THEMOVE - Did Decathlon Blow the Vuelta? | La Vuelta a España 2026 Stage 9 | THEMOVE

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

Johan Bruyneel and Spencer Martin break down Enric Mas' impressive ride to take the stage win on the Vuelta's hardest stage during his first day in the leader's jersey, and discuss whether Felix Gall and Decathlon overplayed their hand. They also wonder how long Tadej Pogačar's recovery will be, how his absence will alter the rest of the season, and take a moment to marvel at Tom Pidcock's performance in the MTB world champs before predicting the outcome of Tuesday's Stage 10, which could serve up a Classics-style showdown between Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen. Become a WEDŪ Member Today to Unlock VIP Access & Benefits: https://access.wedu.team Ultra Pouches: Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch — delivering instant focus and mental clarity, without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use code THEMOVE to get 15% off at https://TakeUltra.com. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. PLEASE support our show and tell them our show sent you. Eight Sleep: Use code THEMOVE at https://eightsleep.com/themove for up to $350 off. 30 days to try it at home. Free returns if it's not for you. Sheath Underwear: Sheath. The underwear of legends. Go to https://www.sheath.com/THEMOVE and use code THEMOVE for 20% off. NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/THEMOVE Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee Odoo: Stop paying for missing pieces. Go to https://Odoo.com AG1: For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at https://DRINKAG1.com/THEMOVE Helix Sleep: Go to https://helixsleep.com/themove for Up to 30% off your Helix mattress Fatty15: Fatty15 is on a mission to support Healthy Aging for All, including all ages and stages of life. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/THEMOVE and using code THEMOVE at checkout.

Man, what a day for Movistar. What a boost for the confidence and the morale of Enrique Mas. I mean, I thought that Enrique Mas would be okay today, but I did expect another winner of the stage. But, yeah, I mean, listen, after all the negativity that has been around the person, Enric Mas, especially in Spain, I've said it already many times. You know, what a way to shut up his haters. You know, he has a lot of haters.

He does have a lot of haters. Today, today, man, they need to shut up. Everybody, welcome back to The Move. I'm Spencer Martin. I'm here with Johann Berniel. We are breaking down stage nine of the Volta, Espania won by Enric Moss on a summit finish over. Oscar Onley with Primus Roglitch, 12 seconds back.

Felix Gall, 18 seconds further down the road. Moss winning in his second stage win, Volta stage one of his career. I thought it was his first, but it's his second. in the Red Jersey makes a huge statement. We'll also preview Tuesdays stage 10. Dive deep into the race, where things stand after the first week or first block, first nine days,

and maybe even talk about Tom Pitcock and Matthew Vanderpull at the World Mountain Bike Championships. But Johan, before we get into it, what is your? And by the way, 8-Sleep is sponsoring our move of the day for this VALTA, eight-sleep, mattress-toppers, they can go warm, they can go cold, UAE's using them throughout the entire year. Patty Pagachar sleeping on these at every race, as well as Pavel Sivokov, clearly working out well for him. He was last man sitting in the break.

But if you want to get $350 off an eight sleep mattress topper before the end of this well, I go to eight sleep.com slash the move to redeem that and use code the move. Johann, what is your eight sleep move at the day for today's stage? Definitely, Enric Mas, Spencer. It looks like, you know, he got wings in the red jersey. Yes. Yeah. It's a different writer we saw.

I think he's very cautious in his interviews. I think he had so many disappointments through the years that he doesn't really feel confident to express his good form. Before the Velt, I heard him say that he was in great shape. I also heard him say that he likes the heat. Today, I think what a statement from Enric Maas, you know, like, okay, obviously got into the red jersey because of Bogacha's crash yesterday, but today it was up to him to prove that he was the leader of his team and of the Vuelta.

And man, did he show that? On the climb, on the last climb, on Tudon, Sanaitana, there was some attacks. We all expected Deccatlon and Felix Galt to attack and destroy the front group. But Enric Musk kind of, I think he gained confidence. kind of discovered him, or he got more confidence on the climb and finally decided to accelerate. And especially, Spencer, I think the most impressive part of that performance was that he had Oscar Only on the wheel. At first, they collaborated a bit, and then at some point Oscar Only was on the limit.

And Rick Maas did, I think, almost the last two kilometers almost pulling. There was a crosswind. you would think Oscar Omni is quite an explosive rider you would think okay he's going to win this stage ultimately that would not have been a problem for Enric Mas because he was trying to gain time on Felix Kal and on Primos Roglich who are his two closest opponents but he had him so much on the limit that he won this stage

in red man what a day for Movistar what a boost for the confidence and the morale of Enrique Mas I mean, I thought that Enric Moss would be okay today, but I did expect another winner of the stage. But yeah, I mean, listen, after all the negativity that has been around the person, Enric Mas, especially in Spain. I've said it already many times. You know, what a way to shut up his haters. You know, he has a lot of haters. He does have a lot of haters.

Today, man, they need to shut up. I mean, it's like, okay, you know, I'm a really good writer. And yeah, I mean, it's nice to see a guy like at 31. You know, he's, he was a promise. I mean, straight away, I think he was second year pro or third year pro when he got second in the Vuelta. He was on, let's not forget, this guy was on Quickstep. I forgot about that. Yes, you're right.

On Quickstep. I think he was there for two or three years. Actually, it's a writer that comes. from the from the team of Alberto Contador development team. I saw him first. I saw him first.

There was a documentary about that team many years ago. He was super young and Contador was, I think he was still racing. And there was a program about the team of a training camp in Italy.

And they did climb and contador was you know attacking and these guys these young kids were trying to follow him and there was one rider who could follow up contador and out of respect for the celebrity contador he didn't he didn't pass him at the end of the climb it was i think it was either the stelvio or the gavia i'm not a really big climb and i said man that guy is a climber uh And then, yeah, the year after he went to Quick Step, and now he's still here at 31 years old, in the Red Jersey, in his favorite ground tour of his career.

