Latest / Life According to Brian and Jason / #46 - Drama at La Vuelta: Hailstorms, Heat and Pogačar Crashes Out! What Now?

Transcript

#46 - Drama at La Vuelta: Hailstorms, Heat and Pogačar Crashes Out! What Now? · Life According to Brian and Jason

0:10
All right, friends, welcome to another episode of Life According
0:14
to Brian and Jason. Hey, Jason! Hey, man,
0:17
it's another week and I'm excited. What do you got? What do you want
0:21
to talk about, dude? My feeds are blowing up in, um,
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Spain. There are riders who are getting pelted,
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bike riders getting pelted with, uh, hail, and these
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riders are going under. What is La Volta? I have no idea what this is.
0:36
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1:13
These, uh, grand tours, right,
1:17
and this is the last one of the Triple Crown, And that is
1:20
the La Vuelta a España, and it's in Spain.
1:23
So you got France, Italy, and Spain. Those are the big 3
1:27
countries for bike racing glory.
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And so right now, yeah, we're 12 stages in on this.
1:35
And I take it you saw the crazy hailstorm on
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the— Yes, you know, the Googlator, we talk about this
1:43
and my phone's always listening. So I got,
1:46
shortly after we talked about Right.
1:51
Other bike races and stuff, I started getting it. Right. It was
1:55
amazing, dude. People are like hiding under umbrellas.
1:58
It's like people just on the road hiding people, protecting them from stuff.
2:02
It was like crazy. Well, yeah, it's just, you know,
2:05
European weather is bizarre. Like our weather right now, it's either scorching hot
2:10
desert or you get these crazy storms. And that's
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what happened on this one. Um, it was at one of the early stages,
2:18
I don't know, stage 3 or something like that. And they're doing a mountain
2:21
pass, which means you might get some hail. And yeah,
2:25
just started pelting people. And, uh,
2:29
uh, Tadej Pogačar, or Tadej Pogačar,
2:33
um, he's the world champion. He was up
2:37
front and he just takes over. He just starts directing traffic
2:41
and like the whole peloton which is like 120+ riders or
2:45
something like that, are all just following him. So, you know, he's obviously a
2:49
leader. People know where he's at. He's wearing the red jersey. That's red
2:54
in this race, yellow in the Tour. And yeah,
2:57
he just takes over. Like, let's get out of the hail because it's coming down.
3:01
You know, imagine you're riding 20, 30 miles
3:05
an hour into 1-inch hail
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on a bike. So yeah, it's just powder with little tires,
3:13
with little puny tires. Yeah, yeah. And so they,
3:16
they seek shelter, find, I don't know, buildings. And yeah, they're just
3:19
stuck in buildings. And I'm like, wow, okay, this race is exciting. I love
3:23
it. So what happened to that? Did they just postpone it or everyone just had
3:27
to, well, I'm gonna go, or some guys? No, no, no, no. The,
3:31
the tour organizers said no, it's too wet and slippery
3:35
because they climbed up a mountain and they had to go down. So they
3:39
just, I think whatever times they had at a certain point
3:43
in the race, they just right there and just kind
3:48
of froze everything. So they didn't declare a winner in that particular stage.
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So what would they do? Would they just redo it or just pass
3:56
on and go, nope, nope. It's just, yeah, it's just a wash, I guess,
3:59
on that. And Because out of 21 days, they got 20
4:03
other days to see who's the best.
4:06
And so that's what they did there that day.
4:10
But stage 8's the one in this one.
4:15
You know, Totti, the world champ, he's a Slovenian,
4:20
you know, so he was raised at elevation. If you've ever been to Slovenia,
4:23
folks, it's— everyone hears about the Alps.
4:28
Of Switzerland. Well, on the back side of the Alps are what's called the
4:32
Julian Alps. And Slovenia, which used to be behind
4:37
the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union,
4:40
you know, obviously when the walls came down, all these individual
4:44
satellite states of the Soviet Union
4:49
became their own countries. And Slovenia— and I've been there—
4:53
it is Literally, I think, a fairy tale country,
4:57
I have to say. Did you go there because of the biking or— No,
5:01
no, just because it's, it's magical. It's like out of this world. They have
5:06
some of the best caves in the world. They have fantastic
5:10
mountains, as good as the Alps. And you're right there, you're right next door.
