134. Ned Boulting and the (last) Tour de France

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0:36Robyn: These guys, they're cyclists as well. There are no fixed contracts. You can pause, upgrade or cancel your cover at any time. And what's more, each month, Lacquer adds up the total cost of the claims and divides it amongst the collective up to a capped amount. so you only pay your fair share. With their collective insurance model, LACA only makes money when they settle claims, so they're on your side to get you back on your bike. I've heard loads of great stories about LACA being genuinely decent, so it's no surprise they've been voted best cycle insurance provider seven years in a row. So find out for yourself by heading over to lacquer.co slash cyclist that's l-a-k-a dot co slash cyclist and use the code cyclist mag at the checkout to get your first 30 days free.

1:23Robyn: T's and C's apply. Lacquer, collective cover that goes further than you think.

1:34Welcome back to another episode of the Cyclist Magazine podcast. Yes, I'm Will Strix and I'm joined today by the fabulous Robin Davison. How are you doing? Oh, I'm doing even better now you call me fabulous. That was really nice. Thanks, Will. Well, Robin, it is our pre-Tour de France special. So I say special, it's like every other episode except we're talking quite exclusively about the Tour de France, not just by ourselves. The listeners will be very pleased to hear, although I'm sure they do want our opinions, which will hopefully backload into the outro. So anyone that doesn't like to hear that can stop listening.

2:15Anyway, we will be joined very shortly by Ned Bolting. Now, if you're listening to this and you don't know that this is IT4's final Tour de France, firstly, I'll give you a second to, you know, take that in. Yeah, hand on the chest. That was good, Robin. I like that. Secondly, yeah, it's the last Tour de France. It's very sad, but that means that we can celebrate ITV4's coverage and then Channel 4 before that, but obviously Ned Bolting, ITV man. What he'll do next, we'll talk about in the interview, but obviously he's got a lot going on. It's more than just a commentator. He has also got a book out, which is already out now.

2:53So if you haven't already, what have you been doing? But you should buy it. It's called The Accidental Tourist, published by Bloomsbury. And yeah, it's the final dispatches from the road. it's sort of a little subheading but there's like brackets around final because as he explains he was already writing it before they found out that they were getting kicked off the telly which is, yeah, it's a decision I think is what we'll call it anyway, yeah, if you want to we haven't received our copy of the book yet if you're listening to this intro then what are we doing here but if you want to hear some reviews from the Bloomsbury site Kadele Evans described it as a very unique, insightful, mostly amusing an often hilarious perspective from a point of view that very few see and even fewer have the capacity to divulge to us all very eloquent from quiet cadet uh phil liggett said a fascinating and inspiring book dot dot dot an excellent read i'm sure he probably said something between those two bits i don't think couldn't print it exactly it's explicit david miller said a joyride of a journey considering you know they've been working very closely together for a long time i probably expected more from david but i'm sure he said a lot of nice things privately and michael hutchinson who also has a book out called faster said the insight of a reporter and the passion of a fan but still clear-eyed enough to take joy in pro racing absurdities and contradictions if that hasn't sold the book to you then please welcome to the cyclist magazine podcast ned bolting

4:31He's back again. For the last time, probably not. But in this, guys, maybe. Ned Bolting, how are you? Okay, a bit sweaty. Just been running. London's quite hot. So, yeah, I'm just hydrating at my desk in London. A bit like you. I've got a glass of water on the go. If there's any slurping sounds, that's the reason. Yeah, I went out for everyone yesterday and I thought that was a big mistake. I think I was seeing stars by the end. I was like, okay, let's just take it easy. we're just talking after you've completed your final Dauphiné highlights show for ITV how is that how does it feel how does all the you know final ITV tour kicking in oh well some it's a curious thing it's both a celebration and a bit of a funeral dirge all at the same time you know we're a close-knit team and I am still even though I'm approaching my 23rd Tour de France with ITV there are still half a dozen members of the production team as well as the main presenter Gary Imlach who predate my experience by a decade you know so it's got real heritage and there are people who's well number one I suppose whose livelihoods are going to be affected quite seriously and number two whose emotional livelihoods are going to be affected because it's a big part of their lives so well I think we're looking forward to the summer the Dauphiné was for us a bit like the Dauphiné is for the riders you know a kind of 75 % effort and then it's 100 % when we get to Lille in a couple of weeks?

5:59Well, at least you won't have to present it as whatever the new name is that I can't remember off the top of my head because that is a shambles. Rhone, no, Auvergne Rhone Alpe, I think. Trips off the tongue, doesn't it? I knew you would make it sound good, yeah. I think it might be the Tour de Suisse next year for me. So you've just, well, you're just about to as we're speaking, but it'll be out by the time this goes out. We've got a new book coming out called The Accidental Tourist. emphasize for the dash that's in there, hyphen. Final brackets, Dispatches from the Road by Ned Bolting, which obviously talking about the Tour de France, because that is Ned Bolting, isn't it?

6:39Obviously, we don't want to give too much away about your book because we want people to go buy it. But just a little bit of a rundown, if they can't guess what that might be about. Well, I hope this one is quite obvious. I think my last book took a little bit of explaining. This one is a bit of a simpler offering. and a book that I guess had been waiting in the wings for a long time. I was very conscious when I wrote 1923, which I think I spoke to you guys about when it came out. I was very conscious with that book. It was the first book I had written that had literally zero jokes in it. It had no jokes.

7:14There wasn't a single joke. There wasn't even an attempt at a joke or even a sentence that might have elicited a whimsical smile in 1923. It just wasn't a funny book, which is not really what I do by and large I think I consider my job to be to entertain to some extent so I kind of knew that after 1923 I needed to return to home base a little bit not the the shop not the shop no but yeah touch base with where I kind of started off in writing and I started off in writing on the advice of the late great Richard Moore who after a few years of working together with him, I think in around about 2009, eight, nine, Richard said, I think your story is very interesting because you came at the sport from the outside.

8:01Would you consider writing a book about your journey of falling in love with sports, which is, and I had no idea whether or not I could write a book. And that's how the genesis of how I won the yellow jumper kind of came about, which took the publishing industry by complete surprise and me by even greatest surprise because it touched a nerve with people at precisely the same the points where I think a large section of the population of this country was the UK was getting to know cycling so how I won the yellow jumper was a bizarre success in publishing terms and then I realized a couple of years ago that 15 years had passed almost or when I started writing but 13 years passed and I've done a lot in 13 years you know my my life has changed cycling has changed my job within cycling has completely changed.

8:47And so I needed to sort of update the story really, and broaden it out. So The Accidental Tourist is not just about the Tour de France, although it has the tour at the centre of its kind of life, but it does spread its wings much further, just as I have. And, you know, I go to Kuala Lumpur and China and all over Europe. And so it's a much broader story. And then I was in the middle of writing it, or finishing off writing it, when the news broke that, you know, that was it for television and ITV and the Tour de France. so I messaged my publishers and said I think we need to put the word final in brackets and add that to the title because it does have a sense of if how I won the yellow jumper was opening a book this does have a little bit of a sense of closing a book as well and what would you say for you has been the biggest change in the past like 15 years since this one book to now if you had to pin down like one thing in the peloton well I think probably the biggest change is women's racing.

