THEMOVE - Vuelta A España 2024 Week 2 Recap | THEMOVE
Episode Date: September 2, 2024Lance, George, and Johan break down stages 10-15 of the Vuelta a España. 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. Ventum: Visit www.https://ventumracing.com/TheMove to enter your answer to each episode question. At the end of the Vuelta, we will pick one winner who will receive a GS1 built with APEX build. But you don't have to wait. Listeners of THEMOVE can save 20% on any Ventum bike during the Vuelta by using code TheMove20 at checkout. Ketone-IQ: 30% off your first sub order + free 6 pack when you use the link: https://www.ketone.com/themove AG1: Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase at https://www.drinkAG1.com/tdf Helix Sleep: Helix is offering up to 25% off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners! Go to https://helixsleep.com/themove. This is their best offer yet and it won’t last long! With Helix, better sleep starts now.
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Discussion (0)
My entire family, by the way, is asleep.
So I've been.
Yeah, you've been relegated to the back patio.
I've been relegated to the garage.
And poor Johan has been relegated to a mansion in Mallorca.
God, poor guy.
Hey.
Hey.
Once in a while, we have to be like George.
You know, once in a while, we have to taste the year-long life of George.
Yeah, you're channeling your inner George.
Well, good morning, everybody.
Welcome back to the Move podcast, talking about the Tour of Spain, recapping week number two.
Of course, and I'm frankly quite surprised.
I'm joined, look at over there, Mr. George Hincapie.
George, I was worried.
It's early on Labor Day.
I know how y'all roll out there at the lake in Granville.
But it's nice to see you up and at them.
I was just happy to get a response from you.
It's nice to say, hey, I can only do it this time in the morning I said
whatever it takes to make the team happy I'll be ready
attaboy
and Johan it looks like you're still living
your best life down there
tomorrow it's finished
tomorrow back to Madrid
back to reality
well I'll tell you
what is the reality is the reality is uh ben o'connor's
lead in this tour of spain which has been the it's what we debated last week you know can he
hold on we're gonna get into all that i did catch some of yesterday's stage um and i was boy
we we've talked about this before is that the way cycling today has to be hard enough and selective enough that the end of
that, the final climb was just brutal.
I mean, they could barely stay on their bikes.
Nasty.
We'll get into all the action.
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gee i did see on your instagram i know i know i haven't i know i hadn't been great about responding
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look at my ventum and i got two windows. I got my back there right here.
I got the GS one and the NS one.
That was just,
that just happened by accident.
My entire family,
by the way,
is asleep.
So I've been,
yeah,
you've been relegated to the back patio.
I've been relegated to the garage and poor Johan has been relegated to a
mansion in Mallorca.
God,
poor guy.
Hey,
Hey,
once in a while we have to be like George,
you know,
once in a while we have to taste the year long life of George.
Yeah.
You're channeling your inner George.
Uh,
the Ventum trivia for week one.
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Here's the question for week two,
five cyclists have won all three of the major
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All right,
let's get into it.
Um,
let's study.
Johan,
you did a fantastic job on these notes.
I love it.
These notes,
when you just don't watch a whole lot of the tourist main,
these notes are very helpful.
I tell you what is crazy.
All right.
Is it has nothing to do with this bike rate?
Well,
a little bit to do it yesterday was September 1st.
Can we all just relate to that for a second?
Where the fuck did 2024 go?
I know it's kind of depressing and it is all depressing and we're already two
weeks into the tour of Spain.
Man.
And what a,
you know,
what a crazy two weeks it's been.
We're seeing the resurgence of wild men arts.
I mean,
back to his dominant form,
who knows if in the back end of his mind, he's already thinking about the world championships.
But he's clearly back to his top level.
Obviously, there's a lot of racing going on.
So all the best guys aren't there.
But he's still winning pretty handedly and quite impressive and quite dynamically as well.
Sprints, breakaways.
It's been pretty fun to watch him go.
