THEMOVE - Did Johan Keep Up With Pogačar? | THEMOVE+

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Johan Bruyneel and Spencer Martin discuss a few takeaways from Johan's trip to Spain's Costa Blanca, where he got an up-close-and-personal look at UAE's pre-season training camp, including a ride with Tadej Pogačar, before debating the pros and cons of the far more intense pre-season training techniques modern riders implement. To finish things off, they give their initial opinions on the just-released 2025 Vuelta a España route before getting into 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 Hello Fresh: Get 10 FREE meals at https://www.hellofresh.com/freethemove. Applied across 7 boxes, new subscribers only, varies by plan. That’s 10 free HelloFresh meals, just go to HelloFresh https://www.hellofresh.com/freethemove

But I think and I fear that we're going to see more and more 19, 20, 21-year-olds who were super good and we're seeing it already. We've seen a few examples already of mental burnouts. Like all of a sudden, okay, you know what? I can't do this anymore. This is too much. Everybody, welcome back to the Move Plus, our weekly show with Johan Bernil. I'm Spencer Martin.

I'll be running through a few topics of the week with Johan, as well as getting to a few listener questions. If you want your questions answered, send them into info at wedo.team. We have quite a backlog, so just give us time to work through that. But first, let's talk about our title sponsor for today, which is Zwift. Zwift just released their Zwift Ride, 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. You all know that our coworker, Lance Armstrong, hates riding indoors, refused to do it until he got into Zwift,

and Zwift has changed the game for him, and hopefully the Zwift ride can do that for you. The bike is ultra quiet, which is really important if you're like Johan and I, and you share quarters with your family and they don't want to listen to your loud bike and trainer all the time, and super easy to set up. You just need one tool, the frame key,

to build it all out and make any adjustments to saddle height, bar height, and reach, and once you're done, that frame key slots right back into the magnetic holder in the frame so you never lose it it is incredibly important to be able to do this if you share the bike with your family as well so you can have multiple people that are multiple sizes just jumping on adjusting it to what they need it's a lot easier than having a bike on a trainer ever we all know we all know that pain if you've ever done that try to share a bike on a trainer with your family. It does not go smoothly. And this adjustability makes the Zwift ride perfect for you and anyone in your

house. And you can get it for just $1,299 and 99 cents at Zwift.com. And you can check it out there. You can look at all the specs. And once you get it, you can join WeDo for our rides on WeDo Wednesday in the mornings, I guess, mornings in the US, evenings in Europe and Suffer Sundays, which is the WeDo Wednesdays allegedly is a no drop casual ride. It's actually, it goes along at a good little clip. Suffer Sunday is legitimately hard though. If you're trying to get in shape, do four Suffer Sundays in a row and you'll be there. That's all you need. And speaking of getting in shape, Johan, you're at a preseason training camp on the

Costa Blanca with basically the entire professional peloton. And you're actually getting some, you're like our correspondent on the ground. You're getting some interesting insights from, I guess, the massive training differences, even just like methodology differences between when you were a pro, when you were a manager to now, which is quite interesting. Do you kind of dive into this really quick? Yeah. So I'm here for four days with my son and two of his teammates from his club. They're off for the holidays. So we had these four days just before

we traveled to belgium for uh for christmas uh so i'm in calpe benissa actually um and um it's crazy spencer it's you know this is an infestation of professional cycling uh 16 of the 18 World Tour teams are here in this area today is the first day we went out

I was I was out for 4 hours I did I went on Col de Rat which is the typical climb it's I mean

it's traffic jam basically it's you know all the teams with the cars behind some of DSM was doing testing on on Calderat.

I saw quick Sudal Quickstep, Tudor, lots of women teams also are here. And I also got I was then by then I was riding by myself because of course I can't keep up with my son and his friends. And I got passed by eight jets, basically. They passed me like Formula One cars. The Tour de France team of UAE, the eight riders of the two the France team of UAE with they uh they passed me like bullets um and um yeah I mean they're they're all here it's it's quite impressive and I'm actually actually also quite impressed about not just the professionals but more uh the professionals I think they all the professional teams they have their you know they

do endurance rides they take advantage that they're in a group to do long rides. I see some rides of 200 kilometers already. But I guess as a pro, that's normal, especially when you're with a group. What I'm really seeing is that the second level riders and sometimes even amateur riders

and recreational riders, how fast they go. It's unbelievable. They're racing. I mean, they're going so fast. I've seen some guys behind motorbikes. And so, I mean, it got me thinking, you know, while I was riding. When you ride, you know, you have a lot of time to think and to debate with yourself. I was thinking to myself, I'm old school, probably.

