Cycling Coaches React To Worst Tactics from 2025 Tour

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Tribalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. The 2025 Tour de France had everything. Chaos, crashes and tactics that sometimes left us shaking our heads. But from wout's monster finale stages that felt like one day classics and teams burning matches way too early sometimes. Today we want to break down the moves that made and broke this Tour. Why some teams succeeded and some failed. And how do you actually beat Poguchar? Get ready for a breakdown of training and racing strategy, drama and a little controversy. And I want to preface this by saying, you know, this is just unsolicited advice from us on the couch peloton, as they say. We're just looking from our armchair expert position, giving our thoughts on the stage. But the man next to me is a proven winner, former Australian ironman champion and 16 time Australian time trial road race crit race champion. And we probably won a million other club races and so does know how to win. And so I want to extract the coach's thoughts here of how the race unfolded and his insight into some of the cycling racing strategy into the episode. Dad, welcome back to an episode. What an epic three weeks. And it continues with the Tour de F Tour de France Femmes, which is on straight away. It started on Saturday night, which we're eagerly watching, especially after our interview with Sarah last week of her third place at the Giro. She's aiming for some good mountain stages coming up, so we're glad that SBS continues to show that for us. But what are three weeks? I just want to drive straight into the last stage. God, I think everyone around the world, including us, was screaming at the TV for Wood.

I know, and I felt almost bad for Pog, but why should I when he's dominating so much and it was so good? Whether you like Van Art or not, most people would have been cheering for the underdog and for someone to finally crack pog, you know, and there's a lot of reasons that would you could actually give to why that happened, why that occurred. But the main thing is that, you know, man on man, for one stage there, you would back POG every time. And you can't underestimate the mental fortitude of WOUT Van Art to, to really dig deep and get that gap, which was ended up being a winning gap at the end where it counted and you know, could it have been POG was just so exhausted from three weeks of, you know, defending every single challenge that was thrown at him. And, and wout didn't have such as as hard a tour. But, but doesn't matter. It's the stage is there to be one and doesn't matter what form you come into on that day. It's. It's who's the better on the day. And it was just brilliant to see where, you know, him and Inger Britzen are our favorite sons. And it was really good to see where come home with an epic victory. And you could tell it meant so much to him. And it was similar to the Strada Biancha when he finished in Siena there it was those two victories really standout performances for, for people who've been riding w off, you know, Vanderpoel so much better than he now. And you know, all these sentences when you see him do those two stages, you know, just remind you that he's. He's not done with yet and he's got, he's got plenty of fight left in him.

Yeah, not just the Stradivianchi Classic, but the Strad Bianchi Giro stage as well, which is that epic finish. And that was a win that he coming for so long. But I loved. The reporter asked him afterwards, you know, was this a stage that you mapped out for the Tour? You know, you really eyed off this one. He said yes, this one plus the 20, 20 stages beforehand, you know, and, and he's going, I've had a quite a disappointing tour, to be honest. And he, and he felt like he had not performed himself in terms of his own abilities, but also not been able to help the team as much as he wanted. So it did mean a lot to him. And my thoughts on this last stage, when they first said they're getting rid of the, you know, the Champs Elysees Sprint, I said I don't care if people say it's boring. It's such great tradition. It's just so good to see them roll in. They can't deserve that. The sprinters deserve that introduction at the end of the Tour after such a grueling three weeks. But yeah, the stage completely proved me wrong. I am all on board this. It was so exciting. It was like a one day classic, a world champs race. It was unbelievable and really smart decision to neutralize the race with 50k to go. So anyone that wanted to race, they could. Anyone that wanted to play it safe, they could. And it just turned into an epic last 50k. And I hope they keep that or at least, you know, I alternate between it.

Yeah, look, the sprinters are the only ones who have been really disappointed in some of the teams would have been really against that because their only option was to have a sprint finish. And, and let's face it, when POG's dominating the race so so much you don't want to give him another opportunity to win another stage. And I think I would kind of agree with that. But you know, to Wout van Art's credit, he, he upstaged them all and, and it would have taken a mighty effort for him to, to drop points and you know, not many people can say they've done that on a climb. And it did remind me of the world Championships at Glasgow with Matthew van der Poel and, and there was four or five of them all attacking each other on that circuit where they did that, that main climb, I don't know, it seemed like about 15 or 20 times and it was really a race of attrition. And that, that last stage in Paris was the same and it was great that they used the, the Olympic Games venue and boy, some of the crowds, that section where there was, you know, 90 deep row of, on the hill, on the hill where they came up. And I was listening to Garrett Thomas saying, you know, the interview was asking him, you know, would you have rather have come into the Champs Elysees on your last ever Tour de France? And he said, yeah, I thought that exactly. I was really disappointed. I wanted to, to just to get the emotion of my first Tour de France and here is my last Tour de France. And he said, but you know what, when I went past that hill and, and the whole crowd erupted, he said, I'll never forget that as long as I live. And he said, there might have been a few guys behind me getting the crowd razzed up. And I think that's what actually happened. A few of his opposition teammates were really hanging out to get Grant the send off that he wanted. And when you hear riders talk like that, you know, and he said, look, it was a really scary stage and you know, quite dangerous. But he said, you know what, it was worth it. It was, it was, I'll never forget that stage as long as I live. And he said, I'll remember all the, all the, all the, you know, the good things about the Tour, but I'll never forget that stage that was epic.

The cliff. Once Benart had broken away and they crested that last climb and then it's, it's quite a Descent back to the tr and, you know, as it gets more and more into the descent, he's going, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70. Oh, that is just heart in your mouth going, oh, please don't crash it also for Pog as well, who was, you know, chasing him down, I'm going, oh, please don't. I know it's neutralized, but please don't crash here and, and wreck yourself. And what would happen if Pog crashed and couldn't get back on his bike to finish the race? I mean, it's neutralized, but you've surely you've got across the finish line to get your win. So directors must have been watching going, oh, we love you, but Jesus, this is risky.

Yeah. Get the whole peloton, you know, behind him, pushing him, because no one would want to win.

No.

When he crashes on the last day. And look, the, the wet cobbles were really dangerous. Yeah. And, you know, you and I have ridden on wet cobbles, and it's, you know, you've come down on them yourself, and it's, yeah, it's so easy. It's like ice skating. And it was pretty scary heart in your mouth stuff. But it was a, it was an epic finish and, yeah, it was. Yeah, I, I, it was a great Tour, and there were lots. I think it was a lot, a lot better tour than it's been in a long time because they got rid of those ridiculous, boring, you know, 210k stages where the break went up the road. It was all scripted, and, you know, it came down. You could watch the last kilometer and see who won. And, and this time, almost every stage had an opportunity for someone. And ironically, 14 teams missed out on doing something. But, but, yeah, there was an opportunity there, and I think that's. It reminded me a lot of the Giro. That's why I love the Giro, because, and the welter, because they don't do this neutralized stuff. Let the brake go up the road. I just. And, you know, let's let everybody look at the scenery. I just, I don't think that's what it's meant to be. I think, you know, people will eventually stop watching if it's, if they're going to do a lot of those stages. And I think they're, I think they did the right thing. It was great.

