THEMOVE - Injured in the spring, fresh at the Tour | Tour De France 2024 Stage 12 | JB2

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Johan makes an interesting observation about how many riders with serious injuries in March and April seem to be the freshest riders in the Tour. We also take another look at the rich history of riding in Eritrea and Biniam Girmay's career.

is the the heat um 36 degrees uh that's like almost 100 degrees knowing yeah and for 90s 96. lots of people coming and going to the cars for ice and they're really suffering and we have this this picture here that we found on the social media page of tadej bogacar of him sitting in an ice bath straight after the finish inside the van of his team. So usually what happens is Pogacar has to go to the podium to do all the protocol. The team bus leaves with all the riders and there's a van that stays behind for Pogacar. So in that van, they've installed an ice bath. And here he is in that ice bath after the finish.

Hello and welcome back to JB Squared. And here he is in the ice pack, moving down after the finish. Hello, and welcome back to JB Squared. My gosh, it's starting to fly by now. Stage 12. When you get over halfway from the Tour de France, it just starts to go really fast. And I think that's going to really kick in. I'm JB Hager, joined by Johan Brunel.

This is JB Squared, your additional show to the move where Johan can go much, much, much deeper, especially on tactics. Before we get into today's another historic stage, how many times have we said that already? I first want to thank our title sponsor for JB squared this year, this year, ketone IQ. We've been working with them for some time, but we're happy to have them on JB squared. So we need to get our little, our ketones on Johan. I'll do the same JB. This is the first of three podcasts for me. So I need to go long until I'm finishing around 12 o'clock. So this helps a lot with mental clarity. And when he says, yeah, he's talking about midnight the man works

non-stop there we go uh hey give ketone iq a try you know not only for the physical benefits the mental clarity uh appetite suppression and you have even uncovered some research that helps with sleep uh 30 off your first subscription order and a free six pack. When you use this link ketone.com slash the move. All right. Before we get into the historic part of today's sprint stage you on, cause we'll, well, I want to spend some time on it closer to the end and show a clip that you sent

me that I think everyone will really get a kick out of. Let's kind of start with more of, you know, as the day started, there's some abandons, there's COVID going around, there's other thing going on, some key people losing teammates. So let's dig into some of that first and talk about who that affects the most obviously they're they're either they're sprinters or gc guys yeah well i mean uh you know it was a sprint stage um i think it's the last stage of the tour that is was above 200 kilometers uh from now on it's all sub 200 kilometers um but anyways you know it was a super super fast start we saw straight away we saw some abandons uh peyo bilbao abandoned uh morkov didn't start both of them reportedly due

to covet um apparently there's covet going around in the tour de france um fabio jacobson abandoned Fabio Jakobsen abandoned because he was completely empty. So obviously, you know, those guys, I mean, Peo Bilbao, for example, I mean, you could see that he was not on his usual level. We haven't seen him yet in this Tour de France. And normally, you know, he was, I mean, he was top 10 last year and he won a stage and he was not his usual self. From what I hear within Bahrain uh they have a problem with with the virus um but they're not the only ones so I think it reportedly there are some riders actually raising the Tour de France with covet um how things have changed you know and I know

we were talking about it earlier this morning I think off the air but it it's like you could have covet i i've had covet where it didn't feel like anything and so even if you have it and it doesn't feel like much what if you pass it to a teammate you're you're in the bus and they have horrible symptoms yeah so it's a tricky thing so you know maybe it's on the safe side you send them home yeah i mean it's it's it's not easy it's not easy um you know obviously three years ago covid was was completely different i think by now almost everybody in the tour de france had has had covid for sure everybody's vaccinated so i think the symptoms are a lot different right now but anyways it is it is still there and it's just just, I mean, I think it's the, the proof is JB that, you know, it's a virus like any other virus,

but if your immune system is down, if you're so empty, I mean, these guys are now very vulnerable, anything that flies around, they catch it. Their body's not resistant to it because they are completely depleted, you know? Well, that's one of the reasons why they catch it um we saw three other riders uh having to hope to go home um jonas ricard and sir greg anderson from alpecin and uh federov from astana they didn't make the time limit only 28 minutes today was the time limit because it was a flat stage ricard i think was involved in a crash.