5:15
And, uh, you got the Julian Alps, uh,
5:17
turquoise waters through the mountains. And then you got
5:21
castles, like 500-year-old castles up on this
5:26
like built into the side of the mountain that you could go on tour.
5:29
And I've never seen any place like this. I mean, Lake Bled,
5:33
just Google Lake Bled, listeners, just Google Lake
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Bled. There's like a cool little castle-looking
5:41
building out in the middle of this lake. You got to get to by boat.
5:45
And then up on the hillsides, another castle, which is very
5:49
cool. I've never seen a country like it. And it's so well
5:53
preserved. Why? Because tourists weren't trampling
5:57
all over it during the communist era. You know, it was
6:02
kind of protected. It's kind of like Croatia, right? Which was
6:05
part of Yugoslavia, which was part of communist Yugoslavia.
6:09
And so now Westerners, us,
6:12
are finding these Eastern European countries And
6:17
so when Tanis and I first started traveling together, she goes, we've got to go
6:20
to Eastern Europe because this is untapped gold.
6:25
And it really is. And so it's a mountains— it's a mountain
6:29
country. Don't confuse Slovenia with Slovakia,
6:32
2 different countries. But Slovenia, yep, they're producing
6:36
high-end cyclists. And if
6:40
you ever visit there, you know why. It's like going to the Rocky Mountains.
6:42
You're like, holy mackerel. Big mountain and,
6:46
uh, great training ground. And so the world champions from there,
6:49
and he went out, he went down. Um,
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he's been very fortunate over the last couple years,
6:57
um, because he's actually one of the 4 people ever
7:01
to win the Triple Crown. That means you win all 3 of those big races
7:04
in one calendar year, and, uh, he's one of 4 people in 100
7:08
years to do it. And, uh, 3 men, 1 woman.
7:13
And Todd, he's, he's the man. And it
7:17
was unfortunate. Usually we, in our last podcast, which is
7:21
a pretty popular podcast where we unpack what the Tour
7:24
de France is all about. Mm-hmm. If you're, if you are
7:28
the rider of the team, the one for the general classification,
7:32
that means out of a team of say 10 people,
7:36
Um, 9 of them are there to run support
7:41
for you. You're the main person. And so he's got this whole team that
7:46
break the wind for him. They basically ride in front of him and
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he gets the draft, which means when you draft someone,
7:54
you're not right behind them, you're left or right of their back
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wheel, right? So that's that draft. You get 30% drag reduction.
8:03
So that means you're saving your legs by 30% mile after mile. And these
8:07
are, you know, 120-mile days, right? And so
8:12
that's why you draft me. That's why you have these, all these people on your
8:16
team is to take their turn up front
8:19
for your main rider. Take your turn. Well,
8:23
during this particular stage, you're on a flat road.
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The peloton's all spread across this road.
8:30
He rides for a team called UAE,
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United Arab Emirates. So highly funded
8:37
team. He makes good money. Let's just say that.
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Not like NFL, baseball money, but it's good money.
8:45
And he had a guy in front of him, but Totty
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was on his left. It's on the left side of the road. And he just,
8:53
right out there on the shoulder, a rock. Sticking out.
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And so he hit a rock at about 30 miles an hour with
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one hand on the bars. Because usually what they're
9:05
doing when they get these flat breaks, right, they get these stretches and they're
9:09
cruising. When you're in a peloton, you're moving, but it's also time to grab a,
9:14
you know, a drink of water or, you know, grab a snack
9:18
or an energy gel packet or whatever you're
9:22
grabbing. And he had one hand on the bars and what happened is it his
9:26
handlebars to the right, and that just blew
9:30
him straight into whoever's next to him, and down he went,
9:33
hit his face. So he was
9:38
not able to continue because he had a concussion.
9:41
He has a fracture to his C7 vertebrae,
9:46
and he had a fractured collarbone.
9:50
So being the dude he is, he tried to get on his bike,
9:54
but he just couldn't do it. And so
9:57
they brought the ambulance and carried him off. And so that was the end of
10:01
his second Triple Crown effort,
10:06
so to speak. So why do you enjoy
10:11
watching these, Brian? I mean, we talked about the Tour,
10:15
but what gets you to want to check them out? Check it out and see
10:18
what's the magic to someone who does not think
10:22
to watch it? I like watching things
10:26
like that, but I wouldn't really think, you know, what's going on right now?
