer some questions or justify something. When that point comes, everyone looks away and finds something more important to talk about.

At the risk of failing to see the bigger picture, and at the further risk of trivialising what is an awful, frightening and uncertain situation across the Middle East, cycling had a near-miss of its own last week. Had half the WorldTour peloton been stranded in Dubai, with the prospect of riders either missing the opening Classic of the season or facing hazardous journeys across borders to get home, we’d be having a very different conversation this week. I just wonder how much of that conversation would revolve around sport’s willingness to be used, often without understanding or even considering the consequences.

And so, back to the slightly glib line ‘stick to cycling’, which we sometimes hear whenever we discuss anything that strays into the ‘real world’ or politics, I’d suggest that only looking at one side of the coin is possibly not a sustainable approach in the longer term.

And finally, an apology to all Newcastle United supporters…

I owe all members of the Toon Army an apology… A couple of weeks ago I commented on the way TNT abruptly cut short coverage of the Volta ao Algarve stage as Paul Seixas was on his way to a first professional victory. They went to an ad break with a couple of kilometres to go and when they returned they were talking about Newcastle United’s tie against Qarabag in the Champions League. I mistakenly assumed this was a second-tier Europa League tie rather than a really important Champions League game. To make matters worse, and further alienate our friends in the North East, I was rather less than effusive when Daniel explained that Florian Vermeersch is a Newcastle fan. It’s nothing personal, honestly, I just bear a grudge against Eddie Howe, whose Bournemouth team denied Watford the Championship title on the last day of the 2014-15 season. Football supporters have long memories and an ability to hold petty grudges for a lifetime but I’d like to assure all Newcastle fans I thoroughly enjoyed my last visit to St James’ Park in 2017 when Watford won there 3-0. (I’m making it worse aren’t I…?) Anyway, I’ve made it my mission to find out why Vermeersch has chosen to support Newcastle – he was at a recent game against Manchester City – and will report back in the podcast.

by Lionel Birnie

Ten years ago, Simon Gill and I went to Flanders for Opening Weekend. Our first stop was Kortrijk and Peter Sagan’s pre-race press conference. Sagan was the big Classics star at a time when the demarcation between the major one-day races and the grand tours was more pronounced than it sometimes feels these days. We didn’t see Contador, Froome or Quintana lining up for the Tour of Flanders the way Pogačar does now.

Sagan was 26, approaching the peak of his powers, and we were all anticipating the start of an era of dominance on the cobbles. The Slovak was reigning world champion and he’d ruffled feathers a month earlier by riding the Tour de San Luis in Argentina with hairy legs – a bit of a no-no when it comes to peloton aesthetics.

A lot of the press conference was dedicated to the question of whether Sagan had reached for the razor in time for the first big race of the season and he declined to give much away. Sure enough, on the Saturday, Sagan’s legs were still hairy, which probably would have had the gnarly old Flemish spectators sucking on their cigarettes and shaking their heads in disapproval were it not for the fact he was wearing three-quarter-length leg warmers, which was probably the greater sin.

Sagan finished second to Greg Van Avermaet in Gent that day. Perhaps if he’d shaved his legs he’d have done a reverse Samson and had the strength to win? It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, when stage five of Tirreno-Adriatico was cancelled due to snow, that he finally found time to have a shave. Later that spring, Sagan won his first – and only – edition of the Tour of Flanders with legs as smooth as the surface of the most well-worn cobblestone.

The reason that incident sticks in my mind is that Sagan was an incongruous figure in the old-school Flandrian milieu. He was a bit of an outsider, bringing a touch of brash, flinty mountain biking spirit to the home of cyclo-cross, where they like to think the mud is smoother, silkier and that little bit purer.

Simon and I were in Belgium to follow the race as it criss-crossed the Flandrian fields in the frosty early spring air. I wanted to capture the sounds and soul of Omloop, which signals the start of the Classics season. We encountered the fanatical Flemish fans and soaked up the atmosphere during a day that always feels like the place is waking up after winter.

Listening to an episode from a decade ago, I am struck by how little has changed. The roads still look the same, the fervour among the fans on the roadside is as great as ever, the scent of hot dogs and cigarette smoke (yes, still!) remains, and the crackle in the air as familiar sounds herald the riders’ arrival has a visceral, reassuring quality. It’s a reminder that spring is just around the corner – if it’s not arrived already – with the promise of longer days, brighter skies and warmer air. From here, we disappear into a cloud of white dust at Strade Bianche, before Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico propel us into the thick of the Classics season.

Flanders Fever, the episode released after that trip to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, is available to our Friends of the Podcast subscribers. We’ve moved it to the top of the feed so you can find it easily if you want to get into the Flandrian spirit ahead of Opening Weekend. Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast at thecyclingpodcast.com – an annual subscription gives access to our back catalogue of more than 300 episodes, plus new episodes of KM0 as they are released – and it helps keep the show on the road.

This week’s episode will be released tomorrow (Thursday). We’ll review the recent all-you-can-eat buffet of stage races which offered some intriguing clues about the season to come. Remco Evenepoel has looked very, very good in his new Red Bull colours, seemingly winning at will until the road pointed upwards in the UAE when he was no match for Isaac del Toro. Juan Ayuso is another rider to make an instant impression with his new team, Lidl-Trek, by winning the Volta ao Algarve. We will also look ahead to Omloop Nieuwsblad (I still can’t get used to the new name, minus the ‘Het’), which is the traditional curtain-raiser for the Classics season. Mathieu van der Poel, fresh from another dominant winter of cyclo-cross, is due to make his first appearance at Omloop, which automatically adds to the race’s status as a key indicator for the bigger races to come. Daniel, Rob and I will discuss all this and more in The Cycling Podcast this week.

Classsic episodes from our archive

In the meantime, delve into our archive to learn more about the spring Classics. These episodes are on our Friends of the Podcast feed, except where stated.

Flanders Fever (2016)
The 2016 editions of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.

FREE: A Postcard From Strade Bianche (2022) – Regular feed
The 2022 edition showcases a new way of racing.

Classicissima – Springtime in Sanremo (2023)
A four-part love letter to Milan-Sanremo, made at the 2023 edition of the race.

The Lionel of Flanders (2017)
A five-part travelogue taking in Dwars Door Vlaanderen, E3 Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem.

FREE: Paris-Roubaix (2021) – Regular feed
The 2021 edition was held in autumn after being postponed in April. It was also the first time a women’s race was held.

Lionel of the Ardennes (2019)
Join Lionel and Simon as they discover Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and another side of Belgium.

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The Cycling Podcast returned ahead of the 2026 season with the now traditional Speculation Episode. It’s a tradition that stretches all the way back to 2021 and it’s an episode that pushes Lionel out of his comfort zone before the season has even got underway.

Nevertheless, Daniel, Lionel and a selection of our regular correspondents gazed into the cracked crystal ball to see what the 2026 road racing season has in store.

With the Tour Down Under in full swing, it won’t be long before the Classics are upon us, and then it’ll be head-long into another busy summer with daily coverage of the Grand Tours recorded on location. The Cycling Podcast Féminin will be released monthly, with the first episode of the year imminent. Arrivée episodes will cover the biggest one-day races, and our programme of KM0 episodes for Friends of the Podcast subscribers will be released throughout the year.

The Speculation Episode 2026

In The Speculation Episode Daniel mentioned he’d made 26 predictions for 2026. Here they are, along with Lionel’s (reluctant) attempts to see into the future.

Daniel’s ’26 predictions

1. Protests about a political, social or environmental cause will disrupt a major race.

2. Even more carbs.

3. The German media will desperately try to push a Lipowitz vs Remco storyline in the second half of the year. If they get any help from the two riders, it’ll also be the most intriguing subplot of the Tour.

4. The Seixas hype train will be the most terrifying white-knuckle ride of 2026.

5. Giulio Pellizzari will be Jonas Vingegaard’s biggest rival at the Giro.

6. A rider colliding with a spectator will significantly impact the outcome of a major race, probably Paris-Roubaix.

7. Polynesian Noni fruit will be the breakout legal performance enhancer/nutrition fad.

8. At some point in the year we’ll see a team employing a galaxy-brained and doomed Pog-slaying tactic that, we’ll learn later, has been concocted either by AI or the team’s data analyst.

9. EF Education-Easy Post will give us two strong contenders for the title of 2026 breakout star – Markel Beloki and Mattia Agostinacchio

10. One fairly major WorldTour team will run into life-threatening financial difficulty. I have an idea who but won’t say just yet.

11. Jonas Abrahamsen will win another Tour de France stage – Foix or Voiron would be my bets.

12. Our Giro podcasts will feature tedious complaints about a final week that looks to have been designed by someone who learned logistics from Ryanair’s definition of ‘Paris’.

13. Visma-Lease a Bike’s Anton Schiffer will have a ‘moment’, if not for a performance then something he says in an interview or becoming the WorldTour’s first ever rider-coach (he’s a Sports Science graduate).

14. Simon Yates won’t be spotted at a single bike race.

15. We and everyone else will continue to call the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ‘The Dauphiné’.

16. There’ll be a moment, probably very brief, when we in the media will be reading the last rites of the ‘Pogačar era’.

17. There’ll be more than a moment – probably about eleven-and-a-half months – when the inherent boredom of the ‘Pogačar era’ will be the dominant and, yes, most boring trending media topic.

18. Matthew Brennan will win Paris-Roubaix

19. Enric Mas, who always does well in ‘even’ years, will enjoy a career remontada at the Giro, maybe even finishing on the podium.

20. The ‘comeback of 2026’ won’t be Mas’s but he will feature in it: cycling’s best ever fly-on-the-wall streaming series, El Día Menos Pensado, returns early in the year and should be a banger.

21. Unibet Rose Rockets will realise their dream of not only starting the Tour but also winning a stage. Victor Lafay will get it…then immediately announce that he’s quitting cycling with immediate effect, not to open a fromagerie in Japan, as he threatened last year, but to become the world’s first skateboarding ventriloquist. Marc Soler will steal the fromagerie idea and relocate from Andorra to Okinawa, yet still commute to Spanish stage races.

22. Oscar Onley will make a mockery of ‘Second Season Syndrome’ to establish himself as the best climber and stage-race rider in the world behind the Pog-Ving axis of excellence.

23. I’ll successfully complete my mission to achieve universal adoption of ‘The SlovALIEN’ as Tadej Pogačar’s nickname.

24. Paul Magnier will win Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Gent-Wevelgem

25. One of the sleeper, back-channel debates of 2026 will be about whether sprinters are heading for extinction. I sort of think they are – with caveats.

26. At least another 15 riders will give interviews out of which the same pull-quote about cycling not being ‘100% clean’ will be crowbarred onto social media.

Lionel’s ’26 predictions

1. Soudal-Quick Step will do the ‘Opening Weekend double’ winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. After that, it’ll be a barren spring campaign for the Belgian team.

2. Tadej Pogačar won’t win Strade Bianche – but only because of an unfortunately-timed puncture…

3. …He will, however, win Paris-Roubaix after a long-ish solo attack.

4. The new name for Gent-Wevelgem, In Flanders Fields from Middelkerke to Wevelgem, won’t catch on.

5. Ben Healy finishes on the podium at Amstel Gold, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège – winning Amstel.

6. Thibau Nys will win his first WorldTour one-day race, Flèche Wallonne.

7. Jonas Vingegaard wins the Giro d’Italia but is pushed all the way by João Almeida and pays the price at the Tour, missing the podium for the first time.

8. The Giro d’Italia will confirm plans for a grande partenza in Abu Dhabi (or Saudi Arabia) in 2027 or 2028.

9. UAE Team Emirates and Pogačar will dominate the opening team time trial at the Tour de France meaning Pogačar leads overall from start to finish as he joins the five-time winners club.

10. Olav Kooij will win the first bunch sprint stage of the Tour de France – but will have to wait until the race reaches Bordeaux because of the breakaways and GC riders.

11. Mads Pedersen will win the green jersey at the Tour de France.

12. The same rider will win both Alpe d’Huez stages at the Tour de France.

13. The independent law firm instructed by Ineos Grenadiers to investigate the allegations levelled against the team’s carer David Rozman last year will finally publish its report.

14. As extreme heat becomes more common, technological improvements lead to the creation of a streamlined ice vest that can cool riders for much longer periods and most of the riders start wearing them on very hot days.

15. Gear ratios continue to get bigger and someone rides a time trial with a 70-tooth chainring, larger than the 68T Tobias Foss used a couple of years ago.