Federoff, I don't know. And Clark Anderson got dropped like mid-stage. But I mean, 28 minutes, that's nothing compared to a peloton that's really going full gas. I think the average speed was like 47 kilometers per hour or something on what's in theory an easy stage. So, yeah. something on what's in theory an easy stage um so yeah yeah i heard pagachar talking about how he liked that it was a faster pace 47.5 as opposed to the sprint stage a couple days ago where they cruised really slow he said i didn't like that and i think it's just amazing how they like to

keep that intensity up it's just like you talk about on the rest days. It's also because it's boring. You know, I mean, if you, if you have a 200 kilometer stage and the pace is really, really slow, it's super boring and you know, whatever. I mean, if it's a relatively easy, uh, parkour, then normally like 43, 44 kilometers, that's cruising in the Peloton. Yeah. The worst 100-mile ride I've ever done in my life was helping a friend do their first 100 miles.

It was like seven hours. It was the worst day of my life. Yeah. They do one of those every day at the tour. Anyway. Yeah. Also, before we start to talk about the stage uh we also woke up to the news that the team uh total energies uh woke up and surprisingly had they had been broken in in

their truck uh 11 bikes were stolen about 160 000 euros of value so imagine how they started today i mean i heard that some riders were on their third bike like the the the the second spare bike uh usually you know they have the race bike they have a spare bike and then there's another bike uh in case something happens right so um that that's a bummer it's you know it's it sounds like this happens often. Lance and George seems to, Oh yeah, it happens quite often. It,

I would have a mechanic sleeping with the bikes. Well, normally, you know, I don't know. I don't know what they did, but normally I remember, uh,

you know, because the trucks, you know, they open in the back. Right. Uh, and so usually you put the truck, you park the truck very close,

even very close to a wall that nobody, or you put the bus and the truck together, right? And you almost park them so nobody can open the doors. Yeah. Anyways, I don't know if that happened or not, but I mean, obviously if that happens in the middle of the tour, that's a huge, huge, huge disturbance.

Yeah. There's we've talked about it. There's enough stress as it is for mechanics. And then you have to deal with this. Yeah. I mean, but they're for the most part, they're, they're racing on a bike you could buy off the shelf. Do they try to rush additional bikes to them?

Um, I mean, they're going to get, they're going to get extra bikes. They're going to rush additional bikes to them um i mean they're gonna get they're gonna get extra bikes they're gonna need extra bikes right uh the thing is that normally if that happens i mean 11 bikes most likely it you know if i you know if you can imagine a little bit what the setup is within inside the truck inside the the equipment truck um the bikes that they race on are the ones that are first because that's the ones that have been worked on and and you know they're there and that's the ones the first ones that they can they take out so most likely those 11 bikes i mean 11 eight of those were the the race bikes which is which is you is, you know, I mean, then for sure, everybody's on their spare bike and, uh, that's, that's absolutely not fun to start the day like that, but they got through. Yeah. I'll mention something only because it was out in the public, but,

you know, Lance had some bikes stolen from storage not long ago. And, and, you know, three, I think it was five bikes. Three of them are, are like undeniably Lance's bikes. Like there's no, there's no hiding it. They're just so distinct. And so what are these criminals trying to, or do they just part it out? And I don't know what.

Most of the time, they don't know what they're taking. I mean, it's just, you know, it's a gang and they just go for. They just see a big truck, they break in that it's just you know it's probably a gang and they they just go for they just see a big truck they break in let's just take whatever it is if it would if it would have been stereos they would have stolen stereos yeah i mean these bikes they're not going to be easy to sell you know because then it's a it's a specific brand uh normally they have team colors um if you know, already, if you want to sell a bike like this for a decent price,

it needs to be somebody who understands because otherwise they're going to sell them for 500 euros. Yeah. If you want to sell it for a decent price, it's going to be somebody who understands and he will most likely have heard about the news. Yeah. It's probably just someone trying to dump them.

Like you're saying, just quick cash. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably just someone trying to dump them, like you're saying, just quick cash. Yeah. What a shame. And a pain in the, just a pain to deal with. Like I said, there's so much stress already and so many things that have to be perfect. And then you have to deal with that. Okay. So let's talk about a little bit early in the sprint the breakaway some riders we see guillermet and and

phillipson going at it in an intermediate sprint which they were they were going hard yeah uh so there were four four riders in the break um from what i've heard i mean i didn't see the start of the stage but it was super super fast then there was a crash uh quite a few riders involved even pogachar was involved needed a new bike and that's when the four riders went away um from that moment on four riders you already know okay this is this is going to be the typical stage four riders in the break two or three teams controlling and a bunch print from that from that for the moment there were four riders that's it that's what a team who wants to have a bunch print once right and that's what happened there were four riders, that's it. That's what a team who wants to have a bunch sprint wants, right? And that's what happened.