Yeah. It's interesting you say that, because a lot of people just look at the GC and go, it was an absolute washout. So how could it be exciting? But it was all the other stages that Made it really exciting. Although I will say we do have short memories, because a couple of years ago, I remember thinking, geez, I don't remember the Tour being this hard, you know, and all the flat stages. My memory is all the flat stage has been really boring. Which 20 years ago, I think they were. They were kind of nullified stages. And then last year, I remember listening to a podcast and they were saying, far out. We've never seen a Tour de France this hard before. In the first week, this is just absolute mayhem. And I remember making a note of it, thinking, I wonder if the same thing's going to happen next year. And sure enough, the first week, everyone's saying the same thing. We've never seen a Tour de France this hard. So I think the level is just getting higher and higher and there's just no, there's no room for anything boring or anything remotely nullified or, or flat anymore. But also, I think the Tour is just a really hard race. And every year we get 21 different stories in a row from 21 different stages, which is just incredible. The last point I want to make on, on the last stage was you saw W's cobble skill coming into one of the final corners when the chase was still on to get him back. He had seven seconds on. On Pogachar and Horic and Jorgensen, and he went around the corner coming off a really fast ascent really late on the brakes. You could hear the squealing brakes on the, on the tv. And he went around that corner and I thought, I wonder how fast they're going to go around the corner. Came out of the corner and you had 12 or 14 seconds. He put six or eight seconds into. Into them, around that corner. And just, just knowing that the cobbles. And he was already, I think, going to stay away that seven seconds, but that solidified it.

Yeah. And look, coming from Belgium, you know, you don't, or can't underestimate the skills that a lot of the Belgian riders, when they're so used to riding cobbles in crap conditions, in rain, wet, icy, slippery. It's not like they ride the cobbles in training all the time, but they've grown up riding these cobbles, so they have, you know, and he is a really great cyclocross rider in his own right, so, you know, you underestimate the skills that these guys have got. And we can't see. It's like watching Grand Prix car racing. You can't really see what 300km an hour looks like. On the telly it just, you know, until you stand there and watch them go past you, it's quite, it's quite scary how fast these guys are riding.

Yeah. Yeah. What did you think of. This is always interesting when you're in a breakaway and there's two teammates. We saw it a few times throughout the, throughout the whole three weeks. But what did you think of Jorgen's tactics with w. How did you, how did you see that unfold? And do you think that was. Was well done enough from, from him and them?

Yeah, look, I think a lot of the time as a couch potato watcher, we underestimate the fatigue that a lot of the writers have, and we should be quite careful about how we criticize. And, and I'm, I'm guilty of this as well. You know, I'd be yelling at the telly, why isn't he attacking or why isn't he counter attacking? And the probable reason is, if he hasn't been told not to is because he can't. And, and, you know, if, if you had the, the fitness to do whatever you wanted, then all those scenarios should play out that way. But, but there are times when the riders are too stuffed. They just can't actually do much more than they're doing. And, and it's all very well for us to sit there and say, oh, he should have, he should have done this or he should have done that. And I think they would if they could. And it's like when you're in a bunch in a breakaway and someone know someone sits on and someone else sits on, and one of those people who's sitting on can roll turns and the other one who sits on can't. And you've got to work out which person's telling the truth. And you only find that out at the end when the person who can sit on, you know, doesn't roll a turn and out sprints you, whereas the, the person who, who can't roll a turn and sits on doesn't do anything in the final. And then you work out who, who's actually bluffing and who's not. So, so it's hard to work out whether the tactics are there, but they just can't implement them. Yeah.

The reason I ask you is it's not just a biased opinion. You know, your, your race tactic IQ is, is off the charts. And I say it's not biased because I've been told my whole life from all your competitors and everyone we know who raced against you at crits, road races, national titles, where you Just won countless times that your racing IQ was, was out of this world. And, and I think that that was a big lesson you taught me growing up was. Whenever we're watching these races, I used to say that a lot. Used to say, why isn't he going? What's he doing? And you're saying, jordy can't. He's not going because they can't. You know, there's.

That's.

If, if they could go, they would. And you have to really drill that into yourself that if they're not going, it's because they can't. And Sarah actually said that in the podcast last week where she was going. She was with Marlon Roycer, they were breaking away and she's going, oh, her turn's not as strong as I thought it would be here. And she realized to herself, although if she could go stronger, she would because they're in a breakaway right now, so that means she's on a limit. And Sarah going, well, it's not too strong for me. That means I have good legs. So that's the kind of conclusion you can draw from that. Yeah.

And you know, I think Jorgensen, he's a fighter and I, he was on his knees, honestly, he kept fronting up day after day. And look, I felt sorry for him because Sepp Kuss was meant to be, you know, the, the other person who was going to take a lot of the responsibility in. Sepp just wasn't at the level for this Tour, unfortunately. And so he really didn't contribute a lot. And it would have grated on Sepp being, you know, been unable to contribute. You know, he's a welter Tour winner, you know, so he has won a Grand Tour, so he's no mug, but he just wasn't on the, on the right level. And you could say that. You know, a lot of the field, the guys, you know, some of them got their form exactly right, some have just got it not quite right. And I think W was getting better as the tour went on and it showed at the end and, and his determination to get something out of the Tour was a, was the, you know, when you're, when you're racing up that hill, just put yourself in this mindset. Pog's won everything. He's already won the Tour and he's against a guy who he knows is not going to give up because I want to win this stage. So Pog's got to change his mindset to no, I'm not letting you win this stage. I'm going to Beat you no matter what. He's also got those people saying, oh, you're boring. He's got all these things in his mind. Not that he's thinking about that, but you think about the mindset of a person who's actually won everything in this three weeks, and a person who's won nothing. I just think that wout had more to, to win and, and, and to lose. Thank did.

Yeah, that would, that wouldn't make sense. We can't often when we hear interviews from the athletes, they are human. They're not aliens like us as much as they perform like aliens. And they actually, they do in these interviews talk about the same things we're talking about. And unfortunately, there was a lot of talk about is Poga clean this Tour? Because his dominance is just outrageous. There's a lot of talk online about it. And Poguchar himself was getting involved in it. I saw this bowl video trying to sack to his tactics, and this guy was defending him, saying, this all seems reasonable. And he actually had liked the post. So this is the middle of the Tour. So they are seeing and hearing this. They're not completely immune to it unless they're locking their phone away. So these things would be playing on their mind. My last question for this is, do you think that if it was closer and Vinegar guard was only 50 seconds down on Poguchar or under a minute or something, that the race would still neutralize it with 50k to go? Or do they say, you guys need to race this stage no matter how dangerous it is? You know, Vineyard could break away for 50 seconds here. So what do you think they do there?

Yeah, I definitely think they would have considered that Jordan, the fact that he was so far ahead, you know, no one likes to see, as I said earlier, no one likes to see someone lose the Tour because of an incident. But yeah, I think if it was closer, there's no way they were going to do that. I, I, I would think they would have a different outcome. It's all very well for them to sit there and say, oh, no, you know, this is what we would do, no matter what the scenario. I disagree. I think if it had been, you know, within 20 or 30 seconds, you know, it's all, it's all on here. And they've selected that race intentionally to have an out, an outcome that wasn't going to be predictable, like a sprint, you know, when you finish on the Champs Elysees, there's only five or six riders who can win. When you do a circuit like this it's no different to a one day stage and of course POG is dominating so they probably regretted it when they saw him dominate the Tour in the first two and a half weeks saying oh no, we've made a mistake here because he's just going to win this stage as well. But it turns out that that's not what happened and no one's guaranteed a victory. And you know yo Ambranil said this and you mentioned this to me before we started that you know it is so hard to win a stage. You just don't understand how difficult it is to win a stage. And because you know Cavendish has won 36 and what's Polk up to?

