135. Stephen Roche: the Triple Crown Champion

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1:40Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host, James Splendor, and I'm really excited to have joining me down the wire, Mr. Will Strixen, because I feel like I haven't seen you for ages, Will. You've been doing this with Robin. I know. Where have you been, James? I feel like you've been away. Well, what a lovely segue. You know I've been away. I went to Italy. Well, I went to Switzerland for the launch of BMC's new bike, the SLR01, so you can read all about it. Read all about it on cyclist.co.uk. and then I've just come back from the Dolomites for the Maratona Dolomiti which is I reckon I think it's the oldest sport even in the known universe or at least it's up there it's been running for 38 years 138 kilometers not very far in cycling terms but get this 4 ,300 meters so it's quite steep so I found it quite hard yeah how'd you get on did you almost die?

2:37um i didn't almost die i came a stonking 1034th out of about eight and a half thousand people that's bloody good and uh before i went i asked chat gpt in the morning bleary-eyed i was like what's a good time for the maratona and then explained sort of my situation i was like the last the only rides i've been doing recently have been 40 kilometers with 650 meters of climbing and I'm 80 kilos and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it rather condescendingly went, yeah, you'll be lucky to get under seven and a half hours. So I was like, ah, TBT! So my target was seven and I got 644. So screw you, AI. Yes.

3:17So there we go. That was fun. How have you been? I've been good. I've been busy. I was on holiday at the weekend, which was nice. Very nice. I just meant I had to catch up on the old Tour de France. The old Tour de France, yeah. That's happening. What's going on? What's going on? Well, this will come out a couple of days. This is how the sausage gets made. This will come out a couple of days after we're speaking now. So it could all be completely different. However, so far, Pogaccia looks good. Yeah. Philipson's crashed out. So the sprint race, Green Jersey is wide open. Because also this year, the Green Jersey competition, and we'll probably see this more in the next coming weeks, could go to anyone because of the weighting of the stages and how many points we want to offer.

3:55So it could well be Pogaccia that wins the Green Jersey, but we'll have to see. at the moment he's very much in the race alongside like Malia, Milan and now Philipsman's out you might see more of a Van der Poel going for it maybe a bit of a bit of a job from Groves got time trial as well the day that we're speaking so there's going to be a big shift in the old GC Van der Poel's probably going to drop off from the yellow jersey which is where he is now probably be Vingegaard having seen what Pogaccia did at Dauphiné it's probably going to be Vingegaard going to yellow unless Remco Evo Napol does something special.

4:31And there's no Gana. No Gana. He was out day one, unfortunately. Day one. So the Dauphine was the Vinigal besting Pogacar in the time trial? Pogacar lost quite a chunk of time. He looked quite uncomfortable. He's a bit wobbly. I think he might have been testing some new stuff. I would probably imagine that he will do a lot better in this one. And that was more of a testing ground. Do you see that bit of ITV coverage that was explaining if you took the two Tours de France, they've won each, and then mapped them next to each other, the gaps that they would actually have. And then if you had all the time bonuses in there, then Bogatje's like a minute and a half ahead over something like 12, 13, 14 ,000 kilometers total racing.

5:15If you took out the time bonuses, then actually Vinigar's beating him by three seconds. Isn't that mad? it's crazy and that's part of my thinking of I think going into this year Wiengergard just become underrated because he you know Pogaccio won last year but before last year we couldn't see Pogaccio being Wiengergard so exactly it's a bit twisty it is a bit twisty like all the best rivalries well they keep on banging on about how it's such a great rivalry and it is interesting but at the same time they're really nice aren't they so it's not like a rivalry in like wrestling or boxing where they really get under each other's skin I want some I want some more aggression between them although there is a clip and i mean if you're watching the most recent and final series of sort of fronts unchained on netflix i think it does try to paint pagachas a bit of a villain and there's one clip i think where he basically says f you to vingegaard on one of the stages so there's a little bit of juice there but then obviously they come off really nicely but i think this is and this is something you see in tennis now as well carlos alcaraz seems like the world's nicest man superstars just getting a bit too nice it's getting a bit too nice maybe they were always quite nice and maybe they were well i don't know no i don't know that's a whole other tangent let's not go there instead let's welcome today's guest who needs no introduction but we'll do a very brief one anyway it is stephen roach the only well the only other man except for eddie merks and tadej begatja to have won the triple crown which is the giro the tour de france and the world championships in one season and the year was will 90 ah come on 1987 big year big year for the irishman so i talked to steven about that triple crown winning year um and i say i will was not involved in this one i can't remember there were reasons but it's just me so you know those strix and fans out there just tune out for the next hour and come back and then we'll tell you about the upcoming stages in the tour de france For everyone else, Stephen and I talk about his time at Abert Sesse, which is the athletic cycling club that loads of pros cut their teeth in in France back in the day.

7:23His progress through those early years and then his amazing season, which basically, although he won all this stuff, made him an absolute villain in Italy. Quite a hated man in cycling for a short amount of time by a certain number of fans, which is really horrible. So there we go. That's sport. And this is Stephen Roach.

7:44I'm going to say you come across as a very unflappable person and as a very clunky segue to asking you about yourself as a rider. Would that be your kind of personality? Were you able to deal with someone like Hino telling you to ride or De Clos La Salle telling you off for muscling his hair later on and not let it kind of get under your skin and not let that morale get too eroded by situations like that well i think i was um in a way very respectuous toward towards these guys but at the same time i was you know outspoken you know for example we had um in the early season we had the grand prix of monaco and i had um being placed in a couple races like you know uh all the early season races we arrived in monaco and john René Bernadot was just a new guy in the team who had just left Bernadino as his right-hand man and had come to Peugeot as being the future star of French cycling.

8:43So we arrived in Monaco, the Grand Prix of Monaco. We did a few laps and I'm in the front with two other Peugeot riders, Jean-René Bernadot and another guy called Bernard Bourreau, and two or three other guys. So I'm riding really, really well and I'm thinking, geez, I could win this. It's an uphill circuit to the finish, down to Monaco, finish on the board I can win this you know so second last lap I attacked to kind of see how things were and when I was brought back then by the by the group I was told Bernardo says to me Stephen the car wants to talk to you Maurice de Mer the sportif wants to talk to you so I slipped back to the car and Maurice says Roach Bernardo wins I says excuse moi Bernardo wins I said but I'm riding very strong.

9:34Roach don't understand. Bernardo wins. I said, OK, well, so I took it easy on the climb, got over the top, and we're coming down into the port of Monaco, and I'm really going fast. Bernard Burrow comes over to me and says, Roach, I'm second. I said, oh, Bernardo can win, OK, but you and me are going to fight it out for second place. So I went down to the port of Monaco. I let the sprint out. But I opened the door for Bernadette. Bernadette came through and I closed the door and I put poor Bernadette Burrow on the barriers nearly because there was no way he was going to come past me like that, you know.

