Domestique Cycling Podcast

Il Lombardia is on Saturday, and for the first time since 2020 Tadej Pogacar will not win it. Remco Evenepoel goes to Como as the new European champion. In Slovenia he crashed on a descent, attacked again and beat Giulio Ciccone in a photo finish.

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We look back at the Euros. Evenepoel crashed and got back on quickly. Ciccone stopped taking turns while Christian Scaroni chased alone in third. Belgium rode for one leader only, with Ramses Debruyne and Maxim Van Gils doing the work. Demi Vollering won the women's race solo in her first race as world champion. We also cover the Giro dell'Emilia, where Davide Piganzoli won, Tom Pidcock was second again, and Brandon McNulty attacked in the rainbow jersey.

Then we turn to Lombardia: 239 kilometres from Bergamo to Como over the Madonna del Ghisallo. The finale is the same as in 2022, over San Fermo della Battaglia and Civiglio, with a fast descent to the line. Does that suit Evenepoel, Pidcock or Paul Seixas best? How does UAE split leadership if Isaac del Toro starts next to McNulty? Can Enric Mas win a classic? We also discuss Bram's stat that Evenepoel and Primož Roglič never shared a race day as Red Bull teammates.

We finish with our podium picks and say goodbye to Bauke Mollema and Pello Bilbao, who both retire at the end of the season.

Thor Hushovd, former world champion and now general manager of Uno-X Mobility, joins Aidan Burgess on the Domestique Hotseat. This is the week the UCI confirmed new standards for finish barriers and a push for GPS tracking. Thor says the talking has to stop and the action has to start.

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He talks about what it is like to run a team of 50 riders and fear the worst phone call. He says every 10 metres of road holds a danger, and that he has had calls from parents asking if their sons are safe. He says the UCI, race organisers, teams and riders all have to take their share of the responsibility.

Thor also looks back at the rainbow jersey he won in Australia in 2010. He talks about how aero suits, narrow handlebars and wind tunnels changed racing, and whether cycling needs shorter formats, like a criterium world championship, to reach a younger audience.

Then it's Uno-X Mobility: why the men's team is only Norwegian and Danish, why the women's team is more international for now, and how the team keeps its trust-based culture as it grows. He also confirms that more signings are coming, including what he calls big names.

Brandon McNulty won the 2026 World Championships road race in Montréal. He attacked alone with 33 kilometres to go, held on by 13 seconds, and became the first American to win the elite men's title since 1993. Michael Matthews took silver the day after his 36th birthday. Mathieu van der Poel attacked from a long way out and still took bronze.

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We go through the whole race. There was the 16 rider break, and France setting a brutal pace with Bruno Armirail on the front for four laps. Van der Poel took Oscar Onley, Quinn Simmons and Primož Roglič with him in a move that stayed out for almost 70 kilometres, and Remco Evenepoel kept fighting his way back after being dropped. Then McNulty went clear. Isaac del Toro, his UAE teammate, would not chase, and Matteo Jorgenson followed every counterattack. Tom Pidcock attacked again and again, and we ask whether those attacks helped the chase or killed it.

We also talk about Paul Seixas cramping on the last lap at 20 years old, and the pressure on him in France. Should trade teams have this much influence at the Worlds? We also look at Matthews' silver after breaking both arms this spring, and Sallanches 2027 with 5,700 metres of climbing.

In the women's race, Demi Vollering finally won the rainbow jersey. She was caught, attacked again on the last lap and beat Kasia Niewiadoma in the sprint, which completes the Triple Crown of Giro, Tour and Worlds. We also cover the UCI's fines for Eritrea's kit and Vollering's yellow card, then preview the European Championships in Slovenia.

Alice Towers should have been lining up for Great Britain at the World Championships in Montréal this week. Instead, a crash in a wet race in France left her unconscious, in hospital and with a concussion. She has no memory of it. Two weeks later she sits down with Aidan Burgess to explain what the injury has done to her.

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She is open about the symptoms. There was a pounding headache that felt like her heart was beating inside her head, and her fuse became so short that small things upset her. On her first ride outside she stopped to check her wheel, then her headset, before she realised the problem was her balance. She also explains the return to training protocol. It starts with 30 minutes on the trainer below 120 bpm, and any symptoms mean she has to wait another day.