20, 20, 21?

I think something like 23. I'd have to check but, but you know he still wants to win stages and he wants to win the Tour and we should talk about that a little bit. You know I think think he, I think he's matured a bit and he wasn't so gung ho this time and I think Vinegard's form caused him to be a little bit more defensive rider this year. Whereas when he's winning so easily in other one day races and tours he can be a bit more blase about going having a crack and we had a crack at him about that and I think he rode really clever this year and still he was trying to win stages, there's no doubt about that. But he was, he even said you know, defense first and then if there's an opportunity then I'll try and win the stage. Whereas before it was like you know, gung ho attitude. And I think, I think that beat him in the bum of you know, at least one year where, where he just cracked one of those stages and they went up the same stage this year. One of them was Hortican. Can't remember what the other stage was where he said, he just said I'm dead. He went on the radio dead.

Yeah.

And they rode that stage again this year and he won that stage. So anyone? Hortican as well. So I think it was a really mature R and I, I think it was a. Well a well planned out even though he had Almeida out of the Tour, you know, so there's a lot of positives we should give a lot of kudos to, to UAE for the way they rode the tour and they totally dominated it and, and I really feel that you know, with his, without his right hand man it was a hardest tour for him to win. And Videgaard's form was really. Which wasn't that far away and he actually beat him on one stage and had that been the INEOS guy, what's his name, Aaronson up the road, would have won, would have won that stage and he would have beaten POG on one of those stages. So yeah, I've, I've jumped, I've jumped around a little bit but I'm, I'm really. Yeah, I want to congratulate POG for, you know, much more mature performance I feel and I think he really understands how hard stage winning stage tours are to win. And now that he's won three tours and I'd love to see him do the welter and have a crack at that and, and see if the teams, you know, we talked about this before, see if the teams would try some more tactics, work together a bit more. But that's a topic we can discuss.

Yeah, honestly, I don't, I think there's a bit of conflict of interest with the Vulture because I think Almeida has had that peg all year as his, his chance to be a GC leader. But at the same time everyone's going, you're this good pog, you know, go to the triple. No one's done it before. So I don't at this stage there's been no talk of it. But that would be from UAE themselves. I mean there's lots of talk around it, but that would be very interesting. Garrett Thomas said on his own podcast, cuz last year Pog won six stages and then this year he won three in the first 11 or whatever. And everyone's going, he's going to get Cavendish's record easily. Know he's, he's going to win six stages a year. And G. Thomas said that's true if it keeps going like this. But, but his stages aren't easy. Exactly what you're saying. And you've got to, you've got to celebrate your wins when you get them because he didn't really, he didn't win a stage after that. And like, and we, you never know what's going to happen. And we talk about this with athletes all the time. Like celebrate your peak form all the time. Because stuff tends to always interrupt at some point. And you know, we, we saw this with Egan Bernal. He dominated a tour at 19 years old or 21 or however young he was. And everyone said, well that's, that's the tour for the next six years. You know, this kid is that good. He's going to win six in a row. And he had a Bad crash. He hasn't been the same rider since. And so Pog's 27. You know, if he keeps his dominance for a few years and keeps winning three or four, yeah, he'll get close to Cavendish, but, you know, it takes a lot to get that consistency and for nothing to go wrong, you know, especially in a sport like cycling. We've seen it with Jonas, we've seen it with Remco. We see it, we see it with Rogue. Every Grand Tour, something can easily go wrong. He's, he makes his own life, Pog, and he doesn't crash too often, which really helps him. But again, it doesn't take much, so you can't take his, his wins for granted. Now people are just saying, oh, it's, it's boring now. He's going to win for the next 10 years. Well, not true at all, you know, Absolutely not true.

No things happen. And you know, you would have thought that out of the last four years, the way he's riding, he would have won the last four, five years. He would have won the last five Tours. Well, he's only won three out of the last five and like he did win four stages of this Tour. And so, so, yeah, his odds are if he does that average of four each. But he's got to stay healthy, he's got to not be injured. Look at Remco. How bad an accident has Remco had three times now? And you know, Vinegar's had a shocking accident Routes had some shocking accidents. And you know, you call it bad luck or, or poor, poor riding or whatever you want to call it. That's the fact that those things happen. And Pog has had a wrist injury and the year he had the wrist injury, he didn't win the Tour. And you know, so you just can't say that that's a foregone conclusion. You know, you've still got to do the preparation, you've still got to win each stage, ride each stage and, and put time into your opponents and, you know, it's a whole process. And so I just don't think that's true, that, that it's a foregone conclusion that he could, you know, get. Oh, I think it'd be magnificent if someone can get close to Cavendish's his number. But I just don't think that that's, that's a. On his mindset. I think he would be rather winning Tours than the most, the most stage wins ahead of that. That would be my first process that he would try to win, you know, Almost what Lance has done sort of thing and prove that it can be done legally if, if that's the case. So, so I think there's other different goals and it's, it's always good for us to talk about it. But, but definitely he has got the ability to win many more Tours. But we, you know, we, we did see vinegar. I think if he, you know, next year he will be, he, he's come back from an injury himself and I think had he not had that interrupted preparation, I think, you know, it would have been a lot closer than people are actually witnessing.

I'm always surprised at, you know, the comments when people say it's a blowout or whatever. I am just more surprised when it's closer because over three weeks of racing, you can't believe that three weeks, 180 kilometer stages, 200 stages that guys are within a minute of each other after 21 stages, you know, you just. The amount that can go wrong in a single day, you assume it, it could blow out to three or four minutes or have bigger swings, which it just doesn't tend to. Which I guess is the level of riding they have now that everyone's just so consistent. Consistent. But yeah, Jonas, he had an unbelievable tour and in his own words, he basically had three bad days and, and that's what cost him. And the other days he was in his best form ever and they were both riding records up these climbs and he was pushed stronger on, on pogging one on the stage. Didn't get the stage win. But I don't think Jonas did much wrong. I think that Pogar is just generally pretty unbeatable and Visma probably just.

I'm.

Going to use the word expended unnecessary energy, too much spread out throughout this, the, the tour and didn't use their team to their full capacity. I don't know if they made any major red flag, crucial mistakes. It was just a lot of little things I think added up. That would be my summary. What do you think of business team tactics?