So congrats to Enric Moss, congrats to Movistar. And the world are still wide open, though. Let's see what happens. It is wide open. We'll dive into it in a little bit more detail after the break. But it is, it's an important lesson. In Rick Moss, 31 years old, like you said, first red jersey of his career today, now looking like he's in pole position to win this race,

just an incredible, no matter what happens, this was an incredible ride from him. He deserves a lot of praise. But just like yesterday with Brian Kakard, you know, kind not, I wouldn't say laughing stocks, but just the type of rider that people dismissively would say, like, why are they here? You know, like, are these guys even that good? And this vault has kind of been an exercise in reminding everyone about how good a lot of these writers actually are and if you just stick with it like good things will come you know like how how much has moss been banging his head against the wall at the volta like a years a decade almost and like now we

could win the whole thing it's very cool to see same thing with movistar movie star movie star looking looking fantastic today long gone are the days of the trident and the bad tactics they played it perfectly but yohan let's take a quick break and then i'm gonna get we're gonna talk about do a Pagotra update and then talk about the tactics of Movistar and most importantly, DeCathon. And I want to get your thoughts on that. So we'll be right back. Everybody, this Welto, Spania coverage is brought to you by our presenting sponsor, Ultra Focus Pouches. Do you desperately need a nicotine pouch every 15 minutes just to feel normal?

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recording, we heard that he had a broken clavicle, not so shocking. Concussion, which was a little shocking. And the most shocking to me was a C-7 fracture, which is basically a broken neck. That's a vertebrae in your neck that he fractured. It's a super dangerous injury to have because that's a really common one that people will break, not realize it, continue moving, and then you can be paralyzed from it if the second break is bad enough. So it's really good. He stopped racing. We saw a picture of him in the hospital today in Barcelona.

He looked really, really banged up. Like it's going to be a long recovery. I assume we don't see him for the rest of the year, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the medical update was definitely devastating. Not alarming for the rest of his career. Colorbone is okay.

I think the C-7 fractures. say it's a stable fracture, so it doesn't need any intervention. That's going to be okay as long as he takes the necessary rest. And then the concussion. So they've decided now that they're not going to operate him yet because of the concussion. That's going to delay the surgery. He's going to need surgery on his collarbone because it's a de-placed fracture.

So, yeah, definitely worse than I expect it. But man, if you look then afterwards, we obviously, we made the, we did our comments straight after the stage. We didn't have repeats of the footage. Then afterwards, we saw what really happened. I mean, I think we talked about a potential rock that caused the crash. And then I saw some other images not confirmed, but apparently it's not a rock, but it seems to be a battery of one of the cameras on the motorbikes that, I did see a Twitter note that said that that's AI generated. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because you can't enhance, like when you enhance poor footage like that, a picture is just information. You can't get more information and the AI will create things to make it a sharper. Okay. I mean, it's, yeah, probably, I mean, I did see, I mean, nowadays, we don't know what's

AI or not, right? So that would also be. It could have been anything, though, right? It could have been because, you know, I mean, I would personally think if it's something that is that, you know, my way of thinking that this was possible was because, okay, if it's, if it's fallen of the, of the motorbike just before the Peloton got there, there was nobody that could have seen it and took it out. I mean, a rock, normally if there's cars passing, motorbikes passing, you know, a long time before, they would, they would

take that stone out of the, of the road, because you could see it. Or spectators, you know, put it, I mean, I don't know if there was any spectators there, but, but anyways, what is confirmed, though, that there was something on the road and that Pogacar was indeed drinking from his water bottle at that very moment. So he only had one hand on the handlebars, and he did hit that obstacle first, which is also, you know, I mean, that also shows you how much tension there was in the Peloton and how fast they were going, because Racha was in fourth or fifth wheel. I think there was like four teammates in front of him. I know. Nobody points it out.

Nobody points it out. So everybody was surprised to see that all of a sudden. It was too late. And then, of course, they probably shouted, hey, pay attention. But you know what? If you have one hand on the handlebars, yeah, you're done. So still, you know, I think everybody's still in shock that the big leader and the big favorite and the guy who was most likely going to win the race is not there anymore.

But look, today we saw a different race. And it's going to be a big, a lot of a big different race. from now on, in that sense that I think that breakaways are going to have a lot more chances now to make it. Even in mountain stages. Today was different because Decatlone decided that they wanted to go for the stage. Maybe we can talk a little bit about their plan and their tactics in a bit. But yeah, Pogacar, I think he's, I mean, I don't think I'm sure he's out for the rest of the season. He should definitely not have any ambitions, I think, to.

to try to come back. Without the C-7, and without the concussion, I would say maybe, was possible if it was only a color bone. But still, you know, then you would think, okay, why? Why would you try to rush after, you know, such a successful season?

You know what? Okay, let somebody else win the World Championship. Let somebody else win Lombardy. I think it's big, you know what? I think his biggest regret, his biggest is going to be the European championships in this hometown in Slovenia. So that's going to be a bummer for him. But unfortunately, that's the case. And I think it would be very wise for him to just not rush it and take time to properly recover.

And I'm sure that next year we'll see him back straight away from the beginning of the season in full force. We wish him. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it's really sad. I find it just depressing, sad because he was he was functioning. level we've probably never seen before. And it's just, it's going to take a long time to build back to that.

Tell me if I'm wrong. So he, you know, he hits, he hits something on the road. He's slippered side and around. And then he flips over the bars. Is that a right handed person drinking with their right, their right hand is drinking? And then they grab the break with their left hand. And it's the front break. He think that's what happened.

Could be. Good be. Because he, yeah, he kind of would have been fine. And then when he, once you go over the handlebars like that, you get really hurt. Yeah. I don't think especially doesn't really matter if you're right or left-handed. Okay, the brake, obviously, he did go over. So he did go over.

