S13 Ep65: How The Giro Was Won (And Lost) On The Finestre, with Matt White

The Cycling Podcast

News, Sports, Sports News

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the dust settles on a sensational 20th stage of the Giro d’Italia, Lionel Birnie is joined by Matt White – one of the people in cycling who knows Simon Yates best – to analyse how the race was won (and lost) on the Colle delle Finestre.

Until the eve of the Giro, Matt was head of performance at the Jayco-Alula team, having been with the Green Edge organisation since it was founded. Until this season, Yates had spent his whole professional career with the team and he and Matt shared many highs and one memorable low.

Matt was in the team car when Simon Yates lost the 2018 Giro on the Finestre following Chris Froome’s audacious long-range attack on stage 19, so he has a fascinating insight into the tactical and psychological issues that played out on the mountain on Saturday. Yates bounced back later that season to win the Vuelta a España.

But what else stood out to Matt as he watched the stage on Saturday? How did Visma-Lease A Bike pull it off, and could Isaac Del Toro, Richard Carapaz and their respective teams have done anything differently?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Derek G is getting closer as the games continue.
0:03.0	By the way, it's 822 to the front of the race, who we are informed is still Harper and Verre right now.
0:09.0	But this is where the battle is being played up.
0:11.0	On these lower slopes of a mountain that has so much history of this race in just the 20 years we've seen it.
0:17.0	Yates with the biggest slice of that history.
0:20.0	He goes, no reaction. No reaction this time. it. Yates with the biggest slice of that history. He goes, no reaction, no
0:22.8	reaction this time, and Simon Yates is on his way up to Colle de la Finestre.
0:35.0	Hello and welcome to the cycling podcast. My name is Lionel Bernie and the Giro d'Italia is already in the rearview mirror and it will soon be time to begin our build-up to the Tour de France, which starts in Leal in little over a month's time.
0:49.3	But first we're going to reflect on a sensational Giro and Saturday's extraordinary 20th stage when Simon Yates
0:56.1	exorcied the demons of the Finestre erasing the memory of that spectacular collapse on the same
1:01.5	mountain in 2018. That was when Chris Frum attacked 80 kilometres from the finish to take the pink
1:07.5	jersey that Yates had worn for almost a fortnight.
1:14.6	On Saturday, with a crucial bit of help from his Visma Lisa bike teammate,
1:18.3	Walt Van Art, Yates turned the tables in not dissimilar fashion on the young Mexican Isaac del Toro,
1:21.1	who had held the pink jersey since the gravel stage in Tuscany at the end of the first week.
1:26.6	This episode will feature my conversation with Matt White, who is a familiar voice to all of our
1:31.1	listeners because he's featured in the podcast Grand Tour coverage since the very beginning,
1:35.0	really, offering his tactical insight.
1:38.7	For more than a decade, he has been at the Green Edge organisation, and until a few days before the Giro was director
1:46.0	of performance at the Jaco Alula team when much to everyone's surprise including Matt's it has to be
1:51.7	said he was let go with immediate effect and he left the team that he's worked for for I think 14 years.
2:01.9	Matt is one of the people who knows Simon Yates the best because Yates, until this season, rode his whole career for the
	...

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