Yeah, three stage wins already right for him um and go wrong anymore something tells me he will
win he will win another one um you know the other day he was close with caden groves right but
um it was uh it was a smaller
group, impressive
job of Caden Groves
who had five of his teammates there
which was impressive
something tells me that Walt Bonnard needs to
look for other opportunities because
he's the big favorite
for those prints, he needs to start himself
usually
doesn't have a lot of teammates left.
So it's a bit risky.
But as you say, George, I think Van Aert is back to being the world.
Van Aert, we like to see, you know, he wins on different terrains.
Will 100% sure win the points competition.
And it's actually still in the running for the KOM,
which sounds crazy in this kind of terrain in the Tour of Spain.
I don't know if he will make it a goal.
He will have to go on a breakaway.
And now we have Jay Vine in contention together with Wout van Aert.
So Jay Vine will probably make that a goal.
But yeah, Wout is Wout.
And I think he will, obviously he has two,
two big goals. Now it's the European championships. We are around the corner and the world championships, uh,
European championships, probably better suited for him. Um,
the world championships is very hard, 4,000 meters of climbing,
but this Walt Van Aart can probably do that.
So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see.
I just saw the Belgian selection for the European championships
and the world championships.
Very strong, very strong team.
You know, different than the Olympics because it's eight riders versus four riders.
So it's completely different dynamics.
But, you know, we could also probably think that Waldwarnart
is already with his mind in those championships,
which would obviously make up for, you know,
the last two years have been difficult for him.
Getting one of those jerseys would be, would be amazing.
And it's definitely a title he would deserve.
Is the European championship. I mean, help me out.
Were you going to ask the same question, George?
Same exact question. Yeah.
I remember when they started this race.
Yeah, when they started the race and giving out the jersey, I thought,
I mean, look, no offense to the EU, but I'm like, I get it.
You want to be the national champion.
And I certainly get it that you want to be the world champion.
I'm like, who?
Do people care?
I think they're right.
I mean, there's only one rider who cares.
It's the guy who wins and can wear the Jersey for a whole year.
You know what I mean?
We had, we had Sagan have it a few times, I think, or at least once we had Jacobson.
This year it's been Christophe Laporte.
So, you know, it does not have the same prestige, obviously.
And especially for a guy like walt von art i would
i think i think the the if he could be belgian champion that jersey is a lot more iconic
than than a european champion but you know if you can't be belgian champion and you're not
world champion i would take it yeah but does it affect his preparation for the world i mean
coming off of such a hard tour spain successful tour Spain. I feel like of course,
cycling has changed. We're wrong many times now,
but I would focus on one or the other perhaps. Uh,
but maybe like you said,
he's not so confident in his ability to overcome that many,
that amount of climbing at the world championships, who knows.
But my guess is we've seen him climb pretty amazing.
One stage of moment two um with
this kind of form the guy can do anything i'm with i'm with george on that yeah well you know
the european champion it's in limburg so uh you know it's it's a bit like leah boston liege
amstel gold race perfectly perfectly in in the possibilities of bonnard uh and it's you know
fresh off uh you know if he's in the shape's now, I don't think he needs any special preparation for that.
It's just another race in the lead up towards the world championship. So,
um, and, and also, you know,
these kinds of races will be a lot more tactical with teams of more writers.
So, uh, um, but yeah, I mean, this involved one art, the way he,
the way he won that stage, uh, what was it? Stage 10, stage 11, stage 10,
you know, with breakaway with this poor French guy,
can't on Pache from, uh, from a group, you know,
the poor guy just did everything he could.
And it was like a professional racing with a junior, uh, that day.
Um, yeah, that's one of those finishes where you go,
there's no chance you're going to lose that.
What can you do?
Guaranteed win. It was also really
exciting to see two first-time Grand Tour stage
winners with Eddie Dunbar coming
off a really tough year, injured,
didn't know if he'd ever make it back to the Pro Peloton
and just
did one of those all or nothing, nothing
to lose attacks right there with
a K or 1500 minutes
to go. And to me, it was personally exciting to watch somebody like that, to go through so many,
you know, trials and tribulations throughout the season to be able to win the grand tours
dream come true and fun to watch. Yeah. So some of the, some of these stories you only find out
because, you know, then Eddie Dunbar wins the stage. And then I read he had like eight crashes in the last, in the last 18 months or something, you know,
to see him take that win was he timed it perfectly. And, but you know,
you had to be there. That was that particular stage.
