From Rotterdam to Alpe d'Huez
Daily coverage of the Tour de France Femmes with Rose and Denny starts on Monday
The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift starts in Rotterdam on Monday, with the race tackling Alpe d’Huez on the final day. Rose Manley and Denny Gray will be there to document the race with daily episodes.
After Monday’s opening stage, which looks set to suit the sprinters, Tuesday sees two stages, with another likely sprint followed by a short time trial. Then its into the heart of the Ardennes before a build-up to the final showdown on Alpe d’Huez.
We asked Rose and Denny what to expect and what they are looking forward to most next week.
What was your highlight of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes?
Rose: That Tourmalet stage. Everyone was absolutely enraptured as Kasia Niewiadoma – a firecracker of a rider – struck out early on Col d’Aspin and didn’t let up as she started up the Tourmalet. We had arrived at the top and the mist was so thick that we could hardly see three metres in front of us. The conditions didn’t let up so when the racers hit the climb they were absorbed into the clouds. It gave the whole race a bizarre, ethereal feel. The whole ‘what-the-hell’ vibe continued at the sight of Lotte Kopecky, who was known then primarily as a fast finisher at the Classics, going wheel-for-wheel against the best climbers in the world. But it was Demi Vollering who came through the haze to win the stage and take that precious yellow jersey.
Away from the racing though, it might have to be our experience with the pizza vending machine. Not a culinary highlight, but we’ll do anything in the name of good podcasting.
Denny: Choosing just one highlight from last year is a challenge. Covering a stage race of this magnitude for the first time, I was wide-eyed with amazement, awe, and excitement. Each day was a journey of discovery and learning.
From a sporting perspective, however, Yara Kastelijn’s win on stage four in Rodez stands out as my favourite moment. It encapsulated everything I love about stage racing: multiple plot lines, layers of intrigue, so much to unpack and uncover.
As they hit the final steep ramps up to Rodez, a now-select GC group was hoovering up the remnants of the break. Were the valiant Fenix-Deceuninck team’s efforts doomed again?
In the closing few hundred metres, with gradients in double digits, Vollering accelerated, leaving her rivals behind, picking off the final breakaway riders one by one. As she crossed the line, she sat up, ready to celebrate a momentous stage win. But realisation then dawned on her: Kastelijn had beaten her to it by taking her first pro win. Fenix-Deceuninck had done it after all – a sweet victory for the plucky underdogs.
Audrey Cordon-Ragot crossed the line in tears, Gallic emotion flooding out, devastated not to have achieved yellow.
In the hours that followed, the inquiry began. What could we read into Vollering’s time gains over her rivals? Was Van Vleuten’s reign as the Grand Tour queen about to end, or would she come storming back when the true mountains arrived on stage seven?Â
Which stage of this year’s race are you most looking forward to?
Rose: Alpe d’Huez on stage eight! It has to be. Not only is it always a spectacle but it will most likely be where the yellow jersey gets decided. We explored the history and legend of the climb in this month’s mini-feature. So many iconic moments have occured there in the men’s Tour – Coppi, Hinault v LeMond, Pantani. It’s a thrill to wonder what unforgettable moments await us on the final stage.
What’s more, we’ve seen such a revolution in racing over the past few years so gone are the days of watching Annemiek Van Vleuten solo time trial to the top of an Alpine pass. We can expect fireworks (and not just from the fans).
Denny: Well, after picking out stage four from 2023, I’ll have to go for this year’s stage four. It’s an ‘Ardennes megamix’, as Rose described it in our preview show, a marriage of the Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. It features eight categorised climbs – and several uncategorised ones too – culminating with the Côte de la Roche-aux-Fachons.Â
After three flat stages in and around Rotterdam, this stage should bring the race to life, one which has the potential to for the first definitive time gaps to be created in the GC contest.
Any places, hotels, food or drinks you’re particularly looking forward to?
Denny: Rose has yet to share the accommodation list with me, so I’m just hoping we have somewhere to stay.Â
Food-wise though, I’m hoping to discover some new Dutch cheeses. As listeners to last year’s daily episodes might recall, I love cheese. Brillat-Savarin slathered over a fresh slice of baguette or Lincolnshire Poacher with some green tomato chutney and a craft pilsner is the stuff of dreams for me.Â
But I know very little about Dutch cheese beyond the mass-produced Gouda and Edam you’ll find in most British supermarkets. So I’m hoping I can carve out some time to visit one or two artisan cheese shops in Rotterdam to get to know Dutch cheese a little more intimately!