I'm old fashioned. A grumpy old fart, probably. But I can't help myself to think that why are these guys riding so fast? I'm not talking about the pros, about the other riders. So fast in December. And to give an example, I know a few teams, they have their development team. And then these development teams are recruiting junior riders. So there are some riders that are still junior.

So in 2025, they will still be a junior, are here with the development team they've signed for 2026. But they're training with the pros. So 17-year-old guys are doing 200-kilometer rides with 3,000, 4,000 meters of elevation. Things have changed, of course. You know, the data, I mean, everything must be backed up by scientific data, but

I can't stop thinking if a 17-year-old talent is doing this right now, what are they going to do when they turn pro? They need to make a step when they get to under 23, and then they need to make another few steps to improve. I don't know. I don't know. I think immediate success is probably based on that kind of training methods and this way of working.

But I think and I fear that we're going to see more and more 19, 20, 21-year-olds who were super good. And we're seeing it already. We've seen a few examples already of mental burnouts. Like all of a sudden, okay, you know what? I can't do this anymore. This is too much. We've seen it.

We see it more and more. And I think the trend is going into that direction. So then I was thinking, well, okay, this is obviously a trend. So when somebody does it, you kind of need to do the same thing to keep up because otherwise you're not performing in the junior or under-23 category. But why is nobody trying to limit this? Of course, you can't limit. If somebody wants to train a lot, that's what it is, right?

But it becomes a trend and the teams are in a race against each other of trying to sign early on the 16, 17-year-olds, which is, I mean, of course, there's a lot of other sports who work the same way, but cycling is a hard sport.

It's super, super hard on the body, physically, mentally, for a lot of years. So if I work backwards and I see the 16, 17, 18-year-olds training so intensely, not just training intensely, thinking. The way they manage the data, they have everything under control.

I know a few guys, they have their planning already. They're 17. They have their trainer, of course. They have the whole planning, the whole training already planned out. And then I look at the calendar and say, wait a second. Their first race is the end of february or the beginning of march what the hell are they doing but apparently i mean today i saw it with

my own eyes this is this is an unstoppable trend and um yeah they're going crazy fast crazy fast there's no more i agree there's no more slowly getting into shape. It's straight away, it's intervals, it's intensity. Okay, fine. We have been taught differently that first you have to have a base before you start. That's changed and I can completely agree with that

and accept it. It works. But I think a few old-fashioned principles of having a solid foundation that you can build on progressively, that should still work. And training has changed, nutrition has changed,

equipment has changed. But it's all about getting in shape quickly and then i think it's going to be difficult for those guys to remain in a really good shape during a long period of time everybody this episode is brought to you by hello fresh with hello fresh you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients in its seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. We all love the holidays, but with how busy they are, I'm always looking for ways to stress less. HelloFresh helps me do that by making mealtime

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So HelloFresh.com slash free the move. Head there now to activate your 10 free meals i wouldn't pass this up that's a very good offer all right back to the show i i agree that the young like 16 17 year olds doing these big rides that just without the science feels a little i'm like i don't know about that that seems like a lot but especially when you're when you're a parent right and you just think about your own kids like i don't know how long they could continue to do that but as far as like being in shape i agree that i'm like but i kind of i'm just investigating my own thoughts like is that just us being brainwashed like oh you have to get out of shape in the off season you have to then slowly build into it why do we even think that we think that because we've been told that and like like tom danielson

had an interesting i think it was a tweet maybe during the tour he does he's like really fascinating tweet chains he gets on there and like fights with people like the blog boys that don't know that have never raced a bike and danielson's like fighting with them and they're saying that he doesn't know anything about bike racing. It's it's a, he's doing, he's doing the good work on there. I can't believe he does it, but he was saying like this idea that you would just get so out of shape and then have to build back into shape.

