S8 Ep91: Life in the Peloton – Back on the road: A diary of racing in a pandemic
The Cycling Podcast
The Cycling Podcast
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2020
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is Mitch's audio diary from the week he rejoined his EF Pro Cycling teammates and pinned on a number for the first time since the Aussie summer.
We follow the team as they tackle the white roads of Strade Bianche and an edition of Milan-Sanremo like no other.
Join Mitch as he takes a taxi to Barcelona airport with Lawson Craddock and Mike Woods for their flight to Italy and follow their journey like a fly on the wall.
We go inside the team bus and the Tuscan villa that was their base for the first part of the week to hear how the peloton has adapted to racing again. And we find out what the new reality is like as the sport adapts to the coronavirus crisis.
Along the way we meet his sports directors, mechanics, soigneurs, the team's bus driver and some riders from other teams to gain an insight into what it's like to be back in the peloton.
Keep in touch with Life in the Peloton
Keep up to date with everything that’s going on with Life in the Peloton at my website lifeinthepeloton.com
Check out my range of Life in the Peloton merchandise on our Etsy store too, from beanies and caps to embroidered tees, logo tees and much more. Visit the Etsy store.
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Instagram: @lifeinthepeloton
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Theme music
The theme music for Life in the Peloton was composed by Pete Shelley, who was lead singer of the punk band Buzzcocks. It was commissioned by the production company behind Channel 4’s coverage of the Tour de France in the 1980s and was used as the theme music for the nightly highlights show. Pete died in December 2018. We were given permission by Pete’s widow and his manager to continue using the music for the theme tune to Life in the Peloton. To hear more about the music, listen to the Andre Greipel episode of Life in the Peloton.
The music in this episode is by Amaraterra, who also feature in The Cycling Podcast's Giro d'Italia coverage each year.
This episode was produced by Will Jones.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're welcome back to racing everyone. |
| 0:28.9 | I'm doing well mate. I've recovered. It feels like I've been on a bit of a grand tour or something. I've only done two one day races. |
| 0:50.9 | I got back from those two one day races and I felt like I needed to have a little mini-off season. It was pretty hectic. The racing was hard. It was hard being away from the family. It was hard being back in the old life again. |
| 1:02.9 | What do you say back in the old life again? What is this week's episode all about? |
| 1:07.9 | I think this is a really good idea. You came to me with this idea and you said, you know, it could be interesting to get a bit of a diary on your first race back. |
| 1:14.9 | At that point I thought it was going to be too repulant. My program got changed to Strata Bianchi and Milan San Remo. We thought, I don't know, can this idea still work? |
| 1:23.9 | But it did work brilliantly because what I didn't think about was this time between when these bubbles now there is no going home between one day races. |
| 1:32.9 | We stayed together for the week in Italy in a beautiful Tuscan Villa by the way. It was just a really cool atmosphere. |
| 1:41.9 | Cool, weird, whatever you want to call it. I sort of recorded snippets over the whole week and try to give everyone a little tiny insight to what life was like back on the road. |
| 1:53.9 | Or what life is like on the road as a pro cyclist staying with the team talking to mechanics, talking to riders before the race, before the recon after the race. |
| 2:02.9 | You know, during the week when we were just kicking back as well, it's actually turned out of hell of a lot better than I initially thought it might. |
| 2:09.9 | It's kind of a fly on the wall of the EF pro cycling team bus and inside the magnificent Tuscan Villa which I think you do mention half a dozen times or so through the course of this episode. |
| 2:20.9 | So it must have been spectacular. It was it was actually brilliant. I tell you what I really did feel lucky there. I was not telling my wife how good it was. |
| 2:28.9 | I was trying to hold it back, but it was a place I'd love to go to and spend my own money there. It was running the heart of Tuscan Villa. Beautiful, you know, vineyards rolling. |
| 2:38.9 | And I did joke about us like you don't want with the boys. If we did happen to get locked down here for two weeks, it wouldn't be that bad to be honest. |
| 2:46.9 | I T what though after about a week, it did sort of wear on and it was nice to move on down to Milan where we finished Milan's and Rimo and ultimately it was great to get back home. |
| 2:55.9 | So who are we going to hear from in this episode, Mitch? |
| 2:58.9 | So I would do want to explain this because there's lots of voices in this episode. I've got my teammates first off, you know, we've got Mike Woods, we've got Logan Owen, we've got Lawson Cratic, Sean Bennett, Magnus Court, Nielsen, Simon Clark and Alberto Betiole. |
| 3:14.9 | They're all the teammates who are down there racing strata Bianchi and Sanremo. Sean Bennett was there as an emergency. He ended up filling up for Logan Owen who dropped out and ultimately Sanremo, they dropped it right or out. |
| 3:26.9 | So only the under six riders, but we get to hear from everyone quite good little dynamics. We also get to hear from the two director sportives Juan Margarate and Fabricio Guidi. |
| 3:36.9 | I also try and talk to as many staff members as we can and we're talking with also Swanier's Pascal and Sophie, mechanics JJ George and also the bus driver, Baja. |
| 3:49.9 | I also get to chat to a few little friends along the way and you know other riders Dan McLeese on there Roy Sutherland, Armin Jensen who's from the winning team of both races. |
... |
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