10:12So it would be a good laugh afterwards. But like I said, it was like a learning curve. Like that night, Maurice de Maire says to me, Stephen, you know, I'm sorry, but, you know, it has to be done. Like Bernadette was coming to this new team at Peugeot as the next French successor to Bernadette Hino. if he wins his race Persia gets front page tomorrow in Likip if Roach wins he might get a quarter a little column in the paper in Dublin but nobody cares in France so very quickly and very simply I understood that you know and the way things work so and that's the way it was on another opportunity then we were I had gone on then I won Paris Nice and Tour de Corsica and we were riding the classics and I was kind of riding I was riding well but I was very tired and they were putting me into all the races and I needed a break so before Paris I took a small break and I was rode really well for Duclos de Salle he punctured I got my wheel got back on again he punctured again I got my other wheel and I finished like my second group but I rode really well so Amoris Demers says to me afterwards what can you see now the way you rode if only you hadn't had a break during the week and gone on holidays you'd have been up there in the front with Duclos but I'd give him giving him my wheel twice you know so anyway um he said you're you're you're a cyclist now pro cyclist you know i'm not a tourist anymore you know it's okay messy thank you so um we went on then and to from there went on into a same week flesh well on and liese pastor and liege and um we had a like before every night every every event we had a big meeting everybody was all around and explained the race route and the tactics and everything else and he says uh well so tomorrow who can I count on tomorrow?

11:57Duglo, how are you? Yeah, I'm okay. Phil Anderson, how are you? Yeah, I'm okay. Giovanni, who are you? I'm okay. And you, Roach, what are you going to do? So I said, I'm going to bring my camera and be the tourist and take photographs. So there was silence in the room. Silence. So Morris then had a go at me. And I said, Monsieur Le Maire, you're speaking now out of context. We're not talking about the race here. You're attacking me personally. If you want to tag me like this, you come to my room after the meeting and we talk about it, not in front of all my teammates. And there's a bigger silence in the room.

12:34I bet. Anyway, and also I always remember the waiters were coming in with the coffee at the end of the meal and the waiters kind of froze. You know, what's going on here? You know, very, very big tension. We left that meeting anyway and we came outside and Jack Boisissa and Douglas Salle said, Stephen, you've signed your licenciement. You're going to be sacked. You can't talk to Monsieur de Mer like that and get away with it. But ironically, like about six, seven years later, I was having a cup of coffee, champagne with Morris. Morris only drank champagne, no coffee. And he had a house down here in the south of France.

13:09And we're having a good talk about different things. He says, Throats, you know, what I liked about you, well, there wasn't, there's no gray area. It was white, I was black. What you did to me that day, those other guys would love to have spoken to me like you did. but they haven't got to do it. So he said it was really for a young guy. He was very surprised that I was actually able to, you know, had my own way of doing things and I was being straight and correct, but I wasn't making any mistakes, but I wasn't going to be intimidated by anybody, which I suppose in a way it's, I wasn't kind of the pretentious guy either who was out there, you know, all about myself, you know, but I was able to kind of stand up and talk for myself and that gained me a lot of respect between the riders and the managers.

13:56So what year was that? This is Persia. Was this like 83? Yeah, we were 81, 81, 82, yeah. So you were going pretty well by 83. That was the season you did the first Tour de France, finished 13th. You were third at the World Champs, won the Tour of Romandie. So you're in the ascendancy. At that point, was that when you decided you would move teams or was there some other kind of change or wrangle between yourself and Peugeot? Because one of the things I noticed is for a long time in your career, there's that moment where you're riding in Peugeot shorts and then you've got a Carrera top as if an old team still owns you, which you never see ride as a mismatched kit, especially sponsor mismatched kits.

14:40So was there some kind of legal wrangle going on? And especially we were riding Bataglin bikes. So yes, there was a twist there because when I am in 1983, the director of the team in Persia was changed. Maurice Demare had handed over to a guy called Roland Berlon, who's an ex-French champion and an ex-Renault team rider with Bernadino. And he was the new director sportif, but he was very arrogant. And before going to the Worlds, we had a talk about prolonging my contract for 84, 85. And we spoke about conditions, but didn't actually agree on money, whatever, I said to listen, you know, I'm not going to sign now because if I become world champion on Sunday, figures won't matter.

15:26We have to renegotiate it. So I'm not going to sign any contracts today. We will speak about it once we finish the Worlds. So I finished third in the Worlds. So as you can imagine, my phone is hopping, you know, proposals and new positions for contracts and everything else. And I'm trying to get Virgil to come back and basically go back to the table and negotiate financial conditions. So the Berlin was always too busy and couldn't find time. And one day he said to me, listen, Stephen, I've left you a contract at the secretary's office in Paris, call by, collect it, sign it, and that's it. So I said, OK.

16:08So I went down to the secretary, got the contract, and it was signed by himself. and he basically pulled on my contract with no financial gain in it. So he hadn't increased my salary at all from the previous year. So I said, hold on, this is not good. I mean, we didn't speak about money because we were waiting for the world. Oh, it doesn't matter. It's all the same. No, no, it's not the same. So I said, but like, you know, maybe other teams can think they can exploit a third place in the world, but I can't exploit it. You're the only one that thinks that. So, you know, either come to the table or I'm going to leave.

16:42so you can't leave you've got a contract as well that's not going to keep me so either come to the table we talk or i can't stay yeah so in the end i got legal advice and the advice there's no way this contract can be um can be binding because i i didn't i didn't hadn't signed it so um it was a contract there was conditions we had negotiated concerning a rent giving me a car and these things i signed those pages but then where the financials were on it he added the extra page on it where there was no signature on it. Right. So we tried doing a deal. So because I knew we're in France here, we don't know what's going to happen, so I did a deal with La Redoute because Maurice Dumers, who was with me and started off in Persia, was now going to La Redoute and I wanted me to come there and join him.

17:32So I said, Maurice, I'll come, but there may be a legal battle with Persia. If you undertake to finance and fight for me and it is a battle, then I will come. so I went to Larodout and I spent two years at Larodout and then at the same time fighting the legal issue with Peugeot which for me wasn't wasn't really you know shouldn't have been shouldn't have happened so in the end anyway Larodout decided they're stopping cycling but my case was still hanging so what do you do so Carrera said okay Steve we want to have you we don't want any legal battles we want to have you clean so they went to Peugeot and asked Peugeot listen we want to start this thing out with steven so if we put peugeot on our shorts for two years the duration of the contract with steven will you drop the proceedings so peugeot just said okay we drop the proceedings so i said drop to me if you might if you want but i'm continuing that my my honor is um at stake here and i don't want to i don't want to be seen to be a guy that kind of just tore the contract up and walked away you know so anyway we rolled with the with the peugeot on shorts for two years and after about two years i i won the appeal with peugeot because i had you know i had all the documentation necessary to to win it and um the guy there roland berlin was a basically intern he was he was sacked from the team for doing this plus other other sort of things but for me my honor was restored personally even though it wasn't publicized uh you know in the media and everything else it was publicized locally maybe but um i didn't do a big um song and dance about it because I didn't want to create confusion and you know here we go again what's happening people have forgotten about it you know but I want it but that's why we had um we're riding in Carrera with um Bateklin bikes and Peugeot on the on the shorts so they did I mean they did pretty well out of you in retrospect it turns out because those are those iconic images of you in 1987 you've got Peugeot down the side of each thigh in white writing on your black bib shorts so they at some point must have thought like yeah this could have this could have gone worse and i wonder what bataglin are thinking are they going this is just people are thinking roach is riding a perjot bike because on the down tube it says bataglin and that's much smaller in the photos than perjot written down the side of your thigh well would you believe i only had one issue with this which was when i went to to ireland i had a contract with perjot cycles so Peugeot on the shorts and I branded my Bateklin Peugeot so of course Bateklin wasn't very happy because I put Peugeot on the Bateklin bike but he was right Bateklin took it very well because he had Bateklin on the jersey also so he wasn't on the shorts but there's no kind of obligation for a team to have the bike supplier's name on the shorts So this is building up to your incredible year in 1987 but just before we come to that at the end of 86 there's quite a bad crash or a really bad crash that you have in a six-day race which as everyone will know you come back from because you ride in 87 but can you tell us a bit more about that crash and do you think in hindsight the way it was dealt with by coaches or your team was the right one or was that something because I think it kind of plagued you didn't it for for the rest of your career in one way or another this knee injury the crash actually was in november 85 on the sixth day okay and i'm i'm with partner with uh the late tony doyle and we are we are fighting for the for the first place overall last night and um the deal with tony was we we fight it out and uh he misses a relay say five minutes to the end and i throw him in there in the last minute then for he can go and win the sprint and get the points.