Maybe actually didn't serve GC contenders that well. And that perhaps the science suggests that you're in really good shape in the wintertime is good for you. I agree with that. I think that, that, you know, getting out of shape and then, But perhaps the science suggests that being in really good shape in the wintertime is good for you. I agree with that. I think that getting out of shape and then doing a race against the clock to get back into shape, that's history. That's done. You just can't do that anymore because back in the days when I was racing and even after, even in Lance and George's era,

there were races where you could basically race yourself in shape. You could go to races and take it as training. Those days are gone. It's just not possible anymore. You go to the Tour de l'Enander or whatever, Tour of Algarve in the beginning of the season. You show up there and say, oh, I'm going to just use this race to get into shape. No. You're going to get your ass kicked. And the second or the third day, you're going to

be crushed and you're going to abandon. That's done. But I'm more worried, Spencer, about the mental endurance of these guys. I think physically, a body can take a lot. It's been shown that

if as a young guy you have a certain training load and a training regime, it builds you and it sets the standard for a very long time. Physically, I think I would still think myself, which is also the advice I'm giving to my son to really

you know race on or train on feeling more than on data but you know they have to learn how to manage their feelings also on the bike how you feel not just focus on the data but mentally

that's where I see the problem. And we've seen it. We've seen it many times in the last few years that 19, 20-year-olds all of a sudden say, hey, you know what? This is not what I want. This is too much. I can't improve anymore.

So that's it. And I think it's going to be more and more, we're going to see more and more of those, uh, of those cases. Here's just an interesting, I was just noticing this the other day. So tour down under used to be just like pointless, right? It's like, there's no data you can grab from this race. That's helpful at all. Look at tour down under this last year, 2024, I guess this year it's weird because we're close to the 2025 tour down under this last year 2024 i guess this year it's weird because we're close to the 2025 tour down under you know who had a real good tour down under binyam girmai you know who had a really good tour binyam girmai you know who finished the year really strong binyam like

it actually is alive i actually met him today on the bike really probably probably flying probably looking in pretty good shape because he's got like yeah and that does i guess kind of it feels unsustainable to me but if you think about it aren't careers getting longer like winners of big races are actually getting older over the last few years and guys like didn't bernardino retire when he was like 31 years old or something 32 well yeah that's. That's true. That's true, actually. You know, if you look at it,

if you look at, for example, if you look at the Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indrae. They all retired in their early 30s. 32.

Yeah, I think Miguel was, Miguel was 32. Hinault was 32. And I think Merckx was 32, 33. So, yeah, you're right. So, I mean, you could also argue, Spencer, that these guys, especially Merckx and Hino, they raced a lot and always pulling, always attacking, always going for it 100%. So Miguel was more focused on the Tour. But yeah, you're right.

I've never thought about that. It's just a take I'm working on where I actually wonder if the modern training makes the racing less taxing on you. And therefore, you can almost extend your career versus like Tom Boonen. I mean, I don't know. This is just me projecting. It just felt like he got, and like Tom Boonen was doing extracurriculars that, you know, we don't need to get into here, but he was having a good time off the bike, but he would do stuff like, I remember one time I heard, he's like, yeah, you know, I rode the world

championships course two days before the race for six hours behind the moto at race pace. And you're like, is that a good idea? Like, it just seemed like it was like a lot of what he did was pretty hard on his body. And then he just looked blunted at the end of his career. And I kind of wonder with modern training of Boone and is just as strong, you know, at the last year of his career as he was in the middle like what we're seeing with garrett thomas i mean that guy's putting out power numbers he's never put out before and he's almost 40 years old it's very simple spencer they race a lot less right i mean they do 50 60 races 70 maximum uh so it's it's purely focused on specific training, which is nowadays,

before you basically could not simulate anything that was even close to a race. Nowadays, they can train so hard, so specific, focused on what they need, and they show up at a race and they're in top shape. That's even you know even 10 years ago that was really not not imaginable uh now they do all the time so it does work and do you want to talk about you met so you met biniyam today and then another big celebrity that you ran into well uh yeah play Pogacar yeah pretty pretty big pretty big name in the sport

they passed me they passed me I had the we do uniform on I mean I was going of course

for them I thought I was going for my standards I'm I was going pretty good but of course I'm 60