We saw the bike flying up. But I don't know if that's really, if you're with one hand on the brake and you lose control, you're done. Yeah. I mean, the problem is if you're right-handed, you grab your front brake and you're going over immediately. Like, it was actually shocking watching the replay how quickly he just, like, somersault. over. That's probably how we broke his had the C-7 fracture because you're hitting the ground with so much, so much

speed. I can't imagine that. Feel terrible for them. I think you're right that we won't see them the rest of the year. Kind of the interesting thing about that is as we sit here and close our eyes and meditate, someone that's not Teddy Pagachar will win world championships.

Yeah. Kind of an interesting thought. Same thing with Lombardia. And you wonder, like, you know, obviously Remco would be the obvious pick, but you're like, is this how the next generation kind of starts to peep their head up a little bit? Like, does Del Toro get a chance? Does Paul Seixos get a chance? It's very, very interesting to think about how that's going to play out. I mean, listen, Sexas, Del Toro for the world's, I think, Remko personally, I think Remco is for me. The big favorite. Probably the favorite, right?

Yeah. And then I think we have to think we have to talk about Tom Pitcock. Tom Pitcock, from Pitcock for the World Championships on the road, in my opinion, is going to be a very dangerous candidate. Interesting. Interesting. For bedtime last night, we were going through the Belgian team

likely team tactics at Worlds. It does seem like Belgium's going to be hard to beat. They're going to be able to work a lot of teams over, don't you think? I mean, they do have a strong team. Without Pogaccha, with Remko, with Vanhart. who else is in the selection. I saw, you know, there's two, there's two or three riders that actually forfeited their

selection. One of them, I think, is Tis Benot. Because I think he doesn't want to ride against Paul Seixas. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. And then Elon Van Welder also said that, I mean, that's probably because he feels drained and is out of shape. Yeah, I don't know. They got a lot of guys, though, like the vermishas, the one of the 50 verminishes they have that could all be fantastic. Let's take another quick break, and then we'll talk about tactics for the day. We'll talk about Tom Pickock.

We will preview worlds and we get closer to worlds. But it's just as I sit here, I'm very sad for Pagachar. But then I was like, man, world, it's just going to be so different. So, like, it's hard to imagine what that race is going to be. Like, I guess Paris Olympics would be the closest analog we have. And that was a really different race because Pagatra wasn't there. That's also Olympics. Yeah, but the Olympics is different because, you know,

there's only 80 writers at the start or something or 100 riders. And there was only, like, half of the writers were top professionals. And there was a bunch of riders that were not released from other countries that didn't have the level of elite professional. cyclist. See, it has made it really weird. I had to break that news to George Hinkapy and Bradley Wiggins and they like, couldn't believe it. Like, what?

Like, what are you talking about with the Olympics? Well, yeah, there's no, nobody at that race. This was during the tour. Yeah. But let's take a quick break and we'll talk about the tactics on the day. We'll be right back. Okay, Johan, we are back. I think the big story from the day, other than Inric Moss winning and looking fantastic is

how it played out. Moves stars sat back. Let the break, you know, the break formed. over it was like 100 kilometers, basically, of attacking, counterattacking, hard start to the day. Everything looked hard today. But a break finally gets away, very strong move with two UAE riders. Kevin Vermarka, as you called out yesterday, looking good, driving the pace with his teammate Pavl Civikov up there. I've always liked Pavl Civacov.

I think he's a great rider. Just super classy, as the Euros would say. Civikov eventually is alone. I think this thing's going to go to the line. I think they had over six minutes with the final client. coming up and then Decafalon comes to the front and you know, Moby starts just managing the pace. Spencer, it was 22 kilometers uphill, 22 kilometers uphill last climb. But you know, I crunch the numbers at the bottom of the climb. They had to put like 13 seconds

per kilometer into them. I'm like, that's that's that's pretty hard to do, you know. Yeah, but you know, I mean, okay, the two last remainder of the of the break were Sevakov and Camp Rubi, you know, the Spanish champion. I mean, not pure climbers. You know, add to that that they've been out there for a very long time. The hardest stage, I mean, 5,200 meters of climbing. Yeah, I mean, once you saw that with like 7K to go or something, they started to kind of get chunks of 30 seconds, like within two minutes.

So that's how much faster it was. But, yeah, now, I mean, especially. Actually, Deccatlon, they had a lot of guys. Yeah, because then on the final climb, DeCathlon comes to the front. And as you say, like, the Cathlain gets to the front. You could see the Pelletton was splitting up. You know, they had like 15 kilometers left of climbing. And the Pelletton shattering.

And yeah, it was like four minutes down to two minutes in the blink of an eye. And you're like, okay, this isn't going to stay away. DeCathlon pulling extremely hard, extremely hard on the first half, easier half of the climb. 7K to go, really, I thought, really strange. So they have Mulberger leading out Gall. Mulberger's super strong. You can see Gall's face is he's in pain on Mulberger's wheel. It's not a steep part of the climb.

It's kind of rolling to descent. Like not even on the climb really. It's like a brief rollers in the middle of the climb. And they launch Gall and he looks like he's in pain before he even launches the attack. He attacks for maybe 10 seconds, sits down. then we get the stall. But then now, Gaul is isolated with all of his GC rivals who then just start

attacking him. In Rick Moss plays this perfectly. Does not panic at all. Yarno Weidar, who is always in the worst possible position. He's always the last wheel going into climbs and somehow makes it up to the front. Really impressive from him. But he's

attacking. He probably didn't need to take that on. I think he was closing on a lot of moves. They get Richard Carapas attacking. You know, things are not looking, And they're looking unstable at this point. Oscar-only attacks. Enric Moss, you know, feathers the pace, closes that down because that's a dangerous attack, he realizes. They catch Civikov, Wiedar attacks, Gall attacks again, but he just does not, you can tell he does not have the pace to create separation.

