Birnie Lionel - A Journey Through the Cycling Year

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781473555600

Version 1.0

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

VINTAGE

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright THE CYCLING PODCAST 2018
Cover photograph Simon Gill

The Cycling Podcast has asserted its right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Yellow Jersey Press in 2018

penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

To all our listeners and
friends of the podcast

Lionel Birnie co-presents The Cycling Podcast having covered the sport since the late nineties. He co-founded The Cycling Anthology and ghost-wrote Sean Kellys autobiography, Hunger.

Daniel Friebe co-presents The Cycling Podcast having written about cycling since the early 2000s. He is the author of Mountain High and Mountain Higher and The Cannibal, a biography of Eddy Merckx.

Richard Moore co-presents The Cycling Podcast and The Cycling Podcast Fminin and is the author of seven books, including In Search of Robert Millar, Slaying the Badger and tape.

Ciro Scognamiglio is The Cycling Podcasts favourite Italian and writes for La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Ashleigh Moolman Pasio, from South Africa, is one of the worlds top cyclists. She was second in the 2016 Womens Tour and in 2016 and 2017 won the Giro della Toscana Femminile.

Sebastien Piquet is the voice of Radio Tour at the Tour de France and other major races.

Franois Thomazeau is the former head of sport at Reuters France, the author of several novels and non-fiction books, a musician (recording and performing as Sauveur Merlan), and the owner of a restaurant in Marseille and a bookshop in Paris. He first reported on the Tour de France in 1986.

Orla Chennaoui is a presenter on Sky Sports and co-hosts The Cycling Podcast Fminin.

Fran Reyes is a Spanish cycling journalist with tremendous sideburns and a fine singing voice.

Joe Dombrowski is an American professional cyclist who has ridden for Team Sky and Cannondale-Drapac.

RM: Where are we, Lionel?

LB: Were in London, in the British Film Institute Caf, on a day when the sky has turned dark.

RM: Hurricane Ophelia. Is it a hurricane or a storm?

LB: Not sure. It started off as a hurricane, but its fading

RM: Its quite alarming, though. Feels apocalyptic. It feels like an appropriate sky under which to be discussing a sort-of review of the year.

LB: A review of cyclings last-ever season

RM: My names Richard Moore and Im with Lionel Birnie

LB: Hello, Richard.

RM: And Daniel Friebe.

DF: Hello.

RM: We are The Cycling Podcast team and were returning to our roots. This is a sort of home fixture, isnt it, because over the years weve recorded a lot from the South Bank. Why did we start recording here? [long pause]

RM: Lucrative sponsorship deal with the National Theatre?

LB: No. Well, it was just a convenient meeting place when we first started. Were like travelling players, arent we we pitch up and podcast wherever

DF: Mercenaries.

LB: This is kind of our home venue, our equivalent of The Globe, which is just along the South Bank here. This is where we feel at home.

RM: We do. I think because so much of our podcasting is at bike races, at Grand Tours, where youre forced by necessity to record wherever you can it might be by some bins, or in a bar were used to improvising. I think we like to have a bit of background hubbub: coffee machines, people chatting in the background, people staring at you as they walk past because were sitting here with microphones. So, anyway, this is the first Cycling Podcast book, a journey through the cycling year. Its by no means definitive, is it?

LB: Certainly not. What are we going to do? Were going to listen back to this then type it out and print it on paper? Its like the anti-podcast.

RM: It is. The whole point of podcasting is that its supposed to be quite easy. Were making quite a lot of work for ourselves. I think the goal of the podcast has always been to focus on where we are rather than to try to cover everything. To take advantage of the fact that we are at races and speaking to some people, and try to bring a bit of the race to the listeners ears, and this book is very much in the same vein. The idea is to take you, the listener (and now reader), through the cycling year. Well begin where we started the year but we should maybe first do a bit of background into the podcast and into ourselves. We are journalists

DF: [laughs] Sometimes.

RM: I think we can apply that term to what we do, can we not?

LB: I think the definition of a journalist has evolved and changed so much during the life of the podcast that we can still loosely attach that moniker to ourselves, cant we?

RM: We have covered the sport for quite a number of years. When was your first Tour de France, Daniel?

DF: 2001.

RM: You were the benjamin, were you?

DF: I was. I was the youngest man at the Tour. I was younger than any rider by some distance, a couple of years, I think.

RM: 2001? Who was the youngest rider that year?

DF: Thats a great question. I think it was no, it wouldnt have been Philippe Gilbert. It was before his time. Was it David Moncouti? There was an oath that year, because we were already on about the third Tour of Renewal. Every year when we started covering cycling there was a huge doping scandal that threatened to pull professional cycling under and then it really would have been the last podcast, the last season, the last Tour, which seemed possible back then. Anyway, this was one of the Tours of Renewal. It was supposed to relaunch the Tour de France, and there was a ceremonial oath about ethics and integrity read out on the start line of the first stage by the youngest rider in the race, and a white dove was released. That doesnt happen any more, does it? Do you not remember this?