So these four riders stayed away. We saw a sprint, an intermediate sprint for the points between Girmay and Philipson. Girmay beat Philipson today, which is usually an indication of what's going to come later. So obviously, you know, Girmay is, you can see he's in great shape. He showed it already there. I mean, and then we saw that Alpecin and Movistar started to set the pace in the peloton. Movistar lost their possibilities for the good GC. Enric Mas is far behind. I think he lost 10

minutes the other day. So now they need to try to do something. And Gaviria has been up there a few times in the sprint. So they gave him all the support, which was nice to see. But of course, two teams, the breakaway has no chance.

And so they basically caught them whenever they wanted. Again, I want to mention once again, Jonas Abrahamsson. What a guy. What a guy. I mean, this guy is in all the breakaways. He's still wearing the polka dot jersey, you know, on behalf of Pogacar. But I think today with this breakaway and the few points he scored,

they're again on equal points for the polka dot jersey um this guy oh he he picked up more polka dot points today yes yes okay so so he's tied with pagachar on that does it and then does it defers to the leader i mean i don't know i mean i don't know who who has it now uh specifically i know that they're tied on points let me quickly check well i mean it's it's going to end up on yeah so yeah and abrahamson have 36 points each but pogacar is in first i guess because he scored on higher category clients then gotcha yeah um but anyway it doesn't matter he's an exciting writer like i mean yeah the guy's impressive. I mean, really impressive. And if you see today, he was all day out there, all day, and already several days.

But yet in the final, deep in the final, in the last two kilometers, he was still up there trying to keep Christoph, his teammate Alexander Christoph in the front. I mean, to be able to do that after such a long breakaway, that's incredible. The guy is in incredible shape. It's always cool in the tour when you can have a rider who can pursue personal ambitions and still work when they need to.

We've seen that likely with Wout van Aert in the past. He can accomplish personal goals and work his ass off for whoever needs it another another uh thing to to mention uh today is the the heat um 36 degrees uh that's like almost 100 degrees no and for 90 96 yeah uh yeah that's You can see lots of people coming and going to the cars for ice and they're really suffering. And we have this picture here that we found on the social media page of Tadej Pogacar, of him sitting in an ice bath straight after the finish inside the van of his team. So usually what happens is Pogacar has to go to the podium for to do all the protocol the team bus leaves with all the riders and there's a van that stays behind

for pogachar so in that van they've installed an ice bath and here he is in that ice pack after the after the finish wow yeah that's that's it's just like jammed in there and into the van it's like could they do a stand-up cryo machine in the bus have you seen those they don't take up much space but maybe maybe the water is more effective i don't know i don't know i don't know but uh but obviously if you can do it straight after the finish and if you can do it on your way to the hotel that's a huge advantage because it's all about accelerating your recovery. If your body has to cool down normally, it takes a while. You're sweating.

After the stage, you're still super hot, super uncomfortable. So if you can get straight into the ice bath on your way to the hotel, that's an advantage in my opinion. And believe me, stick with us because we are going to get to... We normally start out with the biggest story of the day. We're holding on to it a little bit today. So stick with us. Because as we saw them have the run-in, we saw another crash, road furniture. Roglic is hurt. We don't know how much as as of starting this show 15 minutes ago we were doing our trying to find out and get an injury report

um and but a significant time loss you know he i think he's you know he's fallen back far enough that well one we we don't know if he's going to be able to to start tomorrow yeah we'll get that report but it's it was a big time deficit he took on two and a half minutes two and a half minutes uh you could see uh i mean first of all if you look at the images of the crash the the astana rider goes down you know clips his wheel with the with a little little traffic separator. Not much he could do about it. And Roglic just runs straight into him. There was nowhere to go.

I mean, you have to start thinking, you know, what has this guy done to be on the floor so many times, right? I mean, it's like yesterday he goes down. Today, I mean, he must be hurt because he could hardly keep up with the pace of his teammates and the whole team waited for him and you could see he was struggling you know so um obviously that's a huge huge bummer because he was in pretty good shape you know yesterday he was up there with remco and with jonas at some point um he obviously got a morale boost out of that.

And then today he goes down. That's, you know, the time loss, first of all, that's, he loses every chance for the podium. But I fear, I fear that there's more going on than just the time loss. Because today he was really hurt. And the guy can suffer. We've seen already in the past.

He's tough. He goes down and he's hurt and he keeps going. But, uh, the fact that he was, uh, struggling on the flat and having trouble keeping up with his team, I fear that there's something going on that that's not good. That's not good news. Not good. Yeah. I asked the guys this, this morning on the move, and I didn't get a very clear answer. What I was fishing for was, you know, I, historically I thought Roglic just has bad luck in the tour. At a certain point you start to go, how much is luck and how much is skill? Because some riders, I mean, most riders don't crash. They're not on the deck as much as he is.