21:25So it worked very, very fine. I was throwing him in for his relay and my back tire blew out. So, you know, doing 60K an hour fixed wheel and went right down the full length of the track, tumbling and bumping my knee off the ground and everything else. Anyway, they patched us all up and put us back on the bikes and we ended up then losing the six day for a few points. But because of the end of my season, I hung the bike up, but not knowing that there was maybe damage there when i finally got the bike back out again then at christmas it's pain in my knee so i struggled with it for the first few months rode a few races but it wasn't wasn't great and career brought me to a big specialist in italy he diagnosed me with a crushing of the cartilage so here we can operate her on through arthroscopy and and get done with it so he did the operation on me on me anyway i had about two months out I go back on the bike again and I'm still in pain.

22:21So this now, I do the season, I missed the Tour de France, but I do the season and I'm not, you know, I have pain in my knee. So then I meet another doctor, a French doctor, and he operated on me for the ligaments. So the problem with the ligaments, they were crossing like this and they had some calcification there. So he operated on me then in November 86. And so I got back on the bike and everything was going good. and um we um came out then i did my season 87 but meantime like i've been 86 had been with carrera i did zero victories in the season and the boss were getting a little bit anxious and they were coming to me saying steven we're paying you good money but i haven't got the results so yeah will you renegotiate your contract so i did a deal with them i said listen like it's like when you get married you it's for better for worse so hopefully you've seen the worst so um what i suggest is that we are willing to negotiate if we see 87 being a bad year.

23:22So give me until Easter. If by Easter there's no results, then I'll negotiate. But until then, it's business as usual. So that's what we did. And I came back then and I did my great beginning of the season in 87. So I had no more contract negotiations with them. And then I finished off 87 then, as I did. But But unfortunately, though, at the end of 87, we had some events in Ireland, and I fell again on my knee. And because I fell on my knee, my car did more damage, and I woke up the injury. So I ended up then finishing off my season with a knee that was still very, very painful. And happened to have another operation then in the winter of 87.

24:03Yeah. So at some point during the next however many years, you retired in 93. So was that just something that, did you ever feel like you bounced back basically from the end of that injury in 87? Or are you always kind of fighting a tide from then on? I think I probably got back in 92 because 88 was a washout. And I met Dr. Möller-Wulfar from Germany, from the Bayern football team. I met him, very famous doctor, in the end of 88. And he fixed my knee up then through a long, long series of special massage, special treatment and all kinds of stuff. So I got back on then and I got back. but I never really was 100 % and possibly in 92 I was really, really going well again.

25:00I was back with Carrera again and riding for Cappucci and I won the stage in La Bourbeau. And it was basically then I decided, listen, finished. I can't get much better than this. I'm not going to win the tour again. I'm back to a really good level. Like I finished second in Holland. I was third in Saint-Gervais and here I am now winning a stage. I'm up there in the top 10 again. so it's not gonna get much better so let's just kind of do one more year for to wind down but my mind my head was was gone like i was finding more and more difficult to um come down the hills and the front i was always kind of you know thinking there's danger there so to be careful whereas um when this when this happens you're you're automatically in the wrong place at the wrong time yeah because um when you're going down a hill and you don't think about uh what might happen you're fearless but when you start thinking about is there gravel on the outer corner of the corner is there water there does it turn very very tight is the white line high you start looking at these things and you start losing losing time so you got to make up time so you're outside the comfort zone so i made it very very difficult and that's why in 92 i decided okay listen I've had a great career.

26:20I've been up and down. I'm back up now. I have no real injuries. So maybe it's time to kind of call it a day.

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29:16so that's the end of the career but that amazing bit in the middle that year of 1987 and you said you know you're going into it where you're almost being told this could be this could be a difficult season for you in terms of your contract because you haven't got those results from 86 because of this recurring injury from 85 you've shown so much promise in those early years at Peugeot and you've got a team that does look like it is going to kind of support you but then you still go into the Giro with the kind of the worst situation a rider like you could be in which is you're in an Italian team and you've got a defending Giro d 'Italia team leader in Roberto Vicentini.

29:59Tell us what happens next, because that is not a situation that you would expect an Irishman to be winning in. And more to the point, that also calls back to some things you said earlier in this conversation, which is team cars coming up to you, tapping on the shoulder and saying, this is not what we do, because this is not going to be the front page of La Gazetta if Irish Stephen Roach is in the Magaloreza. Well, that's, you know, exactly what I can say. like this particular episode repeated itself on several times during my career. But I had kind of started off 87, won the Tour de Valencia, second in Paris Nice, almost winning it, except for Puncture.

30:38I'd won two stages, Great Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Went on then and I won Tour of Romandie and won two or three stages in Tour of Romandie. And from there, straight to the Giro. So I always knew Roberto was going to be the leader because he'd made his proof by winning the Giro in 86. So we knew he could manage the three weeks, whereas for myself, we didn't really know. So I accepted to go along with it, but I was going to be like a co-leader and let the road decide who was going to be the real leader. So in the prologue, I broke my toe strap. I had the automatic pedals at the time, so I broke my toe strap.

31:17So I didn't do a great, great prologue. but um then i i got away in a break i think on the first day so i took some time back from Byzantini for example and then we went out then and i won the time trial on the scent of the Poggio and then we went down then to the team time trial and we won the team time trial so because we won the team time trial and because i'd won the the set of the Poggio i was better placed than uh of my team rather than Roberto so automatically I got the pink jersey but I never felt in one second that there was any any kind of um you know any doubt or mistrust there I felt this is great it's in the team the team have it but then I noticed very quickly that Roberto was never really too far behind me but it didn't bother me either because I felt well while he's behind me I know where he is so um whereas if I had been in his shoes I'd be trying to get up the road and I used the excuse that my teammates behind me, you know.