Yeah, I thought they had a good team. Having Yates, Sep, Kuss and Jorgensen I think was, was, you know, really good. And of course you've got, you know, wout Bernard there. So there's a, a good list of five out of your eight riders. There are, you know, pretty damn solid riders and I would agree. I just don't think the way the race panned out, a lot of their decisions backfired a little bit. Even though they had the right strategies. I, I think that at the end of the Day, you had to use Sepp Kuss a bit more, but maybe he didn't have the form you need. You need to send him up the road, especially when Almeida was unavailable for Pogucha. That's, that's when they had the advantage and they had Yates, Kuss and Jorgensen. And you know, the idea is for your, as you said, your second best rider needs to be really close in gc, which is what Jorgensen was early on, and you need to use him up the road. And they tried to do that, but it ended up destroying Jorgensen because he was in too many of those events. You need like Sep Kusted at the welter, which actually got him the win at the welter. When Roglich and Vinegard were the main, you know, they already had two GC riders and Sepkus went up the road and no one else in the field worried about Sepkus and they ended up getting a four or five minute lead and they couldn't drag it back. And he ended up winning the tour even though Jorgens, Roglich and Vinegar were his teammates and were probably better than him. But, but that's what should have, that's what my opinion should have been. They should have been using Sepkos, Yates and Jorgensen to really make sure that UAE had to chase down everything. And that would have tied them out rather than the tactic of sitting on the front like they did do a previous year when Jorgen, when Vinegar did win, they literally rode Pog off his legs. But he's a different rider now and he was able to just sit here. It was just like that. It was like Pog had his own team, except they're in yellow sitting on the front for him. They weren't, they weren't tiring him out at all. They needed a different tactic and I got disappointed when they kept doing that day after day. And maybe the fact that Kush, Yates and Jorgensen weren't good enough, but then Yates comes out and wins the stage. So I think you're hedging your bets a bit when you, you know, we out won the last stage, which is, it was over by then. But to have Yates in that, you know, good a form from the, from the Giro, I just think that, you know, they might look back and say, I don't know if we handled those, that advantage that we had with those three really good riders to our advantage to put pressure on uae, really good points.

And let's, let's clarify this. Do you think, how do you beat Poguchar and the follow up question is, is he actually beatable? And you know, to start with, he's, he's undoubtedly almost unbeatable right now, you know, so no matter what tactics they were doing, it's at the end of the day, it's Jonas versus Pogasher and Jonas wasn't good enough. And so regardless of all the team tactics, that has to be said. But I will say that Jonas himself has said, I don't think winning this tour was unachievable. And again, I just had three bad days, but I was really informed of everything else. And so to hear that from him, you know, the rest of us are just going, pogger's an alien. He's unbeatable. He doesn't have a bad day, you know, but it would only take one this tour and it would have been even. Again, you know, he, he managed to not crack at all, but, and to be honest, he hasn't cracked for what seems like 20 races in a row now. He just is literally unbeatable. But, but I guess my question, Stan. So knowing those two things, knowing that he is an alien, but Jonas thinks it's achievable, how do you beat Poga?

Well, I just think we did talk about this. I think a lot of the problem is the ego from teams. My thing would be, well, we need to actually gang up on uae and I'm talking about pretty much the whole peloton and if, if the peloton's got the belief that he's too good and they're in it for just stage wins, then you can't, you can't do anything about it. But if, if the other teams such as uae, such as Bora or any of the other teams that thought they had a chance like Bora, had a two pronged attack with Roglic and, and who was the other guy? Lich. Sorry. Yeah, they had a, they had a really, a really big opportunity there and we didn't know what form both of them were in. But, but you know, Rogvich is a, he's a previous Grand Tour winner, so you would expect. And he's left, he's left Visma to go to a team to be the number one rider. So I was a bit disappointed in him, to be fair. And I was almost cheering Lipowicz on to, to be the number one rider. And I was interested in their tactics where when Lipowicz was struggling a little bit, Roglich didn't go back and help when he was actually coming behind him in the general classification. So, so my point about getting, getting the teams to work together has a real problem because of each of the teams don't want to sort of, and I don't know if it's in the rules anyway that you, that you get together and try to gang up on another team. But, but that is the only way when someone's dominating like that. If you've got people who are near within you know, a minute or so, two minutes or so, up to four minutes that they can be sent up the road and UAE have to respond every time. So if you've got someone in second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth up to up to four or five minutes and if you keep sending them up the road, you know the other, the other teams can then counter as well if that, if that person gets caught other teams with their GC that that wasn't happening. And if, if POG ends up winning three, four tours in a row, they're going to have to resort to this tactic where they have to work together as, as you know, 14 other teams against, against UAE so that, so that you know, gives, it gives someone else a chance. So, so UAE can't counter every single attack from every other team. So you know that's just not going to happen. You know what it's like when there's a guy in a one day race when there's one guy up the road or one girl up the road and there's seven or eight chases. Why does the one rider up the road never get caught? It's because those seven rate chasers can't work together. They can't talk it through to say come on guys, if we just roll together seven will beat one and, but they don't. Someone sits on someone misses a turn and then someone gets really pissed off because someone's not pulling their weight. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it either. You know, I'm not gonna tow that person to the, to the front. So this is the same theory as it is in the teams. You know, someone, someone you decide that you're all gonna try and gang up on UAE and then someone from one of the teams doesn't, then it just destroys the whole thing. So, so my ideal world is that they all get together and gang up but I just don't think it's ever going to happen. And it just has to be someone who's a second string GC rider in any of the teams to be thrown up the road who's within four minutes that UAE have to keep responding to. And that's like, you know, Visma had Jorgensen or of course. Or Yates and, and you know, Bora had Roglich and, and Lipowicz more than Roglich because they're not going to let Roglich go up the road. And maybe now we know in hindsight only, you know, from picnic post, you know, we wouldn't have known that at the start though if they, you know, if they let him go up the road, they weren't to know that he was going to come forth overall and they might have let him go. So. So yeah, there's a lot of tactics that could have been put into place. But it's easy in hindsight.

Yeah, as always. It's so interesting though because yeah, I think that we spoke about this with the One day Classics. That that strategy of what you're talking about can work really well to stop pog's domination in one day races because he just gets that big jump where people can't go with him up these short punchy climbs and then he just time trials away. And we were saying in the one day Classic, stop trying to go with him on those climbs. You know, everyone blows themselves up by trying to go with him when they're better and they run into that red zone and they can't recover if everyone just stayed in their range. Let him go up the road, let him get 20 or 30 seconds, him going into his own red zone and then if you're all willing to work together, you could time trial and get him back. Seven versus one should always win. But again, the likelihood of that happening in an actual race is, is slim to none.

No. And you and I talked about this and I said to you this is exactly what they should let happen when he's, when he's on Flesh Malone or he's on any of the main spring classics, you know, you know, when he attacks, it's, it's always strategic and he has done a lot of attacks where they've been 40 or 50k solo victories. They sh the teams when he attacks, they should just stay in their zones as you said, and work together, leave him out there. And you know, we've done that many times in club races. If some guy attacks and the rest of the group, as long as they all decide to work together, let that guy out there, you know, it is, happens to be the best rider in the world and he possibly could ride that well against six or seven riders. But, but if you work together well enough, you can actually leave the guy out there and he'll be that exhausted by the time you catch him, you know, he's no longer a factor in the race. And I think that that is a tactic that should be employed.

