THEMOVE - Are Slower Speeds Really the Key to Rider Safety? | THEMOVE+

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Johan Bruyneel and Spencer Martin discuss Tour de France Director Christian Prudhomme's recent comments about how increased average speeds are making races more dangerous and how a Canadian amateur, Jack Burke, is taking the Strava KOM on so many famous climbs, before answering a few listener questions. Zwift: This adjustability makes Zwift Ride perfect for anyone in the house to use and at $1,299.99 it’s a game-changer so head to https://Zwift.com now to check it out.

I think what predominates to realize is that the reason why cycling is going faster and faster, yes, the equipment has improved. Yes, the roads have improved. There's not much you can do about that. But the main reason is that the athletes have gotten better and better. Nowadays, you can see that races are going fast from the start to the finish. You know, if I think back, not even in my days, but even in Lance's and George's period, the races didn't go full gas all the time.

There was usually, you know, a warm-up. There was a breakaway that went, and then the peloton slowed down. And then you were using, basically, the easy parts of the course to recover. Downhills, they didn't go full gas. They go full gas everywhere now. So what can you do to stop that?

Nothing. Everybody, welcome back to the Move Plus, our weekly installment of the show. I'm here with Johan Bernil. I'm Spencer Martin. I am going to run through a few topics of the week, and then we'll get to a few listener questions. Again, if you want those read, please email info at wedo.team and we will get to them as soon as we can. But first, Johan, before we get into the show, I wanted to talk about today's title sponsor, which is Zwift. Zwift just released their Zwift Ride bike, an all new smart

bike that is changing the indoor game and making it easier and more affordable than ever to get started riding indoors. The bike is ultra quiet and super easy to set up. You just need one tool. The frame key, which comes on the bike is stored on the bike. Very easy to keep track of. It does the saddle height, the bar height, the reach. And once you're done with that frame key, just throw it right back into the magnetic holder. This is key because you can have one bike for everyone in your family. They can just change it to fit whatever you need. And Johan, I'm on the road again. You're at home with your Zwift ride, racking up your miles. You're going to crush me in this Strava yearly challenge. Again, I'm just planning. I'm with Richard P pluga out here in san diego we're planning my 2025 campaign

to try to come back and get you but the zwift ride is perfect for anyone in the house it's perfect for anyone to use in the house like i said and it's starts at 12 1299 dollars and 99 cents it's a game changer so head to zwift.com to check it out now. And if you get a Zwift ride or if you're just on Zwift, you can join WeDo for our WeDo Wednesday rides. It's a casual. They call it a casual no drop ride. I don't know if that actually bears out. You got to go pretty, pretty hard to keep up. But even if you get dropped, there's always a big group back there in the groupetto.

And we also have Suffer Sundays for those looking for a little bit more but johan how have you liked your zwift ride so far i'm actually i'm pretty jealous of this this is a pretty interesting i just i just got it i just got it uh last week so thank you zwift um it's it's quite quite impressive actually i'm i'm quite surprised it's very very easy to assemble as they state with one key. And the riding experience is a whole different game. I just used it for the first time last Wednesday on We Do Wednesday. Whenever I have the occasion, I jump on and I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, you can fine tune the position to perfection, um, both in, you know, the, the seat height, the stem length. Um,

and then especially also what's, what's super, super, uh, entertaining is the, the, the interactive handlebars. Now you can kind of move through the Peloton. You can move your avatar. Uh, whenever you want to go to the side, you can break and go on the wheel. So I think it's, I mean, I I'm, I'm honestly preferring this to my former setup, which was a normal road bike with the, with the Wahoo, the Wahoo kicker, I guess it's called the Wahoo kicker. Yeah. Yeah. Smart trainer. this combination is definitely a level up. So, uh, it's motivating and, um, very simple to operate. So love it. Yeah. It's, it's really simple. There was,

I have a competitor that I will, that will go nameless, but it was this big push to have these like super complex indoor bikes. And then Zwift has just gone really simple and it brings the price down. It's not as heavy. I mean, the main thing is just having one bike, as you said, you can put your bike on the trainer, but then, you know, you're switching the bikes out or someone else in your house is changing your bike position to fit them. And there's like wear and tear associated with your bike. If you're riding indoors, you're sweating more than you would outside or sweating. I guess it's not evaporating and just like drive chain wearing down so like just to have this simple like little machine they've created that you can just throw on um it's quiet it's indoors you don't have to worry about

um keeping it up it i think it's a great idea i i and also it's the first time I've used now this virtual Zwift hub. So it's basically one sprocket and with the joysticks on the handlebars, you change virtually the gears, which is quite nice. It's very smooth. You don't actually feel the derailleur shifting, but it's a very smooth pedaling. Yeah. And I'm pretty curious about trying the virtual shifting. I mean, anything that makes you feel like you're riding in real life when you're indoors is going to keep it more entertaining and easier to rack up those miles that you're doing. Are we sure you're not coming back in 2025? This is your comeback 2.0. You're going to be on, um, like we're, like, we're wondering who is Astana spending all this money on? Is it your hundred new or something? No, no, no, no. There's no chance, Spencer. No chance.

You know, I've, I'm, I'm not never putting a number on again to compete. You know, I've done in the last two or three years, I've done two events not never putting a number on again to compete. You know, I've done in the last two or three years, I've done two events where I put a number on, but it was just like a mass participation because they have to identify who you are. But, uh, those, those days are gone. I'm just enjoying being out on the bike and, um, you know, still taking advantage of the great weather for the moment here in Madrid. Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm,

I'm afraid, unless you come up with something really special in December, Spencer, I'm afraid that you're not going to catch up with me on the kilometers. I think I'm about 700 kilometers ahead of you now. Yeah, I'd have to do like a Milanes and Remo a day in the summer that I'm there.

We'll see if that happens um maybe i'll unleash something but um this is travel this travel's killing me i'm away from my setup oh my lord but 2025 you better watch out okay first topic of the week when you do come make your comeback christian prudhomme wants to make the the uh aso president director i'm in charge of of aso the sports biggest no he's tour de france director not tour de france director employee at aso oh yes you're right yeah the aso director is somebody else runs the tour de france obviously a big race the biggest race in the sport i think it's safe to say that david lapartienne the uci president is pretty is made his views clear on rider safety, that it's like a rider's concern.

If the riders want to be safer, they should race safer kind of end of story. He doesn't say much more about that. Prudhomme, I would probably say just personally, I think, is maybe a slightly more thoughtful person. But he's jumped into it and said the key to safety in pro cycling is for riders to go slower is to like, make them slower, make them ride slower, I guess, by technological like throttling. I don't, I mean, I guess in theory, yeah, it would be safer if they were slower, but a, how would you go about doing that? How would you enforce that? And what do you think, Johan, is this? I mean, I think of a rider safety a lot.