32:13So, but he didn't, he was always watching me and always never leaving my wheel. So we took it as it went. And then I remember after about a week or so, it was a big fall, say a kilometre and a half and finish. And those days, the time was stopped in the final kilometre. But we're outside the kilometre sign. So I always remember looking up on the ground, looking up and Roberto was basically riding around me, going away. Didn't even, you know, look and ask me. are you okay or should I wait for you you know wow so there was no love lost so um that was okay but then we went down to the first big time trial in uh Savancon or Savanconia and um it was raining so I went out did my my raki for the for the time trial Roberto went in the car and every every few few kilometers he'd state to me Stephen um which way is the wind coming from Stephen is the rain cold steven what gear you're riding and like i'm in my bubble so i don't need this interference from anybody so um i finished off my raki went in for my get changed and i'm in my bubble at this time so i come down for my lunch in my bubble again sit down who's sitting across from me roberto so once again steven at the first kilometer how we're not which gear did you use a steven where was the wind blowing out to 5k all this kind of stuff so i'm just totally draining myself because i'm normally in my bubble concentrating you know where am i doing where am i going where can i lose time where can i gain time and everything else and here's this guy just sapping up all my energy so we when i went on the start line i very quickly realized that this wasn't going to be my day that was going to be a very very long day and um in the finish the time reflected that because Roberto I think put two minutes into me on the time trial and then took over the pink jersey so what was actually what was very disappointing for me was that I'd held the jersey for like at this stage by 10 days maybe so I'd become a star getting used to the attention of the finish line and and everything else and here I arrive and I'm kind of wiggling my way through the spectators to get to the finish to get my masseur to give me a towel and nobody's given me any kind of soft drinks or nobody's kind of saying, oh, Steve, what happened?

34:29I'm very sorry for you. And I felt really bad, you know, because I felt that I'd achieved something. And here I am now, once again, anonymous, you know. Anyway, I go back to my hotel and I'm watching television and I see Roberto on the television and we see him doing an interview and the journalist says to him, you know, well, at least now in Carrera, everything is clear. Roach, we'll write for you now on the Giro and you will go with him on the tour and you will ride for him so straight away Roberto answered back and said yeah yeah yeah that's right Roach and I will ride for me I'm the unique leader of the Carrera team for the Giro but I'm not going to the tour because I'm going on holidays so I said okay that's you know at least he's being honest about it you know yeah yeah so myself and Eddie Shepard we took out the road book I said okay what's coming up in the next few days and then we said okay well in two days time there will be there will be a big mountain stage.

35:23So calculating like Roberto did a time trial today. He must have buried himself in a time trial to do the results he got. So going on that basis, he buried himself today because he sees tomorrow as like a transition stage. And he'd be hoping for this transition stage because the following stage is a mountain stage. So we talk, what if we created a scenario in this transition stage and destabilized him? Because he's very, very easy to, he wasn't very mentally strong so we knew if it made him create a bit of panic then he might crack so the following stage was a stage arriving up into a sapata it wasn't a mountain stage but there was 3 or 4 climbs on the way so I couldn't really attack I couldn't be seen to be attacking so how am I going to get away going over the second last climb there was 3 or 4 guys ahead, a minute or so ahead and I said to Eddie bring me to the front and we go over the top and see what happens.

36:23For me, going fast down the descent is not attacking. They can't follow me. So we basically went over the top. Eddie pulled over. I went straight down. In a career, sometimes you do some things that are just incredible. And you don't know if you can repeat it, but just things, just kind of the bike is like it's in motion. Everything goes well for you. And this day, everything went so well for me. I made it. The descent was incredible. And by the time I got to the bottom, I joined the four guys in the front. But there was nobody with me, which, of course, what I wanted to achieve. But I didn't want to be seen to be attacking.

37:03So basically, I said, I didn't go. I didn't attack. I just went faster than them down the hill. Yeah. So that was my argument. But anyway, I'm riding with these guys in the front. What's going to happen now? I was kind of a bit suicidal because there's still one more climb to finish. There's 40k to go on the flat. These guys behind me are going to chase me. And I have nothing left on the final climb. So I'm going to ask myself what's going to happen now. So the car came up, similar, you know, kind of familiar scenario. Stephen, what are you doing? What are you doing? I said, I'm defending Roberto's jersey.

37:37What do you mean? with me in front, the Panasonic's for Miller or Brookings or Bianchi for Argentine, they haven't got to ride. So I'm, you know, tell Roberto to take it easy. So Steve, you don't understand. You went down that descent so quickly. There's the biggest group is 10. There's groups of five and twos and tens. They're everywhere. You destroyed everybody on the descent. That's great. You know, wait a few minutes and the others will ride. No, no, no. You don't understand. Roberto was panicking. He's riding. and he's getting all the riders to ride. Oh, that's a bit much, you know. So I said, well, you just tell Roberto that he either stops riding and waits for the others to ride or else, you know, it's going to be wars declared.

38:22So I was told to stop. I said, no, finish, basta. So we went on anyway and Roberto caught me on the final climb and the car said to me to wait for, said to my friend Eddie Skippers to wait for Roberto. So Eddie said, Stephen, you know, I can wait for him or I can stay with you. If I stay with you, I'll probably be sacked. So if you agree to fight for me and to make sure I don't lose my job, then I'll stay with you. So I said, Eddie, just, you know, don't worry. Just give it everything you have. So he paced me over the top of the climb. I went ahead towards the final kilometer or two, and I basically almost got back onto the breakaway group at the time, made up of roaming air and one or two other top guys.

39:07and I think I held the jersey for like two or three seconds from roaming here, I think. And Roberto lost five minutes. So I'm back in pink. But Roberto, then he finishes on the finish line. He points up to me on the podium and he says, tonight, somebody's going home. Wow. So, you know, then I was escorted off the podium by the police because the fans wanted to kill me. And they were all saying, so it was very, very difficult and very hostile for the following two or three days. Man. How did you kind of deal with that? Because the next stage, stage 16, kind of become folkloric, known as the Marmalade Massacre, as you go over lots of big, big, big climbs.

39:51That's the queen stage. And you've only got, at that point, you've called him out there, Eddie Shepard's your Belgian domestique. And then you've also got Robert Miller. He's riding on Panasonic, but you know him from crossing paths, different teams over the years and he's also a fellow anglophile in a way and they're your guys and that's it you've only got two blokes riding for you and one's not even your actual teammate what happens in that stage because that was a brutal stage and how did you come through that because again the odds are hugely stacked against you never mind the stuff they must have been shouting at you from the road to try and put you off and everything else going on well we had um The police motorbikes had to ride in front of us, but very close to us with their feet out on the side, keeping the fans back.

40:39Really pushing the fans away. They all wanted to punch me. And as Eddie Shippers points out in one or two of his interviews, he says, in the Giro, there's only one pink jersey. It isn't like, where is he? Where is he? There's only one pink jersey, so we go for the pink jersey. So they would take rice in their mouths. And as I arrived, a bit of red wine and spit it at me as I was coming up, you know? And it trying to punch in at me. I remember one stage then we were, Roberto was riding on the left and riding on the right and there was a line of riders behind us. Those were totally ridiculous, you know?

41:12And then going over the top, then he brings me over to the side of the cliff and trying to push me over the side of the cliffs. So I put my hand on his handlebars and say, Roberto, if I go, you're going, you know? So it was quite hostile, you know? And the fans, of course, in the finish line, I was very quickly taken away every day after the finish line to the podium. And then from the podium, then to the media center. And from there, then to my hotel. And I had my master who would make my food for me because they were afraid that the Italians might try and poison me. And my mechanic looked out for my bike exclusively because they were afraid that somebody might sabotage my bike.

