Domestique Cycling Podcast

Demi Vollering is a two-time champion of the Tour de France Femmes, and she had to win the last two stages to get there. Kasia Niewiadoma rode away from her on Mont Ventoux on Friday and took yellow. Vollering took it back in Nice on Saturday by eight seconds. Then she attacked again on the final climb of the race on Sunday, when sitting on the wheel would have been enough, and won by 1:18. We go through all of it, including the stand-off between Vollering and Reusser on the Ventoux that nearly cost her the race, and why Bram thinks Niewiadoma's ride up it was the best climbing performance he has seen from a woman.

We also get into the row. Niewiadoma accused Celia Gery of closing her against the barriers at the foot of the last climb on stage 8. FDJ said the footage does not show much, and the 20-year-old spent the night before the final stage receiving death threats. The two of them cleared it up in about fifteen seconds after the finish, which rather makes the point about where the escalation actually happened. Our view, and the view of most people who voted on the Domestique Debate, is that this is a racing incident.

On the men's side, Felix Gall won the Vuelta a Burgos by five seconds for the first stage race win of his career. He did it on the kind of punchy finishes that should suit Ciccone, Onley and Pellizzari more than him, which leads into whether he is the only real threat to Tadej Pogacar at the Vuelta. Tudor won the Tour de Pologne with Marco Brenner and then took the closing time trial with Stefan Kung, which is a very good week for a team that keeps stepping up. And the transfer market has properly opened. Soudal Quick-Step signed Tim Torn Teutenberg and Lorenzo Milesi, Santiago Buitrago left Bahrain Victorious after seven years, and Picnic PostNL have now lost all three of their fast men.

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Pauline Ferrand-Prevot came to defend her Tour de France Femmes title and is five minutes down after five stages. Marlen Reusser has the yellow jersey, Demi Vollering is twelve seconds behind her, and the race the whole spring pointed towards has turned into something nobody predicted. We go through how it happened, and why nothing about Ferrand-Prevot's week looks like the rider who dominated this race in 2025.

Before that, the first week did everything the men's Tour did and more. Lorena Wiebes won the first two stages and was untouchable in both, to the point where the interesting question became why anyone is still chasing down breakaways to set up a sprint against her. Then Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset rode 88 kilometres alone to win in Poligny and take yellow, with Lotte Kopecky chasing her all the way to second place. It was the best move of the race so far, and the television coverage started after she had already gone, which we have plenty to say about. Reusser took the jersey back in the Dijon time trial, then Vollering won a finish that went to the line on stage 5. Twelve riders have already abandoned, one team is down to three, and the peloton is racing in the high thirties.

On the men's side, Remco Evenepoel has now won the Donostia San Sebastian Klasikoa four times from four starts. A bike change left him nearly forty seconds down on the Erlaitz, and he still rode back to the front and dropped everyone but Richard Carapaz. Jonathan Milan has won the first three stages of the Tour de Pologne, which gets us onto what that race keeps doing with its finish design. Matthew Brennan and Oscar Onley have taken a stage each at the Vuelta a Burgos, and Onley's is his first win for Netcompany-Ineos.

We also get into the things underneath the results. Two Belgian development teams have disappeared in two seasons. Women's cycling is arguing about whether it needs a bigger calendar. Nine UAE riders are not going to a Grand Tour this year and have won ten races between them. And we still cannot work out what Fabio Jakobsen would be doing at Visma.

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Emily Dixon spent her childhood throwing tantrums on mountain bike trails. She did swimming, gymnastics, dance and netball, and she was, in her words, pretty mediocre at all of them. Then lockdown cancelled everything, her dad started riding Zwift in the garage, and she got jealous enough to put a neighbour's old road bike on a trainer and ride it in her sneakers.

Six years later she is racing in Europe with two professional wins to her name.

In this episode she tells Aidan Burgess how that actually happened, and she is unusually honest about the ugly middle part. She entered Zwift Academy almost by accident, after a time trial got rained off in Melbourne. When the finals invitation came, her parents assumed it was a scam. She turned up in Portugal at 17, needing lawyer-verified travel documents, to be greeted by Zoe Backstedt.

Then came 2025. She describes a season where she finished 29th in her first race and 29th in her last. She spent every race hanging on at the back, quietly wondering whether the team had made a mistake picking her. What changed for 2026 was not training. It was deciding she deserved to be there. She won on 30 April, won again on 1 May, and pulled on the leader's jersey.

She is also clear about what is still missing. The World Tour team has a mental coach. Her development team does not, so she has been building her own sports psychology out of podcasts. She is also sharp on why girls do not take up cycling in the first place. There was no women's racing on television when she was young, and there is still a belief that you need to spend tens of thousands of dollars before you can start.

Emily Dixon rides for Canyon//SRAM Generation. This episode was recorded just before the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and she gives her podium picks at the end.

Rune Herregodts has one month of his Belgian national champion's jersey behind him, and he is out of contract at the end of the season. 
In this episode he tells Aidan Burgess that he expects to leave UAE Team Emirates XRG, that he is talking to a few teams, and that there should be news quite quickly.
Before that, he takes us inside the strongest team in the world. He explains why UAE keep December training camps deliberately relaxed, with no crazy interval sessions and no weighing food, so that riders can hold the stricter plans all season. 
He explains the racing philosophy in one line: they race to win and they train to train, and a race is never treated as preparation. He describes what a domestique at UAE is actually paid to do, which is mostly positioning, and why the modern peloton is decided before the climb rather than on it.
He is also open about the parts that are less comfortable. The jersey brings expectations, and he admits there are days when he would rather the camera found someone in a neutral kit. 
Team Flanders, the team that made him a professional, is losing its Flemish government funding, and he says plainly that without it some riders who have the potential will never turn professional at all.
There is plenty for the equipment obsessives too. He compares the Colnago Y1Rs with the V4 and puts a number on the difference between a full aero bike and a full climbing bike. 
He also explains why he raised his handlebars by two centimetres rather than a few millimetres. And he describes the treadmill the whole sport is now on, where altitude camps and heat training no longer win you anything, they only stop you losing.

Tadej Pogačar has won his fifth Tour de France, and he now stands level with Merckx, Hinault, Anquetil and Indurain. Five stage wins, Marco Pantani's Alpe d'Huez record beaten by more than a minute, and then a Queen stage spent riding as a domestique for his own teammate.

Remco Evenepoel finished second at 6:26 with two stage wins and the best climbing week of his career. Isaac Del Toro is third and in white on his debut. Paul Seixas is fourth at nineteen years old. And on a final stage shortened by the wildfires in the southwest, Mathieu van der Poel went over Montmartre with Pogačar and held on all the way to the line.

Bram and Ethan unpack all three weeks: why nobody even tries to follow Pogačar anymore, whether Evenepoel would have matched Jonas Vingegaard, how Richard Carapaz timed his run at the mountains jersey to perfection, and why stage 21 has become the best stage of the Tour.

We also spend a while on the part of this Tour that was not fun to watch. Half a million people on Alpe d'Huez, no barricades outside the Dutch corner, Einer Rubio into a team car with twenty stitches to the face, and ASO blaming the design of modern cars. We think something has to change before the Tour goes back.

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