It's one of those things that's easy to say, but it's hard to actually come up with real solutions that would work. What do you think about this? I think, you know, we all agree that cycling is a dangerous sport, right? And that cyclists go faster and faster. Now, the statement of Christian Prudhomme,

the Tour de France director, to say we need to make them slower. When I read that, I said, well, that's like the dumbest statement I've seen in the last year. I mean, how are you going to do that? You know, you have to realize that, obviously, the conditions, everything gets more and more modern. So start, for example, with the quality of the roads. The road surface is smoother and smoother.

Bikes go faster and faster. The bikes have improved. There's a UCI limit at 6.8 kilos. That's the lightest a bike can be. But what else can you do? I mean, what can you do? I mean, what, what can you do to make a bike slower? Are you going to put, you know, like huge tires on? Um, I think what, what, what predominates to realize is that the,

the reason why cycling is going faster and faster. Yes. The equipment has improved. Yes. The roads have improved. There's not much you can do about that. But the main reason is that the athletes have gotten better and better. Nowadays, you can see that races are going fast from the start to the finish. You know, if I think back, not even in my days, but even in Lance's and George's period, the races didn't go full gas all the time. There was usually, you know, a warmup, there was a breakaway that went and then, uh, the peloton slowed down

and that you were using basically the easy parts of the course to recover downhills. They didn't go full gas. They go full gas everywhere now. So what can you do to stop that? Nothing. Uh, I think it's part of evolution and, um, it's all based on speed. Um, you can't, but we're going to do like aerodynamic skin suits. Uh, you're going to put like little parachutes on them that they're not, not so they didn't need to wear baggy clothes again, or do they need to have super heavy bikes? I mean, look, I, I took this picture here as an example. This is a picture of a Tour de France cyclist winner, I think, in the early 1900s. Does he want to go back to this?

Because, you know, he's always talking about, you know, cycling is romantic. We have lost the romanticism of the sport, but this, this looks romantic to me, this guy here, not having the gear to get up the climb. He has to walk it. And then on the picture here, you see actually the Tour de France director was walking next to him, giving him instructions. Is that what Proudhon wants to be? You know, I mean, that makes no wants to be? You know I mean that makes no sense so I think that statement of you know slowing the riders down I think what Prudhomme needs to realize is that first and foremost and you if you talk about security and safety of

bike races and cyclists the number one thing that needs to be prioritized is the safety of the courses. And if you look at mass crashes, yes, there are crashes along the road and there's a lot at stake. And you can argue, but there are things on certain courses that can be done a lot better.

We've all seen some, you know, like finishes in the Tour de France, for example, that they're very questionable. You know, they're getting better, but I still have the impression that they prioritize financial interests and say, okay, this city has paid so much and it needs to be in the city center because it brings a lot of attention to all the businesses there. They could do finishes on safer roads towards the city

than just in the city center with three or four corners in the last kilometer. That is, in my opinion, the first thing. And then I think also there needs to be a system that monitors the courses way on beforehand. It needs to be a neutral party, external party, not related to the Tour de France, not related to the UCI. It needs to be an external entity that approves the courses. Now, of course, there's a lot of races, there's a lot of stages, and it's a big job to do that. But it's not it's not impossible. So I would say that's that's the main thing. The courses, you know, and then and then at the same time, you also see, for example, because there was, I mean, this issue has come up because there was the UCI Congress in Nice last week or last weekend, and La Partia and Prudhomme got together.

There was also the annual get-together of the AIOC, so it's A-I-O-C-C, which is the International Organization of Race Organizers. And who's the president of that organization? Take a guess, Christian Proudhon, who was also present at that meeting was David Lappartient. So there they got together again and they were talking about safety and La Partia went on record recently now again but already many times saying that he's definitely aware that cycling is dangerous that there's a lot of crashes but he typical to any leader of an international federation sports federation puts the blame on others it's never them it's never their fault, you know,

because ultimately the UCI is the end responsible of approving the races and the courses that an organizer presents before they want their spot on the calendar. Now La Partienne has the guts to say that the main responsible of the massive crashes are the riders and their behavior. There are some instances that's true, but that's not the main reason. There's obviously a lot at stake, and you break as late as possible, and where there's a little gap, you try to go.

But that's always been like this. I think what you have to see also is that the courses are more and more difficult. You know, there's a lot of traffic islands, a lot of speed bumps, a lot of traffic splitters. Sometimes it's well signalized. Sometimes it's not so well announced. But then La Partienne takes takes a step further and says, well, you know, in his opinion, they, he needs, he wants the race radios to be banned. He wants to get rid of the race radio.

So no more communication between team car and rider individually. Uh, he's, his theory is that it's dangerous, that they're pushing the riders too much. And then his alternative is, and both him and Prudhomme are on the same page, by the way. They're in the same bed here. That they would want as an alternative, yes, riders can ride with radios.

Sometimes, I've seen some reports that maybe two riders per team, but then they would have all the same channel. The only thing they would have is race radio, which is, I've said that Prudhomme's statement was one of the dumbest. This is actually the dumbest idea you can imagine. If you know, and that's why I keep saying that a guy like Lappartient is so far distance from the reality of the sport of cycling. Because if you know what's going on in a cycling race,

and especially in a race like the Tour de France and the chaos there is, if you would even dare to propose that solution, that's madness. Because just imagine everything that's going on race radio. That's actually the information that the directors get. All the team cars get the same and it's constantly pay attention there, pay attention there, traffic island, this and that in different languages. And then the directors filter that information and give the precise information to the riders in their own language, you know, and directed to their riders only. Imagine that you have constantly this, this chaos in your ear,

that you have to listen to it first in French, then in English, then whatever country you are, that's just not doable. So, I mean, the fact that you dare to propose that shows me that you are really very distanced from the core of the sport, you know? And, and, and again, you know, they always put the blame on others. If it's, if it's, if it's an organizer that's, that's in the fault, except ASO. ASO always gets a free pass. But if, for example, whatever, it's the tour of Poland, let's say, or the tour of

Croatia in the past got reprimanded for, and sometimes even justified. But it's always the responsibility of other parties. They're just there to make sure that everything's okay, except when there's a personal benefit for them, for the UCI. And I wanted to finish this rant. I do acknowledge it's a rant, but with this little example, Spencer, and this is how ridiculous this whole debate is about security and safety coming from a guy like La Partienne. When they see a personal benefit, then all of a sudden safety is not an issue anymore. And here's an example.

Have you ever seen a bike race downhill on snow? I've seen like stunt ones. Here's an example of what this looks like. This bike race, a downhill race on snow now the UCI has got the guts to take custody of this discipline and they have now invented the UCI snow world championship and this is what it looks like. I mean, all you then not is safety, not an issue anymore. No, no, that we own this discipline now. I mean, it looks like, it looks like they're,

they're obsessed with wanting to own whatever is on two wheels. I mean, if, listen, if there's a bunch of guys who want to go down a hill on bikes, let them do it, but don't organize an official UCI world championship for going down on bicycles. So, I mean, anyways, I just wanted to put it as an example, but to me, their, their, their speech, their position on safety is completely not accurate.