And eventually, Enric Moss launches a counter blow, knocks everybody out. Oscar-only follows him. Primos Roglitz bridges up, looks looking like, you know, like a shadow of the former. Primos. He's there. He's got the high pace. He looked like he was clipping over at 140 RPMs. Keeping the, keeping, it was like crazy how high his cadence was. Keeps the gap at 12 seconds, as you say, Moss holds off on, like telling us that he is absolutely flying because he pulled the final 2K. What did you think of DeCathlons tactics on this? Yeah. I think, I think, you know, take into account they had so many riders. I think they, they, they overplayed their

hand. I think they, okay, there's two things to consider. What did they really accomplish? What did they want to accomplish? Did they want to take time on the main rivals? Or did they want to take the stage win? I mean, in my opinion, they pace too fast, too early. They should have forgotten about the stage.

You know, that should not have been their worry. They should have tried to set a proper pace, a hard pace, but keeping their four or five riders there. for as long as possible. So then FedEx Gal could have attacked later, 7K to go, way too early. I mean, especially with, you know, it's a hard seven kilometers. It's open. There's no way.

I mean, look, Spencer, I mean, today we see this is how close these guys are, you know. Of course, we were used to Pogacra being miles above the rest. But today we have the hardest stage of the whole VELTA in altitude meters, 5,200 meters. You know, I don't know, six or seven different climbs, a super hard climb. And the difference between the first place and ninth place is 54 seconds. Yeah.

The time gaps are not big, you know. And so we have, and that means, I mean, look, the first four riders are within 18 seconds. So, you know, it was clear that you wouldn't, you know, with 7K to go, I don't know what they were thinking. It's a team also that is not used to do this, right? I mean, it's they're discovering this kind of collective strength. And do they have the right guidance from the car?

Are the guys in the car not over-excited and pushing the guys too much? Which, on the contrary, Movistar is completely different. They have experience in the car from, okay, I know some of the guys. it's always conservative conservative let's wait let's see what happens you know which in the vuelta especially in the vuelta is almost always the right tactics now you never know what's going to happen in the vulta yeah yeah and so and especially with this quite even field right now so i personally think they overplayed their their carts and they were too excited and they phoenix gaul was alone way too early add to that that probably

he didn't have his best day. You know, so at the same time, you know, there's not been any stage yet that Felix Gaul has actually ridden away dominantly from his, from his rivals. On the contrary, he has lost a little bit of time now and then. So he has to attack, but I think it was way too early. And Anrik Moss man, Enric Musk played it perfectly. You know, he was. He did.

He did. Yeah. The whole Movis start team. I mean, really just an impressive piece of work for me. Yeah, I mean, for them, they didn't want to catch the break. Maybe it was probably they said, okay, you know what, if there's no bonifications in play. We already have that. And maybe Gall wanted those bonifications.

So it's the proof, Spencer, that, you know, you can have tactics, but you always have to wait and find out how your leader is going to perform. And actually, the writer himself has to wait. has to wait until it really comes down to the limit to know, okay, am I 95%, am I 98%? Why that? Or I'm 100%. You never know until it really goes down for real. So I think it was the opposite here. Gal had these plans.

Decatlon had these plans. They found out that Gall didn't have the power and Mass discovered along the way that he was feeling better and better. You could also see very smart riding from Enrique Mas because he never reacted straight away. He always came back progressively on an attack, which is, you know, after such a long and hard stage, it's probably the right way.

And then finally with, you know, the last two kilometers, he was extraordinary. And yeah, I mean, the thing about DeKathlon, too, super strong team. You get to the final 7K of that race. It's like, it would be nice to have some of those guys with you, right? If you're Fielskall, that's what baffled me the most. It's like, well, you'd want Gregor Mulberger with 2K to go to close down these attacks when Richard Carapaz is attacking.

And I think, I think you're right. It's a total misreading. The gap was always going to be made where Enricross, Moss made it in the last two or three K. Yeah. Not with 7K to go. So if you're really strong, blow everybody away with 2K to go and pick up some seconds. Also interesting to note, Felix Gall so the gap between first and fourth today 18 seconds which is the amount of time you know this is a tough summit finish on the queen stage of the welta same time gap as the sprint stage on stage two where Felix Gall found himself in the second group and lost 18 seconds so it shows you how important that's also how much also how much time time also how much time final phillings got lost more or less on and Rick must in the first time trial yeah i think he lost 17 seconds in nine kilometers time trial i think to and rancash And so you can't just sit back and say like, oh, these hard mountain stages are coming up. I'll take a bunch of time there because all these guys are equal, pretty much. You know, I think McHumaz's best today.

They can't really ride away from each other because they're all producing almost exactly the same watts per kilo. And today, I think the difference was Interimus Rasmus just rode smarter than his rivals or most of his rivals. And so it's going to be hard to create differences. It's going to be a tight race. Having said that, is Primo's Roglitz is a secret winner of today's stage? loses 12 seconds plus time bonuses, not not the best day, but now he's still 118 back. Like he's lurking, especially with a long time trial in the third week. Yeah.

I mean, listen, Roblich is, you know, he's the sleeping, I think he's the sleeping trap, in my opinion. Still not the Roglitz. I mean, I don't think we're going to see the Roblitz we have, we are used to see in the Veltah. But, you know, he's there. You know, he's there. He's biding his time. I would definitely not count him out. He can be dangerous at the end.

He's, you know, he's a big engine. Riding for a contract still. Let's not forget this. If he wins as well, or does he get a contract? That's the question. No, I mean, he's definitely going to get a contract. The question is which team will want him?

And already now, I think already now, Spencer, it's the first time again since a long time that we see, Primos Rogledge competitive in a grand tour. It's been a while since we've seen that. I think it was the 2024 of Welta, right? Well, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that long ago. Yeah.