16. Groupama-FDJ will be the last of the WorldTour teams to win a WorldTour race – at the Tour of Poland in August.

17. Pogačar will keep everyone guessing about his Vuelta a España participation until the very last moment – confirming his place on the start line in Monaco just a few days before the race. He will go on to win overall, followed by a third consecutive rainbow jersey in the road race, and another European title, on home soil in Slovenia.

18. Matthew Brennan will be the star of the Vuelta – winning a small handful of lumpy stages with punchy finishes.

19. A sports director will reveal the extent to which AI is being used to determine race strategy and tactics.

20. A recently-retired rider – or a rider nearing retirement – will say in an interview that professional cycling has got far too serious, too obsessed with carbs, watts and riding to numbers, mourning the loss of a carefree era that never really existed.

21. Time trial helmet design will get even more extreme. To comply with the new UCI rules regarding ‘traditional’ helmets for road racing, someone will unveil a lid that conforms to the letter of the law with the right number of vents and so on but looks absolutely ridiculous.

22. Anticipating the UCI’s decision to award points for other disciplines from 2027, capitalising on the buzz around the World Championships in Rwanda, and building on the growth of events like the Nedbank Gravel Burn, there are proposals to include a gravel stage race in the WorldTour.

23. The United Arab Emirates’ involvement in the conflict in Sudan provokes nothing like the level of protest or comment as Israel’s actions in Gaza and UAE-Team Emirates face little outcry.

24. Team infrastructure begins to creak at the sheer demands of the WorldTour schedule and there are calls to reduce the number of events and eliminate calendar clashes. Proposals include a two-tier system with development squads eligible to ride the lower-ranked events leading to a complete overhaul and revamp of the entire professional calendar.

25. A group of team owners will reveal plans for a new ‘league’ to revolutionise professional cycling’s business, sponsorship and broadcast model.

26. Now it’s over to you! My tolerance of speculation has been stretched to breaking point so send your ideas and I’ll read out some of the best, funniest or most outlandish in a future episode, or reproduce them in The 11.01 Cappuccino. Email us at contact@thecyclingpodcast.com, reply to this email or comment on this article to make your predictions for ’26.

Catch up on KM0

While we had a break over the holiday period, we released a few episodes of KM0. Daniel’s three-part series, Trapdoor, looked at the battle to avoid relegation from the UCI WorldTour. XDS-Astana survived, Cofidis did not, and Uno-X took one of the available places among the elite. The series provides some illuminating insights into the strategies the teams employed.

Last winter, Lionel travelled to Cardiff to meet the people behind the Maindy Flyers, the junior club where it all began for Geraint Thomas. There was a conversation with James Startt, a photographer and journalist who has spent the last 36 summers on the road at the Tour de France. And, with Simon Yates announcing his retirement, we delved into the archive for an episode recorded just over a decade ago when Lionel travelled to a Lancashire cafe to meet Adam and Simon when they were still in the early days of their careers.

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An interview with Kjell Carlström

In last week’s episode, The Tadej Programme, we heard from Kjell Carlström about the rebranding of the Israel-Premier Tech team as NSN Cycling Team. You can listen to his full conversation with Daniel Friebe and read a transcript below.

Daniel Friebe: So Kjell, I don’t know how much you can talk about this or how involved you were, but it kind of came out of the blue for a lot of people – the team becoming NSN. We knew that the team would probably change identity, but none of us saw it coming: who was going to come on board or who the new sponsor was going to be? Can you talk me through as much as you know or can say from after the Vuelta – how this happened?

Kjell Carlström: Well, I mean, the reality is that we got the demands from Factor and Premier Tech to change the name and the flag, and that was when we really started to work on it. We understood that it was necessary and it was super important to do it. We had a few different avenues immediately when we made the announcement; it was only a few hours, actually, before we got the first contact. And then we went along those roads. We tried to negotiate with them for title sponsorship and some of them looked really, really promising, some of them less so. It took some time, but because we had this existing partnership with Stoneweg – who is, of course, a financial investment company with very good connections – that’s how everything happened with NSN. The others fell through or couldn’t commit in time, and this seemed like a great opportunity to cross over with another sport, which is soccer in this case. So, of course, that’s a very interesting avenue, and at the same time, the fact that NSN is a company that works professionally with marketing and promotion is also something of big interest.

DF: We know your primary responsibility, if I’m not mistaken, is on the sporting side. So when you say ‘we’... No, it’s not? You’re shaking your head.

Kjell Carlström: No, my responsibility is to look after the team. It doesn’t matter what it is.

DF: Okay. Well, when you say ‘We started looking,’ who is ‘we’? Who are the individuals in the organisation that were involved in that?

Kjell Carlström: It was mainly I and Phoebe Haymes – her title now is chief marketing and communications officer.

DF: She’s been promoted.

Kjell Carlström: Yeah. At least she has a decent title. And then, you know, actually anybody that had good connections was invited to rise up and talk about it. And of course, then also Ido Shavit, who has been the CEO for the last few years. So we worked together and we looked into everything that we could.

DF: You probably know which question is coming next. What role did Sylvan [Adams, the Israel-Premier Tech owner] have?

Kjell Carlström: Well, the role that he had was to give us the okay to go ahead and remove himself.

DF: So they weren’t his contacts? I mean, Stoneweg obviously, but...

Kjell Carlström: From some parts, yes. We explored the potential contacts through him as well, but in the end, they didn’t materialise.

DF: Okay. And another probably awkward question, but one I have to ask: is it his money still? Or how much, if any of it, is his money?

Kjell Carlström: No, it’s not. That was the other thing that we needed to look into to ensure we did this in a good way. Fortunately, we found a solution where we could get enough budget for the team to continue as it has been doing in the last few years.

DF: He, I believe, was at the training camp a couple of weeks ago. In what capacity? Is he now just a supporter, or what is his relationship with this team?

Kjell Carlström: Well, the main thing was to finalise the deal with NSN. And then also to ride with the guys, because in the end, that’s what he has always been passionate about. I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that he would come visit the team at some point during the year because he has supported the team for almost 10 years. It is something that has been a big part of our history and his last few years.

DF: As far as sponsorships go, it doesn’t look like the traditional one where a company is just looking for exposure or brand recognition. There’s Stoneweg and then there’s NSN. Can you just explain, to the best of your knowledge, what these two entities are getting out of this? Or what they are hoping for from it?

Kjell Carlström: Well, I think first of all, they want to expand their businesses. Being part of a team and having that kind of visibility is valuable for both companies and brings different kinds of new connections and networking. But they also see a great possibility in cycling – that we can do things better than we have done in the past as a sport. Since this opportunity arose, we are in a lucky situation that they are with us, and hopefully, this will work out perfectly for all parties.

DF: NSN in particular – it’s a fairly new entity and people maybe will have a hard time understanding how exactly they make their money and what their business model is. They see the potential in cycling, but is that in terms of… for example, the One Cycling project maybe materialising and generating revenue or selling the sponsorship of the team? How would you characterise it?

Kjell Carlström: Well, I wouldn’t say that there’s only one thing; I think they see it in a lot of different ways. They promote and host promotional events, they arrange games and things like this, including having rights in different areas of, for example, soccer or the entertainment business. So in that sense, they are making their money and I think it is a big business. That’s just my opinion, of course. But in terms of cycling, I think there are so many different opportunities that cycling could develop further. Those are some of the things that NSN has been saying – that this is something that could be expanded and made better. So I think that’s mainly it.

DF: The mayor of Barcelona was at your launch the other day.

Kjell Carlström: Correct.

DF: And Jaume from Stoneweg talked about the team’s – I think the words he used were ‘Barcelona soul’ or ‘Barcelona DNA.’ How much is the Tour de France starting in Barcelona – perhaps not the main reason for NSN’s involvement, but – how important is that?

Kjell Carlström: I think it’s a great… maybe ‘catalyst’ would be the right word for it. In the end, it is a great opportunity for high visibility and connecting to NSN and the team in that sense. If we were able to do something great in Barcelona, that would definitely be the icing on the cake, no question. So of course we are working towards having a great, great season, but in particular the start in Barcelona. If we could pull off a stage victory there, it would be perfect.

DF: There has been some speculation and concern that, rightly or wrongly and through no fault of your own, you might still be the target of opposition or protests in Barcelona. Even maybe at the Volta a Catalunya and other races. Are you worried about that?

Kjell Carlström: I’m not. I wouldn’t say that I’m thinking too much about it, but the reality is that cycling as a whole is vulnerable because we are on open roads. I think it would be hugely detrimental if that were to happen, no matter the reason. But I think it would be completely unfounded if it were directed at us; that’s my personal feeling. We are a sports team like everyone else, and sports should not be mixed with violent protests. I think protests are completely fine as long as they stick to some kind of rules. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about sports or anything else; it should always be respected in that way.

DF: Obviously at the Vuelta last year it all came to a head and you guys stayed in the race until it ended the way it ended. Would you do anything differently today from what you did at the Vuelta as a team?

Kjell Carlström: That’s difficult to answer because when you live those moments, you take decisions as you go. You take the decisions with the information you have at that moment. Now we have more information and maybe that would change things, maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know. It’s difficult to answer because you don’t have that information when you’re in the heat of the moment. I still think it was the right thing to remain in the race because we are a sports team. The protests should have been contained. The way they were done was wrong, in my opinion.

DF: We’re not going to relitigate that now. I think you made your position fairly clear you recognise the right to protest up to the point where they become violent. So, to talk about sport for a minute, I suppose this has all happened a bit too late for it to make a significant difference to your recruitment. I’m thinking about, for example, the ‘Catalan DNA’ we just discussed. You’ve got one Catalan rider and presumably you might have a more pronounced Catalan identity in the team in future years, but it was probably too late for that to happen this year. Am I right?

Kjell Carlström: Definitely. In the end, one thing that is clear is that our Catalan identity also comes through NSN. It’s something that we are adopting on the go. But yes, it is there, so that’s clear. At the same time, we are a very multicultural team. We have a lot of different nations represented, whether in the staff or the riders. I don’t see that changing; I personally see the way we operate as a strength. It is sometimes a little bit difficult to communicate between completely different cultures, but because we have such a variety, it makes it better. It is easier to understand different views and communication styles when you have so many different cultures.

DF: So we said it was late to shape your recruitment, but I’m guessing Biniam Girmay was a rider who’d interested you for several months. In fact, I think there was speculation even in the summer that he interested you. Can you talk a little bit about how that negotiation went, even going back to when you first showed interest in signing him?

Kjell Carlström: It was sometime during the year, sometime after the Tour, that there were more and more conversations about it. I think the reality is: who would not be interested in such a rider? I have difficulty seeing anyone who wouldn’t be. Of course, we have been trying to become a team that can win in sprints for a few years. It hasn’t succeeded as we had hoped for one reason or another, so this was a logical next step from our perspective and, I think, from Biniam’s perspective. I believe he saw us as a well-functioning team with a good culture that is really trying to be performance-oriented. That’s something that I think he valued.

DF: If you look at his last two seasons, obviously 2024 was fantastic with the green jersey and stages of the Tour. Then last year he accumulated a decent number of UCI points but didn’t win. I guess consistency may be the thing you have to work on with him. What do you see as the big development points for him with your team now?

Kjell Carlström: Yeah, I think you’re right. Consistency, but in the end, it is a team effort. It is the consistency of key people supporting Biniam to win. There are so many different aspects to it and we are already making sure that we are ticking the boxes and looking through all those different aspects. Hopefully, we will get it right immediately, but it might take a while. In the end, he will be using completely new material and working with new teammates, so this is probably going to be a bit of a process before we get it right. At the same time, I think it is a great opportunity for both him and us.

DF: Any changes on the coaching side for him? I presume so; he’ll be coached by one of your trainers.

Kjell Carlström: Yeah, correct.

DF: And in terms of his programme priorities, is it broadly going to be along the same lines – targeting the same kind of races: Classics plus the Tour de France?

Kjell Carlström: Yeah, I think that’s correct to say. Of course, in the beginning of the season, there’s maybe a little bit more focus on stage races to get ready for the Classics and then trying to optimise the results during those. And then going ahead and focusing more on a Grand Tour and trying to get victories there as well. But the main goal is to try to get him back to winning ways; getting those under the belt as soon as possible is always better.

DF: On the GC front, obviously you’ve lost [Matthew] Riccitello. Is there any chance at all that Derek Gee comes back into the team? I think probably not.