25 and so they passed me but yeah I was going pretty good, but of course, I'm 60, they're 25. And so they passed me. But today, I think he kind of knows what the WeDo uniform stands for because he waved. And I had a little conversation with Sivakov because he was kind enough to give bottles and uh and I know he follows me on Instagram so uh and my son actually talked to him um and so they they had they had recognized the we do uniform I don't think they recognized me

but the we do uniform is uh is you know people know what it is um so yeah i mean that was cool and then you know i i told my uh my son and his two friends that they had because i saw them stop for a coffee shop uh and i so i caught up with them and because they were waiting for me and i told them to turn around and they went uh they had they got that picture taken but pogacar was super super super friendly uh super accommodating the whole team actually uh the team directors gave uh they gave bottles to the get to the guys so they were i mean my son and his two friends they're over the moon so you know first day here we can go home mission accomplished they have this was the highlight of the four days we're going to be here. Pretty impressive from today's part, I would say. Yeah, very impressive.

He is, yeah. Yeah, super. He was just cruising, of course. But, you know, I think these guys, I mean, you know, he's training in the World Championships, kid. So, you know, he is recognized all the time. So he must be stopped everywhere they stop. They must come for pictures.

And he was, you know, my son said he was super, super friendly. And yeah, they were really impressed. So yeah, really good. Really nice. A lot of big champions would probably not be like that so yeah i was really impressed seeing that i mean on on the topic before i move on from this just i got you reminded me like you're you're worried that there's what what will you do when you turn pro i actually just think about like juana uso and maybe he will get better or even like utah brooks

where their best years i was just looking through their results you could argue their best years were the first year they were pro and then like you know Aiso what he gets third at the Vuelta as a 19 year old and then he's not better that result so it's not

you kind of look at these guys that are 19-20 and you project improvement but you don't really know because their training is already so dialed in. Yeah, but I think Ayuso is a special case. I think he will maintain his – I mean, he will improve still. I think he will get there ultimately. Because you can see the guys – I mean, you can see the ped I mean you can see the

pedigree of a guy like that you know I don't know he was super super strong in the 123 I mean the way he won the Tour de l'Avenir with that kind of dominance was impressive then

he got top 10 in the Vuelta right I guess top 10 in the Vuelta yeah it's 8th in the Vuelta, right? I guess top 10 in the Vuelta. Yeah, it's eighth in the Vuelta in 2023. Yeah. And so, you know, he had a few good results, but it's not the same progression as Ayuso, which, you know, everybody's different. But there's many, many, many guys.

I mean, but it's not But this is not new, Spencer. Another little story. For example, tomorrow I'm meeting up with a guy, ex-teammate of mine from the Lotto days. I think he's two years younger than me. But he was super, super, super good in the youth categories, like in the cadets and the juniors. He was winning races, like 40, 50 races per year in Belgium.

You know, he turned pro. I think he was four years pro. I don't know if he won races. I'll ask him tomorrow. But, you know, he never made it in the pros, you know. So it's not new. It's always been like this, you know. Like, it's not necessarily the guys who win and are dominating in the in the youth categories that uh

uh that make it to the pros uh or if they make it it's not it's not a guarantee that you're gonna be gonna be super good how many people how many writers we've seen who were world champion junior and world champion 123 that they didn't even make it to the pros, right? So it's not new. It's not new. In fact, it actually probably used to happen more than it does now. Like you go back 20 years ago, you look at a lot of these U23 races, and you actually really can't pull a lot from it.

You'll see like the top six places maybe didn't even have a significant pro career it almost feels like it's getting more clear um i don't know i need to look into that more like why exactly that is before we i'm just going to mix a question here someone asking what happened to gerona spain as a popular training location for world tour teams i would assume that people live in gerona but training camps are at the Costa Blanca for weather reasons. Yeah, I think Israel Premier Tech is in Girona right now. They also have their service course there, by the way. But it's the climate.