41:47So it became a very, very small committee, you know. A lot, like I say, was, you know, as I was saying, like, say what you want, do what you want, and go to Milan to the finish. You know, I was kind of quite adamant. It didn't matter what they did. I was hanging on to the finish but it was one thing saying it but it was another thing maintaining my promise because it got very, very hostile I was going to say because normally you associate scenes of winning whether it's on the Champs -Élysées or in Milan those moments as being the crescendo for a bike racer's career and for that year's Grand Tour whichever one it is and it just looks amazing and everyone's super happy except for maybe second or third place but the guy that's won That's the moment where you can get that release and that relief and that exuberance.

42:33But I'm assuming that you're on a podium in Milan and you're not really getting cheered. It's not the reception you would be wanting. Do you then feel like you have to kind of just get out of dodge, just leave, take your trophy and your jerseys and leave the checks on the table for the rest of the team and just get out because you're kind of a bit of a wanted man? Well, that's exactly the way it happened. And like I, the team came a little bit more, let's say, relaxed towards the end because they knew there were so many mountain stages towards the end. They couldn't help me anyway. So, of course, they became, you know, what can I do, you know, knowing they can't do very much for me.

43:14But, you know, I managed to, with a few friends around and make the most of the other guys that was Van de Velde that was going for the mountains classification, for example. but it was in his interest and his team's interest to keep things together. So I piggybacked a little bit on who I could. And then Eddie Shepard, of course, did an incredible job for me making tempos on the climbs. And, of course, Roberto Vicentini was there also right up to the very, very end. So he always had one or two riders with him also. So he also felt that towards the end he might be able to pull her off. So even though he went riding for me, there were still some bodies in the peloton that could help me.

43:56But of course, when I won the time trial in San Marino, the last day, some friends of mine had come there from Paris to encourage me on for the last day. And I basically put my trophy, my bags in the back of their car and we drove all the way back to Paris and we had some champagne and cakes back in Paris at 6 a.m. the following morning. but um i wasn't um i wasn't too too keen to stay in italy uh much longer than i had to yeah wow and then taking that experience not much longer later in july lining up on the start line for the tour de france and are you thinking joe what i think this is this is also going to be my race well you know for me it was um going into the tour was like okay guys you know i've won my tour so for me I was going to be able to use it as a as a kind of a an argument to only ride when I have to really ride so I wasn't going to just go on the front and ride and chase down anybody because my attitude was you know you guys want to win your grand tour this year well okay you gotta ride because in those days the Vuelta was in April the Giro was in May and the tour in July so if anybody hadn't performed in the Vuelta or the Giro row they kind of had to perform in the tour so i'm kind of sitting there on myself saying okay saying to myself well okay you guys want to save your season well you guys must ride you know so i only kind of really rode or made my team ride when i really felt that this is this this is do or die we have to do it but i wasn't going to put them on the front every day especially because the especially because the race was like four to four and a half thousand kilometers so um which is one of the longest tours in a long long time you know so um i knew that it was three and a half weeks long so if i was gonna have any chance of pulling it off well then i can't start riding from the first week but you know i went into it with the idea wait and see anything can happen i was quite confident that the the time trials was 130 140 kilometers i think in time trials there was a the long time trial in futuroscope of 87 or 88 kilometers there was a time trial in uh in Dijon 40 kilometers then there were there was um time trial of Vantou which is another 35 kilometers or so plus the the prologue so all in all there would have been 130 kilometers or so of time trialing which was my that might my domain but I I knew that um I was as good as any other tour contenders in time trialing so I basically um planned my my tour around the time trials and also because I knew that I hadn't got a great team for the mountains and when you're riding with Delgado Jofferson Bernard Charlie Motti Luchero when you're riding with these guys in the mountains well you have to be very very careful you can't just kind of shoot off or you know these guys I'm not going to drop them but they can drop me and put a lot of time into me very very easily so I had to kind of play very very you know very fine and just make sure that on the on the mountains that didn't kind of didn't lose too much time as you say you had some really big riders you know great climbers of their generation pedro delgado and the guys from colombia colombians breaking in and being these incredible mountain ascenders and yet i think and again this also will sound strange but in the context of the 1987 tour as you say one of the longest but also still the longest in terms of the number of stages because you had two stages in a day on a couple of occasions so 25 five stages in all.

47:35So this is stage 21 that was your pivotal one, which normally we'd think of as the last stage. But stage 21 is going up the Madeleine and La Plania. And that's your pivotal moment, I think, you know, race historians will say. Do you see that stage as that's when the moment happened? That's when you were turned on to thinking, yeah, this is, I'm going to take this into Paris. And what happened in stage 21 to make that so? Well, we had the issue with this thing about my back as far as the time trial on Mont Ventoux. This is where, you know, there's behind the scenes stuff went on that wouldn't have shown out in the media, for example.

48:15Jean-Francois Bernat wins the time trial. He did a scorching time trial. Like he rode a normal bike up to the foot of the Tourmalet, changed bikes very intelligently and rode the Tourmalet. did a scorching time and put all his main tour rivals at two and three minutes. So Jeff gets on television and tells everybody how delighted he was to have won the stage and how confident he is now to win the full tour because there's still a time trial in Dijon. So he doesn't feel any worries at all about anybody. I'm kind of taking the helicopter back down to the valley to a hotel. and with Charlie Mottet.

48:58And Charlie says to me, what do you think of the stage today? So I said, well, you know, I think Jeff made a mistake. He read on the board Paris, where in fact it's marked Mauvantou. Like Jeff was giving his speech as if he's already in Paris, where there's still, you know, so many stages to go. So, and Charlie said, yeah, well, this is Steph, you know, I know the area very well tomorrow. And if you look at it very, look at it very, very closely, you have the feeding stations, a very, very small road. It's kind of an uphill, kind of undulating road. if something happens there tomorrow it'll be you know could be chaos so i went on online then i myself my teammates with eddie we looked up the maps because we had no google in those days of course so yeah they take out the the ordnance survey maps see where we're going maps exactly see where the see the width of the road and the gradients and everything else and then we decided that this could be a real doer.

49:52So we decided what we'd do was we'd fake the feeding station so we would make everybody feel, well, we're going to the feeding station, no problem. Where, in fact, our plan was to go straight through, accelerate as we go through, and just go faster and faster and faster to create as much chaos as we can in the hope that John Fonsor Bernard and the other guys might get caught behind in traffic. To do this, we had to, our soigneurs went to the feeding station but they had the musettes like normal but there were only stones in the musettes so that nobody would think for a second there's something wrong.

50:27So the masseurs went there with their feed bags full of stones so that people thought there was food in them. But then of course in those days the rider could not get food from the car because it was illegal. So we had to get the bottles, feeding bottles cut them in halves put the food solid in the feeding bottle tape it up, and put it in the car. When we needed it then, we'd go back to the car and get a water bottle, which in actual fact is a food bottle, open her up, take her food out, and feed ourselves. But we came to this feeding station anyway, and the speed got faster and faster and faster.