Kjell Carlström: I don’t know. I can’t answer for that, but I guess it’s unlikely. We will see in the next few weeks how things evolve.

DF: Would you be open to taking him back?

Kjell Carlström: Of course. We stated that from the beginning. But a lot of time has passed since then and, in general, it seems unlikely, to be honest.

DF: Is that an area – GC stage races – where you feel a little bit exposed or underpowered because of that and because the sponsors came on board late? Or do you still have high hopes?

Kjell Carlström: We definitely do not have the same kind of firepower as we had in 2024; this is clear. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t explore the possibilities with younger guys who haven’t got the experience yet. Who knows whether they will be able to do it? And then we, of course, hopefully also have Stevie Williams coming back soon from his injury. Now it’s the second year with [Alexey] Lutsenko in the team, so maybe he will also have better results in some of the stage races.

DF: And then final thing Kjell, last year as far as rankings were concerned you did pretty well. You were comfortably inside the WorldTour cutoff. What approach are you going to take to accumulating points in the first year of this next cycle? Are you going to be frantically chasing them, or just racing for wins and letting them come?

Kjell Carlström: Well, of course, it is always in the back of our minds. There’s no question. We were relegated once and we don’t ever want to experience that again. So it’s definitely in our strategy to maximise the points. But at the same time, we do want to win, so you have to try to combine those two things in the best possible way. We think we have a good strategy for that, which Steve Bauer, together with Sam Bewley and the performance team, are creating at the moment. Hopefully, it will work out well. In the end, if you are able to win in the big races, you score points; there’s no circumventing that. That’s the best strategy if you’re able to do it. But if you’re not, then you have to adapt your strategy to something that works for you. We are agile and flexible in changing our approach during the year if needed. But in the end, no matter what, you have to have performing riders, and that’s the main goal.

DF: Great. That’s 20 minutes without mentioning Andres Iniesta, so we’ve done pretty well.

A Wonderful Quizmastime

It’s time for The Cycling Podcast Féminin’s Christmas quiz, a festive tradition as essential as the turkey, mince pies and glass of sherry.

Online now: You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout… would all be worthy advice for our co-hosts on this episode of The Cycling Podcast Féminin. Yes, quizmaster Rose Manley, defending champion Rebecca Charlton and perennial quiz loser Denny Gray are back for another humdinger of a quiz. Join in as they take on such rounds as Blankety Bonk, the Sound Round and the now infamous Cryptic Criterium. No genuine cycling knowledge required but an enjoyment of puns is advisable.

Before all the ugly competitiveness sets in, the team look back at some of their top racing moments of 2025. Tantalising rivalries, career-changing breakthroughs and some French flair all make the list. And we hear from a few familiar friends to find out their top picks from the season too.

And of course no Christmas is complete without a little homespun festive music and some Cycling Podcast-themed gifting.

Keep listening right to the end for a very special exclusive treat from Paul Carella, the musician extraordinaire who also happens to be Rebecca Charlton’s partner.

Also on the agenda, Greek rising star Flyinthesoupis, more allegations of quiz fixing and could that be the sound of Rebecca really enjoying Nienke Vinke’s white jersey win?

Coming soon: The third part of our Trapdoor series

The final instalment of our Trapdoor trilogy examines how Cofidis went from arguably the greatest Tour de France in their nearly three-decade history at the 2023 Tour de France to relegation from the WorldTour 18 months later.

Authoritarian management, shoddy recruitment and plummeting morale have been blamed for the team’s fall from cycling’s top tier, and further evidence for all three is presented here. We find out how and why team boss Cédric Vasseur ‘lost the dressing room’ after that golden 2023 summer before his departure, officially by mutual accord, in the midst of the team’s relegation battle.

Trapdoor: The Fall of a French Institution will drop into the Friends of the Podcast feed on Christmas Day.

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• Our final regular episode of 2025 – The Juan That Got Away – is out now and features Juan Ayuso talking about his move from UAE Team Emirates to Lidl-Trek and objectives for the 2026 season.

• Between Christmas and New Year there’ll be a couple of new episodes of KM0. The 2025 season marked the end of an era for British cycling with the retirement of Geraint Thomas. Lionel and Graham were in Cardiff at the end of the Lloyds Tour of Britain to witness his farewell. At the start of the year, Lionel made a trip to see where it all began and meet the people who started the Maindy Flyers junior cycling club 30 years ago where Thomas discovered his love of cycling. There’ll also be a conversation with photographer and journalist James Startt, who was recognised in July for reaching the milestone of covering 35 editions of the Tour de France. Listen out for those episodes next week.

Season’s greetings from everyone at The Cycling Podcast

As that’s (almost) a wrap for the 2025 season we’d like to wish a very happy Christmas to everyone who celebrates, and happy holidays to all. We’ll be back in January in time for the Tour Down Under. Until then, thank you for listening, and a very special thanks to all our Friends of the Podcast for supporting us. Collectively you are by far our biggest sponsors and we hope you know just how much we appreciate your support because it enables us to release our regular weekly episodes and cover the Grand Tours on the road.

Trapdoor: New for Friends of the Podcast

Our latest episode for Friends of the Podcast subscribers is online now. It’s called Trapdoor: Uno-X’s Viking Conquest and it’s the second part of a series by Daniel Friebe focusing on the battle for places in the UCI World Tour.

The first part is available for everyone to listen to on our free feed and it features XDS-Astana’s head of performance Vasilis Anastopoulos talking in very revealing terms about the team’s strategy as they sought to move clear of the relegation zone before the end of the 2025 season.

While XDS-Astana ultimately survived at the expense of Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Uno-X Mobility became the first Norwegian team to reach the elite level of men’s cycling thanks to a similarly single-minded strategy (as well as the merger between the Lotto and Intermarché teams, which made an additional licence available). Thor Hushovd explains how they did it, two years after first riding the Tour de France in the plucky underdog role.

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One of the most intriguing sub-plots during the 2025 season was the race to avoid relegation from the men’s World Tour as the current three-year ranking cycle drew to a close.

Right from the start of the season, the XDS-Astana team set about winning UCI points. Before the end of January they had signalled their intentions. At the Gran Premio Castellón on January 25, Clément Champoussin, Christian Scaroni and Mike Teunissen finished third, fifth and eighth to score 150 points. The following day, Scaroni, Anthon Charmig and Champoussin were second, sixth and seventh in the Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana, scooping up another 160 points.

To put that into context, a stage victory at the Tour de France is worth 210 points and a Giro d’Italia stage is 180.

Recognising that points would be easier to gather in larger quantities away from the major Classics and Grand Tours, XDS-Astana’s strategy was obvious – they would target multiple high positions in smaller one-day races and the general classification in several carefully selected stage races to cash in on the points available.

Scaroni won the Classic Var and Giro della Romagna and his teammate Diego Ulissi added the Giro dell’Appennino, all nice races ranked 1.1 on the UCI calendar but not necessarily events that would be targeted to make or break a campaign. The thing they all had in common, though, was that XDS-Astana placed a second rider in the top ten to score points. The winner’s bouquet was almost a bonus because they were playing the percentages – a case of prioritising points over prizes.

Add to that overall victories at the Tour des Alpes-Maritimes (Scaroni again), Tour of Hellas and Tour de Hongrie (Harold Martín López), Presidential Tour of Türkiye (Wout Poels), Boucles de la Mayenne (Aaron Gate), Tour of Qinghai (Henok Mulubrhan) and Tour of Taihu Lake (Matteo Malucelli) which netted 1,225 points and the strategy made perfect sense. After all, that was almost as many points as the 1,300 Tadej Pogačar got for winning the Tour de France, an achievement which was beyond XDS-Astana’s reach. Although that collection of relatively minor stage race victories was not worth a fraction of the television exposure and column inches a Tour de France title would bring, it was the key to survival.

XDS-Astana won just two World Tour races all season – only Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Intermarché-Wanty fared worse, as they failed to win anything at World Tour level in 2025. XDS-Astana’s elite-level victories came courtesy of Lorenzo Fortunato’s stage at the Tour de Romandie and Scaroni’s epic at San Valentino in the Giro d’Italia, where he and Fortunato rode together to take first and second, which was the highest-profile example of the team’s mob-handed approach to point-scoring. The Kazakh team finished fourth in the 2025 UCI ranking behind runaway leaders UAE Team Emirates, Visma Lease A Bike and Lidl-Trek, and that pulled them away from the relegation zone in the three-year ranking covering 2023 to 2025. In the end, they finished ahead of Jayco-Alula, Picnic PostNL, Intermarché-Wanty, Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B Hotels to avoid losing their World Tour status.

Arkéa-B&B Hotels would have been relegated back to the second tier had the team not indicated its intention to fold at the end of the season. Cofidis, which regained elite status in 2020 after a spell outside the top flight, was the other team to be relegated. The teams replacing them in the World Tour are Lotto, who secured a World Tour place before the merger with Intermarché was confirmed, Israel-Premier Tech, which has morphed into NSN Cycling, and Uno-X Mobility, completing the list of 18 elite teams for the coming seasons.

Both episodes of Trapdoor are a fascinating and insightful listen, explaining how teams that faced peril and opportunity used the existing framework of the sport to maximise results, as is this piece by EF Education-EasyPost sports director Tom Southam on Daniel Benson’s Substack about how the UCI points system has changed – for which read intensified – racing.

Coming next on The Cycling Podcast

• Online now: In this week’s regular episode, Wings of Change, Daniel Friebe is joined by Daniel Benson who has been at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s pre-Christmas training camp as the team sets next season’s objectives for Remco Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz, Primož Roglič and Jai Hindley.

• Rose, Rebecca and Denny get together for The Cycling Podcast Féminin’s annual tradition, the Christmas quiz.

• There are new episodes for Friends of the Podcast coming during the festive season.

Celebrate the festive season in style

If wine is your thing, our friends at DVine Cellars have put together a festive case celebrating the 2025 Grand Tours. This collection of six bottles features two each from Italy, France and Spain and is available for UK-based listeners to order now.

Go to DVine Cellars

Gravel Dust & Rainbows, an episode released for Friends of the Podcast subscribers in February, is available on our free feed this weekend to coincide with the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships in Maastricht. You can listen to it here.

by Lionel Birnie

Last October, Simon Gill and I made a familiar trip across the channel and headed east into Belgium. We’ve made that journey together dozens of times over the years, to the cobbled classics held in Flanders, or further east to the Ardennes for Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Flèche Wallonne, and across the border into the Netherlands for the cyclo-cross World Championships when they were held in Valkenburg in 2018. That year, Wout van Aert won the men’s elite race by more than two minutes, ahead of the other medallists Michael Vanthourenhout and Mathieu van der Poel.

Back then, the great rivalry between Van Aert and Van der Poel was still mostly contained to cyclo-cross and had yet to fully spill over to the road. There was a lot of buzz about both riders that weekend in Valkenburg, with speculation about what they might do if they ‘switched’ to the road.

I must admit, I was a little sceptical at the time. As impressive as both riders were, there had been plenty of riders over the years who had dominated cyclo-cross but failed to transfer those skills to the Classics and major stage races. There had been lots of talk about Sven Nys, for example. The best examples of cross-over riders were Marianne Vos, who could win anything, and Mathieu’s father, Adri van der Poel, who won the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Amstel Gold Race, the San Sebastian Classic, a couple of Tour de France stages and one world cyclo-cross championship title – although it could have been more because he was a silver medallist five times too.

Van Aert and Van der Poel also rode for small teams – Vérandas Willems-Crelan and Correndon-Circus respectively – so it seemed, for the time being, that their talents would be relatively contained to the winter months.

That was until Van Aert’s breakthrough performance at Strade Bianche a couple of months later, when he was third behind Tiesj Benoot and Romain Bardet. At the end of the season, Van Aert untangled himself from his Vérandas Willems-Crelan contract and moved to Jumbo-Visma and he was soon making waves on the road. Meanwhile, Van der Poel was travelling along parallel tracks with a brilliant spring campaign, capped by that blistering win at the Amstel Gold Race. All of a sudden, they weren’t just cyclo-cross stars, they were on the way to becoming superstars.

Cycling has always sought to pigeon-hole riders, sometimes for good reason. Tim Merlier is not going to win the Tour de France or, as he pointed out, a world title on the road while the vogue is for courses with 4,000 metres of climbing. But there’s been a breaking down of barriers. Track specialists have won the Tour de France. Cyclo-cross riders have won Classics. Now, more than ever, cycling is cycling, and the lines between disciplines have blurred.

