Bling / Michael Matthews joins the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation spanning his entire career — from a motocross-obsessed kid in Canberra who stumbled into cycling, to Australian champion within six months, to a decade-plus at the top of the World Tour.

Bling opens up on the origin of his nickname, meeting Kobe Bryant in a hotel elevator during his first year as a pro, and the eerie parallel of watching LeBron James walk through a crowd in Paris untouched. He walks through the highs — winning the Green Jersey with Sunweb, the emotional 2017 Tour de France stage win in Rodez two years after breaking ribs on the same climb, the legendary Green Edge "Aussie rock star" era — and the lows, including a horror pre-Tour crash in 2014 and a brutal, injury-riddled run through the 2015 Tour just weeks before his wedding.

He also reflects candidly on team culture then versus now, what he sees of his younger self in Tadej Pogačar, the role his wife and daughter play in keeping him motivated at 35, and why the World Championships remains the one jersey that's slipped through his fingers — with Canada, a course that's been kind to him before, right around the corner.

Dr. David Spindler is a neuroscientist, cognitive performance strategist, and elite athlete wellbeing expert who's spent his career helping athletes and teams understand that brain chemicals matter. He's worked with some of the biggest names in professional sport, most famously alongside Mark Cavendish through the darkest years of his career, chronicled in Netflix's "Never Enough."

Three big segments in this one.

Team culture. David breaks down the actual neurochemistry behind why old-school GreenEDGE had that "I'd do anything for my mate next to me" quality — it comes down to oxytocin, the same bonding chemical released when a parent holds their newborn, and why some teams manufacture it constantly while others can't buy it no matter how much they spend. He and Alex build an entire hypothetical Australian WorldTour team from a blank sheet of paper — values, non-negotiables, culture — and get into why "old school Green Edge" gets thrown around constantly but almost nobody can actually define what it means.

Concussion. A proper breakdown of concussion protocols in the peloton and why cycling is dangerously behind rugby and the NFL on brain safety — including the messy legal reason nobody wants to call an impact sensor a "concussion sensor," and who actually carries liability when a rider gets hurt.

Training the brain. David explains the real neuroscience of reactionary decision-making, why riders like Tadej Pogačar seem to have supernatural crash radar, and the actual mechanics of how he trains neural efficiency in elite endurance athletes to extend time to exhaustion — plus how his own PhD on decision-making under physiological load in professional cyclists led him down this path in the first place.

The boys have a plan to get Tadej Pogačar down under.

Meanwhile the Vuelta has completely flipped on its head, someone's playing it ice cold in the red jersey, and the mountain bike world championships produced one of the most ridiculous rides of the year from a guy who basically chose to start from the back. Max's new top five ranks the teams he'd actually send a rider to and there's a brand new segment debuting this week that involves some very confident guesswork about riders' salaries.

We're (Alex is) sorry — Monday's show fell apart in a car park in Stage 3, so here's the make-up episode. Max's 9th All Australian jacket, plus Ed hard-launches the next cycling project: an Everesting attempt in October with zero training.:Max's Top 5 on fixing cycling coverage and a full Vuelta recap.

Alex sits down with Matthew Richardson at his home in Manchester for his most open interview yet. The world's fastest man over 200m takes us inside the Japanese Keirin World Series — the deliberate hit that broke his scapula and put him in a Tokyo hospital, body armour, betting culture, and three days locked away with no phone and a stack of second-hand DVDs.

Then, the full story of the switch: deciding on Christmas Day to leave Australia for Great Britain, telling AusCycling after winning silver in Paris, the equipment saga, the two-year ban threat that became a lifetime ban, and why he'd do it all again. Plus 240kg squats, why he never trains his upper body, creatine, LA 2028, and a golf handicap that shouldn't be ten.

Keeno's back from 44 days in France. Matthew Keenan, Max and Alex wrap the Tour and TDFF. We preview the Vuelta a España — UAE's three-headed monster, Gall, Onley, Landa's last World Tour Grand Tour, Tuckwell's GT debut — and run through Hamburg, Czech Tour, Norway (Uno-X, obviously), Del Toro's deal to 2031 and the transfer whirl. Max's Top 5 commentators, with Keeno sitting right there. We also pay tribute to Finlay Tarling.

Wednesday: Team GB sprinter Matthew Richardson.