I would like to know your guys' opinion on that guys,
as you know, or may not know there's this experiment of the UCI with the yellow cards
you know they've talked about it in the tour they're now experimenting with it and uh three
riders of Decathlon AG2R plus the direct plus the director got a yellow card uh for an incident so
basically what happened was there was as usual a a big chaos, big war breakaway got away.
And then the team of the leader goes to the front.
They basically close off the road. And for some reason, I don't know why,
what happened,
Carapaz crashed and they got given a yellow card for dangerous riding.
What's your guy's opinion on that?
I mean, I saw the crash. I didn't,
I didn't really see that the guy
in front moved into
Carapaz. He just established his
position on the road, which, I mean, cycling
is all about positioning and taking
your control of the space you
have. So if you have a TM team strong
enough to have six guys in the front and you want to
sit all six in the front,
in my opinion, you've established that right because
you got there. And if somebody
wants to get around, they got to figure out how to do
it. It's a tough sport. We all
know what it's like to control
a race for the
GC. We've done it many times
and it doesn't get any harder than
that. And I didn't see any
malicious attempt by this
decathlon rider to crash Richard Carapaz.
I think Richard Carapaz, obviously super strong rider
trying to get in the breakaway, maybe
just took a little bit of risk
in the shoulder there and got
stuck, crashed. I didn't
see them do anything wrong. They were in the front
just riding there, trying to control the race.
You know what I just realized
or was, it maybe
shouldn't be called the yellow card
because everything you just described,
by the way, I think it's a silly experiment just on its face, but, uh, it should probably
be called the anti Mosca card.
Everything we just laid out there, George, all this stuff you've talked about, you know,
since you grew up, since you were like two racing bikes, you know, your dad was like,
Hey, George, you gotta be most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most,
most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most,
most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most,
most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most,
most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most,
most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most, most,
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that's my son right now. Yeah. I'm sure you are. Right. But I'm,
I'm with you. I mean, come on. Thank God. It's just an experiment.
Well, the problem with these things is that these experiments tend to become
rules afterwards. And I'm, you know,
independently of the issue of whether it was dangerous riding or not.
I think this thing,
this thing with the yellow cards is becoming a problem because you know,
yellow card is supposed to, it's a warning. And then I suppose, I mean,
I haven't looked into the details,
but I suppose that if you get two yellow cards,
it turns into a red card like, like in football, soccer over here.
And you can, you're disqualified or thrown out of the race, you know, incidents
like yellow cards, for example, in bunch prints, uh, they're also going to give yellow cards.
And I'm, I'm really concerned that they won't implement the, the, the, the interpretation
of the, of the situation is an issue.
And you can, as a sprinter, for example, you can get a yellow card and that's not even your fault because you need to do something. You're in the bike race. You're
fighting to stay on your bike. Uh, you got a yellow card, second yellow card. You're out of
the race. I think that's a bit too much. So we'll see, you know, I think there's already enough
rules and you know, this fine. Where, where, where is the riders union in all this?
Listen, Lance, I have news for you.
Nothing has changed in the last 30 years on that front.
You know, they're a bit more organized.
Then you know what?
Then we're going to give a yellow card to the Riders Union.
How about that?
We're throwing around yellow cards and red cards and pink cards.
I mean, whatever card.
I don't think it's an issue of them. One thing,
it's just an issue that the UCI just has everything under their control and
they don't let them have the necessary voice.
It's not never been different and won't change. So, you know,
we can sit here until next year to talk about this. Anyway, let's,
let's talk about something else, something really exciting.
Okay.
Well, cause that is what is exciting, right?
Are you going to talk about Ben O'Connor and whether or not he can hang on and Primoz Roglic?
No, I'm first, first going to talk about Pablo Castillo.
