The Speculation Episode

We dust off the crystal ball for our first episode of 2025

The Cycling Podcast returned for the start of its 12th full season last week, as Daniel Friebe, Lionel Birnie and Rob Hatch indulged in some pre-race speculation with the help of some familiar voices.

Last season’s Nostradamus, Magnus Aarre from Norway’s TV2, predicted a Grand Tour grand slam for UAE Team Emirates, with three different riders taking the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España titles.

Cillian Kelly speculated that a high profile team might disappear from view, and his focus fell on Ineos Grenadiers on the basis that the owner, Jim Ratcliffe, and the architect of Team Sky’s era of dominance, Dave Brailsford, have all their energy devoted to Manchester United. Ironically, Ratcliffe is trying to restore United to their former glory as the major force in English football at a time when his cycling team has slipped into mid-table in the World Tour. While speculation about the demise of Ineos Grenadiers appears to be very premature, especially with strong rumours that a new second sponsor is about to be unveiled, there’s no doubt the team has a lot of work to do to catch up with the likes of Visma Lease-A-Bike and UAE Team Emirates, who have overtaken them in the past five years.

Orla Chennaoui asked whether mental wellbeing and mindfulness might be the next untapped area to bring about a leap in physical performance. And we speculated on the possibility of Alternative Intelligence (AI) having an increasing role in pro cycling, even as far as influencing course design, safety and race tactics. We also debated the prospect of the One Cycling project transforming the sport, a subject we are bound to return to as more details are revealed in the coming months.

• The Cycling Podcast Féminin will be back later this week.

Join the discussion at The Cannibal & Badger

We’d like to hear your predictions and trends for 2025 in our (relatively new) online forum and virtual pub, The Cannibal & Badger.

There’s a Wild Speculation thread already running, so log in to your Friends of the Podcast account and add your thoughts.

The Cannibal & Badger is our unashamedly lo-fi alternative to the algorithm-led world of social media. There’s no blue ticks, no billionaire owners, and we haven’t done away with fact-checking. (We still aspire to 70 per cent accuracy in all things). Instead, members all have something in common – everyone is a Friend of the Podcast and we hope it’ll become a warm, welcoming place to discuss the sport as the season unfolds.

Coming soon for Friends of the Podcast

A series of four KM0 episodes with a loose theme of ‘new beginnings’ to kick off 2025.

Joe Blackmore by Chris Auld, for Israel-Premier Tech.

Introducing Joe Blackmore

Between Christmas and New Year, Richard Abraham went to meet Joe Blackmore – the first British rider to win the Tour de l’Avenir, who is about to begin his first full season in the pro ranks with the Israel-Premier Tech team.

In August he won the Tour de l’Avenir’s stage to La Rosière – where Geraint Thomas took the yellow jersey in the 2018 Tour de France – and held the lead to the end of the race, clinching overall victory on the Colle delle Finestre on the final day.

Over the past decade or so, the Tour de l’Avenir has re-established itself as an accurate predictor of future success. Recent overall winners have included Miguel Ángel López, Marc Soler, David Gaudu, Egan Bernal, Tadej Pogačar, Tobias Foss, Tobias Halland Johannessen and Cian Uijtdebroeks, all of whom have made an impact in the pro peloton.

Richard met up with Joe when London was in full festive mood and they discussed his evolution from mountain biking to road racing, a breakthrough season which included overall wins at the Tour of Rwanda and the Circuit des Ardennes, victory in the under-23 edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, fifth place in the under-23 road race at the World Championships, and fifth overall at the Tour of Britain.

Cape of Hope

For a few weeks either side of Christmas, for a couple of decades now, professional cycling has decamped en masse to a strip of coastline south of Valencia to begin preparations for the coming season. If that location now defines this time of year, the same could be said of a thought process or feeling that infects and intoxicates nigh on every cyclist who makes the trip: hope. Hope, mainly, that the next campaign will be a good one, with a following wind and mens sana in corpore sano.

This December, as ever, the Valencian golden belt of winter miles – or, as we’ll now refer to it for the purposes of this episode, ‘Cape of Hope’ – was overrun with some of the best and, yes, most hopeful riders in the world. Our own Señor Brightside, Fran Reyes, was also in attendance and carrying an unusual brief: to investigate, for us, that curious epidemic of optimism that reigns in Spain in December and January. Fran had three days – and he returned with fistfuls of interviews, which together make up this KM0 and an idiosyncratic meditation on hope, faith, or maybe even a bit of forgivable delusion.

Smart Bikes – How AI Could Influence Pro Racing

Lionel spoke to former US Postal Service and Team Sky rider Michael Barry, who has written a couple of pieces for Canadian Cycling Magazine about the ever-expanding role of AI in cycling. We are used to algorithm-based technology designing training plans and nutrition strategies but as machine learning becomes more sophisticated it seems inevitable that computers will influence all aspects of the sport. But where will the line fall, how can the UCI govern technological advances while maintaining sporting integrity and without appearing to be luddites? AI is a huge subject and while this discussion barely scratches the surface of the potential, it’s a starting point for a conversation that may come to dominate the sport’s future direction.

Further reading, by Michael Barry
How AI will make pro racing even faster

How will AI affect the directeur sportif’s role and value?

Who is Jacco Verhaeren?

Former Netherlands and Australia national swimming coach Jacco Verhaeren is the new head of coaching at Visma Lease-A-Bike, filling the gap left by Merijn Zeeman, who departed at the end of last year. Fran Reyes sat down with him to talk about his new role and the areas that cycling can still address to improve all aspects of performance.

Subscribers will see the episodes drop into their Friends of the Podcast feed automatically later this week. Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast to listen to our monthly KM0 episodes and a back catalogue of more than 300 from our archive spanning a decade of coverage.