It is a long time. Like, if you think about the amount of money paid by Red Bull to him since that time, they would probably say it's a long time. Yeah, not last year and not this year, let's say. Which, you know, the way cycling evolves, at the speed cycling evolves for the moment, it seems like a long time, right? two years, two seasons or one and a half season. But yeah, I think he's making a case for himself, Primos, here. Well, yeah, we, if I would be, that would be my, my biggest concern, Primos

Robles. You never know. I mean, he doesn't even give anything away in his interviews, you know, like his interviews are so funny. Oh, you know, I'm super happy, you know, has had a great thing. I'm so happy. Yeah. I'm so happy. You know, he could, you could, you could study him as a, is a, is, like, professional communicators on how to obscure a message. He never, he never actually says anything of substance. I'm so happy. The day is done.

It's like he's just, he's just stating facts. And we have to accept that's all we're going to get from them. Back in the day, in the olden day, we went back and looked, 2021, he puts two minutes,

over two minutes into Enric Moss and a 33K long time trial at the end of the Welta. I just calculated the recent, like the more recent head-to-heads against them. The most we could expect him to take in the final time trial is 123 from Enric Maas. So the thing is he's 118 down now. He can't afford to keep leaking time. So at some point, he will have to like write the ship and almost start taking time, little chunks of time on Enric Maas.

I don't know if he can do that, but it's also Prima's Roglich. So I mean, who knows after the first rest day? Like are we getting into Roglidge territory? Do you remember this? You know, we have to think he's going to. improve, Spencer. His, I mean, his preparation was horrible. Yes.

His preparation was horrible. So, you know, he's riding himself into shape here, which is difficult. You know, I mean, if you start at a lower level, he's, okay, I'm going to improve. At the same time, you can say, well, maybe I'm so much on the limit that I don't recover. I don't think recovery is an issue for Rutledge. He's a big engine. Tomorrow is a rest day. The day after is a relatively easier stage.

And then we have Calar Alto, no? That's a huge stage. That's a really big. Those two last climbs are really, really, really big. Good terrain for Hendrik Mas, by the way, also. But, but yeah, I would be most worried about Primus Rovlish if I'm movie star and Andrik Mas. In like 2022, Valta, you know, started slow.

After stage 10, I think he was almost three minutes down on Remko. And then by the time he crashed out, he was a minute down. So he's a guy that he can get better as a race, especially the Volta goes on. Yeah, I would be concerned about it from Enric Moss, but tonight, Enric Moss should not be concerned about anybody because he's amazing and he should just enjoy his win. Any other, like, let's just say Moss Roglitz is the fight for the win. Who's the third rider now? Well, I think he's still, if Gal is still in it also, and as I said, you know, Oscar only looks like he's improving a bit.

You know, if it's true that he was sick in Hondora and, you know, as he said, he was the whole night on the toilet or something. The day before that stage four, no? So, yeah, I mean, he's definitely there. Today he was on the limit, but he was there. You know, so listen, it's the Vuelta. We don't know. But, yeah, the first four. As I said, I don't think Carapas has it to, where.

and he to rival with those guys when it really matters. He comes back. He attacks his typical style. I don't think Carapas has the legs to win his Veltah. I think we saw that on display today. Also, another great day today for Sepkus. He lost how much he lost? 144.

144. I mean, it's not much, but it's, you know, you can't do that. You can't have that if you want to win or be on the podium. Yeah, I mean, we're saying just it's the repeated trend. The tour guys are feeling it. Like they are cooked. Carapas had as good a launch as you're going to get. And he just is not the thing about today's finish is it's a little laboratory,

climbing laboratory. So as we saw today who the best climbers are. And we saw, Eric Moss is probably the best climber. Oscar Onley is right there with him. Oscar Only, if you think about it, you know, he was probably better than Moss on stage four. So if you average together all the climbing stages, You know, it's like some people take time on him, but he's usually around right there. He was sick on stage four, a little sicker the days after.

You have Roglitch, who's very good. Gall, still looking okay, even though he is, he's in a bad spot because he has time to make up and he's losing time to Moss. And he's a terrible tantalist. Yeah, so like if he went in right now, he might not even finish on the podium, even though he's in third place. Yeah, because in theory, Roglitz and only are the two. best time trial list of those guys, right? Yes. Yeah. So if we finished, if we enter the final

time trial right now, it would probably be Moss first, Rogledge second or first, close, and then only third. So all has to make up time, but he's losing time on summit finishes. Not great, not a great trend. And the coups, it's like you lose 144 on your preferred terrain. That's not a great sign for later in the race, especially for a guy with a lot of fatigue in the legs. Obviously, we didn't expect a lot from set coup. So I'm not like criticizing him. I'm just, just saying, I think SEP might be reaching the end of his G.C. The fact that SEPCUS today

got passed by Skielmosa and Carapas were two guys who also did the tour and seemed to be, okay, they are good shape, but they're not in top shape. They feel. They feel the tour. You know, it's his third round tour, man. Listen, what are you going to expect? We can't

ask for more from Cepkus. You know, he's solid and who knows? I mean, is he going to keep fighting for a top 10 or is he going to lose more time and go in and try to win his stage? I don't know. He's another like CIA level interview where he like gives you no information. Yeah, exactly.

He's saying words, you're not getting any info out of those words. It would be a good, it would be a good politician. He would. Yeah, he should come run for governor of Colorado. He could, he could clean up. But yeah, I think we're looking at Moss, Roglich, Gahl, Onli is. probably the podium fight, you think? You think Carapaz is out of it after today?

I think Carapas is out of it, yeah. It's a few stages already. He's never been able to keep up. He came back always. You know, when the really, when the big fight and the big war is on between the big favorites, he's just a little bit off the pace. So I don't think he can turn that around. Plus, listen, 326, Spencer, he's also, he's also part of those.

not really good time trialists. It's also one and a half minute minimum. It's true. And I mean, today, like, that was as good of a chance as you're going to get. Everyone's looking at each other. Carapaz launches, perfect attack. Tour Carapaz makes that stick. But he just is not the same rider he was three weeks ago.

