Home Roads

Phil Southerland thought he would be dead by now. Instead, his achievements in cycling are an inspiration to millions of others who live with diabetes. Diagnosed as a child with type 1, simply surviving was the original plan, but getting out and riding became his life. Being part of a team of diabetic riders that won the Race Across America was the springboard to Phil putting together a group of pros who all live and compete with the condition - Team Novo Nordisk. We headed out on the bikes from Phil's Atlanta home into the Georgia countryside, where a local dog - and not low blood sugar - was the biggest risk we faced.

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Chip Hawkins has spent his whole life in America's Deep South, where he founded Wahoo. He is the first to admit that, for a lot of his adult life, he did very little exercise. That all changed in his thirties, and he went all in, but for a man obsessed with data, it was a frustrating experience. The devices on the market at the time were clunky at best, and often refused to talk to each other, so Chip set about solving the problems himself. In the process, he created Wahoo Fitness - which also happens to be the current sponsor of Home Roads. Despite running a half-marathon the next day, Chip took me on a leisurely, if chilly, roll around the backwoods north of Atlanta, GA where he lives, and where Wahoo is based, to tell me the whole story.

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Luxembourg is a small place, and Bob Jungels is its biggest sports star. He is the national champion, so who better than to explore the country with. Bob divides his time between his base in Switzerland, and back home, on the outskirts of Luxembourg City, which is where I met him just before he headed to the Giro d'Italia. The ride almost didn't happen, due to my hurried packing and a couple of mechanicals, but eventually we managed to head off on a 100km loop (which you can find on my Strava feed). What was slightly daunting was Bob was in peak, pre-Grand Tour form, and already had one of the biggest engines in the pro peloton...

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Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome are both British winners of the Tour de France and both on the same team. This year, now their team sponsor has changed from Sky to Ineos, they both want to win it again - or at least they did. I recorded these interviews one day in May separately with each rider (and then cut them together) while we spun the legs on Wahoo Kickrs at the team house just outside Monaco. Their strict training schedules and the potential risk meant a ride out in the open wasn't on the cards. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks after the recording, Chris Froome crashed during the Critérium du Dauphiné, and the injuries meant he wouldn't compete in the 2019 Tour. Geraint will, and the conversations with both riders are - I hope you will find - still very interesting.

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This Jon Snow is one of Britain's best-known news anchors - and not the character from Game of Thrones as he has had to explain in recent years, and did once more for my benefit. As well as his extensive experience reporting from the field, interviewing Presidents, Prime Ministers and despots around the world, Jon also loves to cycle. I met him on a Monday morning at his North London home, for the short commute to the Channel 4 newsroom at the headquarters of news organisation ITN. The same building where I began my own journalistic career.

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Sir Bradley Wiggins is one of cycling's greats. The first Briton to win the Tour de France; the Hour Record holder; an Olympic champion in multiple disciplines. Since retiring though, you won't be surprised to hear he doesn't ride as much as he used to. In fact, while recording this, I didn't see him on a bike at all. So instead, we chatted as we travelled around Britain together for a theatre tour during the Autumn. Other well-known names crop up, like Sir Dave Brailsford, Mark Cavendish and Sean Yates. This, though, is quite different to other episodes, but then Brad is very different to every other cyclist.

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It's not easy to go from being at the top of your game, winning trophies, to starting again in a completely different world, but that's what Australian former pro Simon Gerrans is doing. Having left his homeland as a teenager to race in Europe, Simon went on triumph on some of the biggest stages. He called the likes of Monaco and Andorra home, but now it's in Clapham, South London with his wife and children. Why? So he can begin a new life in the world of international finance.

See more on Instagram and find the route on Strava.

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It's often said that professional cycling is closer to its fans than any other sport. You can ride the same roads, you don't need to buy a ticket to watch and, as I found in Rotherham, the pros often train amongst us mere mortals. Like their dad before them, Dean and Russell Downing have been riding this chaingang since they were "knee-high to a grasshopper". The same goes for Ben Swift too and several other racers who joined me in a sizeable group, marauding through the South Yorkshire countryside. Rather than just hanging on though, I tried my best to make the ride just a bit more interesting when it reached a crescendo...

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Kenton Cool is one of the World's most accomplished mountaineers. He has scaled Everest thirteen times (and may well have summited again by the time you hear this episode), as well as being the first to climb it and its neighbours Nuptse and Lhotse in one single prolonged expedition. As you'd imagine, he keeps incredibly fit, and road cycling forms a big part of his life. I caught up with the man now officially known as Dr Cool at his home in the Cotswolds for a ride in one of England's most beautiful areas.

See more on Instagram and find the route on Strava.

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A few years back, Ned Boulting thought the leader in the Tour de France wore the yellow "jumper”. After that initial hiccup (it's the yellow jersey, of course), Ned became one of the faces of bike race coverage in the UK, and more recently, took the microphone to become the voice that commentates on the biggest one of all. He also heads out on the road with his one-man tours Bikeology and Tour de Ned, but for this episode, we rolled across London along a fascinating route that is a favourite of Ned’s.

See more on Instagram and find the route on Strava.

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