I mean, out of nowhere, two stage wins.
Yeah.
Well, not really out of nowhere, you know, not really out of nowhere.
For some of us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can, you can give me a yellow card on this if you'd like for know, not really out of nowhere. Um, for some of us. Yeah. Yeah. You can, you can
give me a yellow card on this if you'd like for not, not knowing the guy's shoe size, but definitely
the first time he comes to the fourth, if you follow his season, this is the best rider in
Spain of the non-world tour teams. He's been very consistent. A little bird has told me that a few months ago,
he has already signed with Ineos. So moves teams to Ineos.
I think it's a rider with huge potential. I mean,
that stage when yesterday was unbelievable. I mean,
I thought that was it when he went, I thought that was a TV attack.
I said the same thing, TV attack,
because he looks like he was suffering so much the whole way
at the bottom of the climb. It looked like he
was on his last breath. And not riding
away from Panakoukhanou exactly.
I mean, I thought this is
there's no way he can do this.
Yeah, I mean, Sivakov was
obviously riding for Dizhi, but then you have Vlasov
who is a top five contender
in any Grand Tour.
And when you saw the face of Vlasov, when he came back, I said, okay,
that doesn't look good.
A little detail also, the first,
so he went stage 12 and he went stage 15.
The first stage when he won was actually very emotional.
I don't know if you guys caught that, the founder of the team,
the night before that stage win. And, uh, you know, he, he, he got,
I didn't, George was sneezing. There is a mute button on that zoom feature.
George came up quick. Okay. The founder of the team, what?
The founder of the team, uh,
passed away the night before, before that stage win.
And so the whole team, I saw footage, the whole team got together. They,
you know, they obviously very emotional, uh, but he dedicated, uh,
the stage into that, uh, to that man. And, um, yeah, I mean, it was,
it was super, super emotional. And for this team, man, I mean, it's,
it's one of the, there's four second division teams in Spain,
and only two can have an invite.
So they have a role.
Two teams one year, two teams the other year.
So this year is the turn of Kern Pharma.
But man, having two stage wins in their national tour,
that's just, that's massive.
It's massive.
Yeah, and they were already in the
breakaways from day one i mean they've not only represented the breakways they've got two stage
wins we were fortunate enough to be in uh gerona last week or 10 days ago and we we got to ride
with danny vander tuck who's also on kern farmer i had actually never really known i never really
knew much about the team but uh he just spoke very highly of the team.
And what, you know, what a great organization they have.
And Danny actually signed with Lotto.
I don't know if you know that, Johan, or if anybody knows that. But yeah, so he's going there.
It's just for a team like that, it's a dream come true scenario that they've already won two stages.
And they could just pretty much ride to the finish and not do anything else and
have a successful welcome.
Wow.
Let's get into all the rest of the action.
And I say,
you know,
all right.
The big headline is,
can you do it?
I can't been all kind of,
which I think we all agree,
but we'll get to that.
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Alright, Primoz Roglic.
This guy.
Yeah. I love watching
this guy. First, before we go to
Primoz, let's highlight the amazing victory of Mike Woods. Yeah. I love watching this guy. First, let's highlight the amazing victory of Mike Woods.
Yeah.
You know, he's been going for breakaways and finally he, you know,
he got in the right, in the right break.
Got, I would say, you know,
helped a bit by the unfortunate crash of Brandon McNulty and Jay Vine.
I mean, that, that was, that was a scary crash, especially Brandon McNulty, who amazingly
came out of the, came out of the depth and, uh, got back on his bike and finished the stage and
seems to be doing all right. But Mike Woods said, you know, 37 years old, uh, that was a hard climb
when he, when he won typical Mike Woods climb, you know, the last three kilometers, extremely steep. And he won that, uh,
yeah, very dominantly. So, uh, you know,
nice for him to win in the national champion jersey of Canada.
Yeah. I mean, I've never seen a, I, I don't know about y'all,
but when I saw the images, I've never seen the Canadian, it looked more.
When I saw the pictures, I was like, wait a second.
What is he doing?