So teams need to somehow work together and, and multi prong attack. And once again, if he's still too good, he's still too good. Bisma went very aggressive in that first 10 days and that, that did cost them and, and the working on the front, we, you do get that tactic. But you know, UAE had the yellow jersey very early on and this has happened a lot the last few years. You know, I would say make them spend as many hours as possible on the front, you know, every single day, get them out in the wind. That hurts him at the back of week two and week three, you know, and we saw it with Jay Cole. By the end of week three, they had no riders left to help Ben o' Connor defend his top ten place. And so it's the same thing. Visma let I think UAE off the hook a lot with this strategy, with his aggressive strategy. Easy to say in hindsight, you know, it has worked for them before. But I just think when, when pogs in yellow just do not, do not give UAE any sort of respite. Just say you guys are in yellow, you have to run on the front. You expend as much energy to have today and wear them down that way. You know, let themselves wear themselves down and, and on that, that double GC strategy. You know, I wonder if teams will have to try and employ some sort of strategy where Visma go out and buy Lipich or, or buy Oscar only or, or the next best GC contender on top of having Yates and Jorgensen or maybe, you know, if they really committed it all in on, on the Tour, they keep someone like Yates super fresh for, for the Tour or something like that where they, they generally have someone that could almost be a GC contender that Poppaj has to watch. Both of them. We, we saw that work years ago in I think it was maybe the 2008 Tour de France where CSC Saxo bank had the Schleck brothers and the guy ended up winning Carlos Sastra all and they never, they refused to say the whole Tour which one of those three guys was the. Was the leader for the gc. And on one of the days Sasha went and everyone was looking at the Schleck brothers and Sasha got enough time that he ended up winning the Tour de France.

So another example, George of that is the sky team when they had Wiggins, Froome, Richie Port, Garant Thomas and all those, you know, three of those guys ended up winning the Tour and they had them all in one, the one team at once. And, and so that theory you're talking about worked. I think. I think Jumbo have that. Visma, sorry have that at the moment. I think, I think they've. But they just didn't use it well enough and I just don't think Sepp Kuss was in the form that he wanted.

Needed to be.

He wanted to be or needed to be. So, so I think they had the right, the right idea with the, with you know, Yates, Jorgenson and, and Kuss. But I just don't think they're in good enough form to, to be legitimate contenders, to be chased down. And unfortunately, you know, that's. And Roglich wasn't either. Roglich really wasn't in great form, you know, compared to what he's been at before. I mean the good thing was he actually finished it the first tour and four, four goes so. But you know, but I didn't think much of his attitude. It just seemed when he was interviewed he just seemed like he had a blas.

Blas.

Not really caring much about what's going on. So. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure about that.

You've point before about Yates winning the stage. It's. It just brings up an interesting discussion. I wonder what the mindset was around Visma because they love sending one some up on the break and the speeds they're riding these climbs now is just pretty much every single climb, including the whole category runs they're riding above 20 kilometers an hour and we know that anything above 18 kilometers an hour is a huge draft gain. So if you are, if you are isolated, it actually is a big issue. And so to have someone up and then to come back to you and for you to get some slipstream assistance up some of these climbs is a massive, massive advantage. So that is a good strategy. But, but I think once again if, if Visma are really all in on Jonas winning the Tour, they're not having YATES Win stage 10, you know, that's, that's an all out effort from him. They're preserving as much energy as possible. They don't have to be on the front. They're making every single UAE rider do some work on the front and expend energy, you know, so it's. I wonder what their internal strategy was. Yeah, around all that. Because every single second of energy counts if you're, if you, if you need. Every second counts in the Tour. So if you, if you want Jonas to be within four minutes, you know, I don't think that Yates winning a stage on station, I think that's conflicting interest and we talk about that a lot with our own athletes that if you want to be good in the iron man, you know, doing a bunch of Olympic distance training and racing or. Or 5K running events and trying to train for that isn't going to be conducive directly to your ironman.

Yeah, I agree with all your points and I. Look, I do think that they sent him up the road for that reason. I think he was there to help Jonas when it counted. But it turned out that they didn't even want to reach the front of the group, and that could have been UAE's tactic as well. Jordan. Well, you know, we don't need to win the stage. You know, all I have to do is defend and ride beside Jonas. Pog just has to ride beside Jonas and he'd already had a big enough lead and. And as it turned out, Yates was an opportunist and he ended up, you know, getting the victory, which is a really great result. To win it. As we said earlier, to win any stage of the tour is unbelievable. So he grabbed that opportunity. So it was. I don't. I just don't think. I don't think they had the intention of. Of that happening. I just think that's. That's how it panned out. It's always easy in hindsight to look back and say, you know, that tactic was. Why did you do that? Well, we don't know what the directors are saying in the car. You know, we. We're just surmising what we think is going on. But, but I think, yeah, I think that tactic was right. But. And look, the fact that the, the GC contenders didn't really chase down the front of the race meant that Yates had the freedom. So I don't think we can criticize that one too much.

Y.

As a. As a result of the tactics.

A lot of theories here as well. You know, and we're kind of talking about. We're just guessing in theories of how do you beat Pocket Hour. And we're kind of conflicting in our own advice. You know, we're saying don't send Yates up the road. You know, he needs to be there helping Jonas or actually send Yates out the road supports Chase. It's like they both can't be true. So we know that. Yeah, again, it's a hard one because the attack to try and wear Pocket Child down was smart because the theory is he can just jump. You know Jonas's weakness against him? He can't go. He can't really go with those monster attacks. Although he did very well this Tour compared to others where it was only a couple, where, where Pog got away. So you want to wear him down so he can't jump, but at the same time, you know, let UAE do the work. But then he gets to the climb a little bit fresher. So which one is it? You know, it's. It's very hard to say.

Yeah, look. And we could talk, we could talk about this all day, but there were some other exciting stages that we should really jump into and yeah, I, I really enjoyed the Tour. I'm actually enjoying the first three stages so far that we've listened to. By the time this podcast comes out, it'll probably be near the end. But yeah, it's a really great time, isn't it? In July, watching the Women's Giro, now the Men's Tour, and now the Women's Tour as well. So the cycling's been fantastic.

Let's go through some of our other favorite moments and stages and uh, just cycling analysis and coaching analysis. I do want to start with stage 20. The day before the last stage. That was like a one day classic. That was so much fun to watch. It would watch. It was an epic breakaway. Classic cycling, just classic cycling racing of, of strategy, guys jumping. There was one point where the breakaway was split into four groups of two or three that were 7 seconds, 11 seconds and it was. And they just, it was a straight line and you saw this awesome image of they're all 80 meters away from each other, but they can't catch each other. It was so fun to watch. And then Kaden Groves with some brilliant capital capitalizing on classic cycling ego you're talking about, which you guys just want to look at each other and played a bit too smart and he just rides off the front to the stage win.

Look. And we're very biased because he's Australian, but. But yeah, he had Harry Sweeney up the road who, who ironically, they both live in Andorra and they're really good mates even though they're in opposite teams. So they train together. And I think it was a bittersweet moment. I heard an interview Sweeney, I loved the attack that he made and I actually thought he was going to go on and win it. And with the guys all arguing with themselves back behind then. But, but a couple of really key moments where Kaden Groves really put, put an effort in to bridge the gap across to Sweeney. And then the race changes because he held 7 or 8 seconds for about 5 or 6K. And no one was willing to do that last little bridge. And I love it. People are willing to lose races rather than win races.

It's just.

Whereas Caden wasn't. We need to get across to him. I know how good he is. He knows him. He knows how well he can ride. So he's just saying, if we let this guy go, he's going to ride away again.

So.

