Velo Podcast

In with the new, and out with the old! In 2021, that meant in with more electronic groups, and out with shifting cables. On the top end, new 12-speed semi-wireless Shimano Dura-Ace and Ultegra groups were big news, and the more affordable Rival eTap AXS group in SRAM's third-tier slot was also worthy of praise. What else made the list of the biggest gear stories of 2021? Tune in and check it out.

What a year it has been! From the first-ever Paris-Roubaix Femmes (finally!) to the ban of the supertuck (on April Fool's Day, no less) to Wout van Aert hitting a Tour de France triple (mountain stage, time trial, Champs Élysées final sprint), this season was a wild ride. Listen in as the full VeloNews European contingent of Andrew Hood, Sadhbh O'Shea, and Jim Cotton join Ben Delaney to count down...

If you could go anywhere in the world to ride right now, where would it be? For Olympic gold medalist Annemiek van Vleuten, that answer is sunny Colombia. And while Ineos Grenadiers are in Mallorca and Deceuninck-Quick-Step heads to Calpe, other riders head to some unusual retreats. Sadhbh O'Shea and Ben Delaney discuss who is going where, and why. American Tokyo Olympian Gavin Hoover just won the...

Pete Stetina left the world of pro racing to go gravel in 2020, opting for the freedom of a solitary project over the support and constraints of a WorldTour team. Then Covid hit and Stetina, like people the world over, had to adjust. Thus, this season was his first full year of racing gravel. On this podcast, he reflects on the highlights and lowlights of traveling the United States by van, engagi...

This year, American Ashton Lambie set a world record by breaking the four-minute barrier in the individual pursuit in Mexico. Later, at the world championships in France, he toppled world time trial champion Filippo Ganna of Ineos Grenadiers, among others, to take the world title in the individual pursuit. And unlike Ganna, who trains with the full support of one of the world's richest WorldTour t...

Christopher Blevins has been racing bikes since he was 5 years old. Getting his start in BMX, he won 8 national championships in that discipline before he was 16. At age 12, he started racing road and mountain bikes, and winning national titles in those disciplines, too. In the past couple years during, during all the racing and training in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, Blevins earned his degr...

Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome joined his Israel Start-Up Nation teammates for a weeklong camp in Israel to bond, visit historical sites, and connect with Israeli cycling fans. VeloNews European Senior Editor Andrew Hood spent the week with the team, and on this podcast he talks with Froome about his experience with technology for performance, recovery, and personal investment. Isrea...

Molly Cameron is a veteran bike racer who has also run a women's team, put on bike races, and owned and operated a bike shop. Cameron has been out as a transgender woman for two decades, and has raced at a high level in both the men's and women's fields. The UCI cyclocross pro recently won the Wafer edition of Belgian Waffle Ride Kansas — beating VeloNews Podcast host Ben Delaney and Scott Moninge...

Brendan Quirk's rise — from Competitive Cyclist and Rapha to working with the Waltons and USA Cycling — tracks with the rise in importance of his home state for cycling.   Arkansas has become a hotbed for American cycling for a few reasons, and Brendan Quirk is one of them. Newly elected as USA Cycling’s chairman of the board, Quirk talks on the VeloNews Podcast about his career’s trajectory, and...

Virtual bike racing is a thing. A big thing. Consider this: Every Tuesday more than 10,000 racers on 1,800 teams race each other in leagues through a series called ZRL, which is now in its fourth season. And then of course Zwift has scores of races every day of the week that are open to anybody on the virtual cycling platform. To explain this phenomenon, and to offer advice on preparing for and co...

Well before he co-authored three Feed Zone cookbooks with Dr. Allen Lim, Biju Thomas was cooking for cyclists all around the world. He's been the chef for everyone from Lance Armstrong to Peter Sagan, and he's cooked in fancy hotels and in parking lots. Thomas is now the resident chef at Outside, the parent company for VeloNews and VeloPress, the publisher of the Feed Zone cookbooks. In this episo...

American Neilson Powless' spring didn't go like he expected; instead of racing the classics he got Covid. But a win at Clásica de San Sebastián followed by a fifth place at the road world championships hailed an excellent return to form. On this podcast, Powless checks in from his hotel in Italy, while Sadhbh O'Shea chats with world champion Elisa Balsamo at the Women's Tour in England.  