You watch riders much more closely than anyone I know. Like, what do you think? How much of this is bad luck and how much of it is lack of skill? He did come to the bike late. Maybe bike handling skills are more instinctive if you started at age 10. You know, I don't know. I mean, listen, he's not bad on the bike, you know, he does crash a lot. That's, that's for sure. I don't know. I mean, listen, it's not, it's not all coincidence. There's something there,

something there that, I mean, it's too many times, it's too much, you know what I mean? Because he does, he does have a team around him. He does have a team that keeps him safe as far as that's possible within a bunch of the Tour de France. But it's been a lot of times. Today, again, if you look at the images, JB, there was nothing he could do. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong moment. But usually the guys, I mean, look, the other day, Pogacar,

we all remember this you know the near miss he had with more or less the same kind of traffic uh like road furniture he could have he could have gone down he didn't um so i mean i feel for for primos it's uh it's really it's so so so so uh i mean it's heartbreaking actually to see that he he constantly has to come back from from crashes and uh I mean what a writer what a writer um I don't know maybe uh it's because it's maybe because it it doesn't it's not meant to be it's not meant to be and maybe this is an indication that he's you know i don't know if he's gonna keep going or not but if he if he has to abandon then maybe he will have to prepare for his fourth welter win which is which is still i know you i know by the way yeah

he's won the vuelta many many times and it's been because of this situation right he needs to go home and then resets his goals so maybe that will happen okay now after the crash van der Poel got caught behind that so Philipson lost that did Philipson get caught behind it too no so you lost that combo and then then go into the sprints. Philipson already had lost Ricard in the first crash, which is normally the third guy. It's normally Ricard, then it's Robert Geis, and then Mathieu van der Poel, and then Philipson.

So he lost two of those. So obviously, we didn't see a lead out from Alpecin. They had no guys left. And it was a bit chaos, you know, there was not really one team that could take control.

So a really good lead out from Arkea, actually. That was the team who basically had the last lead out guy and then launching the mar and the mar is has not been anywhere in this tour i think his his highest placing was seventh until

now and you know we we all know the mar from the past and he won several stages in the giro won the points jersey in the giro uh won bilan san remo one year um it's been a while. It's been a while. And so it looked like he was on the way to, to, to win. But there comes Bini, there comes Bini Amgirmay. And man, three stage wins for this guy.

It's incredible. You know what I mean? It's, it's one of those examples that for him and for his team, you know, and you can clearly see if you're in that kind of energy that everything seems to work whatever you do it seems to work you know you win once and then everything seems to be in a snowball effect and and everything seems to work out fine

and and binyam and and intermarche are in this situation right now well you know anytime every time it seems to work, the morale is great. You know, he clearly said also, you know, I lost my guys. But all of a sudden, you know, with 400 meters to go, I found the wheel of Mike Tunderson and he brought me to the front. And I mean, those are little things that we don't see. But I mean, of course, they know exactly what happens, which wheel they follow. And, you know, once he came out, it was again, you know,

well, Van Aert came close, but not close enough to threaten William Guilmae for his third stage win. And so that in itself, I mean, winning three stages for him is unique and now super, super solid in green, more than 100 points advantage on Jasper Philipsen. So that battle is over. Because Guilherme wins the green jersey if he makes it to Nice. You know what else is so amazing about him winning the sprint and all these sprints is when I'm looking at the, the stage results.

I mean, look at who he's racing against that were in the top, that were in the top nine, then art Ackerman Phillips and Dali, Christoph Bauhaus, co-car grown a vacant, like he's racing against the fastest man in the world and proving that he is equally good and then then and then you normally damar and and cavendish were in there also damar got third and cavendish got fifth they got disqualified both of them um i mean i've i've watched the images uh it's debatable you know um i think cavendish definitely changes his trajectory very very obviously um i think there was a reason for that because you know he was he was there and then the lead out guy of uh of the mar

i think this british guy i don't remember his name now um i forgot the name um mcclay mcclay uh you know he did the lead out great lead. And then basically he pulled off and he stopped pedaling. You know, if you go with 65, 70 kilometers per hour and you stop pedaling, the speed you lose is, is incredible. And so that was like, it's like a rock that comes down in the Peloton and Cavendish had to go around him. That's why he had to change his trajectory. Um, you know, it was definitely not willingly, uh, but he did change, he did change his trajectory. You know, it was definitely not willingly, but he did change, he did change his trajectory. So. And it didn't seem to affect the race.