9:43I think that's probably the single biggest change because I don't, shamefully, I think I mentioned this in the book. I had to look back at how I won the yellow jumper as a kind of slightly embarrassing reference point at times and go, oh God, what did I write about that? And how's that going to stand up, you know, a decade and a half later. And one of the most shameful aspects of how I won the yellow jumper is the lack of female characters. There are two. One is my partner, Kath, who is at the beginning and the end of the book is at my bedside in hospital after I've just had a bike accident so she's in a kind of caring role she is actually a nurse anyway so that kind of makes sense so she's the one female character and the other female character is Odette who used to do our catering at the Tour de France and so she's a cook um so that's not great is it so that's where the kind of female contribution or landscape of how well the other jumper began and ended which is which is nothing short of disgraceful but it It was very easy with the Accidental Tourist to expand on that, on the rise of women's racing.

10:45And my friendship with both Marianne Vos and Lizzie Deignan, who in their different ways, I think, were the two drivers of all of this change over the last 15 years. So if you're asking me for the single biggest thing, Robin, it's that, isn't it? From a position of it's not even on the radar, really, to it's pretty close to garnering, on occasion, as much attention as the men's race is a paradigm shift that I don't think any of us could have predicted. And it's great that we get twice as much racing. I mean, if you told yourself like 15 years ago, you'd be like, well, you get all this great racing, except now you're twice.

11:22Yeah, on the same day. You know, I think there's been some really smart thinking around women's racing. I think you've got to credit, I think it's Flanders Classics in particular, the race organisers, with coming up with that quite inspirational idea of running the women's races after the men's races in the set on the same day, which seemed at first glance counterintuitive, but actually is inspired, you know, because it draws on the inheritance of the men's race and kind of like keeps that audience big. Along the same lines as I remember when I was working with quite closely with the Paralympic movement, one of my first questions to them was, why do you put the Paralympic Games after the Olympic Games?

12:00Surely they would have more attention if they were before the Olympic Games, and they made the very clear and correct point that, no, we're not a warm-up show. So I think there's been some really inspired thinking around women's racing, and I think probably only halfway there, if that, but it feels like, yeah, it's arrived. How bored are you at this point in the day of talking about the ITV show ending? I'm going to be doing a lot more of it. I think that day in November, when I was actually doing my one-man tour, I remember exactly where I was. I was in Bristol. I'd done the show at the Redgrave Theatre in Bristol the night before and I was just having a cup of coffee in Clifton when I got a text message from Orla, who's a friend of mine, just saying that she was really sorry the way it had worked out and all that sort of thing.

12:50And I didn't know what she was talking about because ITV hadn't told me. I had no idea. But TNT had unilaterally just announced it on their social media that they now had the exclusive rights. And by default, ITV didn't have anything. So that's how I found out that I'd lost my job, which kind of mortified all that. And from that moment on, my phone... So here's the thing, my phone didn't stop ringing for the rest of the day. And that really surprised me. But I got rung up by, you know, half a dozen broadsheet journalists. And pretty much every newspaper, let alone, you know, outside of the cycling press, ran a story about it online or in print, which I thought was kind of like that's quite big that's resonated in an unexpected way and then a couple of months later the damn thing was debated in parliament and Gary Imlach and I actually were actually mentioned in Hansard which like again was well I mean what a waste of parliamentary time that is when the world is sort of going up in flames but that was surprising and now and now that we're getting closer to the start of the Tour de France I can feel my phone buzzing again so it's a story that hasn't really gone away and it'll it'll be quite it'll make quite a lot of noise again this summer for obvious reasons and I think even next summer they'll you know in 2026 there'll be another little kind of flutter of like oh you know so I'm quite touched by how much I am asked to talk about it because I kind of knew in principle that people valued the choice and valued the show but I didn't know in practice until this happened so it's a funny way to find out Which is quite frustrating because you think if they'd have shown that support all the way through, then maybe ITV would have picked up the rights.

14:31Yeah, I mean, it's a bit, it's funny, isn't it? I remember there was about 10 years ago that the BBC were trying to cut costs, weren't they? And they threatened to shut down Six Music. And everybody said, you can't shut down Six Music. It's a national institution. You know, it offers a unique service and all that sort of thing. And then the BBC sort of politely pointed out that two and a half people listened to it. You know, like, you may think it's part of your life, you may declaim that it's a national treasure, but you've got to back that up and actually listen to it. And the problem is, for ITV, is that, yes, in any given day, watching the highlights and the live show, a million people would watch the Tour de France, which completely eclipses subscription services by a huge ratio.

15:10but that's not enough anymore because the price of you know re-signing those rights over the lifetime of me working there has gone up exponentially and way way faster than the audience has built so eventually it just reached that tipping point and from a commercial point of view it just wasn't valid anymore and you know you can't itv can't afford year on year to put a product on the air that loses the money it's it's counting it's maths i guess it makes it even more difficult that the TNT price hike slash bringing the Eurosport onto TNT came afterwards. So now, I mean, I'm assuming this year's ITV coverage is probably going to be by far the best figures that you've ever had.

15:48Well, I mean, listen, let's hope so. So there's quite, you know, I would like to think this is a rallying cry for just send us off with a make a big, you know, because you never know, you never know, it may come back. And if another broadcaster were perhaps to show an interest down the line they would look at how it performed last time out for itv you know so get the band back together if christ what age would we be then um so yeah you never know i mean but let's send that message far and wide because and i think i don't know because they don't release their figures but i think you know that there are obviously quite a large number of people who were eurosport subscribers who haven't felt able for very understandable reasons to quadruple their monthly outgoings or whatever it is i mean frankly even i hesitated you know when i of course i do of course i subscribe to tnt i have to it's a professional obligation and it's a tax-free business expense on my part but um even i hesitated you know i thought actually blimey and if i'm hesitating you know what does that say about kind of the the price point and the position i don't know and then what does your cycling commentary um involvement look like post Tour de France.

16:58I know that's not the only commentary you do. You do some, I think it's the international field. I think you did the Giro, which I may have stumbled across below. I'm assuming you'd be carrying on doing that. So if people were somehow accessing the world feed, they'd still be hearing your voice. Yeah, I mean, I have a strong relationship with RCS. So most of their big races, I go out to Italy. And I love that. It's very, very different work. Completely different. You're talking to a very different audience and I don't work with David Miller. So I haven't got that comfort blanket of David who I feel very relaxed working with.

17:29So I'm constantly working with different co-commentators. It's extremely hard work. But I think it's quite interesting what you hinted there, Will, because I think one of the things, one of the unintended consequences of what's happened to free-to-air Tour de France and the price hike is that people are being, let's say, resourceful with their consumption of cycling broadcasting and they're finding ways of accessing stuff that perhaps they shouldn't. so I did have a sense broadcasting the Giro this year but I was talking to a few more people who may not have been in New Zealand if you take my point so normally I get the sense I'm just talking to three drunk students in New Zealand who've come back from a party in the middle of the night and have just stumbled across it but there were a few more people listening this year so that's interesting isn't it I think there's a lot more of that going to happen yeah I mean if you look at our facebook comments so we do guides on like which channels people can find the coverage on and i think ever since the start of the year or that article normally just does well on search engines but not necessarily on social media but this year you know exactly where everyone's watching it and they will tell you about it and it's probably not on tnt but anyway to get on to this year's tour just come off the dauphiné yeah pogaccia has one kind of looked like maybe he wasn't going to and then he did what are your takeaways do you think it's just going to be the same at the tour do you think maybe Wienergaard is holding something back uh I don't think he was holding anything back I really don't I just think he's miles off Pogaccio I mean miles off him um having said that he's also Jonas Wienergaard in a class of his own ahead of you know the opposition behind so he's just locked into this very distant and remote second place that's where he belongs right now, I think.