At this point in the year, especially December and January, Girona is more up north. So it's four or five degrees difference. Yeah. It's as simple as that. And also here, you know, the hotel accommodation. I was speaking to Patrick Lefebvre yesterday on the way here. I gave him a call because I knew that his team was here. But anyway, they were leaving today, so we couldn't see each other but he told me that

so they were here with the pro team the their development team the women's team and uh they have a junior team now 150 people all together are here at training camp under his organization so you need the hotel infrastructure also to to to be able to uh to organize a training camp uh gerona doesn't have that yeah yeah i mean it's also helps it's just like a tourist destination mainly for the summer so it was all these hotels they're not full um it's the perfect the perfect setup for pro teams in the winter time i mean also these places they're not full um it's the perfect the perfect setup for pro teams in the wintertime i mean also these places they just kind of wax and wane for it's you get to a critical max mass there's so many people there that it's easier for more people to go because the infrastructure

is there like i think like san diego used to be a popular like triathlon training destination and now for whatever reason it's not popular and the triathletes go somewhere else like you just see these things it's like a sandbar they shift over time yeah yeah and also you know it's it's it's so common just a little example so this morning you know we put the bikes together because we had to disassemble them to put them in the car yesterday and i had a little issue with the wheel of my son right the the cassette just came off for some reason and i'm in a place here uh i'm not in calpe i'm a bit outside in a little town called benissa and uh so it's not it's not at the coast it's about 10 kilometers away from the coast it's a little village literally 500 meters away from here i just went to a bike shop super nice bike shop they just you know they they're they're ready

they uh they have mechanics there they fixed what i needed to do in five minutes afterwards i was back and ready to go um so everything's really really comfortable here yeah yeah that's a huge it's a huge advantage i can't and when you're in a hotel that's just bike friendly that's this podcast is not sponsored by the costa blanca we promise but um yeah when you're in a hotel that's just bike friendly, that's this podcast is not sponsored by the Costa Blanca. We promise. Yeah. When you're in a hotel that just has equipment and storage for bikes, it's really nice. One more topic before we go into questions.

The Vuelta España route was just released like minutes ago. Yes. You had a few stats on it. It starts in Torino, which is in Italy, which is a little strange because the zero last year started in Torino, the tour stage three finished in Torino. And then they've stage four, they left from the outskirts and went over, um, the Galibier, I believe back into France. Yeah. And then, so this is basically the third time in a year

that torino will be play a major part in a grand tour um why why exactly is that it's just piedmont the region they're trying to put themselves on the map for cycling obviously if you see something like this spencer if a grand tour starts in another country it's money so you know the the region of uh what is it is it piemonte that region of italy yeah yeah they must be they must have some special budget you know designated to you know having the three ground tours and uh it's the money that's that's the first thing because it's it's it is not comfortable for the riders and especially for the staff to start a Grand Tour in a different country, which is not next to the actual country.

You can say, okay, Tour de France. You can start in Italy. You don't have to. You're straight away. The riders have to fly, and the staff needs to drive. And if you start a Grand Tour with three days, here it's going to be four stages outside of Spain. Man, you pay the price for that as a staff member because it's hard logistically. And now the teams, okay, they're organized.

They have so many people available, so many vehicles. For sure, they're going to have special vehicles, vehicles that will only do the Italian four days. And at the same time, they're going to have another set of vehicles, bus, truck, cars ready, just to be ready already. But you need a lot of people and a lot of vehicles bus truck cars ready went to just to be ready already to but you know you need a lot of people and a lot of vehicles um so it's it's hard it's hard uh on the staff and on the teams um but then if you look at the map spencer i just saw i just watched looked at the map here uh the Vuelta a España 2025 does not go below more south than Madrid.

Madrid is in the center of Spain. So nothing in the south, which is, for the riders, I think, at that time of the year, that's not bad because southern Spain, we all know what it was this year in the tour

of spain when starting in portugal then being in andalusia with 40 degrees um so really uh north it's all north it's you know it also it also means that it's very hard. Because the north is very, very steep mountains. And I don't have the detail yet about all the stages, but the stat I have here, which is really funny actually,

is flat stages. This is an official stat from La Vuelta so from their webpage flat stages one one state that the

two states qualify as flat there's five rolling stages like up and down and two of them who have a mount of finish two individual time trials and 13 medium or high mountain stages oh my god you should you should ask today today is he going to the yeah i think he might be going to this vuelta this is i think i i think he'll go if he feels okay after the Tour.