And there are things that can be done. There have been initiatives from teams, from a number of teams that got together and wanted to contract, make an agreement with an external policing

system, let's say, to assess the situation and what can be better. But of course, the UCI has also taken custody of that and now they own this part of the security. But it was an idea from the teams. And of course, it doesn't work because there's always, things get overruled. And, you know, if you look at this company, it's called SafeR. I'm pretty sure that if you look at the evaluation, there's a lot of instances where organizers and the International Federation is at fault.

But of course, that cannot be mentioned because they are commissioning it. So it's a debate, which is, I mean, it's difficult. It's not just black and white, but it's definitely not It's difficult. It's not just black and white, but it's not definitely not by doing, following Prudhomme's idea of, oh, let's make them slower. You know, it's not Formula One. Formula One, I can understand that they tried to limit the speed of the cars

because otherwise they're going to end up going 350, 400 kilometers per hour, and then they're going to take off in the air. Yeah, Yeah. I think, you know, it's, it's, it's a combination of, of speeds have gone up and then, but, but for me, the main, the main reason is that the athlete has gotten so much better and stronger and everything's taken care of, you know, when you, the training, the nutrition, the aerodynamics, the equipment, you cannot stop this.

I mean, what are, what are, what is the bike industry going to say? If you say, oh, hey guys, now you need to go back to, you ride bikes like this guy in the picture I just showed you, who has to walk up the mountain. It's just, it's not possible. Yeah, I saw an interesting tweet actually from Dan Bingham, the technical guru who was at INEOS and then left. But he would have, it was like kind of a joke tweet

that it's like, yeah, let's make bikes heavier. And then people will realize lighter bikes don't actually make you faster. It's all about aerodynamics and being strong. But yeah, just to like explain the athlete's better piece, like the higher the level, like people leave you said even back in like lance and george's era could rest on the downhills so it wasn't all out racing but if the

level increases you have to find places on the course to make a difference that's now the downhills now they're racing 100 of the course versus 50 of the course um like in the past the only thing i would would say is, do you think that and an F1 I should mention, I'm pretty sure they have a third party. They used to have really dangerous courses and they're like really tragic accidents where cars would go underneath the guardrails and then you could decapitate the rider. Obviously, they realize, well, that's really bad. We shouldn't let that happen. So I think they have a third party that goes through and inspects the course and says, of course, is safe or not safe. And it's really helped make the sport safer. Like even recently, I think it was Senna. Like one of the big stars hit a there was a forklift or some sort of truck parked off the side of the course. And he died hitting it because it's an irregular irregular

shaped object now they don't let you do that so they have made things safer over the years that not that is not just making right drivers slower in f1 in cycling do you think that when directors are in your ear with like 100k to go like get to the front get to the front get to the front and everyone's hearing that does that make it more unsafe? It does. It does. It does. There's no, there's no, there's no question about it. Uh, but, but at the same time, um, you know, riders are so, and especially in nowadays cycling, uh, if you look at the tour de France and the chaos there is, but because it's not just, it's not just the riders, there's the motorbikes, the photographers, the caravan behind it.

It's such a chaos that you cannot imagine not having communication. And by the way, Lappartien keeps saying, and he already attacked Richard Plugger for that. I was surprised to see them together on a picture last weekend. They said, yeah, we agree on almost everything. I think that was a really political picture. But, you know, he attacked Plugger on saying, yeah, you know, you only want the radios because you want to give instructions to your riders. Hell yeah, Einstein.

Of course we do. That's why it's called the director and a director gives instructions to the rider and cycling is a moving sport. I mean, it's not the same, like you're, you're, you're coaching a football team and you're in a closed arena and you can give instructions and you can do signs and you can, this is moving. And on top of that, the riders don't know where they're going. You know, they don't know what's ahead of them. So the, the vast majority of the information that comes over the race radio is

information on the course. And this is what's happening now. There's a climb that's 10 kilometers, 7%. The first kilometers are the steepest, whatever. And, and, and, and I would say 20 to 30% is tactics. But what's wrong with giving tactical instructions to your riders? I mean, these teams are companies with a big budget behind. I mean, how can you explain to a big sponsor who puts in whatever, 30, 40 million that, you know okay you know give us all

this money we're gonna have these riders oh but by the way just so you know we can't tell them what to do we can't you're gonna pay them three million but we can't tell them what to do they can do whatever they want yeah well now you're like pulling at strings you're not supposed to pull that johan like the uci a lot of these regulations do seem incongruent with teams actually trying to command a lot of money to sponsor their teams. But I guess the UCI doesn't care about that, right? Like there's no aligned incentives there. Oh no. I mean, they don't care. I mean, one team goes and another one comes, you know, it's, it's,

it's, they don't care about that, but listen, it's, it's a dictatorship. We all know it. It's a camouflage dictatorship. And Lappertian is quite good at being the camouflage dictator. He's never at fault. He's always smiling. I put something on Twitter the other day. Somebody, like a journalist I know, had some criticism about his annual report. L know, is always there smiling, taking selfies. You know, he's always delighted, thrilled, excited, happy, honored that those are his words. It's, you know, it's always, it's, I said, I said to this guy, you know, this, this UCI Congress, you know,

they gave a report of the, of the whole year. And this is, I've seen a lot of those meetings. It's the UCI good new show, you know, they gave a report of the, of the whole year. And this is, I've seen a lot of those meetings. It's the UCI good new show, you know, as look at how, look at how great we have been during the year. You know, let's not talk about this. Let's not talk about this. It's, you know, I even, I even saw, I even saw like at the, at the UCI, it's funny. It isn't funny actually at the UCI congress so uh they did it in Nice you know normally it's like in Lausanne or somewhere they did it in Nice for some reason in my opinion the reason why they did it in Nice because they wanted to make sure that Pogacar was

present but he lives in Monaco and so at least you know and there's no excuse of, yeah, I can't make it. Now, La Partienne had made preparations so that at the gala dinner, after the awards, Pogacar had to sit next to La Partienne, had to sit next to La Partienne at the table. Of course, you know, to have the pictures taken and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, Pogacar went to the awards. They gave him the awards. And then unfortunately for Mr. Lappartien, the seat of Pogacar stayed empty

because he got a call from the doping controllers and they were at his house and he had to leave the party to go and do a doping test in Monaco. And so he didn't have his picture at the table with Pogacar finally. That's pretty funny. I didn't know about that.

Does that count? Does that count as a missed test? Do you have a certain amount of time to get home before they ding you? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They must.