51:01So it was quite obvious there was other teams that had the same or similar tactics, strategy. So we hit the front in the feeding station and just put her foot down. And Jeff, of course, he was lingering a little bit behind. And in the panic, he dropped his chain because the gradient necessitated changing the big ring, small ring. He lost his chain. So again, he got back on again. There's so many guys that have gone past him again. So he lost a bit of time. But in front, all the top leaders were on the front. There was an incredible atmosphere in the front because everybody had kind of thought, OK, Jeff, I won't say I'm making a statement, but we're saying, OK, Jeff, yesterday you thought the tour was finished.

51:42but a bit of respect for us guys you know we still had to kind of still a fight to be to one yeah so we just uh rode like hell to the finish and i got away in the finish then with the gado so you could have won the tour that day because you might remember maybe a very very very famous photograph of bram watson or some video footage where you see myself and himself kind of like this side by side kind of the movement was very um very similar and i'm riding on his bottom bracket and I'm thinking, you know, I got to ride here because by riding here, he sees me, he won't accelerate. But if he doesn't see me, he might accelerate and I can't go with him.

52:20So I was kind of bluffing a lot. And in the end, we got over the top and he won the stage, but I got the jersey. But with all that in mind, then the next day was the Alpe d 'Huez and I knew Alpe d 'Huez was never going to be my great climb. So I knew that Delgado was my main rival now for winning the tour. And I knew that the final time travel was Dijon. So for me to be able to maintain my ambitions with the tour, I had to be within one minute of Delgado for the final day because I knew that I could, with 40k, I could put a minute and a minute into him on the time trial. And Alto Aisle was the worst climb for me.

52:55So I kept Delgado at a striking distance, and I rode on my own rhythm. And I think I finished something around 45 seconds or a minute or so behind Delgado, which left me, Delgado was probably leading me by a minute or so on GC. So my tour was still open. Then we had the stage then to La Plana, and this was the major stage. So going over the Galibier, the Colombians were having a feast day. They were attacking, attacking, attacking. so we were struggling, you know. So we had a talk between us and we were saying, Leo, let's make the descent flat out and try and get rid of the Colombians because otherwise, we're going to hit the Madeleine and they're going to attack us again.

53:38So when we got down to the bottom of the Glibert or Telegraph, Delgado had no teammates with him and there was a few guys attacking so I thought, okay, maybe what if I can get away with one of these small groups? Delgado's on his own. So again, his team come back on. maybe I get a bit of time ahead. So I did this anyway, got across and I was suicidal once again because when I went away with the group, they weren't strong enough to really help me. So I rode my best over at Madeleine but the Gatto's team all came together and they caught me on the foot of La Plania. I knew that he was going to attack me straight away.

54:15So what do I do? Do I go with him? What do I do? So I thought, okay, well, let him go. Let him think I'm dead. and then see what happens. So I let him go 20, 30, 40 seconds, a minute, minute and 10. Then I thought, oh, it's getting a bit out of hand here. Now if I don't react straight away, he's going to finish over a minute ahead of me and my tour's chance are gone. So I thought, okay, well, what I'll do is I accelerate a small bit once I've recovered and see what happens. So I gently accelerated. I realized he wasn't taking any more time out of me. So I thought, okay, well, maybe he's either happy he's put a minute and a half into me or maybe you just can't go any faster.

54:54So I'll try and hold him up with five to go. And once I hit 5K, I'll give it everything I have. And there's no radios, of course. There was no way of getting time checks because there was so many people. And with 5K to go, I gave it everything. And to my great surprise, I came back and finished like four seconds behind him. I just came around the final corner and there he was. Wow. Was he just really surprised to see you? Yeah. Like what we say about the race radio is changing the race. like when I had a race radio I may have backed off thinking okay I'm within 20 seconds or 30 seconds I can back off a little bit where in fact I didn't know where I was so all I knew was that once I crossed the line the stopwatch was stopped and my tour could be won or lost so I basically buried myself to the finish and of course all the journalists were all basically nobody knew where I was so they all thought okay well the gato has won the tour so then of course the famous words of Phil Liggett then it's Roach, looks like Roach.

55:51The journalist then started running towards me and I bet I couldn't answer because I was just totally wasted and I collapsed on the floor and I was in a bad way for a few minutes. But I saved my tour. And then you went into the final TT and you managed to overturn that gap. As you say, you knew that you could put a minute into Delgado in a TT, which you duly did. You did a minute and a second, ended up winning the Tour de France by a really tight margin, which is just incredible scenes and I guess did you talk to Delgado during those end stages or afterwards how did he feel because he must have felt so surprised by that outcome you know just that moment on stage 21 where he suddenly realizes you're over his shoulder but then to see his tour slip away within you know a handful of stages.

56:41Yeah I think that after the stage the doctors treated me and they gave me the okay to go back to my room. So I'm back to my room and I had a bit of sleep. And then at seven o 'clock or so, my master came in and said, Stephen, what do you want for dinner? I'll bring it up to you. So I said, no, no, no, no, I'm going down for dinner. Because in those days, we all ate in like a canteen. We all, three or four teams all let together. And in the mountains, of course, there's not many auctions. So there are two or three big hotels and that's where all the big teams stay. So I said, okay, well, I'm going down for my dinner so rather than go down the lift went down the stairs and got to the bottom of the stairs and i said to my masseur i think it's going to be okay so i walked into the the canteen then and um everybody's looking at me and commercial eating me saying steven well done steven you know well done you had a great stage today uh it was amazing finish a pity tomorrow there still climbs because um i don't know how you're going to recover so i'm saying yeah i know thanks very much really appreciate it and whatever and my plan at the time was that the following day there was a stage into Morsin and my plan was to try and attack Legado on the Jouplan because I'm thinking okay well if I have Legado thinks like this he thinks okay well Roach came back at me today in the finish he came back to four seconds he fell off his bike at the finish he was taken to the hospital he comes back next day he puts one second into me on the Jouplan and into Morsin this guy is unbelievable so my plan was to kind of destabilize him before hitting the time trial and dejon so um that's always my my strategy was to um make him feel that i was kind of invincible and that um that one day i'm taking away an ambulance and the next day i'm beating him on the in the mountain stage and the very next day i put 18 seconds into him where for me was basically nailing the coffin because for me, my work was done then.

58:39All I had to do then was run a good performance and the time trial because he'd be thinking, this guy, how am I going to beat this guy? He's a better time trialist than I am and he's getting stronger as we go along. So I played a lot on his morale and that's how it worked out. So does that mean that going into the World Championships road race in Austria a couple of months later, did the riders feel that same sense of invincibility around you was that something you could turn to your advantage or is it just a complete lottery of a race where you just don't know what's going to happen well in a way i always said the worlds are a bit of a lottery but depending on the circuit you know but for me that year i really went to the worlds i i we had a few criteriums in dublin before going to the Worlds.

59:29And that's where the Irish team, you know, Martin Early, Paul Kimmage, Sean Kelly, that's where we all kind of basically came closer together as a team. And when we went to the Worlds, my main role was to work for Sean because we'd heard so much about this circuit that it was a sprinter circuit. So no point to me even thinking I can do well because it's a sprinter circuit. So it was only when I got there that I realized, wow, this may be a sprinter circuit if we were only doing it once. But we're doing it like 18 or 19 times. So I'm saying there's two climbs every circuit. So it's not going to be a pure sprinter that's going to win it.