On this podcast we celebrate Belgium and Belgium-adjacent racing. Andrew Hood checks in as he travels between the raucous party that was the world championships and Paris-Roubaix. Fred Dreier speaks with Belgian Waffle Ride founder Michael Marckx on the dusty boom that is gravel racing. And Ben Delaney talks tech, with the results of VeloNews lab testing on 15 Paris-Roubaix tires and a new Trek Ch...

Andy Hood, Sadhbh O’Shea, and Ben Delaney are in Belgium for the road world championships, and on this week’s pod they weigh in with their takes on the time trials — including the relay format — and their prognostications for this coming weekend’s road races. Also, a UCI-sanctioned gravel world championships? It’s true. Hood broke the story, and the trio discuss what gravel racers, gravel race org...

It's Fred Dreier's final episode of The VeloNews Podcast! Fred is joined by Sadhbh O'Shea, Andrew Hood, and departed editor Spencer Powlison to offer unvarnished opinions on some of the biggest cycling stories of the last five years. Why is Chris Froome so polarizing? Annemiek van Vleuten or Anna van der Breggen? What will we remember most about Peter Sagan? The list of questions is long, and the...

The Vuelta a España concluded this week, and the race also delivered one of the biggest controversies of the 2021 WorldTour season. Colombian star Miguel Ángel López quit the Vuelta on the penultimate stage after he was dropped from the front group, and afterwards reports circulated that López was unhappy with the tactics of his Movistar team. The story has developed into a war of words between th...

On this week's episode of The VeloNews Podcast we discuss the latest controversy in U.S. gravel racing. Earlier this month a storyline emerged from SBT GRVL about the CINCH cycling team using team tactics to help its star rider, Lauren De Crescenzo, win the race, The news caused a stir in the U.S. gravel scene, with multiple riders taking to social media to contemn the team tactics, as well as CIN...

On today's episode of The VeloNews Podcast we analyze Primož Roglič's zany attack on stage 10 of the Vuelta a España, and Ineos Grenadiers' continued setbacks at the Vuelta a España. Then, Andrew Hood explains how the winds, soaring temperatures, and surging pace is making this Vuelta the hardest grand tour of the year. Then, we hear from Ian Boswell, who has reinvented himself as the top male gra...

The Vuelta a España has kicked off, and on today's podcast we dive into the race's opening stages. The GC picture is already taking shape with the summit finish to Picón Blanco, and Ineos Grenadiers vs. Jumbo-Visma is again the battle of the race. Movistar has three riders in the top-10, and we cannot wait to see how the Spanish squad finds a way to grab defeat from the clutches of potential victo...

The Vuelta a España kicks off this weekend, and on today's episode of The VeloNews Podcast, we preview the race, and discuss its hulking new climb, the Altu del Gamoniteiro. Organizers are comparing the new climb to the famed Alto de l'Angliru climb, which has become the most feared ascent in Spain. What goes into discovering a new climb? We analyze the process that race organizers go through in i...

The topic of athlete mental health has become the biggest talking point of these Olympics. How do top athletes manage the pressures on them to perform, and do fans and media put too much weight on wins and losses? On today's podcast we examine this conversation. We also break down the U.S. women's Team Pursuit, which rode to the bronze medal this week. It's just the second medal for Team USA at th...

The Olympics have started, and we've been glued to our televisions and computer screens following along with the action. On today's episode of The VeloNews Podcast we break down all of the action from the men's and women's road races, as well as the men's and women's cross-country MTB races. We break down the biggest storylines from the events, including the thrilling and bizarre final of the wome...

It's a joint episode between The VeloNews Podcast and The Adventure Stache podcast, with Fred Dreier of VeloNews and Payson McElveen co-hosing this conversation. This week we discuss the state of U.S. professional cycling, and explore why an American professional cyclist in 2021 looks and acts very differently than an American pro cyclist from previous generations. Today, pro racers get to create...

Our cup overflows with Tour de France stories to discuss today, and on this episode of The VeloNews Podcast we hit as many as we can. First up is the French police raid on the Bahrain-Victorious team hotel, and why this raid in Pau has a special tie to cycling history. Then, we break down all the action from the summit finish on stage 18, which saw Tadej Pogačar bang the nail into the coffin of hi...

The Tour de France just had its major Pyrenean battle on the Col du Portet, and on today's episode of The VeloNews Podcast we analyze the big fight between Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, and Richard Carapaz. After several days of letting the Tour de France peloton attack freely, UAE-Team Emirates rode a controlling race on stage 17. Why did the squad decide to limit the attacks, and how did this...