The, you know, the world championships or the Olympics.
It looked more like a, a national team Jersey.
I've never seen it.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, I've never seen it represented like that.
They did a nice job on the design.
Yeah.
I thought it was dope.
What an incredible rise he's had.
I mean, like you said, you're on 37, 38 years old,
still winning a stage in a Greg Durant tour,
won the stage, the epic stage last year in the Tour de France,
started sort of relatively late to the sport, was a runner.
I remember watching him in races like Tour Utah,
where they're like, we don't even know if the guy can stay on his bike,
but we know that he can go uphill really fast.
So to watch his rise.
Big engine. super big engine.
And yo,
I don't know if you had some nostalgia watching our boy Brandon McNulty climbing out of the cliff.
Cause I know with some famous pictures of you doing the same thing and that's
every cycle is the worst nightmare. Well, off of a cliff.
It's terrible. I mean, in the case of Brandon McNulty,
the scary part was actually the, the, the metal rail, you know what I mean?
Those things are here in Europe. I don't know if you have them in the,
in the U S but you know, they're, they're just, and he,
he slid right under it. I mean, that's like a knife, you know?
So he was very, very lucky to I mean, he, he's, he was full of blood,
but it was very superficial. So you know, it looked a lot worse than it was.
Hey, FYI, those are called guardrails.
Guardrails. Okay. And yes, um,
we do have some of those in the United States.
Okay. Okay. Well, they're dangerous for bike riders.
They ask Chloe.
Yeah. I've done, I've been there too. Following you down.
Uh, in San Sebastian, down the Esquivel. Yeah. I ended done, I've been there too. Following you down in San Sebastian, down in the Esquivel.
Yeah.
Went on the guardrails.
Have fun. Ended up in the hospital.
Johan, what rating are you giving Decathlon right now?
Obviously a great rating for protecting GC.
I think they haven't really shown they're doing everything they can to their
abilities. My question is like Red Bull, what's going on there?
I feel like they make these little mistakes that a team of that, you know,
stature shouldn't be making with a rider like Primas Roglic.
I mean, this little, little things like for instance, yesterday,
was the bike change necessary? Was that an absolute, like what,
how much would that help them? I can guarantee you that that did not help them.
That effort took a lot more than I don't know.
I don't know about that.
It was obviously was planned.
You know, he already did it in the Giro when he won one stage.
So, I mean, he seems to like this setup of one by with a small,
a small chain ring, a small chain.
But I'm with George on this.
Yeah.
It's not worth all the, the history of the drama the risk
now yeah i mean and also like at some point you caught an audible you have a team like movie star
the front going full gas you know to keep this break with breakaway in check we know this is
going to be not an easy task i mean as me as a director i'm going to i'm going to probably
question that decision say you, you know what,
let's just stay with the bike we have and get to that climb as fresh as
possible. I think it clearly affected him at the end.
No, it did. It did. I mean, I obviously, you know,
independently of all that, the 22nd penalty he got is, is very expensive.
You know, and they should have known better, you know,
he should have just drafted off other cars, you know, and they should have known better, you know, the, he should have just drafted off other cars, you know, and not with,
it's there in terms of, um, you know,
sorry to interrupt, but also look, they have so much information on the route.
Like you change like midway up a climb or on a place where, you know,
the cars are still going to be all bunched up. They changed.
It was a downhill windy section. They knew are still going to be all bunched up they changed it was a downhill windy section they knew it was gonna be all spread out like you got to make that call where
it's a an opportune time to change a bike if you do decide to do it figure out the route figure
out the best place to change the bike yeah yeah i mean i i agree i mean it's not the it was not
the safest thing and especially you know it's not like he's desperate. It looks like the trend he's got, he's on, uh, from his side and the trend Ben O'Connor is on, it's gonna
figure itself out by himself. So that's right. Do experiments or take crazy risks. But, um, I mean,
you know, surprisingly, uh, yesterday, you know, yesterday after the finish, I saw he was at 43 seconds. Then all of a sudden I saw one Oh three,
they gave him 22nd penalty. And today in his press conference interview,
he says, you know, he says, Oh, it's okay. I'm I'll survive. So he feels,
he feels very confident. I think. Um,
Well, if you look at the final week, I mean, I mean, yes, he, he, uh,
now you still have to race the race and not have
bad days and and and he still has a time trial right but this last week is is i mean look at
some of you put them in the in the show notes johan like the is there's some diabolical climbs
like this the the time difference on paper i, you'd be crazy to bet against him. Yeah.