But it's not a priority. He'll focus on trying to win Milan-San Remo, and then Liège and Flanders. Then, of course, full gas for the Tour. And then he'll see. Of course, he will want to go at some point to the Vuelta to try and win it, to basically have that check

of the three Grand Tours. But I think usually, if you don't make the Vuelta a main goal, usually teams and riders tend to wait to see how things go. A lot of things can happen. You can get sick, you can get injured. So, I mean, he'll probably go to the Vuelta.

Well, even these, I mean, any of this news, we probably should have talked about it. Primoz Roglic announced that he's targeting the Giro d'Italia. Yeah. And it kind of sounds like news but every year like if you just kept track of all these announcements and overlaid it with the races people actually do there's actually not a great correlation because you just you never know what's going to happen like you could get hurt remember walt van art was supposed to do the zero yeah and just in the wealth is the ultimate example of that like whoever you we don't

know who's going to be contending it's like there's so many variables between now and then it is interesting to me it's all in the north like it's actually shocking look at this map the weather will be mild the terrain will be difficult i don't i don't why are they staying away from the south like there was a lot of complaints from riders, staff, even people watching that they were worried about the riders. It was so hot. You kind of wonder, worry in a warming world, is it viable to race in the South of Spain in August? It's something I think about a lot.

40 degrees is not recommendable. It's not 40 degrees. The good news also, although I would have to look into detail, is not is not recommendable you know it's not it's 40 degrees it's you know I mean the good news also although you know

I would have to look into detail there's not many stages that are attached to each other

start and finish but of course if you have the whole Tour of Spain in the

northern part of Spain that means less transfers or less long transfers so that's good

that's good yeah I'm sure what is it una public is that the company that it's like a subsidiary of aso that runs the company but it's owned by aso but it's unique yeah yeah and i'm sure they'll find a way to get back to the south when uh when when those start fees when they when they exhaust the north of the country for start and finish fees they'll look abroad for that they'll look south i mean that is why they're going i kind of wonder like i would love to get rs rcs's take on this they can't be happy about their two rival grand tours starting races in italy because every dime that they pay every euro they like these towns pay to the vuelta and the tour it's a euro they're not paying to rcs to have zero

stages there yeah well i mean rcs still hasn't announced the the route for 2025 because there they were they were they were planning and i don't know if it's still the case they were planning to start in Albania. Go figure. Yeah, and then it maybe isn't happening now. Well, yeah. They're going to get paid a lot of money for that. It was a lot of money, and then something happened. I don't know what happened,

but they've postponed the announcement until mid-January, I think. And we still don't know. Somebody said, yeah, Albania is still on, and. Somebody said, yeah, you know, Albania's still on. And then others say, no, there's a plan B. We'll have to wait and see what happens. There's a really controversial, we definitely shouldn't get into it here, but there's a controversial relationship

that Albania and Italy were trying to foster that got struck down by an EU court. And then the theory is that that's why that fell apart i don't know if that's true um you know who knows you know who knows the jira route for sure who primo primo definitely knows it yeah that's a good point like the teams must know i actually i was i was sitting down planning our season out, Johan, for the podcast, and I couldn't figure... They don't have the dates

for the Giro. They have a rest day penciled in before the final weekend, but that can't be true. It's actually kind of wild how it's a bit of shambolic, the organization of this race that is the first Grand Tour of the year, yet it's the last the first grand tour of the year yet it's the

last to get its root out yeah that's yeah so yeah we'll go into one question for this week because you have to go it's it's kind of a it's one it's a more controversial question than we'd normally read but info at we do that team i don't. Have you been keeping up on this carbon monoxide rebreathing scandal? Not scandal. I've just seen some titles. I don't know the details about how it works or why they do it. I've seen that some teams have been saying that they've used it to test the effect of their altitude caps. That was the official explanation of some teams

now you know yeah you go ahead with the question i'll see if i can i have the answer i'll preface this i've actually done actual journalism work on this for once so i talked to teams writers they do it to you can it's the only way to test, I guess that's your like hemoglobin mass. So you can test or your altitude camps working or not. Um, it sounds bad because you're inhaling carbon monoxide in large quantities. This would kill you. So it is dangerous, but here's the thing that like none of these things mentioned the, the companies that make these machines can monitor their use. So you can't use these machines without the company's knowledge. So it'd be very hard to abuse it. But the worry is people would use it to basically

starve their body of oxygen. Like your body thinks it's dying and it produces more red blood cells. It's kind of like a legal doping loophole in theory. We don't know if that's actually happening though. But this person asked, have you seen this? And it's a link to this. This practice sounds plausible for increased athletic performance, but also dangerous for the athletes.