Hey, what you expect? I mean, you know, they're not robots. You know, when they can try to recover, but then and then they feel fresh at the start, But then finally, after a week, you say, ah, the tour fatigue is coming back into my legs. I felt tired from the tour like two weeks later. And I didn't write it. So I can only imagine how hard it is. But what did you think of the UAE's shifting gears very fast?

So they even had sickness in the team. Pablo Torres abandoned J-I not looking great. It's not going to be easy, Spencer. you know, Pablo Torres, the DNF, sick, Jay Vine is not looking good, Almada not looking good. Today, Sivakov and Gavin Vermeck were looking really good. They're going to keep trying, but man, there's a lot of riders and a lot of teams who want to win stages. Stage wins, man, and ground tours are super expensive. I don't know.

I don't expect we're going to see the kind of turnaround we saw from UAE, like we saw in the zero i don't expect this to happen well it helped in the zero that they had an ace in the hole because novar norvias can finish fast yeah so like stage 10 Tuesday stage narvaias would probably win that but they don't have anybody that can finish like that they got to win these long range of salts that am i dreaming or did civikov sign with decathlon for next year three years three years going to decathlon decathlon decathlon secretly building a hand handy little team over there. And in this WELTA, they are training to support Paul Sixthus in the future. Yeah. But they are losing Mulberger and Gaul. The rest of the core is staying,

right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is a scary team. That's another subplot of this race, is decathlon is learning how to race incredibly aggressively, defend a leader's jersey, even though they don't have it. And then they have, like, Civacov is such an impressive writer. with a lot of experience riding for the best rider in the world. He's coming over to that team with it. Pretty scary if you're the rest of the Peloton. Do you anything else on the stage or do you want to talk about mountain bike world championships before we preview? Let's do that.

Yes. So Tom Pickack. I don't even have the results in front of me. Tom Pickock wins. His countryman Charlie, do you know his last name? Aldrich. Aldrich. Charlie Aldrich, really impressive.

Finish his second. European champion. by the European champion, by the way, Mountain Bike. Interesting. It was a hard fought. Like they were going back and forth. I did not know that for like with seven, with seven of eight laps done,

I thought Aldrich might win. And then do you know the name of the gentleman who got third, the Canadian? No. What's his name? I'll find it. It's not, if it's not,

I think, certain stats, I don't know. First of all, we, I mean, disappointment for Matthew, Vondrapool never got in the race.

I mean, they didn't have, I mean, Pitcock and a few, I mean, Vandrapoul also didn't have a great starting position. So you have to kind of use a lot of energy in the beginning to make it to the front. I mean, I didn't see the first, the first few laps. So I think he's super disappointed. He was, he was, you know, he was definitely trying to win the world championships. Didn't happen. Pitcock, man, Pitcock, he was, I think it looked, you know,

he moved up gradually. To me, it looked like he had everything perfectly under control. He let those guys, you know, fight it out. I mean, at some point there was three French riders. The French have been dominating the whole mountain vaccine, you know, like impressively. Nobody on the podium today. No. And they're usually fighting for like every win at the World Cup.

So the guy who got third is Cole Punchard from Canada. Canadian, yeah. I hadn't heard of him. And the Chilean gentleman, Cosman, sadly flatted and then got forth because of that. Okay, yeah, he's good. He's good. But yeah, I mean, the big favorite was Adrian Bouchy, a young French rider, world champion under 23 last year.

This year, as one of a few World Cup races already, is on Red Bull, on the road team, actually, also. I think he did a few stage races. even I even think he did the tour of Poland before this he's pretty good, really good, very explosive but for some reason it didn't go his way and Pitcock

adds yet another rainbow jersey to his Palmaris second time double Olympic champion now double world champion in the elite on the mountain bike multiple world champion in a lot of other disciplines you know, cyclocross, juniors. I think he, if I'm not mistaken, I think Pitcock was even junior world championship,

World Champion time trial. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So in my opinion, we have to now also add him to the favorites for the world championships on the road. That would be something that nobody has ever been world champion cyclocross, mountain bike, and road. That has never happened.

So that would be first. I mean, he is, so the start of the race, he's not front row. You know, he's going deep to move up. And then you could tell he looked gassed, right? He said, but he gets to the back of the front group and he looks gassed. And then he just kind of sat there and recovered. I think he was fourth or fifth. And they go into the trees and they come out and he's first.

Like what, how did he even do that? What? I think, Johan, I don't know, I don't know anything about mountain biking. I'm not a mountain bike specialist. He's got to be the best of all time, right? I've never seen anyone do this. It's the most versatile rider that have ever existed. Spencer on a bike.

You know, we always talk about Vanderpoul and Walt Von Ardardt, and they're amazing, right? But Pitcock is just another level. The skills of that guy on a bike, it's crazy. You know, he's crazy. Yeah, I mean, what a guy to have. as a bike brand. I mean, Pinarello, Pinarello, they cannot dream of any better ambassador than Tom Pitcock, you know, wins on all the different possible bikes, you know, models they have. And it kind of vindicates, remember this wild goose chase where he was on Ineos and they were going

to go get them and they're going to have to pay a ton of money and we probably get 50 podcasts about where's Tom Pickack going to go? That's a lot of money. Well, they kind of are making work because if you own the team and you own penarillo this yeah this is as good think of what they're selling these these mount bikes are cost so much money yeah and you'd watch this race and think like i got to go get a penrillo mount bike because tom pickock you're you're right the control to this experiment is vanderpool so vanderpool think how good he is in cyclocross the best cycler cross rider of all time. Think how smooth he is on the road. One of the smoothest

riders on the cobbles you ever see. He finishes five minutes behind Tom Pickock in the mountain bike. If I'm going to be frank, he looks kind of clunky when he's doing these mountain bike courses. And Tom Pickock looks like he's riding on butter. I think I think today, Spencer, it's also

Wunderpool. I mean, obviously if you're out of chances for the wind, then it's obviously a mental game also. I don't think Wunderpool. Once he saw that he he wasn't going to make it, then these guys just switch off, you know. But also, if you look, I mean, in these in these mom, okay, you know, Charlie Aldrich, Aldrich is kind of the exception because you would think, oh, there's Bobby.