10:29
Well, I think it's just sporting competition,
10:35
especially for me. Okay, I love watching someone
10:40
who's won the tour 5 times, right? Well,
10:44
That means they're the one everyone wants to knock off. So you want to
10:48
see, can a person sustain?
10:51
Go do like Lance, go win 7 times, right? Can someone
10:55
go win 7 times, or can someone— who's
10:59
the new big dog— take down the old dog, right?
11:03
And, uh, I just think that's what comes with sports, is once
11:09
you understand who the players are Doesn't matter what sport, you understand who's
11:14
the best, what's the biggest goal of that particular sport, and who's the
11:17
competition that's coming. You know, that's it. I love it.
11:21
I love the culture of sports, the competition of sports.
11:25
On in the living room right now, we got the US Open for tennis.
11:28
It's going. I haven't talked about tennis on this channel, but we're watching,
11:33
um, because it's like, who's gonna Who's
11:37
gonna pass through? Who's gonna get beat? And today,
11:40
like a 3rd seed player, 3rd best in the world,
11:43
boom, out by no name. Great. No,
11:47
that's what you want to happen in the cycling world. Will that happen there?
11:50
Yes. Yes. Because it's like, who's gonna take them
11:53
down? And you never know in cycling when crashes are gonna happen.
11:57
Like, like Tadej's main rival, Jonas Vingegaard,
12:01
from Belgium. He's had more unfortunate crashes.
12:06
He's like punctured a lung, broken ribs
12:10
from previous year's crash in other races.
12:14
And then even in the Tour this year, he hit a curb,
12:19
like this roundabout, hit a curb, went down,
12:22
broke his shoulder. And yeah, it was
12:26
just a mess. And so Totty's been He's
12:29
avoided a lot of crashes. He's gone down, but he's never had a serious injury
12:33
until this one. So now, being the true sports guy,
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can he rehabilitate himself to come back?
12:41
See, that's always the question in sports. You know, it's like in
12:45
football. Patrick Mahomes. Yeah, Patrick Mahomes. Is he coming
12:48
back this year? Is he gonna make it? You know, so it's all eyes are
12:52
on the drama in the bigs. For the greats of the sport
12:57
rehabilitate themselves. So that's what I got going here.
13:00
Because here's what he misses. Now here's the drama.
13:04
By him trying to go for the Triple Crown,
13:07
he didn't have to. He's already done it. Why? But there's
13:12
another race coming up, and this is for the glory too.
13:15
And that is called the— there's
13:19
what's called the road or the world championships. That just
13:23
sounds important right there, right? World Championships. But UCI is
13:27
the governing world body of bike racing.
13:31
Okay, they're the worldwide governing body of— that
13:35
means they kind of set the rules and stuff all around the world.
13:39
They have one race each year and it's in a different country. This year it's
13:43
in Montreal, Canada. There's basically 2 one-day races.
13:47
There's the road cycling race one day, and then there's
13:52
the time trial one day. And Toddy won it last year in
13:55
Africa when it was in, I think, Rwanda.
13:59
And that— if you ever seen the UCI jersey,
14:03
it's a white jersey that has the rainbow. So the blue
14:06
stripe, the red stripe, the black, yellow, and green.
14:10
If you win this race in late September
14:14
here in Canada, you get to wear that jersey all year,
14:19
all year, all 2027. You're the only one in
14:22
road racing that gets to wear that jersey. So,
14:26
which means you could wear it at the Tour, you could wear it at the
14:30
Euro, you could wear it any place. So yeah, that's pretty cool.
14:34
And so he doesn't get to ride that because I don't think with
14:38
the surgery he just had on his collarbone, it's going to let him ride
14:42
a bike here on the 20th. So what do we got, 17 days?
14:46
He's got to recover and show up to his bike race. I don't think it's
14:50
gonna happen. So, so that's the, uh,
14:53
that's, uh, as you would say, the ups and downs of sports,
14:56
Jason. It is true. Well,
15:01
you're a man of sports. You're not just watching the basics. You're right,
15:05
you're expanding and checking it out. Well, you learn
15:09
as you go, you know, you just kind of learn as you go. And,
15:12
uh, you know, I have to say,
15:16
uh, I still don't know the whole world of cycling
15:20
because I grew up with, uh,
15:23
Greg LeMond. You remember Greg LeMond from the '80s?