So that, that was one scenario. And then, you know, what's the guy's name? Frank, from who ended up coming second. And I was texting you the whole Vanden Brook saying, if this guy wins, it'll make me sick, because he's just playing the ultimate poker game, which tactically was really clever, but he just did not do a turn. And he was the one causing all of the splits because he just refused to do a turn. He just sat on the back when. When there were three of them were away, two were working and he sat on the back and they were away. They were in front. So that, that, that was just bad tactics in my point of view, because. Because it was now down to three, and if he was not going to do a turn, those other two were going to sit up, which they ended up doing. The race came back together again. Vandenbrock ended up getting second, but I think feel he could have probably won had he had a different tactic rather than just, you know, he could have actually just rolled. Rolled over and. And stayed away because he had the strength at the end, because, you see, you saw him break away from the. From the group to come second solo and. But I love Kaden Groves. Just, look, those guys are arguing. I'm going. And. And for a sprinter to ride solo like that for so long, that just shows how important threshold riding is. And for all those people who are cyclists who think that, you know, just being a smart crit racer or a road racer is all you need. You need to be able to ride threshold. You need to be at a time trial. And I can't even remember how many times we've talked on this podcast about people winning solo. And it's because they've got that threshold ability to hold, hold a steady state for 10K, 20K, you know, 10 minutes, 30 minutes. And we saw stage three of the women's Tour. The Jaco Alula girl literally held 10 seconds for the last 11k. And the bunch, they mucked it up and she ended up Winning. She didn't win because the bunch mucked it up. She won because she was brave. She won because she had good threshold. She, she won because she kept her head and she kept pushing. She didn't give up even when they got to five seconds and she just kept going and it turned out to be a great decision and you don't know the mistakes that the bunch are going to make, so you've just got to hang in there and you never know what's going to happen. And we talk about this stage with Kaden Groves, it was well deserved. He was the best rider on the day and he deserved to win that. And that doesn't happen very often and I couldn't have been happier for him.

What an emotional win as well. And just in that last once they caught Harry Sweeney, you know, those, that last category climb, you know, guys were giving it such a crack. I, there was, there was four guys in there who went for it to try and go for victory and just, just couldn't get away. And Kaden Groves himself, not a climb. I tried to break away himself and, oh, there's one guy, I can't remember who it was, but I was so impressed where a bunch of attacks went. And then there was this lull because everyone is gassed, you know, and they've all caught up and they're gassed. And then that take the gutsiest person of that level attacks next. And this guy went and he got seven meters and then couldn't go. I just thought that is. He's clearly got no legs and he's just gone. If I'm going to win, now's the time. And that's. That is racing strategies that when everyone's hurting the most, that's when you need to go. You don't go when it's easy for everyone because everyone else is fighting easy as well.

Yeah, that's spot on, Jordan. And look, the irony was Welland and Jorgensen got dropped from that main 10 riders, or I can't remember exactly the number, and they ended up being 30 or 40 seconds behind for 20 to 30 kilometers. And all of a sudden, because everybody was mucking around, Jorgensen and Wellens got back to the group and I just thought, this is going to be hilarious. Wellens could probably win this if they keep mucking around. And you just, it was another example of just never giving in and, and seeing those guys get back to have another opportunity to have another go at it. But they were exhausted. They, when they, when they done all their efforts to get back to the group. So, so that last stage had a second last stage. Sorry, had everything in it. And, and for, for Groves to win, that's him. Won a stage in all three Tours now. And for a sprinter, that's, that's pretty impressive. Not many people have done that.

Yeah, for sure. Um, it. There was a bunch of those hilly stages where it was, you know, three category threes and one category four, one category two, something like that, that were just like one day classics. Stage 11 was another one which was just unreal. That was the one where poguchar crashed with 3k to go. And that breakaway was away and, and wild and, and Vanderpoel were catching them. And then those two guys did the opposite of what we're saying. You know, they didn't let their egos get in the way. They worked together to the last 500 meters because Vanderpoel would have caught them if they didn't. And that was awesome to see and that was such a well diverted win. And Penderpoel, he did get a sage win, which was great, but he had two heartbreaking losses and he's just. We talk about this all the time.

Him.

Saigon found out they've got more seconds than first, but that's what makes them champions.

Yeah. And Abrahamson and the other guy, I can't remember the guy who beat's name, you'll probably tell me. But, but they did exactly what we've, we've hoped. You know, work together till the last 200 meters and then let the best man win because you've got one of the best riders in the world, Matthew van der Pole, chasing you. And they held 20 seconds for, I can't remember how long it was, but Vanderpoel was trying everything to, to, to bridge the gap, but just couldn't. And that was a great victory. And I love Abrahamson the way he trains and he is such a, a hard trainer. And some of his, his training sessions are epic. He sits on the trainer in, in the northern hemisphere there in the winter, and he just does massive trainer sessions and he's got pressure on the pedals and it's a great example of, you know, you can use indoor facilities because he lives in, you know, the Scandinavian countries where it's, it's snowing most of the year and sure he goes to camps and high altitude training, but, but where, where most people have got some really nice weather. He's on the trainer, pressure on the pedals, and this guy is a weapon. He will, he will win a lot more stages than he'll, than he'll lose. So it was really great that he won a stage. I couldn't have been happier And I love it when the, when a group of guys work together and let the best man win. I felt sorry for Matthew Vanderpoel but, but yeah, look, his stage two win was, was pretty, pretty epic too.

Again it's just like a one day classic stage. It was, it was, it was all the one day classic guys, you know, breakaway and yeah, it was good and.

Look they had Alperton had a great start. Phillips on one stage one. Vanderpoel won stage two and had the yellow jersey and you know, you're thinking that Albert have got this great Tour ahead of them. Next thing you know, Philipson crashes, he's out of the Tour. They're not going to win any more sprints and they've really got, you know, no one left to sort of try and win stages, which is where you know, Kaden Groves came to the, came to the rescue at the end. They, they back ended the Tour, didn't they? They won the stage one and, and second last stage of, of the Tour and van der Poel was so close to winning a few more but they, they had a great Tour really. They got two, three stage wins and they had yellow jersey for four days. Was it. So I was talking to you before there was, there was probably 14 teams who didn't get anything out of the Tour. So you know, as Johan Brielle said, you know, it's so hard to win anything in these Tours. And so you know, even when you look at Remco, people say it was a, you know, disaster. No, he won the time trial, he won a stage and you know that was an epic time trial to win that. And you know that even though he wasn't quite in form, he's such a great time trialist that he still managed to find a way to win that and that he only won that by seconds. It wasn't a great deal in it and, and you know, Luke Platt, the Australian was leading at all, at all the checkpoints for the majority of that race. And the easier part was the second half of that, of that actual stage. It was the fastest section and it just showed that if you get the execution a little bit wrong, I feel sorry for Luke. I think he did a great job and he's a great time trialer and he's gonna, you know, he's going to win some time trials. You mark his name down, but just got his execution a little Bit wrong and went out a little bit hard and you know, he ended up ninth and he was leading at, at the end of stage one by 20 seconds.

Yeah.

Time check one. I didn't mean to say stage one there. Time check one and, and time check two. He was winning for majority of. And he sat in that hot seat for hours. And look, I felt, I felt that, you know, that's an example for those listening that if, you know, even though he's an unbelievably great time trial, you still can get the, the execution a little bit wrong and he would probably not have won the Tour that stage. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that he would have not finished ninth. He would have probably finished somewhere around third, fourth or fifth had he executed a little bit better. So I'm not saying he would have, you know, his execution cost him, but he would have been closer to the podium because that's where he deserves to be. He is such a talent.