I’d never covered a gravel race before I went to Leuven, but I had been to the Tro Bro Leon, with its rough, rutted farmtracks, the ribinoù. I’d been to the Cicle Classic in the East Midlands, which is a road race with rough sections. Strade Bianche and the Giro d’Italia have made the white, dusty roads of Tuscany a modern cycling classic, winding back the clock to the days when a lot of roads consisted of a rougher, hardpacked surface rather than the smooth ribbons we know today.

The episode we made, Gravel Dust & Rainbows, is a meandering look at a burgeoning scene, one which emerged from the United States where epic gravel events last all day and recapture the spirit of the sport’s earliest days – endurance, self-sufficiency, grit and determination. Last year, and this, there has been criticism that the UCI’s take on gravel racing is sanitised – criteriums with bike paths as US gravel specialist Lauren De Crescenzo described the Worlds in a piece she wrote for Cyclingnews. Last year and this, a number of top US gravel riders, including De Crescenzo, have declined a place in the Worlds because the demands of the event are so far away from what some consider the true heart of gravel.

As you’ll hear in our episode, the course in Leuven last year was a sort of urban-off-road mash-up, with a whirligig section up a pedestrian ramp through the town’s railway station. It looked great, but it certainly wasn’t gravel.

I left Leuven wondering whether it mattered. After all, we’d seen two great races over the weekend – there was the battle between Marianne Vos, Lotte Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes in the women’s race, and then the virtuoso display by Mathieu van der Poel in the men’s race. It wasn’t an Unbound-style rural epic but the course took the riders off the beaten track, into territory that conventional road racing couldn’t reach.

This weekend’s races are in South Limburg – Amstel Gold Race territory – which stepped in after the original host city, Nice, had insurmountable logistical issues. In the women’s race, Vos, Wiebes, Puck Pieterse, Mischa Bredewold, Shirin Van Anrooij and Pauliena Roojakkers lead a formidable home contingent who between them have every type of terrain covered. In the men’s race, Tom Pidcock will be hoping to complete a hat-trick of off-road world titles, having previously won rainbow jerseys in the cyclo-cross (2022) and cross-country mountain bikes (2023). Pidcock is set to complete a memorable weekend double, because he’s due to make his debut at Il Lombardia, the final Monument of the season, on Saturday before flying from Italy to the Netherlands to be on the start-line for the gravel less than 24 hours later.

Also racing are Tim Merlier, a former European road race champion who lamented the lack of opportunities for sprinters to win the coveted rainbow jersey on the road in a Pogačar-defined era of ever-harder courses. Also present is Romain Bardet, who retired as a road rider after the Critérium du Dauphiné in June after a career as a specialist mountain climber, and has transitioned to the gravel scene, winning two rounds of the UCI Gravel World Series this summer.

And yet, as we discussed in the episode, the worlds of road and gravel have been merging, or at least converging, for a long while now. Paris-Tours, one of the oldest one-day races on the French calendar, introduced gravel sections through the famous Loire vineyards in 2018. At the time, Patrick Lefevere, the boss of the Quick Step team, was one of the most vocal critics of the decision to take Paris-Tours through the rough terrain. And yet, that decision, and the introduction of some punchy climbs in the closing phase of the race, rejuvenated a tired event that was in danger of withering on the vines. The major absurdity is that a gravelly Paris-Tours will compete for attention with the UCI Gravel World Championships on Sunday afternoon because the two events will overlap.

The KM0 episode covers all this ground, and more, including our own not-so-spectacular exploits in the Rainbow Ride sportive, which gave us a chance to experience the major gravel sections of the course but, sadly, not the whirligig ramp up to the railway station platform.

The Cycling Podcast will be back next week to cover the weekend’s racing, focusing on Tadej Pogačar’s bid for a fifth-consecutive victory at Il Lombardia, plus the challenge he faces from Remco Evenepoel and Paul Seixas, plus the gravel sections at Paris-Tours and the road sections of the UCI Gravel World Championships.

We’re on Life in the Peloton this week

Back in 2020 and 2021, we were very really happy to collaborate with Mitch Docker, hosting his Life in the Peloton podcast on our channel as he focused on the final couple of seasons of his career before retirement. Mitch was also a lively, charismatic part of our Tour de France line-up from 2021 to 2024.

Daniel and I were surprised, and more than happy, to be invited onto his podcast this week to discuss covering the sport, forming The Cycling Podcast, and our experiences over the past 12 years. The episode is online now. Please believe me when I say we had nothing to do with the title – A Yarn With the Legends. Never has the term ‘legends’ been less deservedly bestowed upon anyone! Presumably it’s simply friendly Aussie vernacular. It was great fun chatting with Mitch, even if my fear when we ended the call was that there had been an avalanche of oversharing on my part towards the end. Oh well, we were all among friends. Hopefully we’ll be able to get Mitch back on The Cycling Podcast occasionally over the winter months too. In the meantime, you can listen to the episode in your preferred player below.

Listen to Life in the Peloton

by Daniel Friebe

One intriguing story from the World Championships in Rwanda was how a rider from the tiny island of Nauru in Micronesia – the third-smallest country in the world, larger only than Vatican City and Monaco – almost made it to the start line of the elite men’s road race…

Daniel Friebe: So Valerio, obviously I wasn’t the only one, I’m not the only one who got curious about this story, because I had seen your name on the start list. Honestly, it was the first time in my life I’d heard the name of this country. Then I delved a bit into the research. I found out two or three things about this country. But let’s start from the beginning. Explain to me, how did this thing happen? And who are you, really?

Valerio Alessandri: Well, I’m a simple amateur cyclist, and I’m already 40. But I had the dream of participating once in a World Cycling Championship – I am a big cycling enthusiast. And also, I can consider Africa my second home, as I’ve also lived a few years between Kenya and Madagascar. So, doing the first World Championship in Africa was a dream I wanted to realise.

DF: Why did you live in Africa?

VA: Because my parents had a tourism company first in Madagascar and then in Kenya.

DF: Ah, I see. But you were born in Locarno, so you’re Ticinese (Swiss Italian) by birth, by origin?

VA: Exactly.

DF: So, yes, please continue, you were telling me.

VA: Yes, and precisely, doing a bit of research on the internet, I discovered that Nauru was the last nation in the world to be affiliated with the UCI, so the 205th nation. And so I thought it would be nice to ask for the licence from the island of Nauru to promote the nation and to show the citizens of this nation that playing sports is good for you, given that it is the country in the world with the highest index of obesity.

DF: Yes, I found that out too.

VA: Also, since they no longer have the phosphate on their island, which they exploited too much, now they live a bit in a state of poverty.

DF: But I’ll assume, I guess you’ve never been there.

VA: Unfortunately, no, I’ve never been there. I’d like to go there soon. I’ve never been there.

DF: I see. So they have a federation or not?

VA: Yes, they have a federation with a president. If you look on the UCI website, it shows up as an affiliated federation, all the details are there, address, email contacts, and so on.

DF: And so you contacted them like that, finding the address?

VA: Exactly. They never replied to the email, nor on the phone, nor on WhatsApp, nor on Facebook. I had found a contact at the Olympic Committee, but even there they directed me to an email, but no response there. And then on a Facebook group called Nauru Cycling Club, I had found someone who said they worked within the federation. But then, probably, it turned out to be another fake piece of news.

DF: And give me a bit of the timeline for this. When did the adventure start? I mean the research.

VA: It was all at the last minute. It was mid-August.

DF: Seriously?

VA: Yes, and, as I was saying, initially it seemed that this person who worked within the federation was interested in registering me and doing all the various procedures. Until less than six days before the race, I was on the provisional start list for the professionals’ race on Sunday.

DF: Indeed. But for people who don’t understand, and I don’t understand either, how do you register without being a citizen?

VA: They gave me a licence. I don’t know either how the regulation works. Do you remember how the cyclist for the Vatican, a Dutchman (Rien Schuurhuis) also participated in the World Championships a couple of years ago? He had his wife who worked in a Vatican embassy, but the wife was not of Vatican nationality. Sometimes there are no answers to all the questions.

DF: No. So you were telling me...

VA: That I was registered up until five or six days before the race, and then at a certain point this person who says he is from the federation, who did all the procedure, sends me an email telling me that he can no longer access the system and confirm the registration for Sunday’s race. I send an email to the UCI and they tell me that the true president of Nauru contacted the UCI to say that he didn’t know about this story. So, what happened I don’t know.

DF: And in the meantime, you had, at your own expense, bought the ticket, found the accommodation?

VA: But I would have gone anyway as a fan. With the love for cycling that I have, I would have gone anyway as a simple fan. So that didn’t change anything for me.

DF: I see. Tell me a bit about your cycling history, because the thing that surprised me – and several colleagues – is that we all looked for precedents, results, and we didn’t find anything.

VA: I haven’t done any UCI races. I’m a simple amateur who sometimes does Gran Fondo races, some local mountain bike races, but no professional level races.

DF: And how would you describe your level?

VA: Well, since I trained with certain Africans the days before Sunday’s race, I was at their level, so the first ones who would have been dropped on Sunday.

DF: And you had prepared yourself, trained?

VA: Yes, the last two months, after work every day – I work for the Swiss tourist board – I was always on the bike in the evenings. I was setting all the records on the climbs here in my area where I live in Switzerland, just around the corner from UCI headquarters in Aigle, actually, so I was in shape.

DF: So tell me, the moment when you realized that this thing wouldn’t work out, when exactly was that?

VA: I think it was Monday. So six days before the race.

DF: Had you already arrived?

VA: No, I arrived on the day of the team time trial. And that day I went to the UCI office to ask for clarification and they told me that the only solution was to contact the president of the island of Nauru and ask him to send an official email, but he didn’t respond like the other times.

DF: But I understand you found yourself another role…

VA: Yep, you see I am friends with two cyclists from São Tomé [and Príncipe], whom you certainly saw at the race. And they were there thanks to me because I’m the one who helped the federation with all the registrations and the procedure. Because they are a very small country, an island without contact with the rest of the world, and the president and secretary have no idea how the whole procedure works. So they arrived a week before the World Championships having been invited by the UCI, because they didn’t have enough points to be qualified by right, so they received a wild card. But the problem, a week before the World Championships, the Olympic Committee of São Tomé refused to pay for the tickets for the two guys. So I wrote a letter to the UCI president David Lappartient and to the president of the African Federation to ask if economic help could be provided. And they said that through the solidarity funds they would pay for the ticket. And so even there, at the last moment, the two cyclists managed to come.

DF: And how did you get in touch with these guys?

VA: Because I’ve been on vacation to their island in São Tomé three times. I went on bike rides with them on the island, they took me to discover the most beautiful places. We are friends.

DF: Ah, I see. From what I understand, you then on Sunday acted as a sort of odd-job-man and masseur for them, right?

VA: Yep, I’m the one who went to pick up the accreditations, I went to the meeting of the managers the evening before the races, I went to pick up the race numbers, I did the feeding on the day of the race. But I did it with pleasure because we are friends and to realise their dream, which was to be among the great champions for once, was a pleasure.

DF: And how did they – Mauro da Silveira Alfredo and Ediney Nascimento Ferreira Do Rosário – do in the end?

VA: I think if you saw the race on TV, one was the second to get dropped. And the other was, I think, the fourth or fifth to get dropped. Unfortunately, they hadn’t really done any international races; they lack the race sharpness.

DF: And back to you for a second, am I right in thinking you were a competitive skier?

VA: No, in winter I go skiing, but I’ve never raced.

DF: Ah, I assumed from your WhatsApp photo that you were a skier.

VA: The profile picture, the one on WhatsApp, is during a World Cup race. The famous World Cup trophy, the globe, was on display, and I just took a photo.

DF: I see. So looking back now, how do you feel about this crazy week? What has the experience, this adventure left you with? Maybe you’ll try again, I don’t know…

VA: God, I don’t know, I have no idea about that. Clearly at first it was a bit of a disappointment. But then in the end, not being a real professional, I also know that at most I would have done two or at most three laps of the circuit, no more. The maximum limit was 10 minutes, after which the commissaires would have stopped me. But on the other hand, I am happy to have been inside the World Championships as a representative of this federation of São Tomé and to have realised the dream of these two cyclists.

DF: How much did the whole thing cost you, the trip and everything in the end?