You know, it's not like he, it's not like he jumped left and blocked out someone from who's coming fast. I personally think JB, I mean, you know, I mean, and, and, and that's, that's what's so difficult to understand because there's, and we've said it many times. There's no consistency in the way they apply the rules. I think, first of all, because most of the commissaires don't even understand the rules themselves. They don't know how to interpret the situation, what's right, what's wrong.

And if you really bother somebody, if you really hinder somebody or not. Uh, I think that they did it now because, you know, in theory, they should have done it the day he won because there he clearly changed his trajectory. Although, you know, he didn't really, uh, bother anybody, but, but still it was a clear change of trajectory. They let it go. They gave him a warning the day after. And now they said, okay, now we need to disqualify you. Then also, if you look at the sprint and you see that Damaris is disqualified, it's also debatable.

He did change his trajectory a little bit, but he was in front. Van Aert was never next to him. And he kind of changed a little bit to the right. Yes, he did change his line. But again, you know, these things happen in sprints. You cannot expect that a sprinter will sprint straight. That's just, you know, so. It's all about weaving through traffic,

which is amazing to watch. Yeah, yeah. So I think both disqualifications are debatable, you know, really debatable. But they seem to have taken a very strict line now and that, you know, you can't do anything, but if you're a sprinter and you're in there, you do what you have to do to make it the shortest way to the line. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're wired differently and they're going to do whatever it takes to win.

That's for sure. Do you think we'll see improvements with this exact, this kind of scenario when, when they, they can do warnings like we talked about a yellow card type, you know? I think it's going to change, you know, I mean, I think that there's a yellow card first and then the second time you get you get disqualified um it's gonna change the behavior of the sprinters you know it's something that they will need to get used to uh but again you

know i i think that that's the the the yellow cards and the red cards that's not the issue for me i think it's how they apply it and for which reason, and that it needs to be consistent. Like yesterday, I saw a stage completely irrelevant. You know, there was, there's, there's a stage race somewhere.

And I think it's in Romania. There's a stage race there. There's also some good teams there. And a Belgian guy from Lotto won the stage and he got disqualified. But if you look, if you look at the finish, the way the finish is, it it's it's a it's a turn it's like this you know so the finish is like this so once this guy i mean this guy was in

the lead the guy obviously when he sees the line he wants to go straight to the line he's not going to go like this right yeah so so you're going to cut the corner yes he he got disqualified and i think it was completely completely unjustified but he got disqualified so um it is what it is so uh anyways it doesn't take away anything uh binyam girimai wins for the third time great uh result from walt von art i think you know i think after his crash yesterday the fact that he he's up there he's in the mix and trying to sprint shows that he is on the up i think that he's coming um and so that's great to see for him i think it's it's also great for for visma and for jonas uh and especially for you know for belgium also for the o the Olympic Games because you know he's the leader before the the Olympic road race so good to see him back up there and you have it this is basically just a reminder because you

know so much of the peloton has dealt with injuries in the past year and you have an image here where to remind us, you know, Wout van Aert is also coming back from injury and how this can sometimes work in your favor to get these riders to back off a little bit from the intensity. I don't think it's any, it's never a benefit, but it's not necessarily, it's not necessarily a catastrophe. So if you look at the picture here, I found this picture. And this is the crash of the Classic in March.

It's a race called Duarsdorf-Landren, the race that Matteo Jorgensen won. We all remember this horror crash. If you look, the guy on the bottom, the circle on the bottom, that's Walt van Aert. He was really, really badly injured. Super. I mean, he was, he broke ribs and he was super, super, super bad. He took the longest to come back, but he's here and he's on the up. Now, the interesting thing I saw is that if you look at these other three guys, so the in the middle that's the osprey steuven really injured he broke his collarbone he's in the tour and he almost won a stage

the guy on top the guy in white that's anthony turgy he was in the crash injured he won a stage the guy in the fluo yellow that's pinam girma he was severely injured in that crash in march look in the shape he is now yeah it's not necessarily i mean obviously they have to come back from it but it's also they come fresh yeah you know if if once they recover from the injuries and they start the tour with full of resources, they're fresh, they've done the training and they are still in the upward curve of their condition. They've been building and they're still going upwards

rather than somebody who's preparing with, you know, a lot of training, a lot of racing. You get to a point where you're at your best and then you need to be able to maintain that form sometimes certain people get it wrong they're too early in good shape for example guys that are typically that are flying in the dauphiné are usually going a little bit less in the tour. These guys are in great shape. Turgi, Binyam Girmay, Jasper Stuyven, and even Wout van Aert.