Rose: Just not a pizza vending machine again! As I’m seven months pregnant, I'll have to leave a whole gamut of soft, blue and goat’s cheeses to Denny unfortunately. Luckily the first four stages are in the Netherlands so all the Goudas and Edams will be just the ticket.
Speculation corner – who will be the top three overall?
Rose: Demi Vollering for the win, which is perhaps not a surprise.Â
But then I think Neve Bradbury is in with a great shot of finishing second. She’s an electric rider and I don’t think any of us have witnessed what she is fully capable of yet. I’d say her Canyon-SRAM team is the strongest there, which is why…
My third place goes to another Canyon-SRAM rider, perhaps their more obvious leader of Kasia Niewiadoma. She used to be known as a punchy rider who was probably too impatient to get many wins as a stage racer but we’ve seen quite a transformation in the past few seasons. She is still that swashbuckling rider, a real thrill to watch, but she has been working hard both mentally and physically to become a force to contend with on the longer climbs.
Denny: I can’t believe you’re inviting speculation, Lionel!Â
My answers are rather conservative. The out-and-out favourite is Demi Vollering – it would be a big shock to see anyone else on the top step. I think Kasia Niewiadoma will be her closest challenger. For third place I’ll go with Elisa Longo Borghini. The Giro d’Italia Women winner is having her best season yet but I’m not convinced she can top Vollering in the mountains.Â
If I had to pick on outsider I’d go with Neve Bradbury too. She was simply brilliant on the stage to Blockhaus at the Giro and she’s such a good climber she could thrive on stages seven and eight.
Whoever the eventual winner is though, I hope the GC contest remains close right up until the final stage.
Can you pick a rider, other than the overall favourites, who’ll win a stage?
Denny: The obvious pick is Lorena Wiebes. No one has got close to her in the sprints this year. And the time trial is short enough to suit her too. So it isn’t inconceivable that she could win the first three stages.Â
To pick a less obvious candidate, I’ll go with Puck Pieterse. She enlivened the spring classics with her aggressive racing style, and stages four, five and six should suit her dynamic, punchy style of racing.Â
Rose: Grace Brown. She has several opportunities for a win, all on very different terrain. She's fresh off her Olympic gold medal in the time trial, which she won in flying fashion against a stacked field, so she might like the look of the time trial on stage three. But she's also the reigning Liège-Bastogne-Liège champion so that fourth stage which covers many of the same climbs must be appealing. Plus she's known as a breakaway queen so why not go for stage four as well? And this is the last time we'll see her at the Tour as she is retiring this year to spend more time back in Australia so what a story that would be!
What’s on the essential packing list?
Denny: Casio Niewiadoma, my trusty calculator.
Rose: Probably a fridge for all the cheese that Denny will buy!
Tour de France Femmes coverage starts on Monday. Then it’s over to Daniel Friebe and daily episodes from the Vuelta a España next weekend. Before that, ahead of the opening stage in Lisbon, Friends of the Podcast will be able to listen to April 1974, an episode of KM0 looking at Portugal’s ‘Carnation Revolution’, which nearly coincided with the country’s finest cycling hour.
Chapeau Mitch, Graham and Richard
A belated thank you to Mitch Docker, Graham Willgoss and Richard Abraham for an excellent three weeks covering the Tour de France. Despite The Kebab Shop Incident™ they maintained their sense of humour all the way to Nice and transported us listeners to the heart of the Tour in finest podcast tradition. One could even say the ‘incident’ brought them closer together and they bonded in the face of adversity? Okay, okay, that might be pushing it a bit…
As ever, our production team worked wonders getting the episodes out each night. It’s easy to underestimate the work that goes into each show, such is their reliability, but grand tour after grand tour Jon Moonie, Adam Bowie, Will Jones, Huw Owen and Tom Whalley deliver the goods.
If you are suffering withdrawal symptoms and want to hear our Tour trio again, Friends of the Podcast can listen to their KM0 episode Room Mates, which dives behind the bedroom door (not in a seedy way) to find out what it’s like travelling and sharing a room with teammates on Tour. We’re perilously close to mentioning The Kebab Shop Incident™ again, so let’s move on…
Photographs by Simon Gill
Record-breaking round the world cyclist Mark Beaumont pays tribute.
