KM0: The Tour de France greatest hits I
Part one of Lionel's favourite episodes from the KM0 archive
New this week: UAE Let The Dogs Out and Dear Diary
In our final regular episode before next week’s XL Tour de France Preview, Graham, Richard and Mitch recapped the Tour de Suisse. The race was won by Adam Yates, ably supported by his faithful four-legged domestique, Zoe, pictured above during last year’s Tour de France in the Basque Country. Following Tadej Pogačar’s domination of the Giro d’Italia, a UAE Team Emirates one-two in Switzerland sent an ominous message to their rivals. Yates and his teammate João Almeida were well clear of the rest and lead a supporting cast that is packed with strong climbers. The question now is whether anyone can stand between Pog and the first men’s Giro-Tour double in more than quarter of a century.
The Cycling Podcast Féminin returned today with Rose Manley, Denny Gray and Orla Chennaoui looking at the Tour de Suisse. We also handed the mic to Christine Majerus, Pfeiffer Georgi, Eilidh Shaw and Lucy Harris to document the Tour of Britain Women.
KM0 at the Tour de France
by Lionel Birnie
If you are a Friend of the Podcast subscriber you may have noticed almost 170 episodes drop into your feed last week. That’s because we have combined our two subscriber feeds, meaning that the KM0 back catalogue consisting of episodes made at the grand tours from 2015 to 2019, and our Friends of the Podcast specials, are now in the same place.
With the Tour de France almost upon us, I’ve picked my favourite episodes of KM0 from the last nine summers. They’re chosen either because I particularly enjoyed making them or because they have stood the test of time and tell us something about the essence and history of the Tour. There’s 21 episodes on my list – one for each stage. Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast to listen, and in the process, help to enable us to cover the three grand tours.
Stage 1. Domestiques (2015)
One of the earliest episodes, made a couple of years before François broke the hearts of every English-speaking cycling fan by explaining that the French don’t even use the word ‘domestique’. They say co-équipier, which is much more egalitarian. Anyway, I explored the role of the peloton’s worker bees who fetch and carry for the stars. It was in this episode that Matt White told a story about borrowing five euros from the mechanic in his team car so he could stop at a shop during a hot stage on the Giro d’Italia to buy ice creams. The shop owner, who was watching the Giro on TV, gave him a box of Magnums which he handed out to riders when he rejoined the bunch.
Stage 2. Radio Tour (2015)
Seb Piquet had been on the podcast before but in this episode we introduced him properly to our listeners as the voice of Radio Tour. He travels in the red race direction car just behind the bunch, or the break, and keeps everyone following the Tour updated with what is going on. But how did he get a job that gives him a front-row seat and a close view of the action?
Stage 3. Christian Prudhomme (2015)
Christian Prudhomme was nine years into his stint as Tour director by the time Daniel sat down to talk to him about the job. He’d been wowed by Yorkshire’s ‘humungous bunting’ in 2014 and he explained exactly what the job of Tour boss entailed – and his recovery strategy once the race concludes in Paris.
Stage 4. A Day In The Life (2016)
Friends and family sometimes assume covering the Tour as a journalist is nothing more than a glorified three-week holiday. Of course, it’s a great experience and a privilege but the reality is that it’s actually pretty hard work too. The hotels can be a bit rough round the edges, the food can be hit and miss, and the coffee is mostly terrible. Okay, okay, your hearts bleed for us! But what is a day covering the Tour really like? We documented a day in the life of The Cycling Podcast early on at the 2016 Tour when we were all still fresh. It’d be an interesting experiment to record a Day In The Life at the end of the three weeks too.
Stage 5. The Political Cycle (2016)
It was a febrile time, politically. The UK had just voted for Brexit and Donald Trump was running for president in the United States. Implausibly, Trump had a link to cycling, and not even a tenuous one. In the late 1980s, surfing the wave of Greg LeMond’s success, there was the Tour de Trump, a stage race in the USA that was going to rival the Tour and was fronted, if not bankrolled, by The Donald. Some think politics and sport should not mix – a view I used to subscribe to myself until François explained that international sport, by its very nature, is political. The Tour de France itself is a source of great pride to the country, a way to promote tourism, and even an instrument of soft power. François joined me in this episode to explain more.