1:00:09So only from that moment, I started to believe that this could be for me because I thought after so many laps, I'm kind of an all-rounder. So it could be my day. And also I thought that because I won the Giro on a tour, everybody was kind of saying well you know Stevens won the Giro won the tour he's going to be tired so nobody's going to be watching me I had no real um I had no real uh no real pressure from anybody so I really only um got on my own mind that that I could win it like the day before two days before but the only fact that I was going against it was the weather it was extremely hot so I was very tired after my season and um if the weather was going to be like this hard hot then it's going to make things very difficult for me.

1:00:54And in fact, the morning of the World Championship it rained and it was very, very cold. So it was as if kind of the Irish gods had descended on me and given me the weather, the ideal weather that would suit me. And all day of the world's that year, I rode my eyeballs out for Sean. And it was only in the final few laps that I really kind of, you know, keeping together, bringing Sean into the breakaway group and then getting away myself at the end. and literally not knowing what to do because when I found myself in the final two kilometers with Ralph Golds, Ralph Sorensen and these guys who are all much faster than me, I'm telling me, damn it, here I am after riding the whole day for Sean, I'm going to finish kind of fifth out of five, you know?

1:01:40So that's not what it's all about. So I had to kind of think very, very quickly, how can I how can I change this situation so I am I just saw an opportunity when they when they came around the final left hand turn as they were closing into the barriers I thought okay I've got one guy on my wheel if I go on the right he's going to follow me and beat me so I've got to go on the left so that I'm going to you know the gap will get closer and then he won't get through and I might get 10 metres and and that's it and that's how it happened I got my my few metres he he braked last minute before going to the gap and I used to always remember the saying from Ertan Senna, the Formula One driver, he used to say, the day you start thinking about not going through the gap, your career is over.

1:02:27And I was one for going through the gaps. So anyway, that day worked out very well for me and I succeeded in sprinting and holding off the group and the peloton then to the line. Yeah. and this year you'll be going back to La Plania as part of Cure Leukemia's Tour 21 series so Tour 21 is lots of amateur riders following the Tour de France a week behind the Tour de France and then you'll be doing stages 16 to 19 so yeah tell me what it's going to be like to go back to La Plania after all these years you said you've been back you went back in 2017 to ride those same roads but you're going back again this year as part of Q Leukemia's Tour 21 fundraising series so are you going to be riding the full stage of 16 to stage 19 and what are those memories going to come flooding back when you start up the slopes of the plan do you still think about those days can you still recall them in a kind of in a way where they look real to you or is it just a distant memory now that people like me try and remind you about no they are they are still very very prominent in my mind you know and of course when you go back there you say wow i did this you know it's i mean it's a i kind of say wow i didn't um didn't realize maybe what i achieved at the time you know but um i'm looking forward to going back this year with the with the group because i mean it's uh we're all very fortunate to be able to have our health and sometimes we don't really realize how thin that line is you know and i think that the leukemia we all know somebody either in a family or a relative or whatever who has some form of cancer.

1:04:12And I've had my, you know, I lost my sister two years ago to cancer. My son has had, he's been, he had a good leukemia twice. Each time he had had a transplant. So I know that there's, you know, huge shortage of funds. We may never find a cure for it, but at least we can make the life for these people a little more comfortable in the hope that there will be some cure down the road. But, you know, it's great to be able to kind of use the bike because it's my hobby, use the bike to be able to generate, to create awareness for leukemia and also to generate some very necessary funds to help fund some of the operations that are ongoing.

1:04:56And it's great to have some nice comrades to ride along beside and maybe make their journey a little bit special. and they'd be making my journey special as well because like going back to La Plana on my own, there's no point. So going back with a group of, you know, 20, 25 riders, it makes it much more enjoyable. If you can say enjoyable, like La Plana being so long and so hard, plus the other clients before, plus the other days around La Plana, they're all very hard days. So it'll be enjoyment, but you know kind of a um painful enjoyment i was gonna say does it does it sort of come back the muscle memory into your legs and i'm thinking of stage 18 as well which um if people haven't seen the the tour route this year that's the queen stage that's five and a half thousand meters of climbing over 170 odd kilometers at that point when you kind of you you've been going for 20 30 minutes do you sort of feel like yeah you know i've got this because it's just in my legs somewhere or is it just as hard as it is for the rest of us now i think that you know with time your muscles have a beginning of alzheimer's you know because they um the muscle memory is there okay but they there's no there's no magic there you either have to you can put the put the miles in put the training in and um you can get a reasonable amount of fitness of course as age goes on the the odds are going against you but um yeah you know i must say i'm very happy that when When I do get a bit of training done, I do have a reasonably good condition does come back.

1:06:38But, you know, a reasonably good condition to go out and ride with some friends around the Côte d 'Azur or go around the hills of Surrey or whatever, it's okay. But riding La Plagne and the Galibier and Madeleine and all these kind of monuments in the Alps, you need a little extra for this kind of terrain, and which means an awful lot more training and you know losing weight and everything else so you know i'm looking forward to the challenge and i'm you know i'm quite adamant that i'm going to get over it i'll probably not be where i would like to have been because i've lost a lot of time over the last few weeks but nevertheless we were we speak to anybody as a bike rider will always have some kind of excuse as to why i could have but couldn't or should have or didn't but might We always have some kind of excuse to account for our lack of performance.

1:07:29But no, I think we ex-pros maybe have a certain amount of muscle memory, I agree. But doing this kind of terrain is not sufficient, unfortunately. That's the sad side. Well, Stephen, on that note, it sounds like get out there, get some more miles under your belt. But I'd back you 100 % to be able to just do this now. So thank you so much for coming on the Cyclist Magazine podcast. And thanks for persevering through all of our technical difficulties. It was really great to chat to you. And yeah, best of luck with Cure Leukemia and Tour 21. And yeah, everyone keep their eyes peeled on that. And there'll be links to sign up in our show notes, how you can get involved.

1:08:11I think there's still places. So go and ride with Stephen and take on some of the most amazing climbs in the Alps this year. Stephen, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

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1:09:43So head on over to daglajan.co.uk that's d-a-g-s-m-e-j-a-n.co.uk to find out more and use the code cyclist15 at the checkout to get 15 % off. Stephen Roach ladies and gentlemen thank you very much Stephen uh I don't know if you could detect it in there there were quite a lot of technical issues in there which we managed to overcome but I think there was a point where we both nearly pulled our hair out when the dog started barking. So there we go. That's the magic of television. And that was Stephen Roach. And now back to Will Strixon, who is going to tell us some more about the Tour de France, because today is Thursday.

1:10:24It could be Thursday morning. It could be Thursday afternoon. I don't know when you're watching this or listening to this. Could be Friday. Could be Friday. It could even be in 2027. Who knows? That's true. Because this will be around forever until the barges that hold the servers are sunk. Anyway, so, Will, what's going to happen in the next couple of days at Le Tour? Le Grand Boucle. Who do you reckon holds the rights for the commentary? Do you reckon it's ASO? I think you should have just done the intro for Stephen Roach with that bit of commentary when he's coming out of the mist or whatever it was.