VA: The accommodation cost me very little because I personally found lodgings for 15 euros a night, a very good small apartment. And the round-trip ticket is 800 euros. But in the end, as I already said, I would have gone even as a fan, so the story of not being registered for the race anymore didn’t change anything for me. I was there every day to see the starts, the races, I went on bike rides, so I really enjoyed the week.

DF: One more thing: have you tried a stunt like this before?

VA: No, no, I’ve never done other things in other sports like this. But let’s say that if one day some exotic island offers me the chance to do the Olympics in bobsleigh, I’d accept right away.

DF: I know a few colleagues interviewed you – my Italian friends from RAI – but did you get much other media attention?

VA: Just from Italian-Swiss television. Beyond that, a Pole contacted me on Facebook, and a Belgian. But then I think once they saw that I wasn’t on the official lists anymore, they lost interest.

DF: Well, Valerio, if you ever do make it to Nauru, or to the Worlds again, let us know! As I told you, it was the first time I’d heard of this country. So then, after discovering it, I spent the next two hours watching videos on YouTube. I learned a lot of things about this island that I didn’t know.

VA: It’s interesting. Did you find that it was the last country to affiliate with the UCI?

DF: No, not that. But this thing about obesity is interesting too.

VA: Yes, poor things. Apparently fast food is to blame… But they even have races. Yes, there’s even the Tour of Nauru. They organise a time trial, a road race. It seems like there are about twenty enthusiastic cyclists. Then whether they have modern or old bikes or whatever, I can’t tell you.

DF: And there will be, what, about 20 kilometres of roads more or less, right? 25?

VA: Exactly. And then it’s all flat, because the highest mountain is 47 meters, which is this phosphate pinnacle, so you can’t ride a bicycle there. It’s also expensive to go there because there’s only one company that flies there. They are really very isolated as a place. But they nearly had a rider in the World Championships…

Brian’s tribute to Jørgen Leth

We were saddened to hear that Jørgen Leth, the Danish poet, writer, cycling commentator, and film director, died last week aged 88. Jørgen made two legendary cycling films. Stars and Watercarriers was made at the 1973 Giro d’Italia, and Richard Moore interviewed Jørgen about that film for an episode of Our Giro, which we made during lockdown in May 2020. You can listen to that episode below, or here.

But it is A Sunday In Hell for which Jørgen was most highly acclaimed. It’s an atmospheric, immersive film capturing the 1976 edition of Paris-Roubaix and it has been described more than once as the best film ever made about cycling.

Brian Nygaard and Jørgen were dear friends and Brian wanted to pay his own tribute, which you can listen to in full below. We’d like to express our condolences to all Jørgen’s friends and family.

Our Giro: Stars and Watercarriers

Listen below: Featuring Richard Moore in conversation with Jørgen Leth.

Coming soon: Daniel and Lionel on Life in the Peloton

Earlier this week, our old friend Mitch Docker invited Daniel and Lionel to join him on his podcast, Life in the Peloton, to talk about origins of The Cycling Podcast and our journey over the past 12 years since that first episode was recorded in a London park shortly before the 2013 Tour de France.

The episode will be out any day now and you can subscribe to Life in the Peloton here.

It was great to catch up with Mitch and hopefully we can return the favour and he’ll pop up on The Cycling Podcast again soon.

by Lionel Birnie

For the first time we’ll be covering the Lloyds Tour of Britain with daily episodes.

We’ve never been able to give the British national tour daily coverage before (although we have covered the Women’s Tour a number of times) because of the clash of dates with the Vuelta a España. However, title sponsorship from Lloyds means we can double up for the first time.

Graham Willgoss will kick things off with the opening episode and I’ll join him from Wednesday onwards before we hit the road to follow the race to its conclusion in Cardiff on Sunday.

Episodes will be released early the following morning, in the familiar KM0 slot, so they don’t clash with our Vuelta episodes, hosted by Daniel in Spain.

It’s great to be able to follow the Lloyds Tour of Britain this year because although we are an international podcast with a global audience it’s a race that means a lot to us, and our UK-based listeners. Every year we are asked whether we are going to cover the race and it’s great to be able to finally say ‘yes’. This year there is a very strong field with the likes of Remco Evenepoel, Oscar Onley, Matthew Brennan, Olav Kooij, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Julian Alaphilippe due to be on the start line when the race rolls out of Woodbridge in Suffolk a bit later this morning.

* * *

So, there’ll be a feast of cycling over the next six days as we split our focus between the middle week of the Vuelta, which resumes today after a rest day, and the Lloyds Tour of Britain as it makes its way to Cardiff, where Geraint Thomas will bring down the curtain on his glorious career on Sunday.

The first professional national tour, the Kellogg’s Tour of Britain, was one of the first races I saw up close. My Dad took me to the final stage of the race in the centre of London three years in a row in the late 1980s. I remember getting a signed casquette from Allan Peiper the first time I went. I also met Sean Kelly for the first time and, as an awestruck 12-year-old told him I really liked his cycling. ‘Thank you,’ he said. I remember the overall victories for Malcolm Elliott and Robert Millar and the sight of Stephen Roche in his rainbow jersey and, in 1989, being utterly convinced the big German sprinter Remig Stumpf was going to win a handful of Tour de France stages the following year after he dominated the sprints.

There was also the Milk Race, a two-week pro-am tour of Britain, but that didn’t have the same TV profile with nightly highlights on Channel 4. (I did bunk off school once to ride over to see the Milk Race when it passed nearby - it’s fine, I was in the sixth form and it was a study period!)

When the Kellogg’s sponsorship of the national tour ended in 1994 there was a gap of a few years until 1998, when the first edition of the revived PruTour, sponsored by Prudential, arrived amid a blaze of publicity and suggestions of a long-term commitment to cycling. That first edition featured some big names from top teams of the day - Chris Boardman, Stuart O’Grady, Magnus Backstedt and Jens Voigt at Gan, Viatcheslav Ekimov, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie and Jonathan Vaughters at US Postal Service, plus the soon-to-be-notorious Festina team.

There was also a host of domestic and national squads, including the Scotland team which included a young Richard Moore, who, like his teammates and many of the riders in the Great Britain, England and Wales teams were preparing for the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur later that summer.

Years later, during the Tour de France, we were recording random conversations in the car for one of our Road Trip episodes when I asked Richard if he’d talk about the 1998 PruTour.

He laughed thinking I was taking the mickey, especially when I asked why he abandoned the race on the penultimate day.

‘No shame in that,’ I said. ‘Jean-Cyril Robin pulled out the same day and he finished sixth in the Tour de France a couple of months later!’

‘Get away with you,’ he said, still thinking I was making fun of his achievements on the bike.

I suppose I was pulling his leg slightly but I was genuinely interested and I would have loved to hear him talk us through his experience stage by stage. Sadly we never did get round to recording that so all I have are a few half-remembered anecdotes from chats in the car over the years.

* * *

The 1999 PruTour was one of the first races I covered as a journalist. All the media following the race were chauffeured in press cars - a bit like the treatment L’Équipe chief cycling writer Alex Roos still gets at the Tour de France to this day - and we got to go up behind the break from time to time.

When the race went over Cheddar Gorge, William Fotheringham - covering the race for The Guardian - rolled down the window and had a brief chat with Charly Wegelius, who was in the break. This seemed impossibly glamorous at the time.

Another travelling companion was David Taylor, a veteran journalist whose name I recognised from reading his reports in Cycling Weekly when I was growing up. He was great company and very funny but tended to nod off after an hour or so in the car so he suggested we share notes in the event that either of us found our eyelids growing heavy and we missed something. One day, when he woke up from his snooze he asked what he’d missed. While he was asleep we’d decided to spin him a line and came up with some extraordinary, barely believable exploits.

‘This is amazing… great stuff!’ he said, scribbling notes furiously. ‘But the bunch is all back together now? Wow, how long was I out for?’

I think he knew we were pulling his leg and he was going along with the joke but I was worried he was taking us seriously so I deliberately gave the game away.

There was a stage that finished at the top of Constitution Hill in Swansea, a viciously steep, cobbled climb. The stage was won by Raimondas Rumsas, who later went on to finish on the podium at the 2002 Tour de France. Shortly afterwards a stash of drugs was found in his wife’s car. Rumsas said the mix of corticoids, EPO, growth hormone and testosterone were medication for his mother-in-law. His wife spent some time in jail and Rumsas eventually tested positive after finishing sixth in the Giro.

Anyway, we were just behind the break, in front of the chase group when we hit the bottom of Constitution Hill. The race regulator on the moto had signalled to our driver to carry on as the crowds were too big to pull over to let the next group pass. We hit the bottom of the climb so fast the bottom of the car took a heavy bang on the road and the crowd gave a dramatic ‘Ooooh.’

David, who was sitting the back, pretended the loud bang had woken him from another snooze and said, in a half-asleep voice, “Where are we? Who’s winning?”

We had riders coming up past the car and our driver’s knuckles were gripping the steering wheel but the rest of us were in fits of laughter.

That was the last edition of the PruTour and I always wondered whether the Festina scandal and other doping controversies were one of the reasons for the sponsor’s withdrawal after just two editions, although the company came back years later to support the RideLondon Classic.

* * *

Back in 2013, shortly after finishing our first Tour de France for The Cycling Podcast, and after figuring out a way to continue with weekly shows (thanks to requests from listeners and Sharp continuing their sponsorship) we decided to spend a few days at the Tour of Britain.

I’d been visiting relatives in Lancashire and Richard had been up in Edinburgh with his family so we met up in Liverpool and drove down to pick up the race in Stoke-on-Trent on the day Mark Cavendish won in Llanberis, and then followed on to see Ireland’s Sam Bennett win in Caerphilly before the uphill finish at Haytor in Devon, where a young Simon Yates won riding for Great Britain. Cavendish won two more stages and Bradley Wiggins took the overall title and, looking back, it was the beginning of the post-London boom in cycling’s popularity in Britain.

The following year, there was a stage finish in Hemel Hempstead - the specific part of Not Watford where I went to school - which felt like a strange convergence of worlds. The race sped towards us on roads I knew like the back of my hand and Matthias Brändle beat his two breakaway companions Alex Dowsett and Tom Stewart, crossing the line with his arms in the air next to Gadebridge Park, just down the road from where Hemel Hempstead CC’s evening ‘10’ has taken place for decades.

In 2016, we began daily coverage of the Vuelta, meaning we could only keep half an eye on the Tour of Britain. In 2017 I was in the Vuelta press room in Asturias waiting for the shuttle bus to take us partway up the Angliru, watching the Tour of Britain coverage on my laptop as the peloton rolled out of Hemel Hempstead, negotiating the famous Magic Roundabout in the neutralised zone. I used to negotiate that roundabout on my ride to school. If it was April I’d pretend to be Malcolm Elliott heading towards a memorable Vuelta stage win; if it was July I was Sean Yates in a Tour de France time trial, so it was surreal to be sitting at the Vuelta watching my home race on TV.

That is the power of elite road racing. The Lloyds Tour of Britain stakes a claim to being the nation’s biggest free-to-attend sporting event and over the next few days schools along the route will take a break from lessons to watch the spectacle. Youngsters in Suffolk, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and Wales will get a chance to be inspired by the sport the way I was almost 40 years ago.

• Our Lloyds Tour of Britain coverage debuts on Wednesday morning. Join Graham Willgoss and his special guest for our recap of the opening stage. Meanwhile, our Vuelta coverage resumes this evening following stage 10.

• We’d like to say a big thank you to Lloyds for supporting The Cycling Podcast as title sponsors of our Vuelta a España, Lloyds Tour of Britain and World Championship episodes. Last year, Lloyds signed a multi-year deal to support British Cycling, including title sponsorship of the Lloyds Tour of Britain stage races for men and women, the National Championships across a range of disciplines, National Series races and the Great Britain teams competing at World Championships. Lloyds wants to inspire participation at grassroots level too with a number of initiatives to encourage people to explore the countryside on two wheels.

• Check out the Lloyds Tour of Britain route here: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/tourofbritain

Thirty years ago, professional cycling had its biggest shake-up in decades when the Vuelta a España was moved from its regular spring slot to a late summer position in the calendar.

It was an idea pushed through by then UCI president Hein Verbruggen and it also saw the World Championships move to the end of the season. There was a lot of scepticism about the switch, especially in Spain, from the race organisers and the teams. The Vuelta had operated perfectly happily in April and May for four decades despite some obvious drawbacks. Firstly, the spring weather meant they usually wouldn’t visit the highest mountains, the race clashed with the tail-end of the spring Classics, and the proximity to the Giro d’Italia, which sometimes started only a few days after the Vuelta finished, meant there was often competition between the two events to be considered as the best preparation race for the Tour de France.