19:20But of course, that's not going to stop us convincing ourselves over the coming weeks and then getting to Lille that there is this hidden narrative that I'm sure we'll go into on air because none of us know what's going to happen. Not even Pogacar or Vingegaard know what's going to happen. That Pogacar can't hold this form for three weeks and that Vingegaard will build his form over three weeks. Whether that happens or not, absolutely nobody knows. But it was curious to Dauphiné, wasn't it? Because you had this time trial on stage four where I remember bumping into Gary Imlach in the corridors in Ealing Studios where we broadcast from immediately after the time trial had finished and I'd stopped commentating.

19:52I was actually just running to the toilet and he was coming out of his little scripting room. Yeah, well no, no. No, we weren't literally swapping places. And we both said, oh no, this is beautifully set up, isn't it? Because all the big three were in like the reverse order of expectations so you thought, this is going to be so close now, they're all going to finish on the same time after stage eight. And of course, it didn't happen. And I think the most cogent explanation of why Pogacar underperformed so markedly, I mean, he did lose a lot of time in a short distance in the individual time trial, was that they were trying something, UAE, in terms of his position and his approach and maybe his setup for time trialing specifically that hampered him.

20:37He didn't look comfortable, did he? He didn't look comfortable. And in the interview at the end of stage eight when Seb Piquet, I think in the international feed, said in his usual Seb Piquet way, he kind of said, so what now? Where will you go now for your relaxation, your preparation? Oh my God, it's like he's in the room. He did his usual kind of like casually taking a cigarette out of his mouth kind of a question and kind of like, where do we go? And his long rambling question was basically could have been summed up with what you're going to do next. And Tadej Pogacar said, well like not much because i i'm quite good like i'm sort of where i need to be but the one thing of interest that he did say was maybe we'll work on time trialing and that was quite pointed and he was also there was this little moment that somebody on our production team picked up on after the time trial when he was warming down and i think eurosport had a camera that was just like filming him warming down a live camera until the point where he stopped warming down he got off at the rollers and he walked over to Matteo Jorgensen's bike and stared at it and kind of very point because he knew the camera was on him and kind of lifted it up and went like that and I think he was messaging his team actually I think that was all like that's how you set a bike up you numpties that's why I've lost 40 seconds you know you could see his bike was actually noticeably wobbling during that time trial as well yeah yeah so I think that's the explanation so he's flying isn't he i mean it's like but we just don't know we should know by now but collectively we just have this ridiculous amnesia with pogaccio that we forget that he's able to reach this this this peak condition and stay there and he just breaks all the rules of kind of like well and maybe his entire approach is revolutionary and everyone else should learn from it you know like like the whole accepted wisdom of if you're going to win the tour de france you don't race Paris-Roubaix and Flanders and Liege and you know and win it yeah yeah maybe you do because maybe maybe practice you know like measuring yourself as a GC racer against the violence of Mathieu van der Poel and those trying to respond to his accelerations is precisely what you need in order to come to the Tour de France and destroy your nearest opponent you know so it's interesting he is in so many ways rewriting the norms you know and he continues to do it and He continues to ask questions of the rest of us.

23:03But I mean, I'm not going to mess around with anybody's understanding of the sport. He goes to Lille, the clearest favourite for me since the Chris Froome years, I think. And I say that with some regret. I'd love to see a close contest. And maybe we will. You know, maybe we will. Yeah, I might get that discussion underway. Are we then too quick to forget that Fingegaard did win two tours in a row against Pogacar and then last year, he looked pretty good at times and maybe he was absolutely fine, but obviously he had this big crash in Basque Country and seemingly maybe wasn't at his top shape. Maybe he's just come down to the Dauphiné from altitude, a little bit undercut and get better into the race and we'll see fully in shape Winkgaard beating Pogacar again.

23:48Well, you've just scripted the opening chats for day one. That is precisely the kind of, that's precisely the straw clutching that we're all going to be doing. But none of us know the answer to that. But where I completely agree with you, Will, is it is very easy to forget. And it's a drum that I have over the last few years been banging consistently about Wigengard. You know, up until this point, when they have both got to the Tour de France fresh and without one way or another being hampered by injury, he has been a better Tour de France racer than Tadej Pogacar. You know, in his first two victories, he wasn't dropped by Pogacar once.

24:24and the high, it took Pogacar years before he'd actually dropped him and distanced him on a summit finish. So there is a strong body of evidence that suggests just that, that Wingergaard is a better Tour de France racer. It's just that that's like saying, you know, when like, I don't know, Bournemouth play, no, I don't know enough about football to extend this metaphor, but when they talk about like the historical head-to-heads between football clubs, it's of no relevance, is it? you know like it's actually about who's in what kind of form with what kind of players right now and and that is all we've got to judge on and and vinger god looks like he's way off pogaccia and he would vinger god was not unless it was the bluff of the ages he was not holding anything back at the dauphiné in fact i think he realized quite early on the ben o 'connor effect you know when pogaccia goes you don't try and go with him you know and it was a very cursory on the both those occasions with Wingergaard he he did like 20 pedal strokes lasted eight seconds looked around sat up and from that moment on it became a training camp for Jonas Wingergaard you know as he realized the distance and the gulf between the two he's just got to try and close it now as as much as he can and for that reason he went very deep on those climbs Jonas Wingergaard whereas whereas Tadek Pogacar self-evidently didn't he really didn't and one of the other sort of GC potentials that I wanted to talk about with you was Primoz Roglic and the sense that he's never sort of got that extra level to win the Tour de France.

25:58And with that in mind, and given the likes of Lipovic's performance at the Dauphiné, he was incredibly strong, Pelizzari finishing, I think it was six at the Giro. Do you see this as a sort of moment for Red Bull to kind of focus on the future or do you keep persisting with Roglic if you were in charge of Red Bull? I think it's the latter sadly you know I was at the Giro I watched every pedal stroke of the Giro he was a he was a long way off from very early on you know it didn't take long before and also like he just he does crash too often you know there's enough evidence there to suggest that is a real problem for Roglic and has been throughout his career that aside I mean you never know whether you're going to crash or not it's just that his strike rate is quite high isn't it but he did look a long way off he looked old actually he looked like he hadn't he couldn't respond he looked he couldn't go through the gears he looked like he was sort of done physically and you have to always bear in mind the relative strength of the pelotons of the tour and the Giro you know the Giro is such an exciting race such a beautiful it's a brilliant race but it is the Giro peloton and of the three pelotons of the three grand tours it is notably and year on year more exaggeratedly the weakest of the three.

27:12It was a thrilling race, but it was a thrilling race between Richard Carapaz and Isaac Del Toro that Simon Yates somehow managed to manipulate to win. And none of those three, with respect to them, are going to win the Tour de France or even come close to winning the Tour de France in this generation. And Roglic wasn't even close to them. So he can't win the Tour de France from there, can he? So I think there is a passing of the baton now. I was very impressed with Lipovic at the Dauphiné. I think he's the real deal, isn't he? Yeah.

27:43Robyn: Now, I don't think there's a cyclist in the world who hasn't crashed or had a bike nicked, which is where LACA bike insurance comes in. Now, I'm usually really skeptical about insurance companies. When you need them, it somehow feels like they'll do anything to avoid paying out your claim. And then your premium goes up and you still have to pay the excess. But LACA is genuinely different. There's no excess on approved claims and there's zero depreciation. LACA covers everything from a cracked wheel to emergency travel cash if you're stranded mid-ride and if you say you've got a bent mech hanger they'll know exactly what you're talking about.