But George brings up great points.
It's like, why get cute?
And by the way, if you are that confident and you can sit there and say,
well, I will survive, well, then don't try things like that.
Yeah.
I mean, there's just no need.
And look, I'm a huge Roglic fan, but we never would have done. I mean, it's just like, just keep it.
It's maybe also, I mean, I think at the end, the, the,
the responsibility lies also on Primoz himself.
He needs to know that he should find other wheels, other, other cars,
rather than, I don't know who's driving the car, but that car should have, you know, as soon as he saw that he was behind,
he should have gone out of the way and said, Hey, come on,
look for another car, you know? Yeah. That's too bad. But Hey, listen,
it adds a bit more to the suspense of the race. I think,
I think one Oh three is not enough for Ben O'Connor.
You know, about Decathlon, you asked me, you asked me, what do you rate them?
They've done an amazing job in terms of defending.
There's one thing that I saw the other day, which I do not understand.
One of the stages, I don't remember which one,
Ben O'Connor was having trouble.
And you have Felix Gall, who is obviously a great climber,
who rides away
from the leader and and comes in 30 seconds ahead of the red jersey I said what is going on there
that was not and then yesterday all of a sudden I looked at the results he lost 26 minutes
Felix it's not like he was riding to be in the top 10 because now that's that's that's over so
that was a bit strange maybe O'Connornor told, told Gal, okay, listen,
go because I prefer to ride my own pace.
But even then you don't leave the leader of a grand tour on his own.
You know, that was a bit strange. I didn't understand that.
Yeah, no, I agree, Johan.
And I bet it's easy to sit back and criticize a lot of stuff going on,
but those things are simple, you know, cycling one-on-one,
like stay with your leader to the very top.
And who cares if you're a ninth or 10th place,
you're going to have a guy winning the tour of Spain right now.
Yeah. So maybe, maybe, I mean, Ben O'Connor is leaving a team.
That's one thing that should not be an issue.
There's a big, pretty big chaos going on in that team. There's a whole restructuring.
I don't know if you saw, they fired Vanson Lavenu, the founder.
Oh, did they really? Yeah.
I did not see that. Yeah. That was, I mean, that was, I don't know.
This guy, I mean, wow. From all the French directors,
I think he was for me, from my experience with all the French directors, I think he was for me,
for my experience with all the French directors back in the days,
he was the most, um, reasonable.
I completely agree with that. Yeah.
And a lot of these guys, this is the same, right.
And we often refer to our, our days or our years or decades.
I mean, there's a Mark Matty was still there.
Labanew was still there.
Bernadot.
I mean, these are the same characters
that 20, 30 years later are still there.
And I'm with you. I thought Labanew was
it just
always seemed so reasonable
and calm.
And that's surprising to me.
Yeah, but especially if you know that, you know,
this guy started this team very little,
it was a very little team shows out or something like that.
The guy mortgaged his house to the team survive a few years.
And now he just got called for a meeting and, and, and got fired on the spot.
He needed to give him his laptop and his cell phone. And that was it.
I tell you, Oh, wow.
You know what that, you know what that is? Okay.
I'm gonna bring this full circle. All right. I'm going to get whoever,
whoever did that. I'm going to give him a yellow card.
Okay. Red card. That's two yellows equals red. I'm giving them a red.
That's a red card. Yeah.