Right. Because you, how would they account for you? Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know how it works nowadays. If, I mean, if normally works nowadays. Normally, if you would report that from this time to this time you're at the UCI Congress,

then they would have had to show up there instead of at his house. Yeah. I assume you don't have to report like, does Garrett Thomas have to fill in like, I'm going to the pub from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.?.m no you don't but if they come to your house and and they call you you have to go you have to go to the house interesting um that's that's hilarious actually that he probably yeah you're right they did it in nice just so he would be there and then he missed half the show because

of doping controls Yeah but Move and I mean there Are certain things like I'm thinking of Peter Stetna Tour of the Basque Country they Tour of the Basque Country kind of a common offender Here they they turn into The finishing straight you know it's common In Europe these bollards like

Traffic bollards very good 364 days of the Year the day there's a bike race Maybe take them out because they come into the final straight and there's just metal poles to keep them from. Very simple. If you can't take them out, don't go there with the bike race, man. It's simple. Yeah. You know, put them on safe road.

You know, that's, that's, that's. Anyways, long debate, long discussion. I mean, most of these bollards, you look at it, most of them are, they switch them around for events all the time. So yeah, that is like inexplicable. I have to say though, I have seen places in Spain that are not removable. Where they're just there permanently. Yeah, where that can't be part of the course.

Yeah. You can't have like, it just literally turned onto a straight and like, yeah, so you're going to have to dodge these. I guess, I guess, I guess that knows career basically finished there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. For like no fault of his own. He was heavily injured and I never made it back to the level he was before. I guess it gets more complicated.

Like this year's would they have said this descent is too bumpy. I mean, I guess you could write that into the, into the charter with whatever pre-riot organization this is. Yeah. There's places that are, that are more dangerous than others. And that's always going to be the case. Yeah. The big crash in the Basque country was obviously because of the state of the road, but then the question is, were they informed? And, and, Yeah, the big crash in the Basque country was obviously because of the state of the road. But then the question is, were they informed?

And also, you know, there's so much at stake that you don't want to break. You don't want to lose 10 positions in the downhill because you know that you're never going to make it back to the front. So, you know, it's not black and white. I do admit that, but I was, I found it, I found it shocking to see the, the, the statements of those two, basically leaders of, of sport of cycling, because Prudhomme is the boss of the tour and La Partida is the boss of, of, of cycling. So moving on to the next topic, this is, this, this one is pretty interesting. So a Canadian amateur Jack Burke has, I've known about Jack for, for a while now.

Um, he was, he was like a U S he raced in the U S moved to Austria, joined like third division, Austrian pro teams did that shuffle. That's kind of a hard life. Didn't have a contract for this year. So now he, he wrote a book called how to be a pro cyclist. It's a, it's a very good book. Um, I think his second edition just came out. I also know him personally, so I'm biased here, but he started going for, he, I think he was playing. It wasn't even really to ride this year. And then someone talked him into just like giving it one last go. He started, he lives in like a beautiful part of Austria, great riding.

He starts training in the, in the spring. I think in this, in the winter, he was just doing like schema training and did a few schema races. He gets in very good shape. The summer starts going for big KOMs. Good idea. Actually. Didn't he, uh, win almost all the races he participated in after the spring yeah he was

doing you know they're kind of like gran fondo they guess it would be called like gran fondos if they were in the u.s but they're they're very competitive these european sports sport teams um like some with extreme amounts of climbing like he did one to like i forget it's like a famous ski resort in austria but it's a very gross probably yes yeah very difficult climbs he's crushing them you know like these are very competitive races to win like people probably focus on these all all the time and they would be putting up very competitive numbers so he yeah he wins all these races still not a team i think he's on like a bar like scott sent him a bike just for the year i think he has to send the bike back at the end of the year

let let jack keep the bike scott but he the first one he gets i guess publicly is the stelvio and if you're not familiar with the stelvio it's the record is his his record time is 108 um i think he beat it i'm trying to look at second place. Jay Hindley had the record. He won the zero. Over a minute back. Like it's C seven 69 seconds behind him. Um, and it's a very, very long climb finishes. Like it tops out over 9,000 feet. So it's extremely high. Um, it's over 8% the whole time. And like, if you were an amateur doing this, you would like minimum double your time, double the time of this. So it's going to take you over

two hours, probably even on a decent day. That's how hard this climb is. And it's snowing at the top. Like you can see in his, in his Instagram posts that he's like wearing a puffy jacket, there's snow all over the place. So not perfect conditions. I think his weight is around 65 66 kilograms his average power he just put everything everything's on strava he was flagged for a while but now he's back it says his average power was like just under 400 watts so that is about you know that's that's like six watts per kilo for over an hour at altitude super impressive then he does the motor the motorolo a really tough climb shorter 43 minutes 45 seconds is his time the average gradient on this thing's ridiculous it's over 11 average gradient his power is 435 watts so you know that's 6.5 watts per kilo like you're

getting up there with that's for 45 minutes basically you're getting up there with like he beat the he beat the time of nibali by over a minute i think anybody uh wait yes no by like well over a minute so he's 42 53 nibali is 4408 so absolutely crushes nibali's time and then right before we decided, okay, we got to finally talk about this guy. And then he posts that he got the Alpe d'Huez KOM 30. I'm a little, I think he got flags. So you can't see it won't. I think Strava will reconcile it at some point,

but I just saw a screenshot that has him at 35, 56, Sepp Kuss at 3605. So he beat Sepp Kos by about nine seconds. Oh, Spencer. I, I, uh, I did we, we got, since I, you know, we, I knew we were going to talk about this, you know, I, I watched the video, uh, and there's actually a video out there, uh, of his, of the West's, uh, record. Right. And I'm so impressed because he does, he just did this two weeks ago. I think it was the 11th of November. And so all by himself, no, but no draft,

no, nothing. Let's not forget these guys got draft at some point in the race and they only went hard, uh, the last, uh, two, kilometers, like on their own. Right. So, but the bottom is five degrees Celsius and it was zero degrees Celsius at the top. I mean, to do that kind of performance in those temperatures, that's fucking impressive. Sorry for the word. Of course, you know, compared to the guys who have these KOMs, it was in a race. Sapkuz got the fastest time on Strava, but it was finish on Obdues.