The thing was, Spain’s Miguel Indurain ruled the cycling world at the time. He won his fifth consecutive Tour de France title in 1995 but hadn’t started his home tour since 1991, when he was runner-up to Melchor Mauri. Instead he preferred the Giro, which he won in 1992 and 1993 to set-up the mythical ‘double’.

There was pressure from the race organisers, the Spanish media and fans and even his Banesto team to line up for the Vuelta and complete the set of Grand Tour titles but in 1994 he again chose to ride the Giro, finishing third.

Despite reservations, the Vuelta organisers were persuaded to go along with Verbruggen’s plan partly because, in the short term, they believed moving the race to September might persuade Indurain to start. When Indurain skipped the 1995 Giro, then clinched a record-equalling fifth Tour de France title, the hottest question in cycling was whether he would roll down the start ramp for the Vuelta’s prologue time trial in Zaragoza in early September. Indurain kept everyone waiting for an answer. He rode a couple of post-Tour criterium races, including a lucrative one organised by ASO in Moscow, finished ninth in the Clasica San Sebastian and then won the Vuelta a Galicia, where he finally confirmed he would be skipping the Vuelta, instead taking a break before the World Championships in Colombia in October. His decision let down an entire cycling nation and the first ‘summer’ edition of the Vuelta got off to a lowkey start.

The race was dominated by ONCE’s French rider Laurent Jalabert, who had just finished fourth in the Tour. He took the amarillo leader’s jersey after winning stage three and held it all the way to Madrid, adding four more stages in the process.

It wasn’t that the race had lacked drama or intrigue that it failed to capture the imagination of the Spanish public. After all, the final three editions of the spring Vuelta had all been won by the Swiss rider Tony Rominger, each one more boring than the last. Rominger led the 1994 race from start to finish and won by almost eight minutes.

But the sense was that the Vuelta had surrendered its old identity and had no idea what its new one should be. Crowds were disappointing, especially in the mountains. Writing in Cycle Sport at the time, William Fotheringham said: ‘The fans were voting with their feet: on the slopes of Pla de Beret and Luz-Ardiden they could be counted on the fingers of one hand.’

‘I don’t remember a Vuelta with fewer spectators. If it continues in September it could be a catastrophe for Spanish cycling,’ said veteran journalist Benito Urraburu. There was quite a high drop-out rate, with almost 40 of the 180 riders quitting the race for one reason or another in the first week or so. Although the race organisers claimed TV viewing figures were much higher than the previous year there was a good deal of scepticism about that and a sense that, without Indurain, and coming after the high of the Tour de France, there was a lack of excitement for cycling in general so late in the year.

It was also the tail-end of the summer season, with tourists returning home from their holidays and Spanish people returning to work. The sense of early-season optimism and the novelty factor of the Vuelta being the first of the big three national tours was lost. On the other hand, the spring Vuelta had often struggled to attract a strong field and foreign teams were especially reluctant to ride. In the early 1980s there had sometimes been as few as 90 or 100 starters, almost all of them from Spanish teams.

But when the Vuelta reached Madrid at the end of September 1995, there was a sense that the race was facing a crisis. Spanish teams knew that they couldn’t wait until September every year to generate big domestic results to keep or attract sponsors. There was also the suggestion that riders who had already agreed to join a new team the following year should not be allowed to start the Vuelta in case it created what Juan Fernandez of Mapei described as ‘sporting contradictions’.

Anyway, after that rocky first summer, the Vuelta gradually found its feet, although it took a while. Not even Indurain’s first participation in five years, in 1996, could provide the catalyst. Indurain was finally toppled at the Tour de France, by Bjarne Riis, but redeemed his summer by winning the men’s time trial at the Atlanta Olympics, the first Games open to professional riders, before starting his home tour in Valencia.

After 12 stages, he was lying third overall, a couple of minute adrift of the race leader Alex Zülle, having lost contact with the front group on the stage to Alto del Naranco. But this was not the Indurain of old. The following day, he was dropped early and the TV cameras stuck with him as he slipped further behind the leaders and was eventually caught by the gruppetto. At that point, and realising he was about to pass the team’s hotel for the night – Hotel El Capitán – Indurain pulled over to the side of the road and headed straight to the lobby to check-in. That turned out to be his final race as a professional and he retired at the end of the season while Zülle topped an all-Swiss clean-sweep of the podium completed by Laurent Dufaux and Tony Rominger.

In the late 1990s, there was a subtle change that altered the identity of the race. The old amarillo jersey, a fresh, bright, spring-like shade of yellow, was gradually made darker and deeper to match the fierce, dry heat of the late summer sun. By 1999, when Jan Ullrich won, the jersey was officially described as ‘gold’.

Throughout the 2000s, the Vuelta looked an arid, brown affair, with unimaginative routes, stages seemingly held on only long, straight, wide roads and a sense that it was a Spanish race for Spanish riders and teams rather than the international affair Verbruggen had imagined. Towards the end of the decade, the race was struggling economically and ASO, owners of the Tour de France, swooped to the rescue, buying a 49% stake in the organising company, Unipublic – a precursor to a full takeover. This sparked a steady revolution – a move towards shorter, sharper stages, a search for steeper, more spectacular climbs and the odd gimmick (who can forget the 2015 team time trial in Marbella that practically took the riders onto the beach?)

In 2010, the leader’s jersey changed colour again, this time to red and the first rider to wear it was Mark Cavendish after his HTC-Columbia squad won the team time trial. Not only did this move differentiate the Vuelta from the Tour but it began to establish in people’s minds a race with a different aesthetic. Red echoed the heat of the late Spanish summer and for the past decade or so the Vuelta has matured, developed a sense of self-confidence and has carved out its own niche. Yes, it’s sometimes a last-chance saloon for riders who have flopped at the Tour de France, but it has risen to rival the Giro for the right to be considered the second most prestigious race in the world. It has also given us all a long tail to the summer. The holidays are over but there’s still some light in the sky and warmth in the air, even if, by the time the riders reach Madrid for the traditional dusk curtain-call in the capital, we know that the nights are about to start drawing in.

What’s in store this year?

This year’s race got underway earlier today in Turin, Italy, because of course it did. It completes a trilogy of recent Grand Tour stages in the city. Jhonatan Narvaez won the opening stage of last year’s Giro in Turin and Biniam Girmay took stage three of the Tour a bit later that summer. Both riders are racing elsewhere this week so there’ll be a new contender for the mythical Turin Shroud classification today.

Daniel is there, of course, kicking off our coverage and looking forward to some pure ciclismo with Michele Pelacci, who featured in our Giro coverage earlier this season. Brian Nygaard will be dropping in soon and our new Spanish signing Dani Arribas will feature once the race reaches home soil.

With Tadej Pogačar sitting this one out, can anyone stop Jonas Vingegaard from winning overall? He will be pushed by Pog’s team-mates João Almeida and Juan Ayuso, but with as many as 10 uphill finishes is there anyone who can prevent Vingegaard from establishing a lead and then stretching it by 20 to 30 seconds every time the road rises to the line?

Tune in to our daily coverage of the Vuelta a España, sponsored by Lloyds.

• DVine Cellars have once again curated a case of six wines to celebrate the Vuelta a España route. Cases are available now.

Coming soon: Lloyds Tour of Britain daily episodes

Thanks to sponsorship from Lloyds, The Cycling Podcast will be able to produce daily Lloyds Tour of Britain episodes next month.

The race starts in Suffolk on Tuesday, September 2 and makes its way across England before two eye-catching stages in South Wales at the weekend. On Saturday, September 6 the riders will tackle The Tumble and the following day the race will conclude in Geraint Thomas’s home city, Cardiff, marking the end of his long, glorious career.

Thomas will be in the Ineos Grenadiers line-up for his farewell tour but the field is shaping up to feature a host of big names. Remco Evenepoel is set to lead Soudal Quick Step, Scotland’s Oscar Onley will lead the Picnic-Post NL team after his impressive fourth place at the Tour de France, and Visma-Lease A Bike are set to name Olav Kooij and young British sensation Matthew Brennan in their line-up.

Graham Willgoss will kick off our coverage and I’ll join him for the final five stages and we’re looking forward to being able to release daily episodes for the first time.

Lloyds Tour of Britain route.

The Richard Moore Youth Race Series

Photos by Scott Armour

The fifth and final round of the Richard Moore Youth Race Series took place on a glorious summer evening at the West Lothian Cycle Circuit, where the series winners were crowned and presented with yellow jerseys. There were celebrations on the podium (constructed from the boards of the old Meadowbank track), and medals, bidons and caps for the riders too.

You probably know the story by now. The West Lothian Cycle Circuit was one of the first recipients of money raised by the sale of Stacy Snyder’s podcast cups. After our dear friend and co-founder Richard Moore died in 2022, Matt Ball and the team at the cycle circuit suggested naming the horseshoe bend at the top of the circuit ‘Buffalo Bend’ to remember Richard. Stacy created a plaque which overlooks the bend.

The Richard Moore Youth Race Series featured five rounds for young riders from across Scotland with a different local club taking on the job of organising the races each month.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who assisted with organising the series and all the riders who took part over the summer. The final round of races was followed with a presentation ceremony. Round the world record breaker Mark Beaumont and Richard Moore’s father Brian – resplendent in his podcast jersey – presented the jerseys and prizes, including the Buffalo Awards, which recognised courageous, attacking and determined racing.

And congratulations to every rider who pinned on a number and took part this season.

Overall series results

Youth A Female (under 16)
1 Lucy Sweeney Edinburgh RC
2 Mairi Dowens West Lothian Clarion
3 Kasey Park Edinburgh RC

Youth A Open
1 Andrew Levinson Edinburgh RC
2 Micah Myles Edinburgh RC
3 Henry Sharp West Lothian Clarion

Youth B Female (under 14)
1 Boo Williams Clydesdale Colts
2 Sarah McCormac Edinburgh RC
3 Isla Reekie Falkirk Junior Bike Club

Youth B Open
1 Gregor McNaught Falkirk Junior Bike Club
2 Alexander Mullen Falkirk Junior Bike Club
3 Henry Lockett Falkirk Junior Bike Club

Youth C Girls (under 12)
1 Lucy Dixon Falkirk Junior Bike Club
2 Freya Illingworth West Lothian Clarion CC
3 Sophie Tomb Glasgow Riderz

Youth C Boys
1 Alasdair Ogg Johnstone Jets
2 Ellis McAusland Falkirk Junior Bike Club
3 Jack Tapia Clydesdale Colts

Round five race and Buffalo Award winners

Youth A Female (under 16):
1st Lucy Sweeney Edinburgh RC
Buffalo Award: Mairi Dowens West Lothian Clarion

Youth A Open
1st Archie Whittemore Clifton CC
Buffalo Award: Archie Whittemore Clifton CC

Youth B Female (under 14)
1st Boo Williams Clydesdale Colts
Buffalo Award: Jasmin Grieve Spokes

Youth B Open
1st Gregor McNaught Falkirk Junior Bike Club
Buffalo Award: Danny Farrell Edinburgh RC

Youth C Girls (under 12)
1st Freya Illingworth West Lothian Clarion CC
Buffalo Award: Sophie Tomb Glasgow Riders

Youth C Boys
1st Alasdair Ogg Johnstone Jets
Buffalo Award: Jack Tapia Clydesdale Colts

The 11.01 Cappuccino is taking a break for a couple of weeks… in the meantime, enjoy the Vuelta.

by Lionel Birnie

Graham and I are a little over 24 hours from Paris just as Rose and Denny are in the starting blocks ready to set out from Brittany for the start of the fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes.

This weekend there’ll be two episodes of The Cycling Podcast a day to ensure we have both races covered. It concludes a busy week at the Tour, which started with us wild camping on Mont Ventoux (before high winds forced a hasty retreat to the safety of The Cycling Podcar).

There’s a lot to listen to on The Cycling Podcast’s channel this week – from our adventures on Ventoux to the questions that have dogged Dave Brailsford’s return to Team Ineos, as well as our regular nightly episodes recapping the action.

Listen to the latest episode

Our Tour coverage is supported by Wahoo

We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone at Wahoo for supporting The Cycling Podcast’s coverage of the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes.

