S14 Ep64: Not the Dauphiné
The Cycling Podcast
The Cycling Podcast
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The build-up to the 2026 Tour de France starts here. It's not the Dauphiné because the race has been rebranded the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, which may take us a while to get used to.
Join Lionel Birnie and Graham Willgoss as they are reunited to look ahead to the first big preparation race for the Tour, which starts on Sunday. With Jonas Vingegaard resting after a convincing victory at the Giro d'Italia, and Tadej Pogačar focusing on the Tour de Suisse, that puts the spotlight on the young French sensation Paul Seixas.
The Decathlon rider won Itzulia earlier in the spring to amplify the growing hype around him. France is starting to believe they finally have a successor to Bernard Hinault, the last French man to win the Tour.
But who stands in his way next week, and what other clues will we gain about who's on track for the Tour?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the cycling podcast. Our Tour de France Attitude Camp starts here. This is the first of four weekly episodes of Lionel, let's call them vertical mindset meters |
| 0:39.3 | that will take us to the tour's Grand Apart in Barcelona, where myself, Graham Wilgos and you, |
| 0:46.3 | Lionel Bernie, will begin our second three-week road trip as normal men following the peloton around, |
| 0:53.3 | well, a little corner of spain and then france in the |
| 0:57.0 | meantime linole you're in the sierra not watford um and i'm currently about seven meters above sea |
| 1:06.0 | level at the base of hampton hill well we were going to meet face to face, weren't we, on the South Bank in London, our Sierra Nevada, |
| 1:14.3 | the two podcasting world, our Attitude Camp's home venue. |
| 1:18.6 | But we had to invoke the extreme weather protocol, didn't we? |
| 1:22.7 | The weather's not being great. |
| 1:23.7 | We had the heat wave here in the UK last week. |
| 1:27.1 | It's now turned, well, it feels autumnal, almost, windy and rainy. |
| 1:31.6 | Not ideal conditions for outdoor podcasting. |
| 1:35.1 | Not without a serious rain jacket. |
| 1:37.5 | Yeah, this is very much indoor podcasting. |
| 1:41.8 | So we haven't yet met face to face. I mean, we don't want to give the impression |
| 1:45.8 | that you've been in hibernation, Graham, since the tour of Britain last year. We have met face |
| 1:50.4 | to face several times over the last few months, but this is our build-up to the 2026 Tour de France. |
| 1:57.1 | And yeah, we'll be on the road again in a few weeks time before we go any further we should also |
| 2:02.2 | say a hearty congratulations to daniel and michaeli pelacci and brian nighard on their |
| 2:08.9 | giro vagando and they're now taking a well-earned rest after three weeks of well eating nothing |
| 2:14.2 | but prosciutto around italy and bulgaria and another triumphant Giro Detalia for them. |
| 2:21.4 | Following on from that, when do we start calling you Bernie Lionel? |
... |
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