Nibali the same and NJ Hindley the same, right? So it was after a race, probably like 10 or 12 days in the race. So, and this is just pure time trial, but still to go that fast on those climbs is insane. And so I was thinking, so where does this guy come from? You know, and then you started looking, he's been, he's been an okay rider, but not nothing really special. So what's, what's the deal? What's of course,

you know, he, I mean, he's 29 years old, um, must be an amazing climber. Uh, I mean, I didn't know his weight, but he looks tiny, looks tiny. His, uh, his bike is specially prepped for, you know, the climbs, no bottles, nothing, uh, super, super light, everything, but still, um, I mean, mean you know him personally so what's your take on on this what where do you see this going my take on it is i mean obviously i'm a little biased because i would say it's actually shocking to me no one has signed him you would say the downsides are he's old right he's 29 could even ride in a bunch but you know he he's

raced at a pretty high level like he did all the big u.s races and then he was racing you know riding in the u.s that is not so normal to be able to race in a bunch in europe that's i've i've seen that a lot in the past with young americans but he has finished top 20 at the tour of Slovenia, which is a big race in 2022. So like he's doing these third to fourth level races in Europe for a few years, but still like he's, you can't bring them in and expect them to, he's not going to do like Sepp Kuss's job right off the bat. It just, there's a learning curve, but you would say another guy that went pro around that same age, at least world tour pro is mike woods another canadian he had way less experience so he'd be ahead of the mike woods curve i mean think about just watts pure watts per kilo 6.5 for 43 minutes you know does just think about like total energies do they

have a single rider that can do that it's possible no like no no they have nobody so if you just work backwards and think we could sign for probably a minimum contract we could have a rider that can come out and outperform everyone on our team as a climber you know maybe he doesn't win a big race maybe he struggles but you could at least say hey why don't you jump in some breaks in the zero let's see what happens we're going to give you, why don't you jump in some breaks in the zero? Let's see what happens. We're going to give you a guy to help you get in the breaks and we'll see what happens. At least you're giving yourself a chance on stages that you don't currently

have a chance on. So, and I know that like rosters are getting full, things like that, but it's a little, I'm just, I'm just looking here because for me, the, the most, the most logical team would be that he goes to Israel Premier Tech, right? That's having a Canadian component, but they're full. They have 30 riders. And he did a training camp with them, I believe, last year or the year before. But here's the thing.

There's a couple of things going against him. So in 2013, he had, I think it was 2013, a weird adverse analytical finding. And there's these all these small Canadian races that are, you know, these French Canadian races that are the biggest. I'd like if you want to be a big pro in North America, you go to these races, but they're kind of in the middle of nowhere. So I think it was before one of the stages. It's the Tour d'Abiti, something like that. I don't know if i'm saying that right but he got like water from that was like at a country club and he got water from the clubhouse

and then he tested positive before i don't have the name of the drug in front of me but they went through this like big tribunal they just they gave him a no fault i think it's like a no fault positive because they figured out it was probably in the groundwater that he got the water contamination yeah contamination um so he technically didn't like get suspended didn't miss any time the uci or wada said it was a no fault aaf adverse analytical find him i guess you could say well you know maybe some team is suspicious of him because of that but i really think it's just you know you meet guys like this and obviously super motivated that's the reason he's getting he's this fast and getting all these talented and motivated they can tend if they don't have

the right training plan they can just ride themselves into the ground i would guess that's what's happened to him you know why he wasn't crushing it in the u.s and guess that's what's happened to him, you know, why he wasn't crushing it in the U S and if you don't have like, think of it cycling so much about mentorship mentorship, because you need someone like to teach you how to live, teach you how to train, teach you how to race, and then also advocate for you. So if he's not winning the big races, if he doesn't win tour of Utah, then he needs someone to go to a team and say, Hey, you should sign this guy. He's really good. If you don't have that, it can be tough. And you're right. Israel premier tech would be the obvious landing spot, but it's not, as you said, they're full. And then I, let's just say he shows up to their camp. He's a little run down, a little injured. He had a broken hip. He had a lot of injuries. I didn't get hit by a car, broke broke his hip wasn't riding his best and you know they have a good young core and then they have like this young core that they probably don't want to flick anybody from and then their older riders are kind of locked in like i think sylvan adams has made it

pretty known that he would rather not have chris from taking up a roster spot but they can't move from you know it's like i think they maybe they had Fulsang. I don't know if he's still on the team, but they have these older riders. He just announced that he keeps going another year, I think. So it's a little bit of bad luck. I think that the one team he isn't in with. He couldn't really go to their development team. Can he though at that age? Yeah, you can.

You can. Okay. I mean, so that's actually a little weird to me. He's not, they haven't picked him up just for their development team. It seems kind of low risk. Yeah.

I mean, you know, who knows? Who knows what's going to happen? Maybe he, maybe he will. Maybe he will be on that team. Yeah. I'm just checking. There's guys on there from,

there's a Canadian of 27 years old on that team. So, I'm just checking. There's guys on there from, there's a Canadian of 27 years old on that team. So that's in theory doable. He could be on that team. And then, you know, nowadays the way it works with the team structures, you can be on that team

and then be once in a while transferred to the big team to do certain races as long as this is not World 2 races. But yeah, I mean, listen, it has happened before. There's been guys that were all of a sudden noticed because they had

a KOM. Jonas Vingegaard was discovered that way because he broke the record on Calderon. Then there's, you know, the guys who win the Zwift Academy who get noticed and some of them get a pro contract.

So, you know, why not? Maybe there is some... I read somewhere that there is one or two teams who got in contact with him and showed some interest. So I'm curious to see if it's going to go somewhere.

But interesting guy to follow. Pretty impressive to have the KOM on the Mortirolo the stelvio and up the west there's not many riders who have no i mean in like not squeak like out to as he kind of squeaked out but like if you think about out to us in the stelvio too so much about drafting like if you have a whole team like if you go back and watch that jai henley stelvio is sent he's in the pack for a lot of the race like he's getting a lot of draft to do that by yourself in the cold that's not when you're flying up climbs

um it's really impressive and you know you were saying like how how could he fall through the cracks but in cycling i mean if you're not if you're not from a non-core country you don't have a lot of advocates you can be super talented but if you're not showing the talent at exactly the right time a lot of people won't take a chance on you it's like i don't know like do we really want to take a swing at this guy is he ever going to put it together but like clearly he's demonstrated now that he can string together good training and put that into results yeah yeah yeah and also i mean some people just don't don't race well when they feel like you know if you're in a third division austrian team and

you're i think he was like living in a barn like he's like like barely had a home like that's not great he wants wants to make the step that's for sure he's looking for it but uh and sometimes you can want it too much and it hurts your racing like you're never racing relaxed which which could be a big a big thing and i'm just looking at like intermarche like 27 riders in a contract for 2025 you know some teams maybe don't want to destabilize the situation by bringing on someone they don't i think it's more it's more the factor of the unknown, you know, that, okay, let's take a bet on this guy, but we don't really know what we're going to get because I think at this stage

in the season, they've, you know, they've done their homework at all. And maybe it's going to say, yeah, you know, that's not worth it. Let's just, you know, if he's 29 and he hasn't shown it now, it's because of a reason, but maybe a team takes takes the bet who knows i'd assume like a team like total energies you're speaking french too in the team so if you don't you're not fluent in french like i know like larry warbus had to learn french before he went to decathlon a lot of people would not be able or willing to do that with such a short amount of time so a lot of times your soft skills can play a bigger part than people think.

Last topic, just to circle back on this before we get to the questions, we talked about Maxine Van Heels last week. Speculation, he would break his contract with Lotto Destiny. He did break his contract with Lotto Destiny. His agent announced he is a free agent. We don't know where he's going. I read an article that said astana and red bull are the two biggest suitors the two favorites with mobistar in ineos behind

them and just one update on ineos we said last week they were full i guess they have sent two riders down to their development team so they do have free roster spots now okay oh that's interesting i mean yeah they announced today i think that they reached an agreement so lotto free roster spots now. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, yeah, they announced today, I think that they reached an agreement. So Lotto and Van Giels have reached an agreement.