So what I want to say with that is also, and I don't want to make a comparison, but the huge crash, and it was already, this was in March, so the crash in the Basque country was in april so it's a bit later we had the three main guys which were jonas and remco and and primos i mean the the the the guy who was most affected was another guy so a guy called steph cross belgian guy i mean the guy was super, super, super severely injured. He's at the Tour. He's racing. I think he's top 20 right now, if I'm not mistaken.

He's 17th in GC. He was very, very bad, in very bad shape. But it's not necessarily a catastrophe. In the case of Jonas, of course, it's completely different because the injuries were very severe. You know, broken ribs, collapsed lung. But Remco was also injured. He broke his collarbone and his shoulder blades.

And Primoz was also beat up. These three guys are in good shape. They're all there. So what I want to say is that, okay, you know, injuries in the spring, sometimes translate into full of reserve, fresh at the tour and, and, and good results. You know, that kind of makes me think it was obviously a benefit back when you were director and lance would focus on

the tour and come in fresh it was also a criticism too wasn't it he always not doing all these other races like all the other guys are but it works coming in completely fresh with the sole focus and we see less and less and less of that because these riders have so many ambitions and things yeah yeah okay but they they I mean you can't compare JB because already if we if we didn't race a lot I mean these guys race very little uh the exception is pogacar because you know he did some spring classics and he did the Giro and now he's doing the Tour. The other guys, and okay, Remco also had to sit out a long time after that crash.

Primoz had to sit down, sit out, and Jonas normally, he was, after the Basque Country, he was just going to do Dauphiné and then, so they don't race that much. They are using altitude more, right? Their training is harder than sometimes races.

You know, the fact that nowadays you can monitor everything. You can basically simulate whatever you want to do. It just, it takes a lot of mental strength to be able to make yourself go through that intensity of training that sometimes you could get from racing but but then again if you're in a stage race let's say you you prepare for for the tour and you in the month of uh in the month of may you do a stage race um which is not that important uh chances are that out of five days there's going to be three days where you don't get the intensity that normally you would do when you're training severe seriously for for the tour de france so that's why

they choose not to race and and to train well with the increase in in crashes maybe that's gonna even push it more into less racing yeah just listen jb... Listen, JB, the crashes, it's unavoidable. And you know what? We're going to see it more and more. I mean, they're going faster

and faster and faster. It's... Look today, 47 and a half. Just, you know, nobody talks about this. But, you know, 20 years ago,

these were record speeds. Like, those were records. Now that's just standard. 47 and a half. No big deal. At those speeds, the road furniture comes up quickly. Yes. Very, very, very.

Okay. Now we're going to go back to Binyam Girme and just the whole story with Eritrea, uh, is just incredible. And like, the more we learn about it, uh, here, we're just the more excited we're get, we're getting about it. You dug up a video that's from 2011. So this is pre, this is pre Girmay by far. Yeah, by far. Pre-Girmet, the whole hype right now. There's been a few professional cyclists before him. I think the first one I know of that made it to the pros was, I'm trying to remember which team he was on um i want to say i want to say

quebec or mtm or an mtn that there was this team before um there's a guy there was a writer from eritrea i i remember i saw him in the tour de la veneer i think 2009 or 2010 i don't remember this guy he was called daniella Heiman out so obviously you know everybody was you know okay this there's there's this there's this black African who's coming here and and he was actually uh I think he were he didn't win it but he wore the mountains jersey for a few days in the Tour de France back then. And now we know that cycling has been popular, very popular in Eritrea for a very, very long time.

And so this video here I found, it's from the 2011 Eritrean Championships. And you can see, you know, the guy who wins, the people, I mean, I've never seen so many people at a bike race ever, nowhere. Not at the Tour, not at the World Championships, nowhere. And the guy is carried, you know, on shoulders, the guy who wins. And this is amazing.

I mean, you see that nowhere, that kind of public attention. So it's obviously, uh, I mean, within Africa, the Eritrean cyclists are, have the highest level. They're the best historically. Uh, but you know, this, this kind of, uh, scenes or, or something really special to, to look at. It's amazing. So what kind of budget do they have compared to the the big teams this intermarche i mean they've they've got they were lucky to have signed a great talent they yeah or they're skilled to have signed him yeah well actually uh jb i i i found out that intermarche picked him up uh in 2021 actually in the middle of in the middle of the season he was riding for a small french team called delco marseille uh second division team or third division team i don't remember but i do

remember that uh our ex cyclist of postal and discovery and an ex director of radio shack uh jose acevedo uh loyal teammate of Lance, who was a director at that team. And he told me about Binyam Girma. He says, this guy is super, super special. He's so good. And Inter Marche were the first to actually make the move when they heard that that team in the middle of the season was falling apart.