Then the conversation turns to the race she is missing. She talks about Zoe Backstedt's silver in the time trial and Team GB's plan to attack in the road race. She explains why racing a circuit with no radios is so confusing from inside the bunch. She also gives her picks for the podium and backs her EF Education-Oatly teammates, including defending champion Magdeleine Vallieres at a home Worlds.

The last part of the episode is about her. Towers is 23 and in her first season at EF after three years at Canyon//SRAM. She talks about wanting more chances for herself without giving up the domestique work she loves. She would like to target the Ardennes, and she looks ahead to the 2027 Tour de France Femmes, which starts in Britain and goes through the Peak District roads where she learned to ride. She also has an opinion on whether women's cycling needs a three week Grand Tour.

Andreas Leknessund joins Aidan Burgess from his hotel room in Montréal, the day after the World Championships time trial and just over a week after finishing the Vuelta a España. With Tadej Pogačar out after his Vuelta crash, the Uno-X Mobility rider says Sunday's road race is "more open than ever".

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He talks through his own time trial, where he rode the 400 watts he was aiming for and still finished 32nd. He also explains what three weeks of the Vuelta do to a rider's legs, and how Norway approached the mixed relay after Katrine Aalerud crashed on the recon.

Then the road race. Leknessund looks at Remco Evenepoel's fourth straight time trial title, Paul Seixas's surprise bronze, Mathieu van der Poel's long solo in Luxembourg and Wout van Aert's form from the Vuelta. Without Pogačar setting the race, he expects more tactics, more riders with a real chance and more room for early attacks, which is where his own chance lies.

He also goes back to stage 7 of the Vuelta, his first Grand Tour stage win, with Tobias Halland Johannessen second on the day Norway lost King Harald V. After his near misses at the Giro, he did not believe he had won until the last kilometer.

Remco Evenepoel won his fourth straight world time trial title in Montréal by 57 seconds from Filippo Ganna, and now he goes for something no man has done: the time trial and the road race at the same Worlds. Tadej Pogačar is out. Paul Seixas and Isaac del Toro finished one and two on this circuit two weeks ago. Mathieu van der Poel has just ridden 174 kilometres alone in Luxembourg. The 2026 World Championships road race is on Sunday: 273.7 kilometres and twelve laps of Mount Royal.

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We start with the weekend. Evenepoel put time into Ganna on every section of the time trial, while Ganna rode a negative split. We also get into why a 40 kilometre time trial is its own discipline, and why pacing it confused so many riders. Then we look at the road race team by team.

Belgium have Evenepoel and Wout van Aert, and no dedicated helper for Van Aert. France bring Seixas, Sivakov and an eight-rider team we expect to race to blow things up. We also cover Great Britain with Pidcock and Adam Yates, Denmark, Germany with Lipowitz and Brenner, Ecuador without Carapaz, Italy with Ciccone, Pellizzari and Lorenzo Finn, Van der Poel's Dutch team, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia with Roglič, Spain with Enric Mas, Switzerland, and a US team with McNulty and Simmons.

Enric Mas is the winner of the 2026 Vuelta a España, the first Spanish winner of his home Grand Tour since Alberto Contador in 2014. Four Vuelta podiums, three of them second places, and at 31 he finally has the one that counts. Primoz Roglic is second at 2:15, Felix Gall third at 2:44.

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Bram and Ethan go through the final week: two more sprint wins for Matthew Brennan, who finished his debut Grand Tour with five, the Jerez time trial where Mas lost only 33 seconds to Roglic, Sepp Kuss riding from eleventh to fifth on the queen stage, and Tobias Halland Johannessen finally winning one in Granada after years of second places.

Then there is the argument. The organisers took general classification times with 9.8 kilometres to go on the final stage, so the last lap did not count. There was no crash and nothing overtly dangerous about the circuit. Is a Grand Tour that has to disable its own classification to run its finale still a twenty one stage race?

After that it is Canada. Remco Evenepoel won GP de Québec, Isaac del Toro beat Paul Seixas in a two up sprint in Montréal, and Evenepoel finished fifth after spending too much of the race in the middle of the group. Del Toro and Seixas both look like Worlds contenders now. The elite men's road race is on 27 September, on many of the same roads.

Full Worlds preview next week.