15:27
The American who won Tour de France, I think,
15:30
twice, maybe 3 times. And, uh, That kind of
15:34
started my love affair with this, even though I was a BMX bike racer.
15:38
But it's a bike, right? Sure. I bought my first
15:42
bike, found out how hard it was and how you have to deal with traffic
15:45
and you got to get yourself out on roads. I abandoned
15:49
road cycling because it just didn't fit the city life very well.
15:53
And then I came back to it once I lived in the mountains.
15:56
And yeah, you know, and here I had to abandon it again,
16:00
but I picked up gravel racing or gravel riding instead
16:03
because Just cars, you know. And I just
16:08
appreciate people at any sport, at any level,
16:11
who— I just can't imagine I'm going to spend 20 years
16:15
sitting on a bike saddle, you know,
16:19
in pain, right? Yeah, you got to learn how to suffer,
16:22
right? Yes, how to suffer and excel.
16:25
And right, any sport is like that. It's like watching this
16:29
tennis, you know, you watch it and you go that person has
16:33
swung a tennis racket since they were 3 years old
16:37
and now they're 27. For 24 years, they still
16:41
love swinging that tennis racket every day, all the time.
16:44
You know, it's like this micro focus of,
16:48
I just got to keep practicing. It's like, wow, to me that's just
16:52
huge dedication, you know. So you have to admire that.
16:55
It's like soccer players, like, really, how many kicks have
16:59
they done in a career, right? Oh man, I don't
17:03
know. That'd be a good question for AI, I guess. I don't know. It would.
17:06
Now, you, you mentioned it before in the tour video
17:10
we did, but why do you think it
17:14
doesn't resonate in the United States? Is it because football's about ready to start
17:19
and baseball season's winding down? Is it just too
17:22
niche? Yeah, why can we just
17:27
not get— you know, cycling in
17:30
the United States had potential to really
17:35
go places back in the '70s,
17:39
'70s and '80s. And yep,
17:43
yep, there's various reasons, you know, there's various conspiracy
17:47
theories too of why that happened. But I
17:51
think because the United States is just geographically so
17:55
big, and which you would think would make great cycling,
18:01
I just think biking cultures that started this
18:05
racing were in Europe, and that's how you got from town to town. Bikes were
18:09
a thing, you know, you just rode them everywhere. And they
18:13
were also the ones to organize it as a race, you know, here.
18:17
We really focused on motorized racing.
18:21
That was our deal. We went from the horse racing straight
18:25
into, you know, motorcycle racing, early Harley-Davidsons,
18:29
things like that. We, we as Americans are fascinated
18:34
with horsepower, you know,
18:36
not human power. Let's just say it that way. I think it's,
18:40
I think it's a psychological shift. In our world here
18:44
versus other worlds, you know? But wouldn't you
18:49
think like a country like China that has made the most bicycles
18:53
on the planet, billions and billions of bicycles
18:57
for their citizens, wouldn't you think they'd
19:01
just be like a cycling racing culture? They're not, they're nowhere to be found.
19:05
And Asians use bikes more daily
19:08
than anything, but you don't see them on racing tours. So it's
19:13
very strange. That is, right? You would think they'd be like,
19:18
I think they see it as, you know, I ride a bike, it's utilitarian,
19:22
why would I need to race it? You know, I don't know.
19:25
It's a weird psychological, maybe a
19:30
sociological thing that, you know,
19:33
every country is different. Here we, I don't know,
19:36
Americans pride themselves on doing things differently. And I think
19:40
Lance Armstrong was our once glory. And then once
19:45
he was deemed a cheater, then I think then Americans really
19:48
lost faith, you know, in cycling, even though
19:53
it does have a very big BMX culture in
19:57
this country. So we have that.
20:00
And then we have this whole gravel series and mountain bike series.
20:04
So we do have it, but it's not on the scale of
20:08
these tours. These tours are huge. You've seen the crowds these things
20:12
draw. Oh my gosh, we don't even have close to that for just
20:16
seeing little bits of— right, these guys ride by, you know, like, boom, gone.
20:20
It's over. It's over. Yeah, I just spent 8 hours,
20:23
had to get up at 4 in the morning, right, drive up to
20:26
this top of this mountain, camp out all day, hang out
20:31
with people that are just crazy, and then they
20:35
come by in 4 seconds.
20:38
But, you know, for the love of the sport, I guess, right?