Richard’s brothers Robin and Peter with their Dad, Brian.
The big crowd, including dozens of cyclists and podcast listeners, who came to Linlithgow.
Mark Beaumont and Brian Moore unveil the memorial plaque.
Brian addresses the crowd.
Everyone gathered on the hill at Buffalo Bend.
Matt Ball, the driving force behind the creation of the circuit, talks about the small but hugely appreciated part The Cycling Podcast’s listeners played in helping it become a reality.
A rare Where Are We Lionel? sweatshirt.
The memorial plaque created by ceramic artist Stacy Snyder and cast in bronze.
Buffalo Bend honours Richard Moore’s legacy
During the closing weekend of the Tour de France, a huge crowd gathered at the West Lothian Cycle Circuit in Linlithgow for the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate and celebrate the life and work of our co-founder and friend Richard Moore.
The plaque was created by ceramic artist Stacy Snyder, who all podcast listeners will know because she makes the cups and mugs to mark each of the grand tours every year. It was cast in bronze and shipped to Scotland before being mounted on stone, which bore more than a passing resemblance to the cobbles – the Flandrian variety if not Hell of the North style.
The corner of the circuit near the entrance gate has been named Buffalo Bend in Richard’s honour. It’s the result of a friendship that goes back to 2019 and the first batch of cups Stacy made for The Cycling Podcast. We asked listeners to nominate worthy causes to benefit from the proceeds and Matt Ball wrote to suggest the West Lothian cycle circuit which was then still a vision rather than a reality.
Matt’s pitch struck a chord with Richard especially. When he was growing up in Scotland there was no such facility for young riders to use.
Matt explained at the unveiling that the response from our listeners was not just about the money. Hearing the circuit being talked about on the podcast provided a vital bit of momentum when it felt like years of hard work was stalling.
James McCallum, a Commonwealth Games medallist, explained how The Cycling Podcast’s support has helped not just the circuit but The Cycling Academy’s work to develop young riders. Then Lionel and Stacy said a few words about how the plaque became a reality, before Richard’s Dad and world record-breaking cyclist Mark Beaumont completed the official unveiling.
This is a reproduction of Lionel’s speech:
Richard, Daniel and I started The Cycling Podcast in 2013. I’d known Richard a few years by then. I’d read Slaying the Badger and Sky’s The Limit and I knew he was an excellent journalist and writer. In 2012, we worked and travelled together at the Tour de France for the first time – for Cycle Sport magazine – setting the pattern for the next decade of summers. At the start of that Tour, on my birthday in fact, while enjoying an aperitif, Richard said: ‘Why don’t we record a podcast?’ I wasn’t too sure and tried to resist but he insisted and started recording on his iPhone. As he headed to his room at the end of the evening he said: ‘Can you work out how to get that online?’
So, I stayed up late, created a Soundcloud account, figured out how to upload our rough and ready chat, but – after listening back to a bit of our late-night rambling, I hesitated to press the button to release it to the world.
At breakfast the next morning, he asked me: ‘Is the pod online?’
‘I’m not sure it’s very good, Richard,’ I said.
‘Oh just upload it,’ he said. ‘What could go wrong?’
That was the spirit of the Buffalo. Let’s just do it. We’ll figure out how to get better along the way.
I am here today as Richard’s friend and colleague but also to represent The Cycling Podcast, Daniel and dozens of Richard’s friends and colleagues who are in the Tour de France press room, peloton and broadcast studios, as well as our army of listeners who are unable to be here today.
Of the three of us who founded the podcast, Richard was the only proper cyclist. He’d ridden at a high level and had represented Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1998.
I remember once in the podcast, Daniel teed me up for the punchline…
‘Where did you finish in the Commonwealth Games, Rich?’ he asked.
‘About 25 minutes after he started,’ I said.
It was just too easy.
To be fair to Richard, he laughed because he knew he wasn’t a cyclist. Not like the cyclists who made it to the Tour de France, anyway. But he knew he was a storyteller, and he was one of the very best.
We didn’t realise it at the time but one of the reasons people tuned into the podcast was the relationship between the three of us. We didn’t plan it but themes just developed because the podcast was, first and foremost, the result of friendship – sometimes an odd sort of friendship, admittedly.