Bobby saw a bird in the garden. You can't let that slide. You got to get that. Vanderpul, I think in these kind of courses, man, it's so. So it's so specialist that his stature and his weight is an issue. Yes. Charlie Aldrich is also big. But, you know, he is a pure specialist.

And so I would guess technically he has the edge over, over Montevonderval. And then, of course, Pitcock is the exception. You know, I mean, he just shows up. He didn't even do a World Cup race in preparation like Wanderpoole did. It's almost it just showed up today. It's possible to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because your skills degrade so fast in mountain biking. If you're not mountain biking all the time, he becomes so slow. As we saw with Vanderpull, he's not a specialist. He's going against guys who do this all the time. You're just behind the eight ball pickock. I can't believe. He'll say, I think he said he's like, I didn't ride the mountain bike for six months.

And then he just comes in and he's crazy. It's passing everybody. It's crazy. Yeah. It's unimaginable. It's unique. It's out of this world. It's crazy.

It is out of this world. It's, I'm, I feel like we should just do like an entire podcast series on. Tom Pickock is doing things on a bike. Just you could never dream. Obviously, Pagachar is, is amazing, right? But what Tom Pickock is doing almost, like, escapes explanation. Like, you shouldn't be able to do this. Spencer, he is a better bike handler than anybody.

Add to this, add to this, that he's also podium in a grand tour. He was third in the wrong last year. just last year. It's like it's crazy. It's crazy. It is crazy. It is crazy. I mean, how different, how wide can the different disciplines be?

You know, cycle cross, world champion multiple times. Mountain bike. Grand Tour. Winner of an obdu west. I mean, how different can it be? You know, like, so it's, yeah, I mean, he has. to become world champion on the road now. He has no choice. Well, he's ever going to get a better chance than this. It's kind of interesting,

you mentioned that. So just in the last 12 months, he finishes podium on the vault, really impressive. And then you're like, well, how good is he in long one-day road races? Well, world championships last year, he's 10th, sixth at Lombardia, 7th at Strata, second at Milan San Remo, and then second at Eshborn, Frankfurt, maybe the most impressive result of all of those. But he could, You're right. He could win the road world championships. It's a perfect course for him. And I guess the question would be, well, what's the training like? How is he training for this mountain bike world championship? Does he shift gears now? Or does you have any insight into that? Or is he just got to go ride around and he gets in shape?

I think he needs to do a stage race. There's still some. Is there? What is there? There's not a lot of good options. What is there? I mean, there must there has to be something. I don't know if there is any stage. Well, let's go to the Europe tour. I think he's probably going to do the GPs, right? Quebec and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It would kind of make sense for there to be an American. This is where there's probably a hole in the calendar where there could be an American stage race that leads into the Canadian races and then it worked well this year because there's the, I think there was supposed to be an American stage race actually that people were going to use. but I don't know if there's that many there's like the there's like a race in freeuli but

well I mean listen it's early September the world championships is a one day race Pitcock has the talent yeah then especially here's a question for you if he wins the world championships on the road

what else can we demand from top Pitcock oh we can still criticize him I don't don't You worry. We'll figure it out. I have two more demands for him to be the greatest ever, the most versatile. He needs to become world champion gravel, which I think. He could probably do that.

I think, and then he needs to have one world title on the track. That's not going to happen. Right. Well, God, what would he win on the track? It'd have to be the omnium. Aminum, but that's the hardest one to win. I don't know. I don't know if that's going to happen.

That could be a little hard. No, but the World Championships, I think Olympic games and World Championships are different, right? So you can be world champion point race, for example, because that's an individual, that's an individual event. Yeah. And do we know if you has any track experience? No, no, I don't think so. It's a very different style of racing.

That's even more specific than mountain biking, I think. What if he wins the Tour de France, though, overall? Yeah. I could make up for a lot of. of a track. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Or win a ground tour. Winner ground tour. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

If he like, let's always shows up to the Giro next year and wins it. Like we're talking about it's not even a debate in terms of the most versatile writer of all time. Yeah. Well, I think he's already now. He's already now. I think it's crazy. What he did today is it was unbelievable. There's guys that, you know, we associate with, maybe we do podcasts with.

from time to time who aren't impressed with this you know just like well this it's road cycling that's what's important yeah but i don't know like if you really think about how hard this is it's i think the pure the pure talent of tom pitcock in almost everything is is unrivaled uh remember he mean i don't know i mean but you know he's also a really good runner he does really fast 10 kays or something you know yeah it's kind of a funny trend i noticed this summer where I noticed a world champion runner was always riding in Richmond Park in the morning. And they said they run, they ride more than they run. It's definitely becoming a trend now and running.

It's easier on the joints and the ligaments. Yeah. And they probably do their, I bet they do only intensity running. And then endurance work is probably on the bike. So, you know, Tom Pickcock, Olympic, what if he wins the Olympic 5,000? That would be incredible. It's like, could, anything is on the table. for this guy, but should we take a quick break and then preview Tuesday, stage 10?

All right, Johan, we are back and we're unfortunately, we're going to miss the end of the Philly Classic here. George is going to be livid with us. We're not going to be able to give people a live watch along to the 33rd Philadelphia Psychic Classic, which did restart this year and has how many K to go. There are like 103K to go. Derek G's going to breakaway. We're not going to stay online for that, Spencer.