Yeah, you can, you can see who, like we can't see the power data but you can just assume based on placings the measure of effort, you know to be 30 or 40 or 50 seconds up on these, on these done time trials. The first couple of checkpoints shows how hard you're riding. You just can't sustain, sustain that. And that's, that's a big swing to, to then lose by 50 seconds or whatever it was. You know, that's a minute and a half in the back section to lose to those guys. So that does show a huge change in effort. It'd be interesting to see the power but we, we don't have access to that and I wanted to touch on Remco and it ties into kind of what you're talking about with Albison, with, I thought Alberson were just a really good representation of the typical journey of an athlete. You know, they start off the Tour on big high notes and it looks like they're going to dominate. And Philipson just, he's so good in sprints. But then, and you go celebrate your wins because then horrific crash, he's out of the Tour. Van der Pael is looking unbelievable, but gets pneumonia, leaves the Tour. They're two best riders, you know, and so it's this up and down journey that we see with all athletes and then they finish it off, they, they stay, they stay in it. They finished off with Kaden Groves winning. So it turns out to be a really good Tour. But similar with Remco's story, he Actually, he put a great post up, which I think all athletes should really pay attention to and listen to. And everyone's asking what's happening on the hills. He's collapsing any and he abandons. And he put out a big post saying basically, since he's crashed last year, it's been a rush to get back to form with all eyes on, on the Tour, and, and in hindsight, rushed too quick and did everything one step ahead of where he kind of needed to be to force his body, his mind to try and get ready. And it just took too much of him and he never felt right, he never felt good and easy in hindsight, you know, but he's just saying, now that I leave the Tour, I know that, you know, I've just been rushing for eight months and we talk about this athletes all the time. You know, when you're coming back, you've just got to do the right things. And if you try and come back and push too early, you can delay your return to peak form by eight months, you know, but if you just take that month to get it right and do it properly and build your base back up properly, you know, you might cost yourself a month or two at the start, but then in six months time, you are in that peak form you want. And I thought that's a really, really important lesson and I'm so great he gave us that insight as to what was happening mentally and physical before him.

Yeah, we've got to be careful here. And this is their job, this is their career. And a lot of the podcasts that we aim at is for age groupers. And it's not their job, it's not their career. And so it's even more important that you live to fight another day and you don't rush your, your comeback if you've been sick or injured or you've been away from the sport and you pick a race that's, that's too close, you don't give yourself enough time. And these are the things that we're trying to, the messages we're trying to get across. And even guys like Remco who are at the elite level need time. You can't rush form, you can't rush your physical fitness. It's worse. As a runner, at least as a bike rider, you can really train hard. As a runner, you can't actually train hard until your body copes and adapts to the running load from actually running on the bike, you've got the bike holding you up. Whereas a runner, your, your impact on the road is every footstep you take, every stride you take, so the impact is worse. So you can't just resume from an injury or illness to run, run hard, whereas on a bike you can actually, you know, the impact's less. So to have Remco, you know, it probably wasn't the right event for him. He needed to probably give himself another month or two and the welters probably what he should have aimed at. But when you're a professional and this is your career, the Tour is the Tour and you want to be in it. But as an age grouper, there's always going to be another race. You know, you're in it for the long haul. As an age grouper, you're not in it for, as a, as a pro for a window of four or five years, and for some pros it's 15 years, but for the majority, the average is four to five years. So you've got to take every opportunity you can. Whereas as an age grouper, you know, you're thinking long term, you want to be in the sport that you've chosen, whether it's cycling, marathon running or fun running or triathlon. You know, you want to be in it because it's enjoyable, it's good for your health and fitness and you love competing. You want to be in it for a long time. And so you should be careful about putting races in front of you that are too close, that you're not prepared for, as long as you understand the consequences that you won't be performing as well as you could if you waited another two or three months and put a race further back. So if you're okay coping with the consequences, I certainly aren't. I'm definitely not one of those people who, if I'm ready for a race, then I'm not where I want to be. I'm. I can't handle the consequences of performing poor. Even though I know the re. The reasons why, I still don't cope well with that. And so that's, that's a hard thing to do as well. And you know, anybody who's competitive, they, when they put a number on, they just expect to be as well as the best person they can. And the message we're trying to say is you have to expect to be the best person with the form you have at the, at that particular time. Not, you know, Remco's form to win the world time trial champion title, the Olympic Games time trial and the road race time trial at the Olympic Games, that's the Best form of his ever career. He's not in that form right now, otherwise he'd be performing better. And it's a stage race, not a one, one day race or an individual time trial. And he's already proven in this tour where his form isn't that good. He still won the time trial. So, so there's a lot to unpack there with an athlete who's, you know, you've, you've got to have the mindset of, you know, I can't be perfect all the time. And consequences of being underprepared are can you cope with it? And if you can't, don't do those races. Wait till you're better prepared. That's the message I think we should be sending.

With all that said, I don't think it was the wrong decision for him to, to race because his form showed that he's still good enough to win the individual time trial. He's still right there. And unfortunately for those top four guys, which was supposed to be Pog, Vineyard, Remco and Roglic, you know, you've got to be at 100% to win. You're a couple of percent off and you can't keep up on those mountains and. But sometimes you can ride yourself into form, you know, and so his form was right there. It was good enough to win the itt. And so you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes he, you know, over one or two weeks he could write himself into form. But yeah, so I don't think it was a mistake. But he just halfway through he said, no, I don't have it.

Yep. And I agree. Look, you look at any team sports, you know, any, any bat, you know, the NBA or, or the English Premier League or, you know, Liverpool can lose to the bottom of the English Premier League if they're just 5% off on any given day. You just can't. You have to be at your best the whole time, otherwise you're vulnerable to a loss. And, and it's, it's, you know, you're going to have more losses than you're going to have wins in, in sport like cycling or triathlon or, or running, you know, so that's why your own personal performance is, is the thing you should be, you know, Vinegar would have to be happy with his performance. He couldn't have done any better. He didn't win. And that's what he's being measured on. Did you win or lose? But even as a professional, you have to walk away saying, well, I did as well, as I possibly could given the fitness level that I've got at this particular moment. I'm, I'm determined to not let that happen next year. But you can't say that it won't because who's to say he won't crash again? Rise are crashing so regularly now that it's not a given that you can have a perfect lead up to any event. And so all those age groupers out there who've had an accident or been sick, you have to be a bit kinder to yourself. And your next race may be the most important thing for you, but you've got to understand you'll get to that race at the best level of fitness with the time you've had. And it may not be your perfect level. You may have been stronger in the past, but, but you've got to accept that, you know, you can only perform with what the form you have on the day. And if you can't do that, you probably should question whether you should do the race.

I just want to finish off by talking about a couple of other riders. The rider of the Tour for me, outside of Ben Healy, who just won the most combative of the whole race, unbelievably exciting tour and just great riding from him. But my personal rider of the Tour was Ahrensman. He came second on that stage 10 to Yates from that breakaway. And I was watching and, and he was just, he was just always there with Yates and he wasn't going backwards, he was actually, he was actually catching him and I thought he was going to take, going to take that stage. He just lost time on that jump that Yates had. Yates came into that corner very smart racing. Yates said afterwards that he'd ridden that corner, he knew exactly what was coming and he didn't expect to get such a jump, but he hit that hard and he, he jumped them all by 50 meters and that ended up being the difference in the stage. And so way very good racing from Yates. But, you know, had that jump not happened, had Aarons had better positioning behind Yates there, I reckon he could have won that stage. Anyway, he comes out the next day, stage 11 and wins. But then more importantly, one against the two titans, the two aliens, Jonas and Pogba, on stage 19 with the most unbelievable performance and, and I just love his interview where he was just going, those guys are, are, they're not touchable and I've just beaten them. You know, I just can't actually believe it. And to walk away with those two stage wins and just such aggressive Mountain riding. I thought it was so well deserved and just so impressed with him.

