The Giro d'Italia starts here

Get set for Girovagando 2024 and join Daniel and Brian from Torino to Roma

KM0 Live – an event for Friends of the Podcast on Monday

Friends of the Podcast subscribers have been invited to join Daniel Friebe, Larry Warbasse and Joe Dombrowski for a (virtual) evening of Giro d’Italia-themed conversation, and a chance to ask questions about the first grand tour of the 2024 season on Monday, April 29.

KM0 Live will be hosted by Daniel on Zoom and it’s the first of a trio of live events this season exclusively for Friends of the Podcast.

Date
Monday, April 29

Time
7pm UK
8pm CET
2pm US East Coast
11am US Pacific Coast
4am (April 30) Sydney

How to attend
If you are a current Friend of the Podcast subscriber, you will already have received an invitation. If not, check your spam folder and then drop us a line at contact@thecyclingpodcast.com

If you subscribe as a Friend of the Podcast before Monday we’ll send you an invitation.

The countdown to Torino

Next week, as the team line-ups are finalised in time for the Grande Partenza, we’ll release our XL Giro d’Italia preview episode. No selection dilemmas for us – our team for the Giro will once again be Daniel Friebe and Brian Nygaard, and our daily episodes will capture the flavour and sounds of the race as it makes its way round the country.

To whet the appetite, a triple bill of Giro-themed KM0 episodes will be released in the run-up to the opening stage, starting with one I am very keen to listen to, because it sits at the heart of the calcio-ciclismo intersection and will delve into the history of one of Italy’s greatest sporting teams. The opening stage of this year’s Giro finishes in Turin on the 75th anniversary of the Superga air disaster which killed the Torino football team and the race will no doubt pay fitting tribute. Torino had dominated Italian football after the Second World War and the plane carrying the team back from playing a friendly against Benfica crashed into the hillside at Superga. The team is still spoken of in reverential terms today, referred to simply as Grande Torino. Last year, on our way back from Milan-Sanremo, Simon, Herbie Sykes (who is a Torino supporter having initially been a Manchester City fan – after making an entirely understandable switch) went to watch Torino play Ciro Scognamiglio’s Napoli and I got the full run-down of the club’s history. Herbie features in the episode, as does John Foot. Truly, the Giro is upon us.

Love & Other Drugs is Daniel’s account of the 1998 Giro, which was the first leg of Marco Pantani’s double – the last time anyone managed the feat. For Daniel, though, the race was as much about the enigmatic brilliance of the runner-up, Pavel Tonkov, as it was the swashbuckling pirate. We were in Friuli during one Giro a few years ago, and Tonkov – who still looked like he could be part of the peloton despite being in his late forties – took a seat at the next table. It is no exaggeration to say that for the duration of the meal, Daniel was not really there. He was gazing in awe at his hero.

Last, but no means least, Fran Reyes makes a welcome return to The Cycling Podcast in Sierra Alpha, which is the inside story of Tadej Pogačar’s Giro preparation work in the Sierra Nevada.

The three episodes will be released on Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week and will be essential listening for Friends of the Podcast subscribers in readiness for the start of the Giro on Saturday, May 4.

Online now for Friends of the Podcast subscribers

How To Become A Pro Cyclist and How To Become An Ex-Pro Cyclist

The latest two episodes on the Friends of the Podcast subscriber feed, released earlier this week, are equally compelling studies of what it takes to become a pro cyclist and how to adapt to life when that journey comes to its inevitable end.

Daniel talks to Jack Burke, the author of How To Become A Pro Cyclist, about his remarkable story and the book, which is part memoir, part manual.

Then Daniel heads to Nice to catch up with Joe Dombrowski, who in January called time on a pro career that started with Team Sky, finished with Astana and spanned more than a decade in the pro peloton. At the time of recording, Joe was just beginning to adjust to life as a retired rider, weighing up what comes next and realising that the competitive instinct doesn’t fade overnight.

Joe became well-known to podcast listeners when he recorded an audio diary at the 2016 Giro. That episode, plus Young Americans and Young(ish) Americans, the episodes made when Richard Moore visited Joe, Larry and Ian Boswell in their adopted home on the French Riviera, are also all available on the Friends of the Podcast subscriber feed.

Thank you to buycycle

Our Liège-Bastogne-Liège episodes on Sunday brought the spring season of Arrivée to a close. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone at buycycle for supporting the series. As you probably heard in the episodes, buycycle is the place to buy and sell bikes online and for a limited time, listeners can sell their bikes without incurring a sellers’ fee with the code TCP24

If you missed any of our Arrivée episodes, they are all on The Cycling Podcast feed.