28:20Robyn: These guys they're cyclists as well. There are no fixed contracts you can pause, upgrade or cancel your cover at any time and what's more each month LACA adds up the total cost of the claims and divides it amongst the collective up to a capped amount so you only pay your fair share. With their collective insurance model, LACA only makes money when they settle claims so they're on your side to get you back on your bike. I've heard loads of great stories about LACA being genuinely decent so it's no surprise they've been voted best cycle insurance provider seven years in a row. So find out for yourself by heading over to lacquer.co slash cyclist.

28:58Robyn: That's L-A-K-A dot co slash cyclist and use the code cyclistmag at the checkout to get your first 30 days free. T's and C's apply. Lacquer, collective cover that goes further than you think.

29:18When you're preparing for your commentary or even just in general life, I know you speak a few different languages how much do you keep up with the european press because you're fluent in german i think right are you seeing much in the german press about lipovitz being taking that step up and then are you also seeing stuff about young paul sex ass maybe looks pretty good yeah he's he's an amazing talent david miller's very excited about him and that says something because david miller had never heard of him going into the dauphiné david always arrives into like a summer of commentary going never heard of him lip of it not heard of him but he's like his ability to learn is very fast but he's a good judge of he's a good judge david and he thinks he's seen stuff in paul sexas that he hasn't seen in a french rider really ever kind of like of his you know not even in pinot he's like i mean he's 18 the kid so it's uh he's a phenomenal prospect i don't know too much about Paul Sixers.

30:18However, I do sort of like go grazing around the German press and they're very excited about Lipovitz. And for them to have a sort of genuine GC racer to celebrate is kind of hasn't happened since the doping generation. So it could be really significant. You know, Lipovitz competing for a podium at the Tour de France specifically, it could potentially be a game changer and just the game changer that ASO needs because ASO own the Deutschland tour and it's still a four-day race I think I don't think it's expanded beyond that maybe five days but it's still not even a week-long race which is crazy when you think about it Germany has the economy it has the topography and the size of population to support a much bigger race than just a four-day race I mean even the Tour of Britain's longer than that.

31:09So, but I do remember, I remember years and years and years ago when he was still racing and absolutely at the height of his success, I spent a day in Erfurt in East Germany having lunch and cruising around town with Marcel Kittel. When he was the yellow jersey, you know, he'd been the yellow jersey for the first time in his career that year. And we were just wondering, and that Marcel is quite recognisable, I think we can all agree, like six foot three, blonde, beautiful. and like a bit of a god and um no one recognized him you know we were walking around airfort which was his hometown at the time he lived there and no one recognized him he wasn't stopped once for an autograph and i went marcel this is sorry this is blowing my mind like if you walked around london you'd be stopped more often than that you know let alone uh milan or paris and he went no this is the you know he said for the german sporting public unless you're winning the tour de France outright, no one's that interested.

32:03So what they need to kickstart that is a genuine GC contender. And then I think it's really good for cycling if the German market bursts back into life. And then going a bit closer to home, I mean, this question's probably changed over the last couple of months, actually. But with ITV coming to an end, INEOS very much changing, we've Garant Thomas retiring. We're coming to the end of what some would probably call as the golden age of British road cycling. However, you also see more British male riders than ever and women too in the world tour. Do you think it is an end of the golden age or are we just so embedded now in the culture that we're just there?

32:44We're just the France who are not going to win the tour, but we've got loads of riders there. Yeah, it's a really good question. I don't know how it's going to play out because it's very contradictory at the moment, isn't it? We've got this enduring, shrinking, you know, it's not a recent phenomenon. and it's been going on for the last five, six, seven years, and COVID obviously accelerated it in some ways, shrinking of cycling in this country in all its different expressions. We've got the complete absence of continental teams. We've got races that are struggling to exist, races that have just stopped existing.

33:16We've got contraction of the cycling shops and the cycling industry is struggling. And yet, last year at the Tour de France, there were more British riders on the start list than there'd ever been in the history of the race. and I suspect we'll have something similar this year. And across the World Tour peloton, we've got the absolute proliferation in almost every single team without exception of really talented riders, some of whom I think could become major GC contenders in the years to come. So I wouldn't rule out us producing another GC contender, but I don't know how long this can last. That's my point.

33:49Because I genuinely think, and it's hard to be scientific about this, but anecdotally, in my own experience, having met some of these young men and women, I hear so many times, sorry to return to the original subject of this podcast, but I hear from these riders, their pathway of getting into this sport and getting interested in the first place was because their parents sat them down to watch the seven o 'clock highlights of the Tour de France. And that's how they got bitten by it. And genuinely, it's almost universal in their life stories to hear this kind of being told. But without that kind of like absolutely mainstream introduction to specifically the Tour de France, the biggest shot winner of the sport.

34:26I don't know. I don't know if that's sustainable to produce this number of riders who are as resourceful and committed and motivated and talented as they are to go overseas to find their career path because it doesn't exist here is really extraordinary. And it flies in the face of the facts, but I think, I fear it might be unsustainable. And I should mention that I think Kat Ferguson is possibly one of the most significant riders in the peloton at the moment both men and women because i think she is so talented across so many disciplines and could end up being such a major rider and i think the way she bears herself the way she her maturity on and off the bike is quite staggering and i think if she can fulfill her promise i think she'll be not only of immense significance for the maintaining the profile of cycling in Britain.

35:18But I think actually she's going to be the next rider who's going to drive the next wave of success and global appeal for women's racing in the years to come. So I think her presence eclipses any of the young male riders, actually, as talented as they are. I think Kat Ferguson, they can build an industry around her. She is absolutely the real deal. Do you think that's where maybe the coverage might bounce back in that obviously probably the women's and men's deals separate or more races keep coming in because obviously there's still some historic men's races that aren't women's races. And obviously there's an argument to say, you know, women can have their races that aren't men's races.

35:58But you see from stuff like the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix that if you do replicate that, it most likely will lead to pre-immediate success. So do you think with someone like Kat Ferguson, other riders like Fyfer-Georgie, Anna Henderson, and maybe it's actually women's cycling in the UK that will carry the torch for a good while. Yeah, quite possibly. I mean, I think that's very possibly the case. Because Kat, who I've been lucky enough over the last few months to meet for the first time, actually, and our paths kept crossing. I went up to the women's tour. I went to Paris-Roubaix, and that was the first time I met her.

36:32So here's a prediction for you. Kat, within an Olympic cycle, will have an Olympic gold medal around her neck, and she'll probably have an elite rainbow jersey within years and at that point she will be the next cyclist after Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish to become sports personality of the year. All she needs is some Olympic success I think because we're just weird about the Olympics in this country and we kind of think that nothing else matters. Absolute nonsense obviously but that's how it plays in this country. If you want to be like, if you want Claire Balding to interview you, it doesn't matter what you do at the Paris-Roubaix, you've got to win an Olympic gold medal.

37:13But I think Kat Ferguson will be Sports Personality of the Year. And I don't think Matt Brennan will anytime soon. But I think he'll be British national champion in a couple of weeks. That's a whole separate discussion. Yeah, that is an interesting one, though. Brennan being the next guy through at Visma so young, that could really be something. The different kind of British riding, you know, sprinting is very different to what it was when Mark Cavendish was at his peak. And I guess we'll probably see again this year that it's not as straightforward as the nine-man HCC, whatever they were, train.