Yeah, look, he really saved Ineos's Tour, didn't he? And, and look, I was a little bit disappointed in the interview after he won stage 14 where they mentioned Ineos and drugs and I thought that was really disrespectful for him, you know. And that really soured a little bit. It was great that he actually came back and won another stage. So I just think he was very aggressive rider. I love the way he actually rides the bike. You know, guys like him and Healey and Ben o' Connor are just outstanding to take it to Pogachar and Vinegar, the two most outstanding riders of the Tour and have a crack and just not be satisfied with sitting in the bunch. Being satisfied with being at the front of the. Of the race, but having a go at it. Ben o' Connor's attack when they all started looking at each other, that was one of the better smartest moves on the whole Tour. And he got away with the South American. I can't actually think. The Colombian.

Yeah, yeah. Tiny. Yeah.

I can't remember him. And it was. I think Jorgensen got away as well, but just didn't have the legs to go. And there was three. My memory is a little bit dim on exactly what happened because I was cheering Ben on so much and that was an epic climb and such a well deserved. Yeah, I was super wrapped for both Healey and o' Connor to win those stages and for Aaronsman to win those two stages. So those four, those four breakaway and you know, Ben OConnor broke away from Pogacaran and from Vinegard and to. I said to you after that stage, imagine when you look back on the highlights and it says Ben O' Connor first on stage 18, second pocket char third vinegar. That's something you would. You know, these two riders are probably going to be two epic writers of. Of the century or Poguchar is Vinegar's, you know, a really good writer of his era. But for Ben o' Connor to be on top of those two guys in a stage in the Tour, that would be. That would be better than any trophy on the shelf to have those two names underneath second and third. It's outstanding.

Especially yeah if, if Kong goes on to win six plus Tour de France. Is it even? God, yeah. He's at the same level. Just hasn't had the same sustained success. Yeah. Unbelievable Tour and so many more highlights. We don't need to go through them all. But I love The. This, this four ups spread finish at the top of one two. Yeah, you just don't see that where it's four guys looking at each other. I thought the Quick Step teamwork was phenomenal there. You know, you always say if there's two riders there in a break, you've got to win that. You can't not win that. That's. But at the top of Von 2, it's a bit of a different story. But that, that Quickster teammate of Paris Pentriere turned himself inside out to get him a good lead out there and make sure that whoever was catching them didn't come and didn't actually get them. And that's half a 21 stages. You just forget all the details of what happened. But the point is Quick Step, they had two out of the four. You really hope they take that win, even though everyone's gone for Ben Healy. But that was a great win by Quickstep and Parry Pedrier.

Yeah. And look, one of the wins, Tim Wellens winning a stage, I think was really. He's such a. You know, I think they used to, they used to call one of the riders El tractor and he used to sit on the front every stage for years in the Tour. And, and now Tim Wellens is that rider who can just sit on the front of the bunch and, and ride solo against the brake on those sprint stages. Tim Wellens is the man who sits on the front for UAE time and time again. And, and he's riding against four. Four guys on a break and he manages to hold the same time. It's. It's incredible writing for him to win a stage, which is really, you know, that whole team's there for pog. For him to win a stage was, I think, really. Yeah. Well deserved. And, and look, when you look at the Tour overall, I mean, how many stages were won by the sprint? So we had Phillipson, we had Malia, we had Milan. Milan. Malia won two, actually. Yeah. And Jonathan Milan won one. So. So, yeah, I think it was a fair spread, actually, and it kept my interest. And the fact that I was in Europe at the time was even better because I would watch it during the day and you were able to watch it in your Bali time, which is good. So. So, yeah, I was, I was really happy with how it panned out. And I think, you know, the best rider obviously won and I think there was some really outstanding victories from. From some other teams who'd be very satisfied with their Tour. There's a lot of, A lot of Lessons about tactics that, that, you know, you know, and even your own particular form, you know, that you've just got to understand where your form is and, and whether that's the right, the right training or the right preparation or the right peaking. It's, it's, it's for an age group, you know, even the, the pros get it wrong. So you've got to be a little bit kinder to yourself when it comes to your events. And that's a big message we want to get from discussions like this. We want to always bring it back to the age grouper and, and to make sure that they're clear that, you know, these guys do it for a living and they make mistakes. So just, yeah, don't be so harsh on yourself.

That is our unsolicited breakdown on, on our thoughts on, on all the tactics and race strategies, and it continues now with the Tour de France firms. And if, if this race pans out anything like last year, it's going to be epic because I still maintain that the finish to last year was the greatest finish in any Grand Tour that I've ever seen. And I wasn't alive for the 1989 Where It Came down to the last stage, but to finish on Alpe Duares last year, and it come down to a matter of seconds, one on one was where Demi Bowler and Foster Cassiodoma was just ridiculous, ridiculously exciting racing. So we'll see how that all pans out. But a masterclass from uie, I think that was almost a perfect tool from them, couldn't have gone any better. Um, but Visma, like we said, they, they didn't do anything majorly wrong. But perhaps in hindsight, a couple of, a couple of mistakes that just gave UAE a bit of an advantage. My last question I wanted to ask you was with more unsolicited advice, if you were the director of Visma right now, what would your message be to be to the team? What would your kind of feedback be? How would you approach this?

Good question, Jord. I think they should be satisfied that they, they were really trying a lot of different tactics. And as I said earlier, it's always easy in hindsight to be critical and, and so that's probably, you know, a bit harsh at times. But, you know, definitely riding on the front would be the, the thing that I would look back and say, well, probably made a bit of a mistake there, even though that tactic had worked before. But yeah, at the end of the day, they still got two stage wins out of the Tour in second place on gc. So I think, you know, most people will say, well, look, that's a really good outcome because UAE were just too good and POG is, you know, a level above and they would argue that they think vinegar is right there. And I would agree if. If he had a bit more time, but that's just not the way it is.

He.

He arrived at the Tour with the form he had. So. So, yeah, if I was the director, I think I'd be disappointed, but I'd be satisfied that, yes, we got second and, yes, we won two stages and they won the most epic stage on the final stage. So I think make them drive their drive home a little bit more comfortable. And had they not. Had not, you know, done an unbelievable wow action and win a stage like that against the seemingly best rider in the world and could be one of the best riders ever to ride a bike. So for we're out to do that one on one, I think they would be very happy with that, with that finish.

I don't think we mentioned it, but yeah, we were talking about Jorgensen, but, you know, big props to him. I think the reason he wasn't so strong, I think he was getting a little bit sick midway through the Tour, which is just. Seems to be unavoidable. Winner on their limits like that. But to get himself in the break, to be there for a support, to try and help that win happen, was just a phenomenal effort. So, so much fun. We hope you enjoyed this episode and our breakdown. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next one.

I can give you.