S8 Ep128: Kilometre 0 – The climate challenge
The Cycling Podcast
The Cycling Podcast
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Slowly the focus on the sport's impact on the environment and the measures race organisers, teams and individuals can take to reduce the carbon footprint has intensified. Race organisers have taken steps to reduce littering, at least one team has stated an intention to work towards being carbon neutral and there is a gradual switch to hybrid vehicles.
But what more can be done?
And what about the environment's impact on pro cycling? Will an increasing frequency of 'freak' weather events affect races, will the heat and humidity of summer become too intense for the riders' safety? Could a Tour de France held in September actually be the future rather than a one-off forced by the coronavirus pandemic?
In this episode we hear from our audio diarists and also from climate experts about the two sides of the environmental story.
Kilometre 0 by The Cycling Podcast is supported by Zwift, the app for riding, training and racing at home. Kilometre 0 is a 15-part series published on weekday mornings during the Tour de France.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to Kilometre 0 by the Cycling Podcast. Power by Zwift, the fitness |
| 0:08.9 | app where fun is fast. |
| 0:12.9 | Well Rich, does that tell you back to last year's Tour de France? |
| 0:32.2 | It does line all yes. What a day that was, stage 19 of the tour. Everything was up for |
| 0:36.6 | grams. Julian Alaphilippe was still in the yellow jersey. We didn't really know what was |
| 0:40.1 | going to happen and what we certainly didn't expect was for the weather to play such a |
| 0:44.9 | role. Although if you remember the previous evening, we stayed in a shally up the hill and |
| 0:50.3 | the weather really turned that night. It was torrential rain. It was pretty dramatic. But |
| 0:54.8 | not as dramatic as what followed the next day as I was descending the Cod of these |
| 0:58.9 | were all in a car just ahead of the race. Sky turned black and the hillstones began |
| 1:04.2 | falling, the like of which I have never seen before. |
| 1:07.9 | Yeah, and that started a train of thought because during last year's Tour we were asked |
| 1:12.4 | a question by a listener about the Tour de France's impact on the environment but also the |
| 1:18.2 | environments likely impact on the Tour de France. And last summer the Giro Rousseau |
| 1:24.1 | all had a stage cancelled, didn't it? Because of altered significantly because of freak |
| 1:30.3 | weather, the stage in the Tour de France. So the Giro de Tire, yeah. We had a stage |
| 1:35.7 | altered there and then also at the Vuelta, the stage at Finne Chandoura, an incredible |
| 1:41.6 | hillstorm as well at the top of the mountain which didn't stop the stage but it had a real |
| 1:47.8 | impact on the spectators who were there and the riders as well. |
| 1:50.8 | And there was that incredible hillstorm in the Criterium de Dauphinie? |
| 1:56.5 | That's right, where riders were sheltering under whatever they could shelter under. I mean |
| 2:01.0 | freak weather happens but the incidence of freak weather are becoming more frequent. |
... |
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