37:49Who's going to be the best sprinter at the Tour? I think at the beginning of the year, we probably all thought it was going to be Jonathan Milan. But after the Dauphiné, I'm not sure. Yeah, his Dauphiné was, what surprised me, the Dauphiné, I think you're right about Milan. I think when he's, you know, when everything aligns, when the stars align for Jonathan Milan, it's pretty hard to beat him, isn't it? He's the closest thing to Marcel Kittel that we've had since Marcel Kittel. You know, he's violent with that bicycle. It's kind of like awe-inspiring, isn't it, to watch. But he does need everything to be there for him.

38:20And on that one Dauphine stage, when he had Consoni, Stoven, and whoever the hell else was in his train, I can't remember off the top of my head, and that Lidltrek train just worked perfectly, he was absolutely unbeatable. but for the rest of the race he was a little bit fragile so i was i was surprised at how poorly he was climbing because normally for it's a bit of like a football cliche he's got a nice touch for a big man but for a big man he climbs well but he wasn't going so well at the dauphine which is often a sign of condition you know his condition isn't quite there for grand tours so he looked vulnerable to this don't forget he's never raced the tour de france and it's not the giro so he yeah there's a few question marks about milan and the other two fastest men in the world are Philipson and Malia and of those three I back at this point Malia probably to end up in Paris with the biggest number of wins but none of them but then again I just honestly I was looking at this first week of racing at the Tour and they're really quite complicated you know there's very few of the sprints are straightforward until we get to those two stages that shoot south after the Mille de Bretagne then you go to Chateau Rue where Mark Cavendish will obviously come out of retirement, pin a number on and win again.

39:28But those are straightforward stages. But up until that point, nothing straightforward, really. So yeah, so maybe that's nonsense about Malia, who's also, let's not forget, he's in a GC team. So he's not going to have much of a lead-out train. So I don't know. Well, speaking of that first week, actually, I think maybe I'm right in saying that breakaways feel like they're becoming less successful at the Tour de France, probably because of the strength of Vizmo Lisa Bike and UAE. But would you say that that first week, there's a real opportunity for those surprise wins to happen? Or is it more likely to be a Van der Poel, Van Aert battle for the punchers?

40:11I think that's a very good question that's quite hard to answer. But I do fear for, you know that dynamic that set in at the Tour a little bit last year where no one wanted to go on the break on the sprinter stages? it was like oh that's a problem for cycling that's like and and it's it's a function i think of the of the seriousness with which the second and third tier teams kind of approach their craft now you know there's not they're no longer prepared just to be there to make up the numbers and you know be the fools who attack so so let's pray i think the thing that we need like if climate change is going to be our friend rather than our enemy at all then the thing that we need is wind we haven't really had much where there was no very little wind at the Giro wasn't much wind at the Tour de France last year I think they've designed the opening week of this race with wind in mind and they just need to get a bit lucky with that because you know I go back to that and they I always my absolute benchmark for breakaway success um of course we saw some wonderful breakaways make it to the line last year and in a way the question we're asking is a bit pointless because they mean so much because they are so rare, you know.

41:19So there's that. But, you know, in recent history, the greatest breakaway success was that stage at the Giro three years ago. I think it was when in Treviso, where Dries de Bont won the stage and he masterminded that quartet of riders with Magnus Court, Davide Gaboro and Eduardo Afini. Those four riders just played the game perfectly and exploited a howling tailwind to their advantage in the last 80 kilometers. But you do need the stars to align for that to happen. So I think let's just pray for wind. And then the course is set up for it. And I think it could be, yeah, it could be really interesting.

41:54But they need a little bit of assistance. Let's hope that happens. If it's just still and hot, we're going to see a lot of days where people will hesitate to go on a break at all. And then eventually one rider from Antemarche will reluctantly go up the road. And that'll be it. Do you think the promotion and relegation from the World Tour is ruining the breakaway then? Because 10th place in the sprint is worth more than a day in the breakaway. So they've all seemed to have a sprinter that will go for a top 10 or in Astana's case, they'll get about five riders in the top 10, even though they know they're not going to win.

42:29So is that affecting how many riders go in the breakaway? Like at the Giro, you see, you know, oh, great, it's David Ibaïs on his own all day. You know, they're not expecting to get promoted. they're really doing it for the breakaway but there aren't enough of those teams doing it anymore like Uno X still very rarely will be that team apart from last year when Abramson was going for that on that nice little polka dot run is the promotion relegation cycle ruining it all? Yeah, 100 % it is I'm not totally averse to the promotion relegation thing I think it's got some strengths to it but that isn't a strength that is a problem in particular at Grand Tours where you get this kind of like big attention on cycling and you get a lot of points.

43:12I think that is a dynamic that is set in that is not productive really. So I think that does need to be looked at and maybe the points weighted differently somehow or maybe points given for other aspects of racing. Why is it all about your finishing? Why is it all about what you do at the finish line? You know, I think that it's quite easy to mock the Giro, which I am very happy to do because I have an affectionate relationship with it. but because there is something quite funny about on the final stage in rome about the number of different podium ceremonies there are for all the different classifications and all the different competitions but because it's quite funny isn't it ultimately in fact there was one i was watching the very last podium ceremony in rome was for such an irrelevant category by the and it went to maz pedersen but by the time it came around maz pedersen had just pissed off he'd gone he'd left He couldn't be bothered with it.

44:07And so I could see what was going on behind the scenes. In their absolute desperation, they put Lorenzo Fortunato on the podium and he won it instead because he was the only rider still hanging around. And the only reason he was still hanging around is because he's going out with one of the women who work for RCS. So he was just waiting to go out for a party. So they went, oh, you'll do. Anyway, and I can't even remember what the category was. Sorry, there's a point here somewhere. Yes. so every day when i was commentating and believe me i needed narratives to kind of like get my teeth into um there was there was genuine intrigue in what drice de bont was up to chasing the inter giro there was the new red bull kilometer that not only had a big cash prize every day that was a real incentive for some of the bardiani riders and all that sort of thing but it also had an overall classification like the red bull kilometer had an overall classification and riders were literally riding for it and and actually incentivized the breakaway it it made the whole thing it just gave it a level of depth and the tour sort of like because the tour is a bit grander than that it shies away from offering these slightly meager classifications and i don't see why it should you know i think maybe just handing out some uci points why not what's what's 10th place worth in terms of uci points i don't know 50 i don't know what it is so but why not just put a UCI points sprint.

45:32Why not? And that would animate things, wouldn't it? But I mean, you know, I've honestly been banging my head against a brick wall. I've had all these brilliant ideas about how to make stage racing more interesting and everyone just laughs at me and nothing ever, no one ever listens. Well, as a commentator, you know, part of the role is filling those dry, no breakaway, 150 kilometers. As you opened, I think you opened your most recent live show with that phenomenon. That phenomenon, yes. We'll skip to the end of the tour. Paris is back after its year off, but it's not the same. We've got a little loop going up the hill to Montmartre like we saw in the Olympics, but not quite the same as the Olympics.