They picked him up, probably for almost nothing, gave him a chance. And then once they saw that he had the qualities, they gave him, I think, a three-year contract. And then, I mean, once you have the guy under a long-term contract, then it's easier to negotiate better contracts, but always something that they can afford. I mean, this is one of the low budget teams. I don't exactly know how much it is, but it's not going to be more than 50 million. It's less than 50 million for sure. And give us a, give us a round number that some of the bigger teams might have like UAE. It goes from, I mean, the top teams, it goes from 25 to 50. Okay.

Maybe UAE is above that. But 50 million is reportedly what Ineos was their budget. So I think Vizpai is a bit below that. And UAE may be above that. And now Bora coming in with huge money. So the budget keeps going up. I mean, you need to be 25 to 30 million to be in the game it was even in the new it was even in the news that astana is getting some new

funding you know they're getting reportedly they're getting a new chinese uh financial backup yeah okay so so let's come back to guillermay and intermarché. So what happens, Johan, with a guy like Guilherme when they get three Tour de France wins, potentially a green jersey? Do they try to, you know, I just compare it to like my media career. You try to lock them down with a new contract. We're tearing this contract up and we're going to pay you more immediately. What do you think is going on with him? I think he's already on a pretty good contract. You know, I mean, he did win.

He did win against the Babel game in 2022. Then had a, you know, not such a good season last year. This year, this is the first time that we actually see him again at the front. And I'm just checking here. I mean, they have him signed up until 2026. So they're okay. I would assume that there's bonuses in his contract for big wins. So they don't have to worry.

They don't have to worry about him for the next three years. He's tied up. And as long as they can kind of find a middle way because i mean the challenge is now also always even if you have a rider who signed up let's not forget you know he's only 24 years old so he is going to be very hot on the market even if he has a contract there are teams they're going to say hey is there something you can do about your contract we want to pay you double so what intermarche will need to find a middle ground even let's say let's say let's say if if i don't know what this contract is but if it's if it's one and a half million for some for

example and he gets three million somewhere they're going to have to give him two million to make sure that he's two million plus bonuses. That's like something I would envision, right? So it's a constant negotiation to keep the rider happy, even if he's tied up because, you know, he was, let's say, in 2023, he was happy to sign a new three-year deal, right? But now that things are going amazing, you also have to know, okay, I did make that commitment when nobody else wanted me because 2023 was not a great year for him so then it's a matter of finding the

balance between okay what's what's what what's fair and what's what can i get somewhere else and find the middle ground that's usually how it goes well i hate to make it about money but these you know it's a dangerous sport and you know these especially if you're a sprinter and it could be it could end quickly so you've got a bank bank while you can i can't imagine like you've said that cycling is bigger than soccer in eritrea so i can't imagine the market value for him off the bike, you know, for a soda or a candy bar or a mobile company. I think right now, you know, financial issues, that's the least of his worries. He makes good money already, but he's God in Eritrea.

It's fine. Binyam Girmay is set for the rest of his days. There's no doubt about it. I know. Like I said, I hate to make it about money, but I like to see these people being taken care of, right? He's a big, big star. All right. And I don't know if everybody's been listening to the move, but Lance has been saying we may go to Eritrea sometime but

what the air trans are hearing is we're coming to Eritrea I I was opening all these emails and looking at YouTube comments and they're so you guys are so funny in Eritrea like we're so happy you're coming we're gonna roll out the red carpet and but so i definitely i would like i'd like to go i mean i'll talk to lance if he was to take me with him yeah yeah it's uh it's it's picking up momentum so now let's do vintum trivia we do want to give away a brand new vintum ns1 road bike uh very soon at the end of this tour we're going to draw you can enter every single day by submitting your answer yesterday's question was what year city and country did lance win the uci race road race world championship that was in 93 in oslo norway uh today's question is besides cav what other nickname is often given to Mark Cavendish?

