S14 Ep30: Ineos Turn to AI to Get the Pulse Racing
The Cycling Podcast
The Cycling Podcast
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2026
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The spring Classics campaign has come to an end and the Giro d'Italia is just around the corner. To bridge the gap between the two, and with Daniel Friebe absent as he prepares for the Giro, Lionel Birnie is joined by Tudor Pro Cycling's Larry Warbasse to wrap up the first part of the season, look ahead to the first Grand Tour of the year and react to some huge sponsorship news which may help Ineos Grenadiers challenge for the Tour de France once again.
In part one Larry updates on the Tour of the Alps, where he and a lot of riders were fine-tuning their form ahead of the Giro and one of his teammates made a rapid and successful transition from speed skating to elite level cycling with a stage win. He also talks about his version of the all-day-breakfast and heat training indoors.
In the second part, Lionel reports back from the big reveal which confirmed a new title sponsor for Ineos Grenadiers. From the Giro d'Italia they will be Netcompany-Ineos thanks to backing from a Danish IT company that is pumping in a figure thought to be around €100m over five years. The target is for the team to win an eighth Tour de France in the next five years, but its the introduction of Netcompany's AI software, Pulse, which makes this more than just a sponsorship deal. Pulse, which is used at several major airports, including Heathrow, will be used to help the team make 'better decisions more often'. We ask whether its use can extend beyond logistics and training and start to influence racing strategy and tactics.
In the final part, we tie up all the loose ends from the spring and turn our attentions towards the Giro before handing over to Daniel and co for daily coverage of the Corsa Rosa, which starts in Bulgaria on Friday, May 8.
Image courtesy of Netcompany-Ineos.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the cycling podcast. |
| 0:29.6 | My name's Lionel Bernie and no Daniel Freiber this week because he is at the podcasting equivalent of the tour of the Alps, fine-tuning his fitness, resting his voice ahead of the Jura d'Italia, |
| 0:43.1 | which starts on Friday, May the 8th in, logically enough, Bulgaria, of course. |
| 0:47.9 | We're used to these overseas, starts to the Juryd Italia these days. |
| 0:52.2 | One man who'll be there in Bulgaria and then in Italy |
| 0:57.5 | for the jurid Italia is Tudor Pro Cycling's Larry Warbass. And Larry, you've just finished training |
| 1:03.1 | and I'm interrupting your refueling. I'm sorry about that. But what are you tucking into after training |
| 1:07.9 | today? So today, hey everyone, good to be back. Just finished my |
| 1:13.0 | training session. So was eating actually some oats with raspberries, some dried cranberries, |
| 1:22.7 | actually added a little special flavor today with pistachio cream. You know, it's like the pistachio |
| 1:30.0 | equivalent of Nutella. It's probably not very healthy and probably doesn't really help my recovery |
| 1:34.8 | any, but it tastes really good. So, and then, yeah, egg white omelet. So, you know, trying to stay |
| 1:41.1 | lean. It's coming up to quarter to three there in the afternoon, Larry and Nice, where you are. I mean, that sounds like breakfast to me, but I mean, breakfast is the meal of kings, right? Yeah, I also ate it for breakfast, to be honest. So I don't know, some days I just, I like my oatmeal a lot. So I just eat it for breakfast and lunch. And so very quickly, where are we 10 days out from the start of the duity tell you so what did your |
| 2:04.0 | training session look like this morning well I actually did really well did |
| 2:08.9 | half of liege after through the op so still kind of resting a bit I mean |
| 2:16.2 | today I did three hours so it's not exactly rest, |
| 2:18.6 | but Monday I took off Tuesday. Yes, I just did an hour easy. And then today was like two hours |
| 2:25.3 | easy on the road and then an hour heat on the home trainer. So in a heat suit, research has shown |
| 2:32.1 | lately that you can extend the benefits of altitude and keep the |
| 2:37.8 | hemoglobin mass, which is one of the biggest benefits of altitude, longer by doing heat training. |
| 2:44.2 | So it's not exactly fun, but it's effective. So yeah, did an hour session on the home trainer. |
| 2:50.5 | I'm imagining a heat suit is, |
... |
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