46:17Do you think they're trying a bit too hard? Do you think they should keep it as it was before? Do you think it's not quite Olympic-y enough? It's probably worth a try, isn't it? I'm a bit sceptical as to whether or not it'll produce the desired outcome i mean it's it's a gamble but you might see who you're going to see tobias johannesson uno x are going to be all over the front because johannesson will be chasing sixth place it might be a bit like that and then you know i and then you know because because uno x have been riding so hard pogaciu will attack and take another minute and and maybe you know that's what they they they clearly they clearly want and i sort of understand why so i'm being a bit of a luddite and a reactionary about this but they clearly want tade pogac to finish on his own in the yellow jersey in paris on the champs elise and put his arms in the air because that would be a quite a shot wouldn't it that would be like well we've never seen that before but on the other hand i do think it's like thin gruel for the sprinters that's the second year in a row and their race just because the cameras don't capture it their race you talk to any sprinter and the and the the riders who work with that side of the teams that side of the team their race is every bit as important i think and their reward has always traditionally been paris and the champs elisee sprints and for them to just have that ripped away from them because no way is it going to be a sprint no way is it going to be a sprint it's going to be in bits and pieces and riders are going to be finishing the tour de france in the gruppetto which one of the nice things about the champs elisee is that the however many riders complete the race 150 riders come over the line pretty much together they complete it as a as a race it's no one's dropped we're all in and that's got a sort of like for me a symbolic value and I do you know what I quite like them here I'm talking myself into it like but I quite like the the rhythm of the final stage I know most people sitting at home don't they're not sitting in Paris at the finish line like I am and they don't feel the weight of three weeks of traveling like I do so it obviously means more to me but I don't I don't mind the fact that they're all the shenanigans and then eventually you get onto the circuit and a race starts it's just like a neutralized rollout with a very short criterium race and I don't mind that and the Champs -Élysées stage can be pretty interesting actually in terms of the bunch sprints so they're throwing something away and they're replacing it with something that could be amazing but probably won't be however like I say it is worth a try and they are being responsive to public opinion i am very much out of line with public opinion on this i suspect uh since every single year the biggest single kind of comment we get about stage 21 is why isn't it a real race or what happens if there's only one second in it you know and all that sort of thing and and i get i get that i get i get it's just weird to have a sporting event that reaches its climax with a total anti-climax maybe they should just put a Red Bull kilometre at the top of the climb and just do it once.

49:14So there's a few seconds on the line. If there is one second in it, they can have a sprint and then we can peel off. Yeah. Or just put an arch at the top of the climb that is the arch of the unknown prize. Oh, and it could actually dock points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dock points. Yeah. Or just it's 20 minutes. You've just won 20 minutes. Well done you. Yeah. Who knows? Well, one thing that I did want to ask you, and it sort of comes from that tradition versus breaking away from tradition mindset. And probably because we're so close to the Tour de France finishing in a time trial that this change might be a bit like, I guess maybe too soon.

49:56I know it is a special event, but I wasn't there to watch Vynukorov win his breakaway. And something that I've always wanted was to see a breakaway fight on the final day, on the Champs -Élysées, because it's such an anomaly, I guess. Would you sort of, I mean, I know you do understand that kind of need for something different now and again. And that's not going to change unless, I guess, the course has changed. But do you see another option in, say, the next five years, say that it continues to finish on the Champs -Élysées, that that will ever change, that we might get a breakaway? Or do you only ever see it playing out as an expected sprint finish?

50:39Yeah. I mean, it's... No, that will never... I can't see that ever changing, actually. unless you had some really anomalous year the only thing that would change that potentially is if all the sprinters pretty much bar one had abandoned the race and so you had no one to control it and you had like 10 teams willing 12 teams willing to attack or you had terrible weather you'd need something yeah you'd need like a lightning strike event really in multiple different ways to change the narrative there's too much strength in that peloton isn't there and there's too you know if you think about the nature of the course yes it's cobbles but also it's a two and a half kilometer straight road and then you turn around you know so like they can you can see them there's nowhere to hide it's an incredibly wide road so everything everything possible militates against a breakaway making making it to the line but um so maybe it is you know it's just i don't know how you alter that unless you were to deep what you could do i suppose potentially deviate the route a little bit so you don't go back down the Champs-Elysees.

51:44You could go up it and then maybe at the Etoile, dive off to the left and kind of like flick-flack through the other little side roads. So there are corners and it's a bit more of a technical circuit and then dive under the tunnel and do it all again. That would be interesting. You know, I don't know what the practicalities of that would be like in terms of closing off even more of Paris. But that could be quite cool and worth considering. But no, on balance, I'm being, I suppose I'm just being a bit of a stuck in the mud on it. I think, I am looking forward to it. It is something different. I'm a little bit disappointed it's the last one we'll ever do because I would have liked to have kind of signed off where I began in some ways.

52:24And also, if Tadej Pogacar really is going to finish on his own in the yellow jersey, I've got no idea what I'm going to say. I ran out of words about Tadej Pogacar a long, long time ago. So I'm going to three weeks to think what on earth do I say at that moment I might just say nothing and just drop the microphone all you hear is a thud that'll be quite some statement if if if you and David left the commentary booth 10 minutes before the end yeah just gonna have a pint well you know what's gonna happen now see ya how much I don't know how much you've studied the route so far but there's some we've got some pretty big hitters on the way this year obviously everyone is going to watch every single stage on ITV for.

53:03However, if you had to recommend one stage for someone to make sure that they tune in for start to finish, which one would it be? Okay, I'm going to be really, I'm going to be really obvious here. I think I'm going to say state, well, is it an obvious thing to say? I don't know. But stage one, how about that? Because for me, like, I was asked, I did an interview recently where people said, you know, is it going to be emotional? When's it going to hit you what you know this is the last of 23 kind of participations as a journalist in the tour and the obvious thing to say i suppose would be at the end when the riders on the podium and the sun is setting behind the arc de triomphe and all that kind of thing and yes that will hit home but actually for me the most thrilling moment of any tour de france is actually the moment that we first get live pictures from the start line of stage one before the neutralized rollout when they're just rolling up to the start and the key riders are lining up on the front and it's normally a helicopter shot and you can see all the colors of the peloton and all of them all of the riders are there they're all there none of them have crashed none of them have got sick none of them have lost any time in gc none of them have won a stage there are no king of the mountains points it's all all that potential is there locked up in that peloton and the damn thing is about to start again and you know you might have a predictable outcome in mind but you sure as hell don't know all the crazy stuff that will happen because crazy stuff will happen.

54:32Absolutely no doubt about that. The joy of it is we have no idea what it's going to be. And I love that moment where the story, it's like picking up a book, isn't it? And then opening the page for the first time. It's just a really special moment. And it's really soon. And just talking about it makes me quite excited. So yeah, watch stage one. Watch stage one of the Tour de France. And then don't turn it off. Just keep it on. Don't turn it off, just keep your telly on for a month. And if there's a rider that's maybe not going to finish on the overall podium, or be one of the top three sprinters, that you might say, what for this guy?

55:11Do you have someone like that? Yeah, I do. And I would have said this had he not achieved what he just did on the Dauphiné. I think Jake Stewart is in the form of his life. I think he's a really dangerous rider. I think he's looking really good. I've noticed this in the last couple of years. that boy has come on so much and there's so much to what he does. And Pascal Ackerman crashed out of the Dauphin. I'm not sure he's going to be ready in time for the tour. So Jake has a real opportunity here to really make his mark. I think he could win a stage and I think he could do more than that. I think he might be the kind of rider who could have a tilt at the green jersey and see how deep he goes in that as well.

55:50On his funny bike. On his extremely, obviously, very fast funny bike. Yeah. that obviously David Miller can't say anything about. No, but I'm sure he'll find a way of saying a lot about it. I thought that was absolutely bizarre. Not that David Miller is not saying anything about the bike, but Jake Stewart finished just behind that crazy GC van der Poel group on that first stage. Yes, he did. He was very clearly faster than everyone else there. And then they made him work for Ackerman, and then I think it was the next sprint, Ackerman was absolutely nowhere. where I think Jake Stewart could have probably beaten Milan if they just let him have that.

