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Hello and joining you on a sunny Thursday afternoon from Berlin, where prior to this, the heavens had been well and truly open for torrential business all week.

Yesterday, the world's first demonstration of another downpour, the explosion of a 2000 ton fish tank in the Radisson Hotel before Christmas, killing 1500 fish, hence the animal rights activist demonstration yesterday.

My name is Daniel Friba, I'm the host of this episode of the Cycling Podcast, in which we'll be mainly talking about actual cycle racing after several months of whimsically skirting around the subject while the pro peloton has been in hibernation.

Our first guest today is joining me from Soyer in Mallorca in the Ballyaric Islands, where I think he's going to pop down to the shops after this recording by a house, true story.

And where last week he suffered the indignation of commentating on a race during which the Israeli rider Nadav Rysberg, betted his record on his back door climb, the Coyd then Blader, by the small matter of six minutes and a second over four kilometres.

Even more remarkably, Rysberg's average heart rate on the climb was just 87 beats per minute, despite a vam of 1923.

Rob Hatch does not possess a driving license, so he can at least be eliminated from enquiry should anyone suggest that Rysberg was possibly in the back of a motor vehicle when going up the climb.

Rob Hatch is of course the Maestro on the mic, the voice of Cycling on GCN in Urusport, and he's here with us today.

Rob, what can you tell us about Nadav Rysberg's ascent of the Coyd then Blader, because it's always suggest, it's slightly suspicious.

I would suggest that you've been on strarver, I thought I had a like for nothing, I thought you'd be an extremely kind to me the other day, but then turns out you were looking at my history.

Well, it was rapid, wasn't it? I mean, you know, I was going well as you well know that fateful hot summer when we were flying up those hills, but yeah.

There's someone else also beating your record on that.

It doesn't surprise me, Daniel, I'm not a professional buyer-hider.

Do we know, he did DNF that particular round of the challenge, my yoddka, do we know where he DNF'd? I mean, he must have been in the car.

No, unfortunately, there were eight-assault rapid riding on those races, be the way that it was so bad that we only saw about 30 to 40 kilometres of each race, I guess it was before the end.

Well, you can tell us more about the challenge when you're getting just a minute, but we'll introduce our second guest, also joining us today from a secret bunker in the United Kingdom secret only,

because it's precise location, what for not what for what and where is what for anyway.

It's as big a mystery as the origin of his nickname.

He has seen off Valverde and Nibali and in true contrarian fashion reacted to Tibo Pino and Peter Sang as retirement announced by declaring that he is making a comeback.

He's fresh off the plane from Marseille, where he visited the only velodrome I will probably ever be interested,

or who's door I will ever be interested in darkening, I, the stad velodrome home to, olympique Marseille, football club, it is the Lion of Flanders.

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