Finlay Pickering finished the Vuelta a España sick, and he tells Aidan Burgess he never once thought about climbing off. The Jayco AlUla rider spoke to us on the morning of the final stage in Granada, a day after Mikel Landa's win on the Collado del Alguacil and two days after the worst day he has ever had on a bike.

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He is honest about what went wrong. A good time trial, then a stomach that stopped working, then 30 minutes lost on stage 19 and a top 20 on general classification gone with it. His reason for staying out there is the best line in the episode: a DNF on ProCyclingStats is not something he wants next to his name.

There is a proper masterclass in here on racing in the heat. Pickering does not think the heat was his problem at all, and he has little patience with the idea that the Vuelta in August is a surprise. Saunas, a training block in Spain, 20 minutes at a time, every day, building slowly. He explains exactly how he does it and why most people get it wrong by cooking themselves once and never going back.

He also makes the case for Enric Mas. Pogačar crashing out changed the race, but Pickering argues the winner still had Roglič, Kuss, Carapaz and Gall to beat, and points back to the day Mas chased Pogačar down on the road. His view on racing the best rider in the world is simple: you do not want to fight a guy who is nought and 26.

Plus stage 20 from inside the bunch, Landa as a hero from his childhood, the Worlds without Pogačar, a losing bet on red at the Monaco start, and the supermarket start line in Granada.

Enric Mas reaches the second rest day of the Vuelta a España in red, 2:06 ahead of Felix Gall and 2:10 ahead of Primož Roglič. The man with four Vuelta podiums and no Grand Tour win is now the favourite, and Bram and Ethan spend this episode working out whether he can actually finish the job.

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Mas took 27 seconds at Calar Alto and another 25 on La Pandera, and Movistar have controlled this race in a way nobody expected from them. That leads to the argument that runs through the whole episode: with Tadej Pogačar out and his season now over, does this Vuelta come with an asterisk next to it? Bram says it should not. Ethan says nobody looks up who crashed out twenty years later.

Then the heat. 41 degrees on the road to Loja, riders taken to hospital, and Sunday's stage into Córdoba cut by 79.5 kilometres under the extreme weather protocol. Both hosts think the measures are the right ones and both think they are aimed at the wrong end of the day, with the Vuelta moving finishes later for television rather than starting in the cool of the morning.

There is a lot of good racing in here too. Wout van Aert won twice in three days and controlled the whole finale in Córdoba, Visma are on five stage wins with three of them from Matthew Brennan on his Grand Tour debut, and Jakob Omrzel and Marco Brenner produced the two surprises of the week. Bram and Ethan then look at the final week: the Jerez time trial, Peñas Blancas, the brutal stage 20 to Collado del Alguacil, and a Granada finish that is not a parade.

Plus the Tour of Britain, where Tim Wellens took the overall and UAE filled the podium on the final stage in Earlston. Ethan was at stage 1 in Lincoln to see Lewis Askey win.

A heads up on the end of this one: Bram's internet dropped in the middle of the Tour of Britain section, so the episode finishes earlier than usual.

Finn Fisher-Black joined Aidan Burgess on the first rest day of the Vuelta a España, four days after Tadej Pogačar crashed out of a race he was leading by nearly four minutes.

He is honest about his former teammate. People assume Pogačar wins so often that a bad day cannot really hurt, and Fisher-Black says that is exactly backwards. Everyone starts each race the same, everyone wants to win, and nobody turns up to a Grand Tour without doing the work. He explains how the news travelled through the bunch, how quickly the racing stopped, and how close his own team came to being caught in the same crash.

Then the race that is left. Fisher-Black rides for Primož Roglič, who was hit by a car on a training camp only weeks before the start and could barely get on a bike. Nobody in the team knew what they had until the racing began. He talks about how you read Roglič's mood, why the calm version is the fast one, and why he thinks the last week will be the best one.

There is also the tactical picture. With UAE no longer policing the race, nobody seems to want the job, and Fisher-Black explains why that opens up breakaway after breakaway, why he still fancies a move with Jay Vine and Pavel Sivakov in it, and how much freedom he gets while his leader sits second overall.

Plus the Monaco time trial and rolling out of a casino, the warm-up he makes up as he goes, the hail on the Font Romeu stage and the hotel that took the peloton in, the five-star reviews that got deleted, the mattress in the background of the call, the drink bottle scrums, and why he still wants to go back to the track.

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