56:29Because then the next time when he actually did go because Ackerman crashed out, it wasn't close. Yeah, but I mean, you can see the thinking. You know, Ackerman, look at his, pop onto his pro cycling stats page and look at how many races he's won compared to Jake. You know, I get the seniority thing. And it's only sometimes with hindsight that you kind of understand these things and you go, well, that was a bit weird. But they have to kind of prove the concept, don't they? and um you know it was a bit it was a bit like that last year at the tour uh when anta mache started the race with um uh gabin tason and biniam girmai and actually everyone thought tason's probably got the edge in a fast sprint on girmai and girmai let's be honest he hasn't done much for a couple of years and then they rode quite specifically for tason in that first sprint and biniam had absolutely no support and from that moment on it was kind of like oh oh that's kind of like what we should be doing now and they flip tactics and that can happen in a team and i and i understand it because especially in the i think especially in sprinting there's limited amounts of understanding about relative form and sharpness that you can glean from a training camp right i think with gc riders that's much more apparent because it's a numbers thing ultimately isn't it and you know you can you can measure that but the sharpness of mind motivation and nerve as well as the kind of like top end power and recovery and top end power again those things are much harder to calibrate in a sprint so i think it's often happens at races that you go in with one plan and another one emerges because it just it speaks for itself so i'm really interested to see what jake can do at this race and then one question that i had that this this kind of relates what we're saying before are you going to be like kids on the last day of school or are you going to be strictly professional all the way through we did have a we had a little production meeting about this uh during the dauphiné the question was asked you know what over because we're on air for you know a lot of hours over a month and the question was asked sort of what do we what do we say if anything about the lights going out and free-to-air cycling effectively disappearing from british tv and i think the consensus was pretty unanimous that what we're going to do is going to be very sober and uh we're going to show and not tell you know in other words there's going to be i think a lot of nostalgia i think that our producers are going back through the archives and digging out stuff that dates right back to the channel four era and and so i think people will i hope that you know when when the race situation allows for us to dip away and and kind of fumble around in the memory banks a bit we'll do that but with a soft touch it's not going to be look what we all miss you know i think it's just it's just i think i I think it's what the viewers are going to want to see, you know, because the viewers have been part of our lives.

59:17And we know, we understand as well that we have been part of the viewers' lives for a very long time. So not to do that would be quite weird. But I mean, that's where the point that we're making starts and finishes. It's just, this is what we've enjoyed together for a very long period of time. And I guess when that curtain sadly closes, what is one thing that you would say throughout the years working at ITV that you hope viewers will take from this experience? Because it is such an experience. It's such a, you know, you're almost invited into people's homes like every summer and it's sort of intimate in a way and you are part of one of the many voices of summer.

1:00:01What would you, yeah, what would you hope that people would take from all this? I think that's a really good point. Very nicely expressed, Robin, the idea of being invited into someone's home. that's precisely what I've always felt and I think if I want to sum up the the strength of the race and the offering and the place of importance that it's occupied in people's lives in one sort of like thought I think it's that because I know this is I know this is applied to me and so I think by implication it's kind of been transmitted across the piece and I also I saw something I've learned from my colleagues from Gary and Matt and David in his own way and Pete in his own mad bonkers way as well, is it is an event which, like it or not, broadens horizons.

1:00:48You know, it literally broadens horizons because every day that's what you're looking at. Endless horizons of a country you may know quite well, but you don't know every corner of it. And the Tour de France will teach you that. And the Peloton itself, this organism made up of a million parts, is something that you will never understand fully. So all you can do is learn. When I first started, it was a francophone environment where very few people spoke English. That's changed. But still, it has this air of, from a British perspective, otherness that I think is deeply important to the way that UK consumers, to use a horrible word, viewers consume the product or understand the product.

1:01:30It broadens horizons. It makes you a more thoughtful and appreciative person, I think, following this race. my two sort of big outstanding questions that come from this whole thing is how are fans going to keep track of gary emlach's shirt choice post post the tour big question big question yeah it's a huge question and then the other one that's just completely gone from my head oh here we go what happens to the theme tune i don't know who owns it actually but it's not going to pop up in the top 10 anytime soon is it let's be honest it pops up in my top 10 in my top 10 it is yeah i don't know whether gary's just got plans he's keeping under wraps so you couldn't rule out gary launching his own brand of you know man's got to live yeah um his own brand of kind of like maybe monikered polo shirts with little gi and a little crest that'd be nice wouldn't it if i were him i'd be thinking about doing that yeah i'd buy one of those i'd buy one of those there you go there's three right there gary well ned anyway people will be it will be able to find you they will be able to find you on itv this summer they will be able to find you on podcast players with never straights far and that i'm sure will continue you've got your book out the accidental tourist then i'm sure there will be more books i'm sure you probably got more live shows coming any other big plans that you want to let people know how to find their bolting.

1:02:56Substack? Yeah, Substack is a hugely interesting thing that's just come into my life, and that gives me an opportunity to write stuff that nobody would want to publish. So it's great. Total freedom of expression. I love it. Yeah, there is a big announcement in the wings, but it's not something I can talk about yet. That sounds rather exciting and a pretty good place to leave it on. It is exciting. I want to know what it is now. Oh, God. It's another road book. No, you just said it. That happens every year. This is going to be our day now, Ned. We're going to be like thinking of everything that it can possibly be.

1:03:33Okay. Good luck with that. No, it won't be long, but I have got a big announcement coming, but it'll be not long now. Lovely. Right. Ned, thank you very much. Enjoy your summer, as we will enjoy your summer too. Cheers, guys. Thanks for the chat. Really enjoyed it. they're vaulting ladies and gentlemen always and when i say always i mean very frequently a really good guest great bloke very busy man probably soon to be less busy but hopefully as he teased he will become more busy once again robin i've briefed you briefly which is interesting briefly briefed me no we want your opinions on what is going to happen at the when this comes out we're just over a week away from Grand Depart.

1:04:22Do you have any crazy predictions or not crazy predictions apart from, oh, I think Pogaccia is going to win? Because I would guess that's what you're going to put in your predictions, which our official cyclist predictions will come out next Wednesday. Yeah. On Cyclist.com, yeah. Maybe this time I'll actually get a prediction, right? Yeah, I think you've got Mads Pedersen at the Giro, actually. Well, there we go. Yeah, just repeat that so everyone hears it clearly. I don't really have any like crazy out there predictions, but one I'm really sort of looking forward to how he's going to go is Kevin Volklund from Arkea B &B.

1:05:05Yeah, I really think like not necessarily a GC challenge. I don't think that at all. But potentially like... One of the states last year. Yeah, exactly. And I think he could realistically win two this year, just throwing it out there. Probably bigger stages than that one. Yeah, yeah, because the one, like, I feel like when you come into the Tour de France from a team like Arkea, people aren't necessarily expecting a lot of you, it's fair to say, because, you know, it's all like, oh, they'll go in the breakaway and then maybe they'll get like one stage. But now, especially after his like really good Tour de Suisse performance, yeah, there's just going to be more eyes on him.