So they've agreed on the buyout clause, which, as I said, in the last week, it's going to be around a million, which is still pretty,

pretty good. You know, I mean, it's the equivalent of his running contract. I think it was 500,000 next year and 600,000 the year after. So the law in Belgium permits to break your contract if you pay that amount.

Of course, they would have prepared to keep him. But once the rider has made up his mind and doesn't want to be there, then I think it's also not really smart to fight against that and try to keep him against his will.

Because you're going to pay him a lot of money and the guy's not going to be happy. So, yeah, I'm curious to see. I still think that Red Bull is in pole position. Something tells me that they kind of had it done more or less,

maybe, maybe a verbal agreement. I don't know where a promise, whatever. And then once the news got out and other, other people got interested and, and yeah, I've heard that. What is it called? XDS Astana, is it called? I guess so. XDS Astana is also now in the running because for them, it's a guy that would make some sense because he's the rider that can score a lot of points next year. It's a guy who wins races, but on top of that, if he doesn't win, he's second, third, fourth, and can get a lot of points.

I still have serious doubts if that would be enough for Astana to get a spot on the world tour. I don't think so. I think that ship has sailed, but they will keep trying. So, you know, they apparently have the budget for next year because reportedly with the new sponsor, the Chinese carbon manufacturer they will double their budget so let's say if it's 20 million now it will be 40 million in the future so they definitely have the chance to buy out the contract and to pay Van Gils what he thinks he's worth yeah and I would assume the reason he hasn't just signed for astana

is because way like you know would you rather go to red bull with more competition in the team and be on one of the sports top teams or essentially you're signing up to be relegated the year after and his agent alex carrera said it's minimum three-year contract so yeah it would be you'd be going back to where he is now. Relegated, yes, but he would be in the same situation as he was on Lotto now. Basically being number one or two

in the pro teams and having access to all the races anyway. But if I would be Van Gilds, I would definitely not recommend him to sign for Astana. That's not, uh, not the best environment for him. Yeah. Like the, the path to underachieving in your career is well-paved. It's not, I feel like a lot

of, I knew someone that went there as like a young rider and I don't feel like they ever, uh, achieved what they could have.'s just it's like it's choose your own adventure team it's a very very complicated team i've been i've been the manager two years of that team spencer so i know i know you know the people may have changed but it's still the same so uh you know i would not recommend them to go there you think red bull bora like that if you want to develop, that seems like where you'd want to be. I think so. Yeah.

You also see the importance of Ineos getting that development team, but they just got like a week and a half ago because now they can, they're more flexible with your roster. It's not really their development team, right? It's like a third party that they associate. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess they still have now the flexibility to say like peter oxenberg you're 19 you're gonna go race for them and we

can call you up when we need you i mean some nba teams do this like i don't think the denver nuggets have a develop have a g league team but they have some partnership and then you can send riders down and send them back up on the topic. First question, first listener question. Perfect, perfect symmetry with this. It is again, info at we do that team. We're getting a lot of questions, so I'm not going to get to all of them right away. We will try to get your question as soon as we can. It is from Mark. Could you provide a progress report for aj august at ineos the young americans said to have to be like remco but with prop but probably with more power i think that was axel merckx who said that um yeah i don't think i don't think aj probably loved that that quote

got out there but you know he's a guy he's 19 same same age as peter oxenberg on any os i don't think that he was managed that well i just have a lot of questions about how his season went where you know what his third sorry fourth professional race was johan this man is by the way he's 57 kilos i'm gonna say and i think i'm well placed to say it i'm gonna say party tobaix. I'll tell you why, Spencer, because we were at Paris-Roubaix with the move travel. We had two spots in one of the vans. Last minute, I got the request of the parents of AJ, who flew last minute ticket to, to France from the States, because he got called up like the day before two days before to do Paris Roubaix. And so I was, you know, I had, uh,

both of his parents with me in the car during the day of the ride, the day of Paris Roubaix. So we followed him with interest. And, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's not a race that you would put an 18 year old new professional in without any notice. I can understand that sometimes, you know, with people getting injured or sick last minute, you have to, you know, call up somebody, but they call up somebody else, you know, not, not this kid with no experience. And he finished the race.

He finished the race. I think he was just out of the time limit, but he did finish the race because I remember I was with his parents in the tribune at the finish line and we waited until he, until he came in. Obviously, you know, he's a big talent. He has a huge potential. For some reason, I don't know if, you know, I don't really know if he had some health issues or injuries or, but it doesn't seem to me like he had a full program of races where he could really expose himself and his qualities. Yeah, I mean, I just have a lot of questions like, how could that, how did that happen? You know, like, what were they thinking um i guess that just

shows you that there must be some confusion at ineos or not a clear directive from up top all the way down ineos is known as you know that they kind of got most of their success by buying talent and not developing talent and i hope that this is not the case for AJ. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would also guess he probably he's just fatigued. Like you're from,

he went from a club team to a world tour team. I mean, the guy has potential. I remember him, his name came up for the first time when I saw him. I saw the, I watched the race on TV and on a cyclocross and he won the, the world cup cyclocross on the Koppenberg as a junior, as part of the USA program, uh, USA cycling program. And so, uh, listen, the guy's good. The guy's good.

Uh, you know, we can't expect also the first year that he's gonna, uh, you know, show, show everybody, uh, maybe in the front all the time, but I'm pretty sure that he's gonna you know show show everybody uh maybe in the front all the time but i'm pretty sure that he will be he will be in you know next year or two years in two years time he will be on the top i would say highlight of his year this is in july czech tour seventh place overall which is really good because that was won by mark hershey diego ulysses second sergio hagita third um not a soup like he was only a minute behind hershey for the overall so really good race at the czech tour i mean for an 18 year old neo pro like that's might be that's kind of all you can expect just to show something in a race like that it's just really about the next few years. The fact that he's at INEOS does concern me.

Well, they must let him grow slowly. You know, it's still very early. And most of the times also, it's probably also these young kids also who want to go really fast already. They want to progress super fast because they need to take their time, man. They need to get the experience that their body, you know, assimilate all the efforts and, and get a little bit stronger month by month or year by year. You can't expect them to be on top of their straight away. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like Magna Sheffield,

kind of a, another similar talent at Ineos American, three years older, though, 22, you know, came in with a lot of promise. It hasn't really he just kind of posted similar seasons since he joined, but he did get like six that tour Flanders. So that shows like there is improvement happening. That guy has some power. Let me tell you. Yeah. Like that, but to get six, that Flanders at 22,

that's really difficult to do. Like really difficult. So there is improvement happening. Some, some riders are improving at the team. I guess we'll see how it plays out, but you do have like the new and improved Ineos, maybe he'll thrive under there.