Stage 6. Disc Brakes (2016)
Of everything we’ve made, I suspect this might be the episode that has dated least well. The attitude to disc brakes before they became ubiquitous was overwhelmingly negative. For a start they made the bikes look ugly, the mechanics didn’t want to deal with them, and there were horror stories that riders were going to lose their fingers, or worse, to razor-sharp discs in crashes. We now know differently. Bike design has evolved thanks to the minimalism discs have allowed and they look sleeker than ever. They’re also faster. Even the mechanics stopped grumbling.
Stage 7. A Tour of Survival (2017)
In 1987, the ANC-Halfords team started the Tour de France in West Berlin against all the odds. They were a small British team that owed its place in the Tour largely to the fact it was the 20th anniversary of Tom Simpson’s death on Mont Ventoux. The team’s rise from domestic races on British roads to the Tour was meteoric. The team was not short of talent but by the time they got to the Tour they were already worn out, the rigour of racing well enough to show they deserved their place meant they arrived in West Berlin already frazzled. The story of the team’s boom and bust has long fascinated me and it’s one I will return to one day. This episode is a taster.
Stage 8. Ten Years After (2017)
This was one of the most intense interviews I’ve done for The Cycling Podcast, and one I was strangely apprehensive about. In 2007, Michael Rasmussen had been kicked out of the Tour while in the yellow jersey after he got caught in a web of lies surrounding his whereabouts and information he’d given to the anti-doping authorities. And yet here he was, back at the Tour in the press room working for Danish media. He’s a slightly cool presence but the fact he was friendly and showed absolutely no signs of embarrassment intrigued me. In our interview, conducted outside the press room one afternoon, he was unapologetic. He pointed out the double-standards and hypocrisy rife in the sport and challenged my thoughts on doping. I didn’t agree with him on much but I could also see he had a point.
Stage 9. Tour de La Musique (2017)
One of the most surreal episodes we’ve ever done, inspired by François’ love and knowledge of music, and recorded over a rest day drink or three. We adopted the format of the old Juke Box Jury television show, playing enough of each song to form an opinion before giving our verdict. In the 1930s the Tour had an official song every year – as the Vuelta does today – and cycling has provided the inspiration for lots of music, much of it absolutely terrible. We heard some of the highlights, such as Kraftwerk – who played at the grand départ that year in Düsseldorf – and lowlights, such as Jean-François Bernard crooning.
Stage 10. Breaking the Story (2018)
François wears his knowledge lightly, so lightly in fact that it wasn’t until we’d been working with him for a year that we realised that he had been responsible for breaking the biggest doping story in cycling’s long, chequered history. In 1998, François had been the bureau chief at the news agency, Reuters, when a trusted stringer tipped him off that a Festina team car bound for the Tour de France had been stopped on the border with Belgium and was found to have enough drugs to stock a medium-sized pharmacy in the boot. François takes up the story, which has all the drama and intrigue of a crime thriller.
Part two will be released on Monday.
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The best way to support us is to subscribe as a Friend of the Podcast. You will gain immediate access to all the episodes above plus the entire archive of more than 300 episodes released for subscribers since 2015. But more importantly, you’ll be supporting The Cycling Podcast and ensuring we can continue to send teams of journalists to cover the grand tours next year and beyond. You may have noticed we’ve been without title sponsorship since the expiration of our contracts with Supersapiens and Science In Sport and so rely on support from our listeners more than ever.
Join us for a ride in Richard’s memory
Richard Moore’s dad Brian, and Richard’s two brothers Robin and Peter, would like our listeners – and especially Friends of The Cycling Podcast – to join them at West Lothian cycle circuit in Linlithgow, Scotland, on Saturday, July 20, when Mark Beaumont will unveil a plaque, created by Stacy Snyder, in Richard’s memory.
Bring a bike and join us on a few laps of the circuit, wear your Cycling Podcast jersey or casquette, if you have one. If you can’t bring a bike but just want to say hello and have a cup of tea, refreshments will be available. Brian has even promised the sun will be shining!
Saturday, July 20
West Lothian Cycle Circuit
McGinley Way, Linlithgow EH49 6SQ
Circuit open: 10.00 to 13.00
The plaque will be unveiled at a time to be confirmed between 10.00 and 13.00
The Cycling Podcast is supported by MAAP
A big thank you to MAAP for supporting The Cycling Podcast. Check out the full range of clothing to make you look the part on, and off, the bike at maap.cc