1:10:56Oh, I get with Pedro Delgado. Yeah. It's Roach! It's Roach! Yeah, that's a good one. Do you know also what I thought, James? If we find out who who owns the rights to the ITV Tour de France theme song. I love that song. Yeah, because obviously they're not going to be using it. TNT aren't going to be using it. We could have it. We could have it and make it a podcast theme tune. Right, well, I'm going to go away and make that happen today before this airs and somebody else hears you saying that and we haven't got the jump on it. It's really hard to whistle, isn't it? It's a lovely song and then I try and sing it and I go...

1:11:32And it just, I don't know, it just sounds like the beginning of that Bowie song. Yeah, I think it's because it's way more complicated than it first appears. Great piece of music. It's a fantastic piece of music. Do you think it was written purposefully, specifically, or do you think it was library music? I think that a publication called Cycling Weekly tracked down the person who made it this week. And I think that's a hint for you. Wow I believe That Our theme tune I know it to be Library music But I believe It's made In part By Andy C From Ugly Duckling Really? Which is a hip hop Act Which you may have Heard of Will A little bit of samba Was a famous song You don't know who they are do you?

1:12:20I think I can tell Of Andy C Not Ugly Duckling Not Andy C The drum bass DJ Oh it's not that one then No Anyway go on tell us about Tour de France ok so Thursday today there's a few, it's a lot of categorised clients but they're lower down the ladder let's say and it finishes with a bit of an uphill it's a punch, it's 10 % so it's going to not beat the sprinters, it's going to be Pogaccio, Van der Poel if they can be asked, maybe a T-Bernese maybe a Oscar Omni, let's get him out there Cal Slow Zone, but it might be someone else Wengergaard's looking good on the punches Friday, it's another punch you on.

1:12:59It's the murder Britannia. Last man who won there. It's called Matthew Van der Poel and he went into the yellow jersey. Could he get it back? Probably not. Depends on how the time trial goes. But that is going to be honouring your man the badger, Bernadino. The badger. The next day we'll be honouring Louisan Bobet because it's 100 years since he was born. First rider to win the tour on three consecutive occasions. Start in his hometown. But it would be a sprint but it's false flat. So I would say it's probably not going to be Jonathan Milan it'll be Malia or Gamay or someone else or maybe it'll be Milan and I'll be wrong.

1:13:33Gobeenium that's what I'd say. Yeah I think so too and Sunday will be flat. It's the Mark Cavendish stage in Chateau Rue so you'll come out of retirement win that one. Okay yeah excellent. But it'll be Jonathan Milan. Monday is not a rest day because it's Bastille Day so we've got a stage on Monday through the Massif Centrale mountain stage surprisingly, despite it being in the massive central, they're not massive mountains. They're category 2, category 3 but there's a lot of them so it adds up to a very genuine spender, 4 ,400 metres of elevation over 163k. You could have done that. My race was harder.

1:14:11I think this could be the kind of stage where they let the breakaway go let them take yellow, put your feet back there'll be second week the mountains start on Thursday with the ultacam and that'll all go back to normal. The high camera. Yeah, that one. Lovely. Well, there we go. So effectively what you're saying is don't bother tuning in until the middle of the next week. Yeah, Thursday. Yeah, Thursday. Watch the last corner. Do you ever feel that about the Tour de France? That it's exciting, it's like the build-up, the anticipation. It's like the World Cup. The anticipation is immense and then the theme music starts up, which we both realise we can't whistle or hum, and then the montage from last year comes along and blah blah blah and then you get into the racing and after whoa what's going to happen like day one then it just becomes kind of inconsequential as you wait for the right people to get in the right position to actually start duking it out in the mountains for gc which is no that's just a yeah i'm i'm not criticizing it i mean i sound like i am um it's just it just dawns on me every year that i'm kind of not as interested as i think i'm going to be for about the first 10 days.

1:15:24I think that's... Ned Bolting agrees with you. Oh, does he? Well, that's good. I was going to say that speaks to how much of a philistine I am. Well, he said his favourite part of the tour is just before it starts. Yeah. My favourite part of anything is just before it starts. Tears? Just before it starts. Tears. A sneeze? Oh, the build-up. The build-up just before a sneeze. My goodness. That is fantastic. Trailers of a movie can't be enjoying that. Yeah, exactly. Trailers of a movie always infinitely better than the movies themselves. They make even bad movies look good. Oh, so you mean not the movie you're going to watch but the movie that they're trailing?

1:15:57I mean, invariably the movie I'm going to watch if I manage to get to the cinema at all these days, which I don't because I have a child and I'd love to go more and I do like going on my own. I recommend it to anybody. But yes, invariably the films that you watch at the cinema are poopy pants, aren't they? Cinema films. The new films are shite. The last film I saw at the cinema was really good. What was it? A Complete Unknown. The Bob Dylan, Timothee Chalamet job. that was actually quite good and I did actually see that at the cinema and we sat near this woman who just like kind of commented on like loads of scenes and there's a scene where he goes into a party in like a New York apartment and there's Joan Byers is there and loads of other people and they want him to play his guitar and he's just like not having any of it and then she's just there being like that's an overwhelming amount of people you don't want to play a guitar do you Bob?

1:16:48stuff like that It was a 3D experience. And that happened when I saw the Banshees of Inner Sheeran. Right, yeah. Banshees of Ed Sheeran. And this guy came in, brilliantly drunk, about two minutes after it had started, with these panning shots of these kind of slightly bleak Irish islands and fields. And lo and behold, he too was Irish, with his little bottle of teacher's whiskey. And he was just going, So you have to excuse my accent, I'm going to do it anyway. we've just had an Irishman on, so that's terrible isn't it? He was just going, he was going, oh, my God, Mary and Joseph, oh, look how beautiful it is, oh, beautiful island, it's amazing.

1:17:31And like every single scene, he just like, there's scenes where they sort of fight, and he was going, oh, go on, get at him, get at him, son, get at him, go on, have at him. And he was just like, halfway through, people started being like, boo, shut up, mate. And then he started shouting back, anyway it ruined the film and i'm sweating just telling you this story and it has nothing to do with this podcast do you know if you like that experience i think you should have gone to see the minecraft movie okay what happened there because it became a trend that there was something about something happened in the movie where jack black said it's chicken something i can't remember exactly what it was but then all the ewes that became a thing and they all started throwing things in the cinema one man brought a live chicken into the cinema for this thing wow Obviously, the cinemas were like, stop the movie, out you go.

1:18:22But yeah, great for the old TikTok moment, not great for the viewing experience. Fantastic. All the cinemas, you'll have to clean it up. Yeah, well, I don't know, maybe that chicken's still knocking about. It's probably got more space than living in a barn, although just a baby now. Yeah, probably had a great day out. Great day out, yeah. Well, we should probably leave it there, Will. Until next time, let's keep our eyes glued to those riveting sprint stages and all of those points bonuses on offer. and yeah to be fair the punchy finishes are good stuff and Mille de Britannia is they do it twice so at least you get a little bit more Mille de Britannia Britannia rules the waves the wall of Britannia rule of Brittany that was the last the denouement of the Maratona was the Mille de Giat which I think is something like the wall of the cat maybe so you've done all this climbing and the last thing you do is a 450 metre 19 % climb into town meet you.