But next question that I thought was pretty, pretty interesting. Johan, I was watching the 89 tour last night. And aside, this is not me. This is a, this is a listener. Aside from the fact that the riders were taking water bottles and drinking from them on the side of the road, the most shocking thing for me was how much more of the riders rocked on their bikes on the hard climbs compared to today's riders who barely move side to side in the saddle is this because bikes are stiffer and lighter or better training and understanding of the physics of riding or any other reason

thanks love the show okay well for me the very simple answer is that the main reason, and I would say the only reason is the gearing. Yeah. Back in the days, I showed this picture a while ago there, but the gears they were using was 39-23, almost all the stages and sometimes 39-25. Nowadays, in most of the mountain stages, I would guess they're riding 36, 34, uh, or 36, um, 32, whatever, uh, for a pro that's, that's, I mean, you can spin, you can spin. So, uh, I think the main reason is the gearing. Uh, you had to, before you had to really work the bike to move those gears to propel your bike forward. Yeah, you're right.

It's the gear. And I think he talked about this like a couple of weeks ago. It's the reason I paid the question, um, like how insane it was. People were getting up these climbs, like the Motorola with like a 39, 23 or 39, 21. If you're on the straight corn cob, but the gearing is different. It's like the tech, the technology push the the gears out but then it also took a while for people to understand like you were talking about you had a manager that like said you couldn't ride a 28 or something like 25 25 yeah like there was this thought like do you remember ankling when it was like tom boone in

his ankling and that's how he's so good like Like, it's like, no, you should just spin as fast as you can and it will save your legs and you'll be faster. Like there's no like secret technique of some big gear that people thought. I think Team Sky, I mean, really blew everyone out of the water. Like remember like Wiggins almost never stood up when he won the tour in 2020. I think that was 2012. Like it was like oh yeah you're more efficient when you're sitting down i mean obviously there are even like nuances there uae there was telling me that actually when you stand up you can clear some of the lactic acid because

your arms are now engaged and you can like flush out of your body so there is a balance to strike there you don't want to want to sit down all the time but it's really in short they figured out scientifically that just sitting down and spinning is the best way to get up climbs fast well yeah but those i mean those theories change all the time also you know i mean this this is a subject for another podcast but uh coincidentally you know i have a young son who's racing so he's always always coming, you know, with, Oh, you know, now it's this way. And now it's this way, you know, I mean, and here's, here's a, here's a prep tomorrow, you know, the, the tilted, the tilted break. Yeah. And this is it tomorrow for the first time, I'm going to try it.

I want to see if it really works, you know? And I think, I mean, if you look at it, it does, it makes sense. But, you know, another thing, for example, which I've been looking into is the, the, the, the length of the, of the cranks, you know, when I was a cyclist, we were, we were put in our mind and it made sense logically that you, the longer lever you would have, the better it would be. So I was, you know, I was on 175 and 177 and a half and time trials, even 180. Now it's the opposite, you know, that, that, that goes shorter. I spoke to a friend the other day who's preparing for a triathlon, uh, you know, amateur level, but he's riding 160 cranks on the time trial bike. So, you know, a lot,

a lot changes. And then actually the, the reasoning behind those new trends makes sense to me. Um, but anyway, coming back to coming back to the, the, the rocking the bike, it's, it's the gearing, it's the gearing. I do think that, yeah, I think you'll like it when you shift in the brifters, the shifters. Uh, I like it, but you know, I think I I'm not, I'm not sure if I went on record on one of the podcasts or if I,

if I said it privately to somebody I said, and this is last year or two years ago, I said, the day you see me on a bike with my brake levers tilted, you have my permission to slap, to permission to slap to hit me off my bike tomorrow i mean we're gonna we're gonna you know everybody can change their mind you know so tomorrow i'm gonna try it out i mean my i only did it because the ventum we both have ventums thank you ventum and they came like slightly angled in i just didn't move them and i actually have a hard time riding without them angled in slightly i i don't think visma ever did that though which makes me think like what do they

what do they know that we don't know they they jonas jonas doesn't do it at least as extreme as today yeah yeah and you think that they have they don't do things just to do them. So I'd be curious what information they have. So last question. I prefer to just, you know, I, I, I look, I checked out a bit of reports and some studies and then I prefer to try it out myself before I talk about it. So I'll let you know after tomorrow and a message if it works or not. I'm dying to know. We'll talk about it next week on the show. Last question for the week so i was just thinking about that this this morning that's why i'm i'm picking this one

but a few weeks ago johan mentioned that cycling teams don't have a franchise value and are tied entirely to their sponsor contracts why is that it has to be more than just stadium deals there would have to be some franchise value in belgium for the wolf pack sponsored by sudol quickstep right the oakland this is a good point the oakland a's have no permanent home yeah they are currently homeless a shrinking fan base no major sponsorships and they're valued at one billion dollars there has to be something i'm missing mike in texas i i would say johan you want to go first about the, like the, why don't teams like you've run multiple teams? Like why is there no franchise value? And then I have a theory for why the A's can command such a price tag without

a home. Yeah. Well, I think, I think that the main reason is because cycling, it's also the way it's structured and the way it has been done all the time. And, you know, you always say it cannot be done until somebody does it. Right. So things can always change. But in my opinion, the attractiveness of a sponsor, having the ability to have the team named with, with the name that takes away the value, because you could say, okay,

the Wolfpack sponsored by, right. But then there's going to be other teams who say, oh, you know, we offered the whole name, you know? And, and, and that's actually, okay. It's, it's, it's the Sudal Quickstep team. It's the Lotto team. It's not, it's not, you know, the Wolfpack sponsored or presented by, or powered by Sudal, whatever, you know? I think we would have to go to, to something like that. Like every team has its name that stays the same and then the sponsors can come in.

But the fact that that's not a rule and that there's always going to be other teams who offer the whole name, it cannot be done because, you know, if you pay 10 million and you'll be, you'll be okay. Powered by Lotto or being the lotto team i i know what i would i would be going yeah i mean i guess you see this a little bit like obviously for an nfl team you can't the denver broncos cannot bring on a sponsor and call themselves oracle broncos they just wouldn't be allowed to do that so i think where you get the best analogy is formula one, because some of those teams like Mercedes is sponsored and owned by partly owned by Ineos, but they're not called

Ineos. They're called Mercedes. Like they've held their name. I think you can sell your name off, but the big difference between F1 teams in the Oakland A's like Oakland A's great example, they don't have a home. Okay. So how are they worth a billion dollars? Well, if we, Johan, we could go out and buy a cycling team today, but what would we, we would be buying maybe a bus, maybe some bikes, maybe a lease on an, on an office or a service course, but mainly we would be buying a liability to write a bunch of checks to a bunch of riders. I mean, if you, if you buy a team that you would, you, you would buy, you would buy the remaining time on the sponsoring contract, right?

