Welcome back to Lenten Rouge Cycling Podcast for opening weekend day number one.

The Saturday races, we've got Omloat men and women's races with huge, well, just completely

different races to what both of us expected.

We've got Grand Camino, Benji watched visit South Aegean Islands, Facebook stream most likely.

We have Furnardesh, absolute chaos in the finish there as well.

So it was like a fever dream, the racing today actually.

But starting with the men's omelope, which had the usual course in the final 40Ks or so,

but a bit different, not as hard, I would would say in the middle of the third of the race around

the labor volkenberg um it was it only really started the ikenberg with about 58ks to go headwind i

think light headwind to the finish some crosswind on the climbs so So a bit more favourable to the sprinters than in

previous years. The last sprint, let's say, was David Ballerini in 2021.

But, yeah, I think. If I recall correctly, the Vombardarla victory was in a headwind after

the Murno, no? Because that's when he was also benefiting fromo pacing on the way to the finish line.

And I recall it vividly that it was on paper a headwind last kilometers.

So just because it's headwind doesn't mean that it will eventually be a sprint.

And I gotta say looking at the start list before this race started, I thought, there's so

many teams that want to open this race up.

UAE does not have a sprinter here, so they want a morgado, a Narvaezza,

whatever. They've got so many strong individual riders. Then, obviously, when it comes

to Vizma Lisa bike, Waiwanar sprints in the last couple of weeks have not looked too

impressive when it comes to positioning, seemingly a little scared in those

sprints. So I thought, okay, Vizma is going to want to open up in this zone from Aikenberg to

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