20:41
Sure. So you were there. That's right.
20:45
I know, I know. But it is cool
20:48
stuff, I have to say. And yeah,
20:52
I just give you a little side— let me just kind of give you a
20:54
little side tour. Um, our last podcast on the tour,
20:58
I talked about a couple young Americans better coming up.
21:02
Quinn Simmons out of Durango, Colorado. He gets done
21:06
with the tour and then he's like, hey,
21:10
I want to go do the Leadville 100 on a mountain bike.
21:15
So he got a special qualification because he's not part of that
21:18
tour series, not part of the Lifetime Grand Prix.
21:22
That's what we call it here in the States. It's a combination gravel
21:26
racing slash mountain bike pro-level
21:30
race. And it comes here to Bentonville here
21:34
in October. That's one leg of it. But the Leadville 100
21:38
is a famous 100-mile race at elevation,
21:42
9,200+ feet up to 12-something.
21:46
And Leadville created this race back in the '90s just,
21:50
just to survive as a town. It was like the brainchild
21:55
of the mayor or something. And he's like, we got to get people to come
21:59
here because this town is dying. There's no more mining going on and
22:02
just people living at 9,200 feet or whatever.
22:06
And so they create this Leadville 100,
22:09
early mountain biking days. You know, imagine those '90s mountain
22:13
bikes, dude. Heavy. Heavy,
22:16
no suspension, you know, just brutal.
22:20
But it is a thing now. It is a worldwide
22:23
thing to show up and say, I not only completed
22:28
the Leadville 100, but I won it. And so here comes
22:32
Quinn, um, legs are dead after 21 days
22:36
of the tour. He's had like a week and a half,
22:39
maybe 2 weeks recovery time, hops on
22:43
a mountain bike one time, 3 days later he's in the Leadville 100
22:47
and he takes 9th place. So, wow, he thought
22:51
he could win it. But it's not his discipline. You know, he lives
22:55
in the mountains. He loves riding mountain bikes. He rode
22:59
Leadville 100 when he was 19, took second place. So everyone had these expectations.
23:04
Oh, you're, uh, you know, you almost won a stage
23:07
of the Tour de France. No problem. You're gonna win the Leadville 100.
23:11
Nope. But the pros that specialize in that dusted
23:15
him. So that just shows you right there. Um,
23:19
bike racing in America is no joke, you know, and people
23:22
all around the world came. And the guy who won it's out of Utah,
23:26
and, um, Egan Swinson, he's a beast.
23:30
And actually him and Quinn trained together
23:34
once in a while in Tucson, so they know each other. And then a dude
23:37
from Aspen, I think he was in the top 5. And Europeans
23:42
come over and try to do it. And they get smoked too. You know,
23:45
it's not easy. And, uh, because yes,
23:49
the mountains are high in Europe, but they're not as high
23:53
as Leadville, you know. Um,
23:57
and, uh, so yeah, it's just the air's thin that,
24:01
you know, you have to hit up there around 12,000 something
24:04
and then back down. So hey, we have our thing
24:08
here, and I think it's only going to get bigger. I really
24:12
do. But it's a grassroots movement. Isn't that America right
24:15
there? It is. That's how we do it. Things start small and
24:20
they build. And we're not keen on adopting something from
24:24
somewhere else.
24:28
Soccer will eventually be the
24:32
most popular sport and probably already is in America.
24:36
But that's taken 70, 80 years to even get to
24:39
this point. So we'll see. But I
24:43
love it. You know, you and I are bike guys, you know. So I
24:47
just like racing on 2 wheels, man. I like racing on 4 wheels.
24:51
But I think any sport that has a Triple Crown—
24:55
what other sports have Triple Crowns? What about a pop star?
25:00
Oh geez, I don't know. The horse racing. Yeah. Oh yeah,
25:03
horse racing. Everybody knows, uh, Uh,
25:07
you got, uh, Kentucky Derby, got the Belmont,
25:11
and the Preakness. Yep. So you got to win all 3,
25:15
and that's only what, a handful of horses? Less than a handful,
25:18
right, of horses that ever done the Triple Crown in a year.
25:22
Uh, the Triple Crown in auto racing, it's kind of a weird Triple Crown.
25:26
Yeah, what is that? It's across disciplines. Um,
25:31
So you have, you gotta be able to win the Indianapolis
25:35
500. So that's here in the States. You have to be able to win Monaco
25:39
Formula 1, which is one of the hardest.