So if they have like a quick step or something, you buy the remaining time and you buy the guaranteed contracts of the writers who will represent that brand. But that means that you have to start working straight away beyond the expiration of the contract to guarantee your continuity. So basically you buy a bit of time and three years of guarantee, but not much more. Josh Young You're basically buying the right to spend a bunch of money. You're not buying any revenue the difference with like f1 teams and the oakland a's is if we went and bought the

oakland a's we would borrow money to do it and we would be buying revenue from the tv contracts it's like actually in the u.s the stadium like you can make you make money day of the game really the big money you make is from tv deals. Yeah. That's the whole discussion. And the weakness of the cycling teams is that they, they have no TV revenue, none, none. I mean,

the only thing that I can think of the top of my head that they have some revenue, but it's, it's actually too ridiculous to even mention it. It's the 50,000 euros per team they get from the Netflix series. That's it. You know, and then of course, if you do your own documentary, you can sell it to Netflix or to HBO or whatever. Uh, but the, the, the TV rights are at the wrong place, you know,

and that's always the same discussion. The, the, the main player is ASO is the Tour de France. That's where the most of the money is and the tv rights and as soon as you there's a discussion with whatever project whatever proposal you know that the teams come with to work together with aso as soon as you start to name the TV rights, discussion is over. There's no discussion. They will not share 1% of it. And as long as it's like this, then

there's nothing to be done. It cannot be done. Or a big player needs to come in like the Saudis with their PIF fund and buy the whole league or something and then redistribute the rights yeah and the reason that aso can can do this is you just like to stay with the a is like major

league baseball major league baseball is a league and they own they they negotiate their tv rights they're just the sum of all the teams and they're all like the 30 or 32 baseball teams. I remember there are, are the major league baseball association. So it's like the teams are banding together. The advantage is that the members of the league and the co-owners of the league or the teams, but these teams,

these 32, 32 teams, you say are teams that will remain existing with or without a sponsor, with or without a title sponsor league, whatever, call it. Because we don't know of those 20 teams or those 18 teams. We don't know who's going to be there in two or three years because their sponsorship deal expires and there's no guarantee that it will still exist. So you can't have that ownership. If you only know that you're going to exist two years later. I guess in theory, major league baseball, those,

I looked it up at 30 teams. They don't know that they'll be around. They only know that there'll be around because the TV deals, it's like the chicken or the egg. Yeah. I guess like theoretically, let's just say this isn't going to happen, but theoretically, let's say the 18 world tour team said, forget us ASO. If you don't share profit TV profit with us, we're leaving. So they leave. And then they...

Let's just pretend it does. They form the super big great cycling race in July. They put it on in Germany. And then they would go sell the TV rights. And Flanders Classics does this where you have to pay

to stand on the best part of the course. they have actually quietly carved out a little extra revenue from um doing stuff that's quite taboo in cycling but you know you would do that where you'd have to like pay to stand on the side of the road you'd have to you know pay to watch the race where this starts to get fuzzy is would people actually pay a lot of money to watch cycling on tv or you know aso doesn't make a ton of money from the tv rights like if they share their tv rights money it wouldn't be very much money because they really just give it away i think there's even a french law that they have to give away like france tv which is the free station in france like just airs it and you can just like plug your tv into the wall

and watch the race so they are commanding a massive premium for that but the question i guess is if this happened and all these teams did this would people actually like would people would networks be lining up to pay pro psych the pro cycling league a ton of money for these rights like i think that gets a little dicey there's's a lot of history now when, you know, when breaking a 100 year history tradition of, you know, free access to the sport, it's not, not, not, not easy. It would need to be something parallel, you know, where you kind of set up a circuit with, you know, the best riders, uh, and they raise a formula of whatever three or four day races all the time the same and you can only see those guys

there competing against each other and it would take some time and of course if it takes some time it needs a big check behind it and then what you would have is whoever team participates in this let's say Saudi funded

league parallel, and they still participate in the other races too. They would get straight away sabotaged by the UCI because if the UCI is not part of it, they would say, okay, well, if you participate there, then you're sanctioned. You're not, we, we, we take away your license. You're not allowed to race in the other race in our races. Yeah. And like what you're right. to race in the other race in our races yeah and like what you're right it would have to be like saudi funded you'd have to need you need so much money to keep

these teams going and this project going until it can make any money it would have to be a really big check and if you think about okay what's the uci's punishment it would be the other race as well i'm racing in the saddle league what do i care it's really the world championships it'd be like pagacha if you go race in the new league. What do I care? It's really the world championships. It'd be like, gotcha. If you go race in the new league, you're not doing worlds. Well, then you just make another world championships. You could, you start, you start to wonder like, you know, like golf went through this a few years ago and you wonder like, was any of that good for golf?

And then now PIF has basically bought the PGA tour and they're going to combine those back into one like the dual system i don't know if cycling has the juice to do that but there is a precedent for because football soccer was free to air in the uk for a long time like as you're saying long tradition of it i believe in rupert murdoch in 1993 just created the english premier league like that just that just was like a brainchild of a marketing executive. They come up with that. They put it behind a paywall on sky and it's still there today. Like you have to sign up for the sky pay package to watch the premier league in the UK.

The reason it works though, is that it's so pop. It's like popular enough to get over the hump and like people put up with it and pay a bunch of money to watch the sport. You wonder, you know, and I'm sure there's people that know more about this than I do with like F one's done the same thing. Like you, I think you generally have to pay to watch formula one, same thing with baseball in the U S it's not as popular as it used to be, but they're probably making more money. And there's all types of calculations you'd have to do there to figure out if it's worth it. Um, and I mean, one thing we haven't mentioned yet with this, like, okay, the A's might have

a great value, but because someone's going to buy them and think I can make a bunch of money with this. But if baseball keeps getting less popular, will there be people there in the future to buy the expensive baseball packages to watch baseball? So it's not all like rosy for these other necessarily rosy for these other sports versus cycling's spray it out model and people will watch it free on tv which is actually going away like it's not going to be free to air in the uk after this year it's just going to be behind the eurosport paywall time will tell spencer time will tell um you know it's you know

people from within cycling would say, you know, yeah, you know, this will not be done. This cannot be done in cycling. And it's the same, like always, it cannot be done until somebody comes along and does it. It will happen at some point, uh, but who knows when. Well, probably, I mean, if it does happen, just, you'll probably feel a lot fewer teams, like 10 top flight teams. and we'll look back and think

man that's crazy we had 18 world tour teams yes um that would be my guess that you'll have to band together some of these big budget teams to create like just a really really really robust financially robust top tier makes sense well joh we will, it's black Friday. We'll let you go out and get your black Friday shopping. And it's nine o'clock at night here. There's no, I can't go if it's just opening in Spain. If I'm, if it's not online, I'm not getting anything from black Friday, but, uh, I wasn't planning on it anyway. So. All right. Well, thank you for joining us and we will be back next week okay