You are listening to the Cycling Podcast at the 2023 Tour de France Fam.

Today, we're at the Tour Malais Bagnère de Bigour.

Well, then, normally, the listeners join us and we've already done our day's work

and we're sitting in some beautiful square or not, but always with a beer,

wherever the square looks like.

And today, listeners, you're joining us from Lambazan at the start of Stage 7 of the Tour de France Fam.

Because, well, today, it's a big big day, isn't it? It's Tour Malais Day.

Yeah, I mean, it's like a sleepy town on the edge of the Pyrenees,

but I guess the atmosphere is anything but sleepy.

Right, it's getting ready to race.

We can see some teams on the rollers already.

Others kind of leaving it a bit later.

But there is a sense of tension. I don't know if it's the quietness here,

but it doesn't seem to be the normal kind of buzz that we get before we're race.

It's definitely the kind of, I don't know, the most hotly anticipated,

kind of most tense experience of the start that I've had so far,

at least in the Tour de France.

Well, we've got coming up, of course, at a very short stage,

just over 18, almost 90 kilometres in length.

And the cold uspan, a category one, going up and over that,

and then finishing at the top of the cold, the Tour de Malais.

So, I mean, this is where the GC will be decided pretty much.

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