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The road.cc Podcast

road.cc

The official podcast of road.cc sponsored by Hammerhead, dedicated to looking at the things that impact real cyclists. Brought to you by road.cc, the UK's number one website for independent reviews, buying advice and cycling news. Covering road cycling, gravel riding, cycle commuting, leisure riding, sportives and more!

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21 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 11 min
English

Episodes 21

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Tuesday · 1 hr 30 min
What makes Demi Vollering the greatest stage racer of her generation? + The growth of women’s cycling and why the Tour de France Femmes’ visit to Mont Ventoux was so significant
Send us Fan Mail On the latest episode of the road.cc Podcast, we reflect on a big summer of women’s racing, a historic trip to the Giant of Provence, Emily dissects why Demi Vollering’s so good, and Ryan chases some professional cyclists around France
August 6 · 51 min
“There are bigger issues to tackle than people on e-bikes”: How a bike shop turned detectives to track down a cargo bike wrongly seized and destroyed by the police
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July 31 · 1 hr 7 min
“We’re seeing some insane new records”: Why are Tour de France speeds getting higher and higher? + Dispatches from the Alps and Paris
Send us Fan Mail So, why is the Tour de France peloton getting faster and faster? That was the question I posed to UAE Team Emirates boss Mauro Gianetti, Geraint Thomas, and MPCC president Emily Brammeier during the race’s record-smashing final week. Later in the episode, we head into the heart of the Alps, and then down onto the boulevards of Paris for an audio retrospective of the Tour’s epic final weekend, featuring a chat on the Alpe d’Huez finish line with podcast alum Conor Delves, the star and creator of the acclaimed Cadel Evans play Lungs on Legs, who was busy hanging out with cycling royalty and prepping his next run of shows in the Alps. I also chatted to some British fans who made the pilgrimage to Alpe d’Huez (including one couple who’d been there for five days before the race arrived), and climbed to the roof of the Tour, the Col du Galibier, before embarking on the long, long drive back to Paris for the Tour’s thrilling finale on the slopes of Montmartre and the cobbles of the Champs-Élysées. And a few celebratory end-of-Tour beers too, of course.
July 23 · 34 min
Phone calls, barbecues, and bingeing Gossip Girl: What do Tour de France teams get up to on rest days?
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July 17 · 47 min
Tadej Pogačar’s so fast that even Colnago is battling to keep up with him
Send us Fan Mail As speeds continue to ramp up at the Tour de France, spearheaded by the imperious Tadej Pogačar, we chat to Colnago’s lead engineer Filippo Galli about how to build a Tour de France-winning bike, why aero bikes are all the rage (even on the climbs), and why the biggest bike brands in the world are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of the peloton. Plus, we headed to the UAE Team Emirates bus at the Tour to catch up with Bostjan Kavcnik, Pogačar’s mechanic and the man who built the future superstar’s first ever bike back home in Slovenia. Bostian chats about life as a Tour de France mechanic, his relationship, both personal and professional, with cycling’s most dominant rider, how it feels watching someone he knew as a kid winning the Tour every year, and the pressures of supporting the man in the yellow jersey…
July 9 · 1 hr 54 min
Is Tadej Pogačar being unfairly criticised for simply trying to win the Tour de France? + Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Battling the heat at the Tour
Send us Fan Mail Tapas, tension, thrillers, tempestuous temperatures, and team time trials… There have been a lot of talking points during the first week of this year’s Tour. And we’ve got them all covered as the road.cc Podcast hits the roads of France (and a bit of Spain)
June 26 · 1 hr 45 min
“My husband said I made it look too easy. But I was having a great time”: North Coast 500 record breaker Caroline Livesey on Scottish downpours, rescue rice puddings, and the joy of cycling + What Andy Burnham as PM could mean for cyclists
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June 4 · 1 hr 28 min
“We did 10 miles on our first ride and couldn’t walk”: The father and son who cycled around the world as “complete novices”… and who still don’t identify as cyclists + Does a boring Giro make for a great Tour de France?
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May 21 · 43 min
Victoria Pendleton: “I wish I could be part of Team GB now. But someone had to go out there and do it first. I’ll take the hit”
Send us Fan Mail This week, double Olympic gold medallist and nine-times world champion Victoria Pendleton joins the podcast to discuss what inspired her to write her new personal development book ‘The Fear Opportunity’, as well as her complicated relationship with cycling, and why she’s proud to have helped pave the way for both the current mega-successful crop of British female track sprinters and the much-changed culture and environment they compete within.
May 7 · 1 hr 29 min
“People will come up to me and say: ‘Yeah, f*** cycling!’ No, that’s not the message!” Comedian Kathy Maniura on creating ‘The Cycling Man’, your local bike lane’s worst nightmare + The new Rapha Roadmap discussed
Send us Fan Mail The worlds of cycling and comedy collide this week on the road.cc Podcast, where we discuss a new critically acclaimed character who is emotionally repressed, not very self-aware, and loves his bike. Sound familiar?
April 25 · 1 hr 31 min
Big Mac recons, tattoo bets, and never giving up: Inside Picnic-PostNL’s Paris-Roubaix Femmes bid
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April 11 · 1 hr 32 min
How to prepare for Paris-Roubaix: Alex Dowsett’s tech guide to the cobbled classics + Reflections on cycling’s Holy Week
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April 4 · 52 min
“The day after a classic, I was dead. He’s playing golf!” Adrie van der Poel on Mathieu’s chances of making Tour of Flanders history, Tadej Pogačar, and remembering his own Ronde win 40 years on
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March 27 · 1 hr 15 min
Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig: “I’m a bit silly, I’m a bit weird but, you know, it’s what you get” + Was Milan-Sanremo epic Tadej Pogačar’s finest hour?
Send us Fan Mail Have we reached the peak of the Pogačar era? That’s the question posed on this week’s episode, following the world champion’s epic crash-maybe break bike-chase-attack-attack again-outsprint Tom Pidcock victory at Milan-Sanremo, a race that was for so long Tadej’s kryptonite. So, where do we go from here? And in part two, Shane Stokes catches up with one of cycling’s greatest entertainers of the 2020s: Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig. The Danish dynamo has had a tough couple of years, but she’s determined to return to the top. And while the old energy and spark is still there, Shane discovers there’s a new pensive side to her personality – including an interest in world politics, stockbroking, and computers…
March 20 · 54 min
Chasing Brennan: Chapels, wonderkids, and Status Quo + The pros discuss race safety (and the UCI’s tech interventions) as the road.cc Podcast hits the Spring Classics
Send us Fan Mail The spring classics are here – and the road.cc Podcast is hitting the road. Or the narrow, treacherously cobbled and ridiculously steep Flemish lane, to be exact. Yes, this spring we’ve set ourselves the somewhat lofty aim of traversing every part of Belgium and northern France during the classics season, covering every town centre, rural lane, cobbled berg, bus-filled car park, and stretch of brutal pavé. We’ll be soaking up the unique atmosphere, sounds, and culture of the best period of the entire cycling year, in one of the sport’s true heartlands, where bike racing seeps into everyday life, and (hopefully) giving you some behind-the-scenes insight into the classics and their stars – starting with Opening Weekend, where holy places were visited, unholy amounts of beers were consumed, and where new saviours were born.
#128
March 3 · 27 min
Shimano launches a NEW 11-speed Tiagra groupset! What's going on??
Send us Fan Mail In this spontaneous edition of the road.cc Podcast, Ryan is joined by Jack Sexty, Mat Brett and Stu Kerton to discuss Shimano's surprising revamp of its popular fourth tier Tiagra groupset. The reason this is so surprising to us is not just because we were left to surmise that the groupset would eventually be phased out - it's because we were all but told this would be the case in a presentation distributed to the media shortly before the launch of Shimano CUES, the company's range of 9-, 10- and 11-speed components aimed at more recreational riders and commuting. In that presentation, Shimano said its 'mid-tier' road and mountain bike groupsets (below 105 and SLX level) would be unified under the CUES brand, which surely meant Tiagra, Sora and Claris would be chopped... but now we've been told that's not what was being said, and Shimano never explicitly said Tiagra would be phased out. Could have fooled us! Shimano also introduced a mechanical, 12-speed Shimano 105 groupset when it said that wouldn't happen following the launch of 105 Di2 in 2022... so, is all this flip-flopping and U-turning a worrying sign for the world's largest manufacturer of bicycle components, or is it a good thing that a company of Shimano's size can improvise and give the people what they're asking for? The road.cc tech nerds dig into the details based off what they know so far.
February 26 · 59 min
‘No, I’m not the new Cycling Mikey’: Britain’s most infamous camera cyclist councillor on holding bad drivers to account, dealing with trolls, and not caring what the Daily Mail thinks + Riding the Tour de France (as an amateur)
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February 18 · 1 hr 6 min
“Cheating will be part of cycling forever”: MPCC president Emily Brammeier on anti-doping, tackling the ‘grey area’, and making clean sport the norm + How to design a time trial bike from scratch
Send us Fan Mail Cheating in cycling… should we just accept it will always happen? Four months into her new role as the president of the anti-doping Movement for Credible Cycling, Emily Brammeier joins us to discuss the MPCC’s aims and ambitions, 19 years into its existence, how the cycling and anti-doping landscape has changed since then, and the suspicions that still hang over the sport. We also chatted about the need to tackle the so-called medical ‘grey area’ exploited by teams and riders seeking an edge – which she described as pro cycling’s greatest modern challenge – the success of the MPCC in proactively leading the way when it comes to ‘grey area’ issues such as tramadol and carbon monoxide, and her and the group’s plans for the future in a sport where, Emily says, there will always be people looking to cheat.
January 30 · 1 hr 55 min
'Oscar Onley shouldn’t have gone to Ineos’: Brian Smith on Britain’s Tour de France TV paywall (and why it’s a shame), calendar congestion, and how pro teams “use and abuse” riders
Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode, we’re joined by one of the most recognisable voices in cycling: former two-time British champion and TNT Sports pundit Brian Smith. Brian chats about the struggles involved in promoting smaller races from outside cycling’s heartlands, while battling for position in a congested calendar. We also discuss the biggest bike race of them all, the Tour de France, and its visit to the UK (and Scotland) next summer, Oscar Onley’s move to Ineos (and why it might be a mistake), why Brian believes pro cycling teams “use and abuse” their riders, and why it’s a “shame” the Tour has gone behind a televisual paywall… even if Brian’s the one commentating behind it.
January 16 · 1 hr 22 min
“The cycling industry needed a good shake-up”: Can bike brands finally breathe again in 2026? Why the industry is back on track and “wiser” after years of turmoil + Tour de France UK Grands Départs reaction
Send us Fan Mail On this week’s episode of the road.cc Podcast, bike industry stalwart Rory Hitchens joins us for our annual cycling market health check-up – and tells us why brands being “honest” with themselves have brought the industry back to where it needs to be. And in part two, Ryan and Dan pore over the details of next summer’s festival of bike racing. Apologies in advance to the people of Carlisle...

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