Benji Naesen

Welcome back to the Lantern Rouge Cycling Podcast.

Recap of the final stage of the Tour Au Verne Rhone Alps.

Did you know, Benji, that in French, or at least I saw on the Le Groupetto forum, the acronym they've got is TAURA, not TARA.

Okay.

I'm just trying to, like, you know, remove, like, close all the apps on my phone because it's charging on the computer battery.

I'm in Notre Dame de Brioncent.

I've made us turn off the exit.

We're off to Albertville.

And then I can see Roadworks, where we're trying to get back on, which I think happens to me 100% of the time that we go off the planned route in France.

So might not be getting to Tignes anytime soon.

expectations did we have or was there the question of success kind of no we we thought like last night we said del toro should win because the the wounds of success looked more than just like they looked like he had a proper crash so yeah i didn't you know him doing a big raid on the design we hoped he did it for the stage like for the the entertainment but i don't think

Yeah, del Toro was going into the stage as GC favourite, not having to do too much.

just to shoot, he's ahead of Cexas, he's got to put seven seconds ahead of Jorgensen, there's no bonies, but he can just burst away from him, we'd see what would happen on the final climb, and then we, but yeah, we have a breakaway formation, again, not televised, and we see the whole Ineos team in the breakaway, so Diplus with Carlos Rodriguez, they're going for the stage win, because he's out of GC, they then have, who else is in the break, Astana guy?

I don't know about starting.

I mean, if he wants to start, every team lets riders start with scrapes or after crashes the previous day.

I think that's a normal thing in cycling.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Like, did he realistically have a chance to win today?

Like, we, even without knowing his condition, we thought pretty unrealistic that he's going to drop Del Toro by a minute after that crash of yesterday.

So then probably better to park it up.