How can you imagine like two and a half hours? of us. I don't even know if it's televised, but we should do live, live commentary. Just the pro cycling stats updates. Derek G's in the break. I mean, it actually seems if you think about it, it could be hard for anyone to pull back Derek G. I wouldn't want to be the guy tasked with doing that. But so tomorrow, not tomorrow's. So tomorrow we have a rest day. So nobody, nobody watched tomorrow. Take tomorrow off. Stage 10 on Tuesday, 184 kilometers. We're moving south. We're in the Costa Blanca today. We're actually a lot of the roads that we rode, Johan, they've been doing the last few days.

But we go even further south on Tuesday, 184 kilometers, it's not an easy stage. 184 kilometers, 3,000 meters of climbing. And probably will not be a GC day, but it's going to be tough for it to be a sprint day. There's one, two, three categorized climbs and the finish is uphill. the last the last the last 4K are 3% uphill how do you think this plays out

and who's going to win this? I think it's breakaway sponsor. It's too hard for sprinters, difficult to control. GC teams will not have any problems letting a breakaway go. I'm going Wal-Vernard for the win. Yeah, this is

if Wal-Vanard's going to win a stage, it doesn't get better than this. Because as You say the difficulty of the stage, especially the finish, just kills any motivation for sprint teams to hold it together. So if that's not happening, it's probably going to be a breakaway. So there you have to start working backwards. Who can sprint or get up or get away on a tough finish from a group and can also make it into a breakaway that's going to form probably on a climb? There's a 3K climb at 5% and then a 5K climb at 4%. The breakaway will probably form on one of the.

of those early in the stage. Who's strong enough because you'd say, well, maybe Matt's Pedersen, you know, he's sprinting really good. He could win on that uphill finish, but I don't know if Matt's Pedersen can make it in the breakaway right now. I mean, maybe he can, but I bet Wilde Anarch could drop him. He did say to wait after the rest day. So

let's see. Stage 10. Stage 10. Okay. And we know, wow, it's going to be up there for the sprint points. If it's a sprint, if it's a sprint, if you say it's 3% at the end, then it's Matthew Brennan. if it's a bunch sprint but i don't think it's going to be a sprint well and i think just because of what you just said it probably definitely won't be a bunch sprint because everyone knows if they

take matthew brennan to the finish he's going to beat him in a sprint yeah so then everyone's going to be wanting to get on the breakaway i think matth matthew brennan getting in the break away and winning from the break away probably a little hard to imagine because who in their right mind would work in a break with matthew brennan yeah for at least people would be doing everything they can to drop him or get away from that group before the finish and everyone. This isn't the Tour of Britain women. I don't know if you watched that, but Lorena Wevis was in breaks.

They were like, people were going to the line with her. It's like no one should be doing that. Just everyone should be attacking and she should have to chase down every move, which is probably what would happen here if Matthew Brennan was up the road. If you say, wow, Van Art,

I'm going to say, just to be different, I'm going to say Matt's Pedersen wins. I think it's probably one of those two guys. Yeah. It should be actually, I think it's getting a nice little palate cleanser. Coming out of the rest day, not GC takes a break. We get to see these big superstars who came to the race to contest stages and point jerseys do their thing. I think it's going to be really fun, almost like a little classic inside of a stage race.

Yeah, for sure. And you think no change on GC, right? No, no, no, no. I just really don't want to turn on, you know, because the broadcast isn't going to start until two hours into the stage and then. I just, classic VALTA would be like, oh, there's a group of 20 away. Oscar Onley is in it. And Enric Mott is like now 20 minutes out of the lead. Like, what has happened?

Well, before the TV came on. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. Okay. All right. Well, anything else before we take off? We'll be back on Tuesday. We'll check it tomorrow off.

We'll be back on Tuesday. Yes, Spencer. One more thing I forgot. Today, the stage in the VALTA was actually not my most important race that I followed. I was on a bike ride. and my son was racing a stage race in Galicia up north. And I had to stop. He called me very proudly on video to show me his yellow jersey.

So he won the overall in the stage race in Galicia. So very proud that today. I'm very, very proud of him. And yeah, that was my highlight of the day. His overall win in the stage race in a junior race. That's a big deal. Congratulations, Christian. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He didn't really well. Really the key was, we didn't know it at the time, but he had a great opening time trial, right? Yeah, he had. Yeah, it was an uphill time trial, was third there, and then today he was second in the stage

and won the overall, and the young ride. So he had two leaders jerseys, yellow jersey for the overall win and the blue jersey for best young rider. That's huge. That's huge. Yeah. Congratulations.

I mean, the level of racing, too, is so impressive. And, like, you know, Spain, that's probably not even the highest level of racing you can do in Europe, but it does show you the handicap Americans have. Like Christian is doing stage races that you just wouldn't be able to do in the U.S. Which shows you why there's probably not a lot of, there's not a ton of American riders coming out ready to win in the world tour, I guess. They have to be. They have to be in Europe. Yeah. They have to be in Europe. Yeah. Yeah, like, look at all the guys are, you know, like Quinn Simmons got to Europe really early, something with like Mateo Jorgensen. Like, that's the key to to go a pro these days.

but congrats that's a big win we'll let you celebrate it tonight anything else before we take off i think that's it tomorrow rest day i'm going to try to go on a ride um not very long because i have some back problems but uh today i did a little ride and felt okay so hopefully tomorrow i have another day on the bike how about you well yeah we we hope those get better i have uh i'm going to try to get out for a ride i'm not i've been indoor riding while the stage is happening which has not been so fun. So get out for a ride, then maybe a lunch or dinner with Mr. Lance Armstrong to discuss some we do business.

Yeah. Okay, good. So working on the rest of the day. I'll keep you posted. We'll have a debrief on the show on Tuesday on how it goes. Okay. Thanks for you. Talk to you later, Johan.

Bye.