How can the UCI and WADA strike the right balance that promotes innovation and use of the best available science, but also preserves rider safety? If one team uses it, they'll all eventually use it. This could be a dangerous race to the bottom that we would want to avoid appreciate your thoughts thanks tristan like do you think the uci i mean probably they should come in and ban this like well the benefits don't sound they have asked wada they have asked wada to ban it. It's not banned right now.

And I think La Partienne went on record saying that he has asked WADA to ban the use. I don't know how they can do it. But if there's a way and if there's enough requests, WADA will try to ban it. And then I guess it will go through a phase that I don't know. I don't have enough information, Spencer. What I do know is that it's stuck with everything. You know, as long as it's not banned, people are going to use it. Whether it's for measuring the effects of the altitude or if it's to enhance their performance and simulate altitude training.

But I didn't know the information that the manufacturers can monitor the use of these machines. So that's a good thing. That's a good thing. It sounds... I mean, it sounds dangerous. I mean, you know. It doesn't sound like something I would totally want to do.

It's probably, though, I would bet that they would say, like, living in Madrid gives you actually more carbon monoxide exposure than this practice would and is more dangerous to your health. I mean, there's a difference, Spencer, like living in an and or putting it putting it on your mouth that's a different thing uh it is it it kind of you can see why they're using i mean maybe i'm an idiot for listening to the teams taking their word for it but because you know think about it you spend all this money going to these outstreet camps and like, well, I hope they work. Like, that's essentially what is happening currently. We're like... That's... Listen, we all know altitude camps work.

We all know it. You know, to measure the effect of the altitude camp, I don't think... I mean, I think it's been used and now some teams have gone on record. UAE has actually officially stated that they will stop using the method to control the effects of the altitude camp. But then again, as long as it's not banned, it's not manageable.

So they'll have to ban it and find a way to test for it, I guess. The thing that stuck out to me the most, hasn't the UCI banned Tramadol, but WADA has not banned it? So isn't there a precedent of the UCI banning things? I think it's banned Tramadol now in competition. Okay. But actually, you know what?

Let me think properly because I think actually cycling went on a higher level. And I think it makes sense also why cycling would be a lot more interested in banning Tramadol before it's officially banned by WADA because it's not the same riding a bike than running or swimming when you're numb and don't have the reflexes.

If you're cycling in a bunch of 200 guys and you're taking a heavy painkiller, you're taking a pain killer, a heavy pain killer that's not a good thing so I can see why they should probably ban it

in Formula 1 too but yeah, cycling has been on the forefront of banning tramadol before any other sport i think yeah yeah i did i get i get like so upset when people are like hey in soccer they can use tram at all and but not in cycling it's like yeah they're going 100 kilometers an hour with 200 people right next to them like you probably shouldn't be on an opioid while you're operating

a machine that goes as fast as a car. In some cases, maybe even faster. But Johan, that is it for this week. We will not be back before Christmas. So Merry Christmas to everyone that celebrates. But we will have a show out probably early, early in 2025. Okay. All right. And wait, do you have any cyclocross plans

that you want to share? I'm going to Belgium for the Christmas days and as usual for the third year now I'm going to go on the 26th on Boxing Day to watch the World Cup race in Cabra. It's a classic

very hard race. Only Mathieu Van Der vanderpool i mean only of the three the big three i mean pitcock has announced already no cyclocross at all walt van aert is not participating in that one so uh it's gonna be from the pool against the real cyclocross specialist so uh but anyway i just want to go because it's a great atmosphere. It's a tradition and it's nice. It's super nice. So I'll send you some pictures.

Yeah, can't wait to hear about it. And we'll talk about that on our next episode. Thank you so much, Johan. And we'll talk to you soon. Okay, thanks. Bye. Bye.