1:05:43we're all looking at you don't get nervous about it don't get nervous about it um i think i'm on the same wavelength i think it's going to be a big year for french riders nice i've not double checked the start list so this could be complete nonsense and none of them are actually doing the race but if roman gregoire is riding also a good tour de swiss i think he's going to win the stage I think Lenny Martinez is not going to be in the GC he's been too hot or cold so far this season but when he gets out of it early he's not going to dab a goodu and be riding in back of the race every stage you know this guy's a real a real rider he's going to win a stage he could win a big mountain stage you know one of the ones when they get a little bit tired and UA decide actually maybe we should probably let them have this one and they let them go yeah it's quite tricky this year because it's one of those so Lenny won the Mon Vontu one day race last year and then you sort of look at the stages, obviously there's a lot that pack them in, but the Vontu stages it's all flat and then there's the one climb, which kind of screams to me like, UAU is going to be way too controlled You know how they're like they want that stage to play out and then it's like Yeah, it's just going to be like sprint Sprint Yeah, basically.

1:07:05It's like they designed it purely so the KOM could go. Yeah, exactly. And people can be like, oh, it's crazy. What are they doing these days? And it's like, well, they're literally just climbing that climb. And it's basically pan flat. Like, come on, let's get in before the moaning. Yeah. And just enjoy the spectacle, guys. Oh, and I'm really excited for that last day, Will. I know you know how much I want to see a potential breakaway on the Champs -Élysées one year. could this year be the year? For the listeners, Robin is an historic hater of the processional final stage. I mean, they have their place, don't get me wrong, but it's like once in a decade, I want to see something different.

1:07:48Not like a time trial. But then last year. Yeah. Wait, hold on. Maybe twice in a decade. This is a different decade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It ended last year and then this is the new decade for all those listening. So you want the breakaway? Yeah. Do you want the breakaway to be Pogacar? Or does that not count? I want the breakaway to be... I don't want it to be Pogacar. I want them to beat Pogacar. Because Pogacar will already have won the Tour de France. So if he does this, it's like, okay, let someone else shine. So greedy. I think what the organisers want is they probably want Pogacar, Van der Poel if he gets to the finish.

1:08:29they want that stage one of the Dauphiné vibes ridiculous day R.O.P. the Dauphiné get on to that one again it's going to make me sad I'm going to cry I also think and I think it was confirmed prior to us speaking that young Oscar Onley is going to target stages that's all the fronts and I think we can all agree that he is going to win a stage yeah that's it I love Oscar Onley I think it's so much fun to watch him on climbs I could watch him on the flats too. Oh, fair enough. All right. Go one better, why don't you? I'm actually looking forward to it. And our colleague, Ewan Wilson, he said, watching the Tour de Suisse, that stage of the Tour de France, which goes up to Peregoud, I don't know what his exact words were, but basically he wasn't looking forward to it because I think he basically thinks it's going to be a demolition.

1:09:23However, I thought that was really entertaining. and I always think those mountain time trails are highly underrated. When was the last mountain time trail you watched that didn't have some kind of surprise or drama? Yeah, there was that one where didn't Roglic's train come off or something? Or he hit a little dint. That was the Jira one that he won the Jira on. Because that was crazy as well. That happened mid-ride and he won the race. Yeah, mad that. Drama. And then he lost the other one on the Tour. What a mixed bag. The Tour de Suisse, watching that. And, you know, you go on for about four hours and still Harry Sweeney is winning.

1:10:06Where's this come from? And then, obviously, Almeida dominated that stage and he'll probably be pretty good at the Tour de France. But here's my other opinion and something that we'll probably see at the Tour de France. I think we'll probably see that Almeida might kind of reverse this, but the Dauphiné, we sort of went back to the early Pogaccia days of he was just sat on his own chilling out. I think it will likely go back to that at the tour. I think it's going to be like, does the team actually matter? Because I think probably Pogaccia is going to win without much support. I don't know. But spoilers, I'm not actually going to say Pogaccia.

1:10:43My official prediction is not going to be Pogaccia. Oh, not putting your eggs in the Pogaccia basket. Cancel him. Cancel him. No. Are you going for Fingered World? Yes. Are you going for Remco Ebenovol just to be different? I think that Visma are the kind of team to play their cards very close to their chest. And they didn't seem too disappointed at the Dauphiné. They did just release their team. And it's probably exactly as you expect it to be, isn't it? Let me have a look. You know, they've got a good team. Obviously, they probably do a bit too much work, but they're going to make it hard. they'll be a bit disappointed that Vontu is not a big climbing day, but they've got other stages.

1:11:25He's got a really good time trial. We saw that at Dauphiné. I feel like he's also the kind of guy that goes in slightly undercut and rides into the race. That's fair. That's valid. Which is what we saw at Dauphiné. So here's the team, obviously. So we've got Wingergood, Wout van Aert, Yates, Brackets, Simon, Matteo Jorgensen Eduardo Afini Benut Kuss and Campanac God that's a bloody good team isn't it Yeah Jesus I think they were right Yeah I reckon they'll be good What do you know No I'm actually I'm convincing myself more and more that thank God that's going to win Yeah okay I don't know I just want to see the thing that annoys me actually and I do enjoy Talibagatia but you get the criticisms of like, oh, you know, Pogaccia, Wingergaard make racing boring.

1:12:20Give me an example of a Grand Tour that Wingergaard's been at or ridden and won that has been in one of those boring races, hasn't. Yeah, yeah. Now, that's probably because he's not done, you know, a solo one. The only one I feel like he's done without Pogaccia is probably the Sepp Kuss Vuelter, which was, it was good and bad in fairly equal measure. It's rather interesting. I enjoyed it. Yeah. And yeah, maybe he would dominate if he did. But we like to see the good riders go against each other. And while there is two, and if you look at our Facebook comments, they'll say, oh no, there's only one favourite for this race.

1:12:57I think it's going to be closer than it has been the past couple of years. Yeah? I hope so. I've talked myself into it now. I mean, I hope so. I hope there's a real good fight. I do not want to see one rider out in front by the final week. I'm going to be very annoyed. On the final stage. And they break away together. and they hold hands written it's written in the stars yeah I've definitely convinced myself now actually okay right well all I listen to this go you're wrong please write to me and tell me that I'm wrong either on social media or on our website or by email or a physical letter all our addresses can be found on the internet I'd very much enjoy that and also when our predictions come out next Wednesday make sure to comment on that and say Robin God could have you know stuck your neck out a bit more.

1:13:45Yeah, yeah. That will, yeah, fair enough. I'll accept that. Okay, final thing. So we normally predict the jerseys and an extra one. You're going to predict Pogaccia, Philipson, Pogaccia, and Evnipol. And you're going to put Vokalan as your wild card.

1:14:05Might change Philipson. Yeah, you'll have to read it to find out. Yes, great tease. all right Robin thank you very much for joining me and Ned obviously thanks very much to Ned I'm sure you can keep an eye on Ned's summer because we will all be watching the ITV coverage of course and the theme tune that's got in my head now I feel like we should be ending with theme tune but I don't actually know who has the rise for that so I don't think we'll be able to get that but just maybe Robin you can sing it oh it's just so good isn't it it's so good oh right my hey people is killing me thank you very much for them thank you very much everyone enjoy the tour de france we'll see you in a couple weeks

1:14:54Robyn: hello lovely listeners i just wanted to tell you that cyclist isn't just a podcast no cyclist is also a beautiful print magazine it's packed full of all the best rides from around the world the newest bikes and kit, and loads of in-depth articles featuring guests just like on today's show. So head on over to cyclist.co.uk slash subscriptions and check out our latest Cyclist Magazine subscription offers.