25:43
It's one of the smallest, weirdest tracks. It's a street course,
25:47
but it's super hard to pass on. So that's what makes it so exclusive.
25:52
So if you could win that, and then the third
25:56
is the 24 Hours of Le Mans. So the big 24-hour
26:00
race in France. If you can win all 3
26:04
of those in a calendar year, or just any time really, they don't even do
26:08
it in a calendar year. They're just like, can you do that in your career?
26:11
Because it's all 3 different disciplines. The last person
26:15
to do that was Juan Pablo Montoya.
26:20
So he's a great driver. And then everybody knows
26:24
Mario Andretti. He's one of them. Yeah, that's what made— that's
26:28
why everybody knows his name, but no one understands why they know his name.
26:32
Why? Because he's tripped around with it. What about Hamilton?
26:35
Is he only a— he's only Formula 1. And he's
26:39
won that, dominated, but he hasn't tried the others? Yeah, nope.
26:42
And he probably never will. So, because he knows how hard
26:46
it is. You know, there's only a few people
26:50
are willing to risk their reputation to suck,
26:54
stink at it, right? And, uh, the minute
26:58
you venture out of your lane, you could get humiliated. It's like Quinn Simmons.
27:02
He showed up, he didn't care, like, yeah, whatever.
27:06
Um, didn't really train for it, but he got 9th and he said they
27:10
were faster than me. And that was it. He just is like,
27:13
yeah, but he'll be back. But he's also not
27:17
a tour champion. You know, imagine if you're
27:20
like the 5-time, you know, world champion
27:25
in cycling. Are you going to go try, hey, I'm going to go try BMX.
27:28
I want to win. You know? Yeah. I think
27:32
that's, I think a lot of that crossover stuff's a
27:36
thing of the past because I think people,
27:40
it's like you and I, we're football and baseball fans. Who was the
27:44
last double player? At those 2 sports.
27:47
Oh, wasn't it Prime? Uh, yeah, it was probably,
27:51
uh, probably Deion, right? Yeah, he was after Bo.
27:54
They're playing tonight. CU's playing tonight on ESPN. They suck,
27:58
and yet they got an ESPN, right? There you go.
28:01
Prime, primo game. Go ahead. Yes, well, I'm just making the point that
28:05
the crossovers, uh, people willing to put their neck out seems
28:09
to be fewer and fewer. So yeah. Yeah. Well,
28:13
Bo Jackson, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But anyway,
28:17
that's why I love cycling. It's just, you look at it
28:21
and go, oh, this is kind of boring. But again, once you dive in,
28:24
know a few things, hey people, use AI and
28:28
say, hey ChatGPT, tell me who
28:32
are the people to watch in this bike
28:36
race and it'll run it down for you and you get an instant education.
28:40
Yeah, well, I like sporty things. I mean, I can watch swim
28:45
meets, dude. If you can watch swim meets and go, oh right,
28:47
that's crazy, you know. I like the stories.
28:50
I like seeing, especially if you see them in the, in the stages
28:54
and you see the growth and the little stories there, right?
28:57
My kids did swim team. I, I could watch, and I did watch
29:01
all the men, you know. People would be talking in between. I really liked watching
29:05
the the kids perform and get better all
29:08
throughout the summer and then over the years, which is very
29:12
rewarding. And I don't pretend to understand all of it,
29:15
but I can see why you would like the ride. Now, say one more time
29:20
for our listeners, what is this race called? This is
29:23
the La Vuelta a España, and it's the Spanish Tour
29:27
de France. That's the best way to think about it.
29:32
And where are we? Where are we in the stages? Tomorrow's going to be stage
29:35
13. So what do we got? 8, 8 stages left.
29:39
And yeah,
29:43
but what's, what's interesting when your top champion
29:47
goes out with an injury, now it's just a breeding ground for who's
29:51
next, right? Next man up. Right. And Enric
29:56
Mas, Great rider. He's so far the
30:00
red jersey. But the rider I really like,
30:03
and he's an older rider, I think he's like 35. His name's Richard Carapaz
30:07
and he comes out of Ecuador. He's a super tiny little
30:11
rider. I mean, you know, he's a small little guy, but man,
30:14
that guy can climb a mountain on a bike. It is fun to watch.