Wahoo sponsors or supports more than half of the teams in the men’s and women’s races. Riders using the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 have held the yellow and green jerseys since the start of the race back in Lille, including Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Jasper Philipsen, Jonathan Milan and Ben Healy. In fact, Wahoo-supported riders have won 10 of the 19 stages so far.

The Elemnt Bolt has a crisp, easy-to-read display with smart navigation, so whether you are racing, training or chasing your next personal record it’s the cycle computer to have. Pair it with the Trackr heart-rate monitor and you’ll have all the information at your fingertips to get the most out of your riding.

And when the weather is rubbish and you want to train indoors the Wahoo Kickr is the gold standard in turbo trainers. It’s incredibly quiet and accurate and transports the road to your living room so you can maximise the benefits from your efforts.

Until August 4, listeners in the UK and EU can get some very attractive discounts on Wahoo’s indoor and outdoor equipment, with savings of up to £700 or €800 available. Go to wahoofitness.com for details. Wahoo, the choice of champions.

Go to Wahoo

The Tour de France Femmes Preview

We’re welcoming Féminin listeners old and new to get into the Tour de France Femmes spirit with Rose Manley and Denny Gray as they meet up to preview the race over a platter of French cheeses.

In what proved to be a far longer ‘punchy’ episode than anticipated, Rose and Denny share their top fives of the race to come. They discuss the top five things to look out for on the course, plus their top five GC contenders, interesting prospects and stage hunters. Plus they finish it off with some crucial guidance for new listeners to the Féminin pod: a top five of Féminin references so that everyone knows their Nienke Vinke Fan Club from their ‘Casio’ Niewiadoma.

Also on the agenda, the English for ‘fromagerie’ and Denny gets trapped down a SD Worx vortex.

Daily coverage of the Tour de France Femmes with Rose and Denny begins after stage one on Saturday and continues until Sunday, August 3.

Tour de France Femmes preview

KM0: Never Go Back?

This episode started out as an examination of Dave Brailsford’s return to Ineos Grenadiers after a few years away overseeing Jim Ratcliffe’s portfolio of sporting interests, including Manchester United Football Club.

Brailsford returned to the scene of his greatest sporting triumphs – where Team Sky and Team Ineos won seven editions of the race in eight years – in Lille. Team Ineos CEO John Allert described him as being like ‘a kid in a sweet shop,’ looking forward to taking the team back to the top.

But Brailsford’s return has been clouded by more questions concerning what went on at Team Sky in 2012, the year Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France but was subsequently revealed to have competed using a therapeutic use exemption to take triamcinolone to manage his asthma. That was one of several anti-doping stories that had never been fully or satisfactorily explained. Even a British Government inquiry and a UK Anti-Doping Agency investigation failed to get to the bottom of things.

Just before the Tour, allegations surfaced that David Rozman, the Team Ineos head carer, had been in text message contact with a notorious doctor Mark Schmidt a month before that 2012 Tour. Schmidt was central to the Operation Aderlass investigation and later served a prison sentence for doping activities. Rozman had been a Team Sky carer in 2012 and was later primarily involved in supporting Chris Froome.

This episode looks at Brailsford’s return and features David Walsh, the Sunday Times journalist on why the questions concerning Rozman matter now, 13 years on.

Never Go Back?

KM0: One Wild Night On Ventoux

A month or so before the Tour de France, we were discussing ideas for KM0 episodes...

'How about camping on Mont Ventoux?' I said.

'Yes!' said Graham.

And so I packed a tent, airbed and sleeping bag and decided not to book a hotel near the Giant of Provence so there could be no turning back.

After picking up camping equipment for Graham at the Nîmes branch of Decathlon, they set off up the mountain to meet Simon Gill, who was in his camper van. The original plan was to camp in the forest, where other Tour spectators were setting up for the night. However, police restrictions on the crowds and vehicles meant we couldn’t risk being stuck down the mountain, 10km from the summit, on race day, so they soldier on, past Chalet-Reynard and the shelter of the tree-line and up to the bald, rocky peak.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience – as in something they will not repeat in a hurry. Unforgettable in its own way as they braved the strong winds.

Who knew Ventoux could be windy? Well, the clue is in the name for a start, and remember the last time the Tour was scheduled to finish at the top of the climb, in 2016, when high winds forced the organisers to bring the line down to Chalet-Reynard?

This is the story of our wild night on the mountain.

One Wild Night On Ventoux

KM0: Chapter & Verses, part three

It’s been great hear from so many listeners who have enjoyed the freewheeling three-part series with Shelley Verses, who was the first woman to work as a soigneur at the Tour de France, with the American 7-Eleven team in 1986. I’m looking forward to picking up where we left off later in the year to learn more about her time working in cycling.

by Lionel Birnie

Tuesday: The middle week of the Tour de France has featured almost as many ups and downs for us as the Pyrenean mountains presented to the riders. Rest day morning was spent catching up on admin and laundry before we got on the road to Toulouse. The first laundry stop of the Tour is always fraught with tension but the laverie in Brive-La-Gaillarde had large, modern machines. Graham was sceptical a 36-minute cycle was long enough to wash the stench of the opening week from our garments but the machines proved otherwise.

We arrived in Toulouse in late afternoon, just in time for Graham to head off to the city’s cricket ground for the annual rest day cricket match, which has become a bit of a tradition over the past few years. It’s contested, if that’s the word, by assorted members of the English-speaking press pack and staff members from EF Education-Easy Post. Graham reported that the standard was ‘mostly poor’ although he admitted that Tom Southam, one of EF’s sports directors, was pretty handy with the bat. He also mentioned his own devastating reverse-sweep a few times so presumably that would have made the highlights reel too.

In the evening we headed to an airport hotel on the outskirts of Toulouse to make an episode of KM0 I’d been looking forward to immensely. Over the years, I’ve made a few pieces about the team chefs who live and work on the road feeding the riders but until now no one had actually offered me the chance to sample the food served to the riders. Owen Blandy was happy for us to head over to his food truck, parked in the hotel car park, where he served us osso bucco, a beautiful bolognese ragu with hidden depths, a medley of vegetables and a blueberry tart for dessert. The riders supplement all that with pasta and rice for the carbs but the food, as well as being fuel for an endurance event, would not have been out of place in an upscale restaurant.

Wednesday: We headed to Chez Emile for cassoulet, which did not disappoint. I first visited with Richard Moore and Edward Pickering in 2012 when we were unaware the restaurant had such a good reputation. For a long while a photo of my bowl of cassoulet and the red wine which accompanied it was the header image on my Twitter account. I showed our waiter the photo on my phone and he instantly recognised it as a Chez Emile cassoulet. ‘The recipe has been exactly the same since we opened,’ he said. The restaurant was opened in the 1940s and it gained prominence in the 1960s.

The evening stretched a little too late into the night when we met a group of Irish cycling fans who would be rooting for Ben Healy on Hautacam. When conversation turned to the subject of selecting Ireland’s greatest ever sportsperson, Sean Kelly was leading on GC when Graham almost caused a diplomatic incident by suggesting Kent-born footballer Andy Townsend, or London-born footballer Phil Babb. To be fair the Irish guys took it in good spirits and even bought us a digestif – thanks guys! – although Graham had to endure being nicknamed ‘Phil Babb’ for the rest of the evening. Fortunately I didn’t have to produce my Irish passport to get us out of a bind.

* * *

Thursday: After Hautacam came haute cuisine at Le Viscos in Saint-Savin, where we met François for dinner and enjoyed his company as much as the porc de bigorre, cooked deliciously rare and served with little truffle-stuffed pasta tubes by the restaurant’s highly-decorated chef Alexis. Dinner was one of the highlights of the Tour, as it always is, but we were brought crashing down to earth when we left for our hotel in Lourdes. Arriving at reception well past midnight, monsieur on the desk took an eternity to check us in and sort out a bill for the city tax. My internal monologue burst out into the open when I said in a plaintive voice, ‘Please just let me go to bed.’ Things were compounded by the fact that when I got up to my room my key card didn’t work, meaning a walk back down to reception to find monsieur had gone for a cigarette break. By the time my head hit the pillow it was well after 1am and, with 21 previous Tours under my belt, I know the hidden cost of two late nights in a row.

The room was just about tidy enough, but smelled faintly of disinfectant and desperation. The plastic wipe-clean floor felt icky on my bare feet and the pillow – one of those firm cylindrical-shaped bolsters – was uncomfortable and has given me a stiff neck. As ever, I couldn’t get out of Lourdes soon enough in the morning.

* * *

Friday: A challenging drive to the time trial took us up and over the Col d’Aspin, already busy with fans and cyclists getting into position for the following day’s stage. Graham headed up to the finish at Peyragudes – the location for the opening sequence in one of the many James Bond films (that’s enough Bond references) – by cable car. After we’d recorded the episode and noted the queue of traffic waiting to get out of Loudenvielle we decided to have dinner with a group of press room colleagues, some of whom weren’t born when I first covered the Tour. As we ate barbecued curly-wurly sausage and chips, and the campsite-style cafe pumped out pop music, the youngsters got into the spirit of things. Graham filmed them as they threw a few moves before panning to me where I gave a disapproving shake of the head. You can see the clip on my Instagram page, or see below. It was meant in jest, of course, but it’s also a reminder of how the years fly by. One day you’re one of the youngest in the press room, eligible for the ‘white typewriter’ as best young reporter, and before you know it someone’s asking you, ‘What’s a typewriter, grandad?’

Saturday: After three late finishes in a row, our luck ran out in Luchon. A series of things conspired against us. Thymen Arensman’s stage winner’s press conference was unusually late – there was almost a 40-minute wait after Pogačar had finished before he sat down to take a few questions. Then we dithered about a bit getting out of the press room before trying to find a suitable recording location. Luchon was packed and buzzing with people and every bar, restaurant and brasserie was set up for dinner service. We sat down at a table that did not have cutlery or napkins on it, assuming we’d be allowed to just order a drink. Monsieur came bounding over to tell us it was ‘pour manger seulement’. We packed up all our recording equipment and eventually found an empty table at a hotel close to ours, although time had ticked away.

Then followed all manner of disruptions and technical issues – three revving motorbikes took an eternity to park side-by-side just as we were about to hit record. Eventually, we got through the recording and managed to send the files on patchy, intermittent 5G, though much later than usual. By now time was ticking past 9pm and I was aware the restaurants – not so long ago set up 'pour manger seulement’ – would soon stop serving.

The first warning that we were outside the time limit came when a simple pizzeria said they were no longer offering even take-aways. Every other restaurant was full, or had finished for the night. A little Morroccan place raised our hopes by appearing to suggest they’d do us cous-cous and some chicken to take away before dashing our hopes cruelly. I was resigned to going hungry. Graham, though, was playing the long game and held out until a little creperie had quietened down. I went to collect the car from the press room and when I dropped off the key so he could get his bags out of the boot he had just put his knife and fork down having finished a vegetarian pancake. There was eggy residue on his plate. He’d cut it in half – so he says – and had been prepared to share it with me but I’d been gone a while and he wasn’t sure I was coming back. My words at the start of the race – that the Tour de France is a team event until it becomes an individual one – had come bouncing back to haunt me.

* * *

Sunday: My painful neck is not being helped by the French hotel industry’s eccentric approach to pillows. This week alone I’ve had the solid cylindrical one, the pancake flat one, the huge square one that won’t fold in half, and the one that feels like it’s stuffed with cotton wool. One minute you’re refusing to join in with dinner-time dancing with colleagues half your age, the next you’re wondering about the wisdom of bringing your own pillow to the Tour.

Carcassonne was again majestic and the cassoulet rivalled the one at Chez Emile, even if it did contribute to another broken night’s sleep. Never mind – it’s the rest day today, and we face a relaxing 280-kilometre drive across France to Mont Ventoux…

Welcoming Wahoo Fitness to The Cycling Podcast

A very big thank you to Wahoo Fitness for sponsoring our coverage of the second half of the Tour de France. They joined our Tour coverage after the first rest day and will see us all the way to Paris and beyond as they also sponsor our Tour de France Femmes episodes next week.

Wahoo Fitness supplies more then half of the teams in the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes with top riders such as Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Jonathan Milan, and Ben Healy using Wahoo’s Elemnt Bolt 3 and Trackr heart-rate monitor. Wahoo-sponsored or supported riders have held the maillot jaune since the race began in Lille two weeks ago and have won nine of the stages so far.

