Welcome back to the Lantern Rouge Cycling Podcast with Benji Niesen. I said yesterday stage 8 was possibly the most exciting stage of the tour so far.

Well, stage 7 even as well, but today's stage 9 was definitely my pick the day before the rest day.

But the yellow jersey changing hands 90 kilometer solo breakaways attacks literally from the gun for the first 50 kilometers,

GC action, groups across the road,

a stage for the ages, and one I'll definitely remember fondly for a long time.

One, I'm probably going to go back and watch the last two or three hours of it in full.

But I'll hand over to Benji to intro the stage and set us up for just before the G.C. action kicking off.

Today's stage started in ball we finish in La'Are. Throughout the parkour we've got pre-proper climbs in the sense that we have firstly a fourth

cat in the first two kilometers that I don't necessarily see as a decisive climate

is far and cool. Nonetheless it kind of was because for the first 50 kilometers of

the stage we had so many attacks. I'll I'll go into that in the second.

After that 50 kilometers, we start the first proper kilometer day, first guy,

God Lausier.

That one is 11.8 kilometers of 8.3% average already had a lot of action on that.

And I had 2 kilometers of downhill towards the cul de soude and that is basically just

going to the top again 3.8 kilometers at 7.4 percent. Then a downhill towards the intermediate sprint and that is basically

around 70 to 80 kilometers from the line and then it's a bit of a flat section

until we have a small fat cat.

And after that, we go towards the called the Marib Blanc,

which is 7.3 kilometers at 8.7% average with percentages up to like 14 to 13% so quite intense

there's also a bonus gate on top for bonus seconds which will come into play in

the stage summary and after that a

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