All right. Send your answer to ventumracing.com slash the move. I know that one. I know that. I know the answer. I figured you would. And also, very important, if you're in the market for a brand new bike, NS1, GS1, and they even have their new e-gravel bike, which is really worth looking at. You can get 20% off right now on any

Ventum bike during the tour through July and through July. So the code that you use on checkout is the move 20. All right. If you want to buy a new bike, 20% off is a pretty good discount. Couple of questions for you, Johan. is from mike in california he says uh was johan ever the team director or coach of an olympic or world championship team does each country have a team director for tactics etc again that's from mike yeah no the answer the answer is no i've never never been the director because World Championships and Olympic road races are in my countries. There's a national coach, usually that's somebody who has... who's completely separate from professional teams. I've been at World Championships and Olympic Games and of course I've been in contact with the national coaches, but I've been at world championships and Olympic games. And of course I've been in contact with the national coaches,

but I've never actually been in that position to direct one of those races myself, because that's a different position. And that would be a very, I think that's a difficult job directing those roles because you have, it's not the same team. You have multiple stars, especially in Belgium, multiple stars capable of being leaders the thing the thing about about those races is uh you know you you put a team together the the best possible team of of your country uh usually you know it's there's the best riders

from from different teams and and one rider is going to win if you if they work properly one rider is going to take the world the the rainbow jersey or the olympic gold medal uh and the others have nothing uh the the guy who turns with world champion will ride the whole year with the rainbow stripes and the guys who have helped him uh will be his rivals uh some of them will be teammates but most of them will be rivals so it's very challenging uh it's it's difficult um it's not the same like for example a soccer tournament right because you also have a national team and it's different clubs but they win together right if they win uh here it's different so it's it's a difficult job very difficult yeah in soccer even even guys that didn't see a minute on the field when yeah right they get it just the same uh here's another

question Johan and JB first thanks for your dedication to providing an unparalleled level of insight into the into bike racing we also enjoy you never rush the show you always say how it is without a bias uh johan can you please compare the tactics we are seeing to tactics you saw in some of the main battles between lance and jan your tactical approach seemed to have been to have Lance sit in the wheels and be more reactive. Was there a stage in particular that you recall telling Lance to control himself and not race in the style we are seeing with Tadej? That's thanks from Dave. Good question. Yeah. Well, I mean, sit in the wheels and be a reactive, that's not completely true. Usually what we tried to do was, and the Tour de France was different then. You know, it was typically, there was a long time trial in the first week.

So, of course, we tried to win that or be as close as possible. Everybody goes full gas there. And then we tried to really hit hard in the first mountain stage. And then if that worked, then we tried to really hit hard in the first mountain stage. And then if that worked, then we tried to defend. And it was up to the others to attack. There has been instances where, for example, Lance wanted to go or wanted to win, that I've told him, okay, it's better not. We don't need to win.

Especially, not so much in terms of winning, but in terms of taking the Jersey, I remember a few instances that we said, okay, listen, today's a good day, but we don't want to take the Jersey. Let's just have somebody else still have the Jersey. We want to take it a few days later. So, um, from that point of view, it was a bit different um but but you know i mean you always have to be you always have to be really good when it matters uh in the mountain stage in the time trials and then we've had a few stages where you know there was crosswinds we had to be in front um but but we definitely didn't race every single stage as if it was a stage where you could take time.

I think, uh, I think, you know, uh, I know I've been critical about the tactics of UAE and, and, you know, uh, I still think that a grand tour and especially the tour de France, it's a three week effort. You know, it's not 21 one day efforts. It's not 21 one-day efforts. It's a three-week effort. And that's always how I try to put the strategy together, by seeing it as a whole three-week effort and not just on one day. And especially because he's doing the double.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So we'll see. Okay. Good question, Dave. And thanks for writing in if you'd like to send in a question specifically for johan uh send it to me at the move at we do dot team

and uh looks like another do you think it's sprint or breakaway tomorrow i think sprint okay i think it's going to be sprint stage you've got a lot of ambitious sprinters who are motivated to keep it together, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, Philipson will want to. I mean, obviously, they lost two riders, so they're down to six. That's obviously not good. But there's more guys there.

There's still Lotto's there. Jaico's there with Grunewig. And DeMar was now in front. So Arkea will be ambitious. That's always good for, for sprint stages. If there's a sprinter who has not been in front and all of a sudden he's there, well, they get, they get a new morale boost. So, uh, I, I think it's going to be a sprint tomorrow into pool.

Okay. And if you want more insight into what Johan is, is thinking is going to happen tomorrow, listen to him and Spencer on outcomes after this. It's in the same, it's audio only for the time being, but it's in the same podcast feed. If you want to listen to them, they go in depth on predicting for the upcoming day. So anyhow, thank you everyone for listening. We appreciate you tuning in to JB squared and Johan. We will talk tomorrow.