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Oh, Good-day, everyone, and welcome to Life in the Peloton.

I'm Mitch Docker and I've got Lionel Bernie here joining me this week to introduce this week's episode.

Gidey, Lionel. How you doing, mate? I'm good, thanks, Mitch. I'm out of quarantine after my trip to the Tour de France. I had two weeks in which I wasn't allowed to leave the house. And yeah, it was a long two weeks, I have to say, but I'm free now, free as a bird. Well, good, mate. You did tell me that there was a possibility that you were going to go to the Giro. And then I thought about it. And I was like, oh, hang on, that's another two weeks quarantine after that as well. And then the Vuelta another two weeks. So it's probably maybe changed your decision about that. It has a bit, yeah. but I gather you are off to Spain for, well,

you're in Spain anyway, but you're off to the Welter in a couple of weeks time. Is that right? That's how things stand at the moment. That's right, yeah. It's going to be the last race of the year and it's one of my favorites. I've sort of ticked that one off a few times before. It's going to be a hell of a lot different this time,

no heat and more or less running into Christmas Eve. But nevertheless, it's another race and I'm looking forward to getting a big race in my legs before this season finally finishes.

But before we get going, I have to introduce this episode. I've got Dr. Kevin Spouse, who's the team or the head team doctor on EF Education First.

He's an American, a great guy, and so it'd be great to sit back and have a chat to him about the ins and outs of the daily job of a team doctor.

But also, I wanted to get some tips of him, some tricks of the trade. So I got

everyone to send some questions in and I formulated sort of some questions myself. So I hope

you enjoy this one, guys. Sit got the team doctor, Kevin Spouse, a good friend of mine actually as well.

Welcome to the podcast, mate. Hey, Mitch. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Mate, I've been very impressed. I've been listening to your podcast the last few weeks, and it's been like we haven't seen each other all year. You've brought out a podcast over the lockdown and the best part about it was I could just sit back listen to your voice and it

feels like we haven't missed each other for however long it's been well likewise you

maybe I sit back and listen to yours a little bit you listen to mine it has been

weird the fact that you know I've been with the team for a while now and never have

been away from racing and away from you guys for such a period of time. Living in the U.S., I'm not able to get over. We have had doctors at the races, but I've not been able to be there, and that's been really strange for me. So it's good to talk to you face-to-face, kind of. Well, let's get into it. Today we're going to talk all about your job and what happens on the race, because I think what I try and do in this podcast is just trying to get into all the little different jobs that everyone does, aside from the cyclists, of course, because I just find it so fascinating that there's so many little different jobs that no one knows about, and even myself, don't 100% know exactly what your whole job is.

So to start off, you're the team doctor with us on the World Tour team.

You started back with a development team of SlipStream back in 2010 and then merged across

into this team, which was Chipotle, then became Canada, which is now EF.

What I want you to do is just tell us a little bit about your background, maybe blow out

the myths of what a team doctor is on a world to a team, and what your story is, how you've come

to doing this job today. Yeah, so my background is pretty varied. I did undergraduate studies

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