30:18
He is so fast. And so
30:22
you just never know who's going to show up. And so that's what I'll be
30:26
watching for is, all right, who's, who's the next rider up?
30:30
And I was hoping Sepp Kuss, he's an
30:34
American rider, rides for Team Bismarck,
30:37
um, that since his main guy
30:41
that he supports, Jonas Vingegaard, goes out with an injury also,
30:45
I was hoping, step, Sepp, this is your time, man. Yeah,
30:50
he's not looking fresh enough. He's there,
30:53
he's hanging, but he's too many minutes behind
30:57
at this point in the, in the tour here. And,
31:01
but I would love to see him win a stage at least.
31:04
And, uh, so if you can win a stage and say you're, you're the
31:09
champion of the day, that's, that's worth everything too.
31:14
So yeah, so that's why I'm watching and, uh,
31:18
And then I'm definitely going to watch the World Championships
31:21
in Montreal, see who gets to wear that jersey all year.
31:25
And then there's a few other smaller ones. I think what you have to
31:30
understand too in bike racing is you got your
31:33
big 3 tours, but then you have what are called kind
31:38
of single-day events. And those are fun to watch too.
31:42
You know, they're just like a one-and-done. They're called monuments.
31:46
You know, you don't need to remember that name, but some are one and done,
31:50
some are 5-day tours, things like that. But you
31:55
know me, I split myself between the Grand Prix in Europe and
31:59
then our Lifetime Grand Prix here
32:03
in the States. And that, that's the one
32:07
I pay attention to. So our listeners, it's called the Lifetime
32:11
Grand Prix, and you're going to see, and a
32:15
lot of them are international cycling, but a lot of them are from the States.
32:20
And it's actually a professional event
32:24
that some people who, some pros are like, yeah, I don't feel like living
32:28
in Europe anymore, racing the grand big tours.
32:32
And they get maybe a deal with like Specialized or
32:36
Giant bikes or Trek bikes here in the States. And, or they self-fund.
32:41
And because of YouTube now, YouTube,
32:44
YouTubers can get enough audience and it supports their
32:49
racing habit, so to speak, as a pro, you know, and,
32:53
uh, living the dream. That's right. And so check out Lifetime
32:57
Grand Prix. It's a mixed discipline. It's gravel racing and mountain biking,
33:01
which is cross-country mountain bike racing. And they get money
33:06
and it's great racing too. And they do a great, good job for
33:09
low buck. They basically ride e-bikes
33:13
and then they have like, um, 4-wheel drive Razors with
33:17
camera gear on it to try to get you up on the action. Yeah,
33:20
they do a pretty good job. So that's, that's our American
33:24
Grand Prix right there. And it's just like
33:27
day stage races. And so the next one coming up
33:31
for that is, uh, I can
33:35
never say it right, Shawmagon.
33:38
Shawmagon. It's up in Wisconsin,
33:41
September 19th, up in Wisconsin. It's a
33:45
40-mile all-gas,
33:49
uh, cross-country mountain bike race. When I say all gas,
33:52
it's literally a 40-mile sprint. So it's
33:56
who can run 40 miles the fastest. One day. So that's great.
34:00
So, so check that out. Okay, dude, I will.
34:04
I might be checking all this out. Yeah, you got me interested.
34:08
All right, well, and again, the glory of YouTube is,
34:12
you know, you just get the 6-minute update. So between
34:16
now and Stage 21 of the Volta,
34:20
uh, you can just pay attention day after day.
34:23
No excuses, man. You got 6 minutes. I got
34:27
6 minutes and I've been talking about it for a while here, so I'm gonna
34:30
get all the feeds. There you go. You can be like, dang it,
34:34
Brian, now I got all this bike stuff all over it. No, it was good,
34:36
it was good. I was like, wow. Now I don't know who's winning in
34:40
disc golf, come on. Yeah, what's going on? Well, it did show me
34:44
near crashes and stress, so of course I had to
34:48
watch, yeah. Right. Well, thanks, dude, that was a good question.
34:52
Hey, guess what? What? Hey, we're over time.
34:57
Well, thanks friends for joining us on this episode of
35:00
Life According to Brian and Jason. And hey, if you're
35:04
a bike racing fan, check out this stuff. If not, click like and subscribe
35:09
and buy us a coffee. Until next time, see ya.
35:23
This podcast is produced by Iceberg Media.