Welcome back to Lantern Rouge Cycling podcast for the Ampstel Gold Race. Men's race recap. We had Tate Pagatja.

These shortest favorites for any major world tour one day race. I think this year don't quote me on that, but he was $2 for this race, given a 50% implied chance to win.

Let's see if that was realistic. His main competitor, second favorite was Pidcock, who's been target in the Ardenne after a little bit of a maybe a disappointment in Cobble Classic's campaign.

After the fantastic strata win, he's got chef and last year's winner, Queer Koski. Kosnifra and Gerdon were good on Wednesday at Provincy Pale.

Jumbo sent probably their weakest squad to a world tour race so far this year, with Benoat and Valtteri as the leaders, no Vanart, no Roglic, no Vingigard, and yeah, then it was much of a marchness really with like nice riders, but none of the big guns.

Apart from Pagatja, not even an Alaphilippe here for Sudar Quickstep in this race, Benji. So it really was, why isn't Poggy done this before too many times? Is he just because he needs a couple of weeks off between races and his schedule normally does UAE, so he's probably more tired by now in other years.

Exactly, and last year, if I recall correctly, he was playing to LBL after RVV, and then he showed up for Flash, but not for Amstool.

Maybe a bit of a rest period after RVV towards those two races, but then he didn't ride LBL anyway, because of a family issue at that time now.

I believe that there's probably some factor in there that the team wants to limit his race days as much as possible, because much in a few days ago, said that he wasn't going to ride Flashwell on in the next day.

Poggyachar said, are you sure to someone who said that he wasn't riding Flashwell on on Twitter, so nobody knows if he's starting Flashwell on at this point, but I guess we'll figure it out.

I'll lose anyway.

Who knows at this point, I don't dare to say it anymore, I won't lie, I don't dare to say it anymore, it doesn't stop.

Same thing.

Okay, I believe you now, you said, Alaphilippe, I think that's due to the knee issue that he had for Flash in RVV, and like.

It's a real bummer for a quick step, but on the other end, I wasn't expecting him to be competitive for absolute gold race in the first place.

I was more seeing him compete once again in Flashwell on, and once again have trouble in LBL, just like the majority of years.

That being said, this race started and we were all there was to explain to people quickly, like 253 Ks, how does this race differ from its Belgian counterparts in terms of parkour.

And I guess you're the expert on the Kassan, Benji, that's cobbled climb or a cobbled and a berg or a hailing is a hill that's Dutch, I believe it's the both, the same both sides of the border.

Here we have like a circuit of cowberg, Bamblerberg, Azerbosweg, they are all pretty short, none of them are that long, like two Ks, five percent.

And the gulper berg vague 600 meters, 8.5 percent, there are some steep parts, the steepest is the coiter berg, I believe, coiter and berg, which has a steep pinch, 1.1 K, 6.8 percent, but they're all paved, and they're all pretty wide.

A lot of them are pretty wide, so I think that helps someone like Pidcock Benji, if you remember, Brabast last year he struggled on the Moscow strut, cobbled climb, but then was good on the non cobbled ones.

I agree, I do feel like this race has gone through a bit of a transition over the years, because obviously as you might remember, this race finished in the regular cowberg finish with the finish at the top of the cowberg for the majority of years, and then it had a finish which was a kilometer after the cowberg.

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