Welcome back to the Lantern Roo Cycling Podcast with Benji Narson for the Basque Country Stage 2 recap.

We've had no breaks with World Tour Cycling seemingly forever, but this stage race is delivering already a nasty stage 2 with an interesting finish.

154 Ks from Zara to Sestal, and all these climbs, I thought I said yesterday they look easy sort of 4.1 Ks, 4%, 3.8 Ks, 5.9%, 2K, 6%.

But they all have really steep pinches in them, although they were really narrow.

It was raining, and then it stopped raining today. It was cold at the start, and the roads were half drying out as they were riding on them.

Then there was the main climb of the day, La Storiana, 7.5 Ks, 6.2%, but the first 3Ks were the steepest, with 8.2%, 9%, and 11% for the third-care of the climb.

Flying down at the top, and then you have a technical... I'm talking... I'll show that in the YouTube video how twisty it was, but super technical running to the finish with multiple hairpins, very narrow, poor road surface, and then a short flat section before an 800m, 7.5% kick to the line in Sestal, quite a nice stage design, albeit a little bit sketchy in the rain.

Roglic in the leader's jersey, Benji, did you think Jumbo really needed to do anything today?

They needed to... there wasn't much to gain for them, really, was there?

I think a stage win, it had been a long period of time, but I think we both had a bit of an idea once it started getting pretty rainy that might be troublesome.

We've had a history with Roglic, or at least Roglic has a history with rain, where it's probably not rain-related, but it's due to the technicalities of the consequence of the roads and the sins being more treacherous that he's either a bit more stressed or less likely to try stuff on those stages because he's like, okay, let's not show it away with the crash on the descent, then fuck up my entire season here.

Yeah, we had that in mind, but I thought when I saw the breakaway going away, which was not really an important breakaway of the day, that I didn't see it happening for the breakaway, and I expect the peloton to fight over it, and there was one team that took control pretty much for the majority of the race, and it was the Movistar, yeah!

Movistar. Well, I don't have too much criticism for them today, to be honest, and we'll get to what happened on the final climb, but yeah, that break, as Benji said, not threatening, they got given three or four minutes, Movistar kept it in check.

The young bow committed, I think, thingston, as well to help chase Rogwiches in a, unfortunately, it doesn't mismatch too badly, his black-range jacket, and yellow kit.

It's not like the Mutant Ninja Turtle World to stuff. Vingo God was in the green jersey, but yeah, those two, I thought they were going to keep Vingo God close on GC.

Valverde for stage win, potentially, and Astana without a win this year, with a lot of basket riders in the basket region, in the rain, got to be one for them.

But even Movistar brought that break back, he became a massive run into the finish in the 25-case to go.

They brought the gap to about 40 seconds, there was a loan, SKP left in that break, I think for the Burgos rider, Oscar Cabado, he got onto the climb.

We'd seen Luchenko on the left-hand side riding his domestic for Freilé, Adam Barou, Yonni Zegere, and Fulsang for Astana, Amador on the right-hand side for Inos, and Gagan Hart as well, pulling for a short while, protecting Adam Yates.

Erie Dumbar, I don't know where he went today, he was protecting Yates wheel, but I didn't see him since then before the base of the climb.

Rogwich pretty much just had a vingo goal, the minute they hit the base, and it kicked off pretty early.

If you wanted to attack, you had to do it early. We got that, I think because of the TT yesterday in Burgatio losing time.

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