Richard wore his own cycling ability lightly – some would say rightly so! But his pride in Scotland was unequivocal, which made it a fair target for Daniel and me. We tried to tease Richard about Scottish cycling, which was hard because Robert Millar, king of the mountains at the Tour de France, was Scottish. David Millar was Scottish. Multiple Olympic champion Chris Hoy was Scottish. It was also tricky for Daniel because his Dad is actually from Harthill, not too far from here in Linlithgow.
In the very early days of the podcast, we all met with a young rider from Hackney in East London called Tao Geoghegan Hart. You should have seen Richard’s face when he realised Tao was eligible to race for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games. He practically marched him to the nearest outfitters to get him measured up for his Opening Ceremony kilt there and then.
A few years later, a Colombian sprinter called Alvaro Hodeg burst onto the scene for the Quick Step team. His surname is spelled H-O-D-E-G – the result of a misspelling at the immigration desk back in the day – but pronounced Hodge. His ancestors are Scottish and so Ally Hodge was born. Richard could have formed The Ally Hodge Fan Club.
He even tried to put a kilt on non-Scottish riders. In an episode of The Cycling Podcast Féminin he claimed that the Dutch woman Floortje Mackaij was Scottish, which admittedly had me checking Wikipedia…
A gear change…
One day, Stacy Snyder, a listener and ceramic artist from the USA, contacted us asking if we could put her in touch with the American rider Joe Dombrowski, who had recorded an audio diary for the podcast at the Giro d’Italia. She wanted to gift him a handmade cup. Richard got a cup too, and when it arrived he said: ‘We should do something with this.’
And so, in 2019, Stacy started making batches of cups to mark The Cycling Podcast’s coverage of each grand tour, with the proceeds going towards a cycling-related cause.
We asked our listeners to nominate worthy causes and the circuit here in Linlithgow was one of the first recipients of some money made from the sale of Stacy’s cups. Back then, the circuit was no more than a drawing on a piece of paper but Richard identified with the passion, commitment and vision in the email that was pitching for some of the money.
Richard was also a great champion of young riders. He gave them a voice in the podcast. He remembered his own trips with the Scotland team, riding in well-worn kit, scraping together money to race and buy equipment. It wasn’t just a lack of talent holding Richard back – cycling was, and still is, a sport that requires infrastructure, facilities, support, knowledge, commitment, and people who are prepared to put in time without any expectation of getting something back. Let’s face it, cycling requires money.
In order to provide all those things, there needs to be something physical. A place to bring people together. Somewhere to ride, to make mistakes, to crash and get dropped and learn the painful lessons of the sport where it’s safe and there’s support at hand.
To change gears again…
At some point, my Dad started investigating his own ancestry. I knew I had some Scottish blood somewhere down the line but I didn’t realise how recent it was. In fact, my great grandfather was born in Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. Not only that but he lived for a while near a hamlet called Birnie.
You should have seen Richard’s face when I told him.
‘Oh no…’
‘I’m nearly as Scottish as you are,’ I said. ‘More so, probably, because I’ve got a village named after me.’
‘No way.’
‘Well, I’m more Scottish than Ally Hodge.’
In 2021, I planned a cycle tour of Scotland for the podcast, visiting all the football grounds with Simon Gill, aka Simon the Photographer. During the planning for that trip, Matt Ball and I talked about informally naming a stretch of the circuit after Richard to recognise his support and contribution to the sport. As it turned out, I cancelled that trip in 2021 and rescheduled the Tour d’Écosse for early April 2022.
Richard died a few days before we set off and so that tour became a form of therapy, riding through his country, visiting places he’d told me about – including football grounds he’d worked at during his early days as a sports journalist. On the way, we visited this circuit, which had progressed beyond drawings on a piece of paper, but not by much.
That’s when the idea of Buffalo Bend came up. And so, here we are. Buffalo Bend marks the convergence of three things – Richard’s passion for cycling, his pride in Scotland and his support of young cyclists. I hope that the next generation of Scottish riders swoop round this corner, past our monument to Richard’s brilliance and legacy, as they make their way to the Classics and grand tours.
The Cycling Podcast is supported by MAAP
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Lionel, powerful tribute to Richard. Love how you are still needling him! Brought a tear to my eyes.