That's shocking. card that's shocking
that is shocking I mean they had the best
year or season of their I feel like
their history of their team this year
so maybe something happened internally but
based on their results you should not
have been tired
yeah I know
before we run
I just want to kind of go down the list
of some of these for those
who are just going to watch this last week and check it out
and look he's got a minute
stage 16
Lagos de Cabo Donga which is I've never
done that climb everybody talks
about it the weather can be
an issue as we even saw some bad weather
yesterday
you know from what I've
heard and watched over the years epic a couple
transition stages uh stage 19 alto de moncalvio eight kilometers the last 4k or double digits yet
again super steep uh final and then boy stage 20 the most elevation of of uh i think i'm reading this right most elevation
of this wealth yeah so he has time right uh he still has to he still cannot have bad days let's
not forget i mean this is not a foregone conclusion he still has to he did not look
for my money roglic did not look great yesterday i agree i agree I agree. You know, I mean, the plan was different for sure. Yep. So
just, just folks just keep that in mind. And then finally, I do think if it did come down to it and
the time stays where it is, you got a 24 kilometer time trial at the end. I mean, there's, there's
the fan and you're the spectator and you it's like, how about we just keep it like this and get
to the last and get to the last day. I mean, that would be fun to watch, but there's a lot,
there's a lot of racing left to go.
Yeah. I think we're dealing with Roglic, you know what I mean? Listen,
he's, he's a triple Vuelta winner, one, the Giro second in the tour,
the quality of this guy and the mental toughness of this guy is, is,
is, you know, he knows how to do this. Um,
Yeah. And he's riding, I mean, based on our counterparts, uh, analysis,
I mean, he's doing some of his best climbing numbers of the entire year.
So he's obviously got the fitness, the confidence. Um,
I just feel like, you know, they, they're just making little mistakes that a team
like that shouldn't be making, but I'm not taking the way that the chance that he's most likely going to
win the tour of Spain.
So he would become the four,
the second rider ever to win four times the two,
the Vuelta.
Only guy who'd done it until now is our ex teammate,
Roberto Heras.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep. I think that was a trivia question.
Even I knew that,
Johan.
Alright, guys. I got to fly to San Francisco.
George probably has it. What do you got?
You probably got a big day out on the lake
doing some wake surfing, although
it's looking a little
rainy in the background. Is that going to
put a damper on Labor Day?
No, I'm going to go take my GS1 out on this gravel trails right behind my house here.
And then maybe do a little bit of surfing.
And Ashish is in town.
Ashish and his whole family is there for Labor Day weekend.
Correct.
Yes.
Johan, all we can ever do is just kind of see this dreamy background behind George.
You know, it's now like Ashish is there with the whole, like, I love the guy.
How many times have I invited you and you say, oh, no, no, no, no.
Johan, you know what it's like.
You've never invited me, George.
You're welcome anytime.
I am relegated to the garage.
By the way, right around the corner, we have a great golf course as well.
I'm going on a little bike ride also now.
I found a new riding mate here in Mallorca.
It's the son of a certain Miguel Indurain, who has a nice bike shop here.
And yesterday I had a little ride with him and had fun with a little video. He sent to his dad, me still wheel sucking,
the wheel sucking Belgian of Indurain.
Does he pedal like his dad?
I'll post, I'll post the video on social media.
Yeah. Let's see. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't cause big, big man.
He had that, he had that style that was just so fluid.
It just looked perfect.
He's just curious if that trickles down.
He actually told me that his dad, I mean, I've spoken with a lot of people.
Miguel just does all the Gran Fondos, George, maybe a future.
And he is unbelievably strong.
He trains like an animal and is incredibly strong at 60 years old.
It's pretty impressive.
I'm out.
All right, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in.
We'll be back next, what, next Sunday.
Let's do it one of those days.
Sunday or Monday is a little crazy for me next week, but recapping this.
See what happens.
Yeah.
One week to go.
A lot of climbing.
I'll be in Bentonville, Arkansas.
That's right. The Hinkabee Fondo.
The home of cycling for the Hinkabee Fondo.
It could be a little difficult, but yeah.
Okay.
As usual, per usual, we'll work
around your schedule, George. We'll make it work.
Might be yet another
early one. All right, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in. See you in a week.
Thanks, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you in a week. Thanks guys.