James Moran is Head of Nutrition at Uno-X Mobility, joining the team in December 2019 as a consultant when they were still a Conti squad, before building the entire nutrition program from the ground up as they turned WorldTour. What began with just a list of riders and no instructions beyond "teach them about nutrition," has grown into three full-time chefs and nutritionists across the men's and women's programs. He works closely with nutrition partner Mauten on carbohydrate absorption research and oral microbiome testing, and was central to Jonas Abrahamsen's transformation from 68kg to 78kg - one of the team's biggest nutrition success stories. Before cycling, James worked in track cycling with British Cycling, and has also consulted across boxing, tennis, and rugby.

Plappy's back from San Sebastián.

Max's off-season plans hinge on one thing: Melbourne's finals run. Either he's playing in a grand final, or he's Everesting a climb in South Australia with Ed Langdon — completely untrained, in the hunt to be the heaviest person to ever do it. Also floated: getting Plappy to hand down one of his old sports cars as the podcast's official team car.

On the bike: Wout van Aert's Denmark treble, Jensen's cruel near-miss ("biggest blue balls of my life" per his own Instagram), Marco Brenner's Poland win, Remco's record San Sebastián, and Felix Gall's Burgos victory — with Oscar Onley's return to form the one Plappy was happiest to see. Gianni Moscon adds another line to the rap sheet with a fresh DQ.

Max builds out his All-Australian squad (37 riders deep and counting, no room for Uno-X yet despite their stacked year) and floats basing a second Aussie team in Asia. Plus Max's Pillar Performance Top 5 out-of-contract riders — Danny van Poppel, Habats, Christophe Laporte, Toms Skujiņš and Laurens De Plus — a Comm Games track wrap, and the reveal of the TDF Femmes Zwift prize winner, a 26-year-old triathlete lawyer from Adelaide who couldn't have written a better use for it himself.

Plus your voicenotes.

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The final episode of an incredible nine days — Max makes his case for "Team FDJ," a 2024 grudge resurfaces, and one mid-race turn from an unlikely rider blows the whole GC group apart before the decisive finale.

In this episode:

• Demi's callback to 2024 and the full context behind it — was Kasha really in the wrong?
• Max declares himself "Team Demi" while defending FDJ's road captain instincts
• Zoe Baxter's monster turn splits the group and takes down a podium contender
• The "Longini" nickname is born, and UAE's surprising third-fifth-seventh haul
• Breaking down the polka dot jersey points system — and why it clearly wasn't designed for the GC leader to win it
• Full prize wrap-up: Oakley Metas, TDU hamper, and the Zwift setup winner still to come
• A genuine debate on race length — should TDFF ever go beyond nine days?
• What's next on the calendar for the whole peloton before Worlds
• Amy signs off — for now — with a standing invite back for Social Club

🚴‍♀️ Tour de France Femmes 2026 coverage with Max Gawn & Amy Jones — thanks for following along all nine days
🎧 Zwift smart trainer winner announced on tomorrow's Social Club episode
🎙️ Send us your voice notes — link in bio, speakpipe.com/stanleystsocial

#TourDeFranceFemmes #TDFF2026 #StanleyStSocial #CyclingPodcast

Will Max's solo laptop-battery monologue finally sees the light of day? Alex rides Ventoux himself, and a genuinely controversial corner sparks the most heated debate of the whole Tour — was it a block, or just racing?

In this episode:

• Alex's own Ventoux ascent, and a Strava time nobody's allowed to see yet
• Ventoux recap: Niewiadoma's decisive attack, and how badly the favourites underestimated her
• Longo Borghini's quiet, selfless ride that may have saved someone's GC entirely
• The corner that's split the podcast down the middle — Amy makes her case, with "extensive video evidence"
• Vollering takes yellow for the fourth time in eight stages — genuinely one of the tightest GCs in years
• What Canyon-SRAM should do with the white jersey heading into the final day
• Prize money reality check — why the white jersey might be worth less than a sausage roll and a Coke
• Final stage preview: four ascents of the Col d'Èze, GC still wide open, huge prizes on the line
• Tips locked in — including one accusation of bias that doesn't go unnoticed

🚴‍♀️ Daily Tour de France Femmes coverage with Max Gawn & Amy Jones🎧 New episode every stage — follow so you don't miss one🎙️ Send us your voice notes — link in bio, speakpipe.com/stanleystsocial🕶️ Final stage prizes: Oakley Metas, a TDU hamper, and the GC comp winner revealed

#TourDeFranceFemmes #TDFF2026 #StanleyStSocial #CyclingPodcast