Wahoo’s vision is to help everyone become a better athlete – whether just starting out on a journey in cycling or competing at the very top – by creating connected fitness technology and training insights. Wahoo’s combination of software, sensors, indoor and outdoor training equipment can transform your experience and take your riding to the next level. Go to wahoofitness.com to find out more.

Through the final week of the Tour and the Tour de France Femmes, you can ask former pro rider Ian Boswell anything, courtesy of our title sponsors Wahoo in a segment Graham has named ‘Any Other Bozness’. To put your question to Ian please email contact@thecyclingpodcast.com

Find out more about Wahoo Fitness

KM0 episodes online now

Chapter & Verses, part one and part two

About a month before the Tour, Shelley Verses got in touch. She wanted to tell some stories from her career as a soigneur. She was a trailblazer – the first woman to work as a soigneur at the Tour de France. She was part of the American 7-Eleven team in 1986 and this three-part mini series focuses on that unforgettable edition of the Tour. Part two is out today and part three will be released early next week. These episodes are on our regular feed.

The Great French Cook-Off With EF Procycling Chef Owen Blandy

On the rest day in Toulouse, Lionel and Graham had a dinner date at the EF Education-Easy Post hotel. They’d been invited to sample a meal fit for the maillot jaune, Ben Healy. Team chef Owen Blandy talked about his life on the road cooking for the team and Lionel and Graham turned up with grumbling stomachs and were allowed to eat the food. This episode is on our regular feed.

Steve Cummings’ Mandela Day Win in Mende, A Decade On

Graham turns back the clock to 2015 and the day when the African MTN-Qhubeka team celebrated Mandela Day in the best way possible – with a stage win at the Tour de France. It came courtesy of Steve Cummings, who outfoxed the two great French hopes of the era – Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot – in Mende. For Friends of the Podcast subscribers

KM0 episodes are available for Friends of the Podcast subscribers. We make the occasional episode free for all to hear, but can only do so with the support of our Friends. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has subscribed, past and present.

Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast

A Grand Tour sandwich with a tasty filling

by Rose Manley

Come and chow down on our Grand Tour sandwich episode! Deliciously filled with all the chat from a thrilling Giro d’Italia Women plus a look ahead to the imminent Tour de France Femmes in our mini feature about Breton cycling.

Rose Manley, Denny Gray and Rebecca Charlton cover all the talking points from a Giro which saw the maglia rosa change hands several times. It took a daring strategy on the Queen stage from Elisa Longo Borghini to finally wrestle the overall victory from this year’s breakthrough GC rider Marlen Reusser. And we ask a question rarely asked, where the heck were SD Worx?

In our mini feature, we explore Breton cycling in light of next week’s Tour de France Femmes Grand Départ in Brittany. The Cycling Podcast favourite François Thomazeau explains the history and heritage of the region, plus we hear from two Breton riders that have had outstanding Tours de France in recent years: Cédrine Kerbaol of EF Education Oatly and Maeva Squiban of UAE Team ADQ.

Also on the agenda: a café that floods once a day, Liane Lippert’s many hats and a shocking revelation about Breton cheese that blows the Belgian cheese debate out the water.

Daily coverage of the Tour de France Femmes begins on Saturday

Rose and Denny will be on the road for the fourth summer in a row, covering the Tour de France Femmes as it travels from west to east, taking the riders from Brittany to the Alps. The Tour de France Femmes preview will be out in the coming days too.

Listen to The Cycling Podcast Féminin

Toast the Tour with DVineCellars

The case of six wines telling the story of the 2025 Tour de France, curated by Greg Andrews and the team at DVineCellars, is on sale to listeners in the UK now.

Buy the DVineCellars Tour selection

by Lionel Birnie

Usually the second Monday of the Tour de France means a slightly later start, a leisurely breakfast, a chance to do some laundry and catch up on what we’ve missed while we’ve been in the race bubble – which is almost everything going on in the world that doesn’t relate to the race.

Today, though, is Bastille Day, the French national holiday, and so the race goes on for one more day before the riders and everyone else working on the race gets a well-earned rest. We had a delightful, but all too brief, breakfast in the shaded courtyard of our guesthouse surrounded by pleasant greenery and an array of locally-made jams before it was time to get on the road. (It’s called Au Lys Blanc and it’s in the centre of Châteauroux, if you’re interested.)

We’re beginning the day with a lengthy transfer to the start in Ennezat before a brutal stage takes the riders into the heart of the Massif Central. Just a glance at the race profile in the roadbook this morning causes the calf muscles to involuntarily tighten.

As I write this, from the passenger seat in The Cycling Podcar with Graham – the Willing Goose – at the wheel beside me, we’re following the Intermarché-Wanty bus and team cars to the start. It’s a reminder that many of the riders will be preparing for the hardest stage of the Tour so far with a two-hour bus transfer from the hotel on twisty rural roads. The Tour de France has never been just about the racing – the whole event is a test of physical endurance and mental resilience. The riders who excel are the ones who cope best with everything that’s demanded of them on and off the bike.

It’s been an intense first week with barely a moment to catch our breath. Perhaps it’s because I missed the race last year but even two years ago the Tour didn’t feel as big, as busy and as chaotic as this. But there have been so many highlights already, from Graham’s morning spent with the happy, enthusiastic members of the publicity caravan, our visits to see the Bayeux Tapestry and the Louison Bobet museum in Saint-Méen-le-Grand, and Graham’s efforts to park the car being mocked by Adri van der Poel, former Tour of Flanders winner and father of Mathieu, of course.

Graham and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for listening, and for your comments, which we’ve read but have not had time to respond to. Perhaps there’ll be time at the laundrette tomorrow…

Listen to The Cycling Podcast

A big thank you to Van Rysel

Our coverage of the Tour de France has been sponsored by Van Rysel, the company which supplies the bikes and kit for the Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale team.

The company was founded in Lille in 2019 and so the Grand Départ was a special weekend for them. In fact, in Flemish the name translates as ‘From Lille’.

Graham, François and I recorded our stage one episode at Van Rysel House, a pop-up that attracted thousands of cycling fans to mix, watch the race on TV and enjoy the party atmosphere over the weekend.

Then came the news that Decathlon, the chain of sports equipment stores, would be taking sole ownership of the team at the end of the year, reportedly increasing the budget to make it one of the best-backed teams in the World Tour.

Van Rysel is part of the same family of companies as Decathlon and will continue to supply the team with bikes and equipment, including helmets, shoes and clothing.

The vision is an ambitious one – Van Rysel wants to become one of the top five bike brands in the world. I spoke to Maxime Delabre, the company’s chief marketing officer, about the challenges of creating a bike company that taps into the region’s rich cycling heritage while still representing the most cutting–edge ideas in design and aerodynamics. He explained that early on in their journey they realised that many other bike companies were travelling to the pavé of Paris-Roubaix and the bergs of Flemish Flanders to test their bikes and photograph them for promotional material. At that point Van Rysel realised that they had something that many other bike brands wanted – a deep connection to the cycling culture and an innate sense of the history, drama and excitement of Flanders.

We’d like to say a big thank you to Van Rysel for supporting The Cycling Podcast’s coverage of the 2025 Tour de France.

Your chance to ask Ian Boswell anything

When the race resumes in Toulouse after the rest day, we will be putting your questions to Ian Boswell, the former Team Sky and Katusha rider who finished the Tour in 2018. You can ask Ian anything about the Tour de France or cycling in general by emailing us at contact@thecyclingpodcast.com and we’ll select the best questions for him to answer next week.

KM0 episodes from the first week of the Tour

Monday: Le Tour en Angleterre
The story of the Tour’s two-day trip to England in 1994 to mark the opening of the Channel Tunnel, as told by two journalists who were there – Simon Brotherton of BBC Radio 5 Live and William Fotheringham of The Guardian.

Tuesday: Introducing Graham Willgoss
Graham joined The Cycling Podcast team for last year’s Tour de France and is back on the road again so needs no introduction to our listeners but this episode tells the story of how he discovered cycling and his route into journalism.

Wednesday: Maître Jacques
As the Tour visited his home town, Rouen, we found out about Jacques Anquetil, the first man to win the Tour de France five times. This episode features the French author and poet Paul Fournel on what drew him to Anquetil, why the public respected him but didn’t love him the same way they loved Poulidor, his controversial views on performance-enhancing substances, and his tangled private life.

Thursday: Join the Caravan of Love (released on the free feed)
The publicity caravan has been a Tour de France institution since 1930. Now, a vast train of vehicles travels ahead of the race, representing more than 30 companies who pay to be part of the travelling show, entertaining the crowd. Graham spent a day on one of the Basic Fit floats and he fitted right in.

Friday: Reduce the Risks, Not the Thrills: How to Make the Tour Safer
Former two-time Tour de France stage winner Dan Martin has been retired a few years now but at the start of this season he started working as an analyst for the UCI’s SafeR group. They watch and log accidents and incidents in the races and suggest measures or rule changes that could make the sport safer. In this episode he discusses with Lionel how increasingly intense racing, higher stakes and the road furniture designed to slow down motor traffic are creating challenges for race organisers.

KM0 episodes are available for Friends of the Podcast subscribers. We make the occasional episode free for all to hear, but can only do so with the support of our Friends. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has subscribed, past and present.

Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast

Toast the Tour with DVineCellars

The case of six wines telling the story of the 2025 Tour de France, curated by Greg Andrews and the team at DVineCellars, is on sale to listeners in the UK now. It includes the excellent Tom and the Peloton Ventoux Rouge.

Buy the DVineCellars Tour selection

The peloton in Arras, by François Thomazeau

A week ago, we were in the Grand Place in Arras, sheltering from the rain, waiting for the Tour de France to pass by. François has been home in Marseille for a few days and, while he enjoys his summer afternoons with the Tour on in the background, he painted this in watercolour and ink. He’s used a bit of artistic licence because the three figures in black in the middle of the square, missing all the action, are Lionel, Graham and François himself. Actually, we were watching from just behind the barriers but, as a metaphor for life on the road covering the Tour, it works perfectly.

A tribute to a pioneer, a mentor and a legend of cycling journalism, Sam Abt

I was sitting in the shade at the top of Mûr-de-Bretagne on Friday when my phone pinged with a message from James Startt to say that his dear friend and colleague Sam Abt had died. We arranged to meet up so James could record his tribute, which we included at the end of Friday’s stage seven episode.

Sam was a legend of cycling journalism and covered the Tour de France more than 30 times between the 1970s and 2007, when he followed the race as a reporter for the final time. He wrote for the New York Times and later the International Herald Tribune, where he worked the rest of the year as an editor – a serious journalism job which included selecting the stories for page one. Cycling, though, was his passion and he used his annual leave to cover the Tour de France for the newspaper.

As James said in his tribute, Sam’s writing was so efficient with never a wasted word or a complicated one when a simple one would do. He was a supreme communicator and his work introduced generations of readers in America, and the rest of the English-speaking world, to the Tour de France. His writing, like his personality, was also witty.

I was lucky enough to meet Sam during several of my early Tours and I was in awe of his ability to distil the complex, nuanced, chaotic nature of the race into such beautiful, clear prose without over-simplifying or dumbing down in the slightest. It was an honour when he agreed to write for The Cycling Anthology, a book series I co-edited with Ellis Bacon. I remember when the email arrived with his piece, which was somewhat on the short side and I initially thought there’d been a mistake. That was until I started reading and realised that he’d packed more insight, colour and wit into his piece than most of us manage in twice as many words.

Our condolences to all Sam’s friends and family and a huge thank you to James for his moving tribute.

Tour de France Eve is Christmas Eve for cycling fans. The biggest race in the world gets underway in Lille tomorrow and our team is in north-eastern France reader for the Grand Départ.

François Thomazeau has made his way from his adopted home in Marseille to the city of his birth for his 36th Tour. Lionel Birnie (22nd Tour) and Graham Willgoss (3rd Tour) have made their way through the Channel Tunnel, along with hundreds of British cycling fans. They’ve collected their accreditations and have headed to Valenciennes, their base for the opening weekend, and are ready to go…

They recorded a pre-Tour conversation at a very agreeable hotel in Valenciennes, which turned out to be the base for the UAE Team Emirates squad, and the pre-race favourite Tadej Pogačar.

The Tour starts here…

Daily episodes start on Saturday after stage one. KM0 will be released throughout the Tour. Follow The Cycling Podcast in your preferred app to get episodes as soon as they are released.

Greg Andrews and the team at DVineCellars have released their Tour de France case of wines, celebrating the route of the 2025 race.

The case of six wines is on sale now.