443: Why Are Grand Tour Winners Getting Younger?

0:00Hello and welcome to FastDoc, your source for the science of endurance performance. I'm your host Trevor Conner, here with Chris Case. In the early 2000s, the average age of Tour de France winners was over 30 years old, and it was accepted that World Tour Cycleers didn't hit their peak until their late 20s. Then, Egan Bernal won the 2019 Tour at the age of 22, and Tade Pagaccio won the following year at the age of only 21. Since then, the average age of Tour winners fits within the best young rider white Jersey category, the Jersey design to identify future talent. In this year, for the first time, we even had a teenager leading one of the teams. Grand Tour leaders are clearly getting younger, so the question was whether this is an anomaly, or if it was always the case that riders were physiologically at their best in their early 20s, and we're only just now figuring it out. When Chris Froome and Garant Thomas were winning the Tour, teams were looking for 30 things, and now that Pogachars dominating, they're hunting the junior ranks for who's

1:01going to wear the yellow jersey in just a few years. Did they figure something out in the physiology to make this switch? Or are they just blindly following the trends? To help us answer these questions, we're joined by a regular fast talk contributor and cycling legend, Dr. Andy Proud, an elite coach and owner of Apex coaching, Neil Henderson. Both have worked with their fair share of both young and old cyclists who have all ridden at the top of the sport. Chris gives them a unique perspective on what the right age really is. They'll share examples of young phenoms they've worked with. Whether young riders have the mental strength and leadership skills to lead a tour to France squad, and then dive deep into the physiological advantages of both young and season riders. The physiology alone isn't enough. We'll also talk about whether young riders can have the strategic sense to win the biggest races. Finally, we'll talk about whether there's been recent changes in the races themselves that may favor young riders. Go on here, I guess we'll also hear from Pro Gravel racer Lauren DeCrazanzo, who's seen some of her best results in her 30s. Elite coach and owner of Source Endurance, Adam Mills, and physiologist Matt Kassen with

2:03Wahoo Fitness, who's dive deep into the physiology of young and older cyclists. So find a little youthful vigor for the next hour and let's make it fast. So guys, welcome to the show. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. We just had to dive us right in because we started a conversation before we hit record and Chris just went, stop, hit record. Yeah. Because this is a good conversation. So we're actually in the middle of a conversation here that we're now going to bring all of you in on. We were just talking about Tadeh, what he just did today. So what was the. What was the stage for in Endura? Tell us a little bit about what he did, but we're talking about young riders and a big factor in this is Tadeh. And the question I was about to ask and we had to hit record is are we looking at one of the best cyclists of all time and the fact that he just started showing up at such a young age, he's an anomaly.

3:04He was going to be strong at any age, but tells what he did. Oh, with 50 K to go, he attacked the group and rode solo for the last 50 K, but three minutes on the best riders in the world. And most of the guys in the chase group actually lived in Endura. They knew these roads like the back of their hand and he rode away from them like they were school children. Yeah, three minutes and 50 K just, I mean, as he wished he got, he could just do and get take. It'd be like me walking into a candy shop and nobody got the. No one's up the counter. No one's up the counter. I'm just going to get all the goodies. I think to answer your question Trevor, yes. He isn't an anomaly. There was a question. There was a question somewhere there. Yes, he's an anomaly, but is he the kind of not the only anomaly? Is he the only young rider that is changing the sport? As we see it, no, I don't think he is. And that's, I think what the deeper discussion shall be today. That's what this whole episode is about because there's certainly a move now towards, oh, we need to be looking at younger riders.

4:04And I unfortunately, well, I shouldn't say that. I don't want to disparage the authors. But I read a 30 page study last night at the end of it. I was like, there were only two paragraphs in this study and the title that's relevant to this episode. But I think the title is worth it alone. This is a 2021 study. So this is after he's only won two tours. And the study is predicting the next pogachar, a data analytic approach to detect young professional cycling talents. And the gist of this study is they're sitting there going, well, we're now moving towards younger riders. Tade has kind of set this trend. And the issue you have is it's easier to identify somebody at 21, 22 can be a winner at 28. But how do you identify somebody who's going to be a winner at 21? And so they're now trying to create all these data analytics. So you can start grabbing 13 and 14 year olds and say, you're going to be a tour de France winner in six years, which has some issues in and of itself that I'm sure we're going

5:07to get into. But this is the gist of the conversation. Would love to hear just the broad overview from both of you. Is this the right trend? Yeah. I mean, Neil, you've looked at data from people that were 16. That went on to be come world champions. Did you know could you see it in the data 10 years before they made it to the top or even five years before they made it to that level? Yeah. So to be clear, I've had some experience with some very young extreme talents. Like absolutely. As a perfect example, Mr. Taylor Finney, as a 16 year old in his first time trial, he was running up against Ben Day, who as I believe the reigning Australian pro elite national TT champion. And they were going back and forth on the Lions to Boulder TT. Taylor was on a 52 14 back when we had gear restrictions. And on the down hills is when he was passing Ben. Taylor would wind out that 52 14 and super tuck where Ben was probably riding a 55 11 standard

6:10TT gear at the time and Taylor would just zoom by him. His power, I remember, 337 watts for that Lions to Boulder TT. And again, that's not like world class by any stretch. Taylor was probably 70 some kilos at the time. He was still growing. But the competitive, I think he ended up finishing maybe second to Ben. I think maybe even Chris Baldwin was there who's US pro TT champ at the time. But he was in the mix and for him to kind of produce that power in a TT position was clearly a flag of this kid has the goods. I had never coached an elite world champion to that point, but I was coaching other elite professional riders, not world tour level, but it was very clear that he had a very big future ahead of him. But did you make a prediction at that time? No prediction. I mean, there's also some bias. For sure. For his parents. Absolutely. I mean, the best way to predict the medal, you know, who are your parents? If they've meddled you have a pretty good chance, you know, that's, there's a few pieces

7:13that clearly that individual has an extraordinary had an extraordinary background though he was just in his first year as a racing cyclist of any kind as he turned 15 into 16 is when he started racing bikes. And so that youth, you know, clearly there can be a glimpse, but my gosh, what we're seeing now like this is extraordinary in a way that I'm not sure is awesome and great for everyone. There's the discussion for today. So Toddi's early coach was an ego Santa Maquat who was, you know, professing all the zone two hours and hours of zone two for this young guy and he predicted this guy is going to be special. He is going to be one of the best. So when he was a teenager, he saw it in the data. Yeah. He said, if this kid continues to improve on what he has now, he will be one of the best that's ever written. So it was, it was a bold prediction. No, I know with who this kid was. So that's why I ask if you, if you, in your heart, if you made a prediction for Taylor,

8:16you know, maybe an ego set it out loud. Actually, I have my spreadsheet from Taylor's future. Wow. Year 2007. So I have the, you guys can look at this, but it shows what we were looking at as projected, weekly training hours, kind of average for the year in 2006 was 10 hours because he was an office cyclist. 12 hours, 14 hours in the year 2008 that he actually competed at the Olympic Games Olympics. 14 hours a week and he was at the Olympics. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But if I recall right around 68 was a high going into the Olympic Games with a projected goal of a medal at the Olympics in a junior world record. And to repeat the junior TT world championship, which he did earn in 2007, which he did not do. He did not repeat as the TT. So Kuyikowski beat him in 2008. He ended up third. In fact, but he did set a junior world record in the 3K and he did not medal at the Games in 2008. He finished seventh. But progression for him, like a bigger jump, we were anticipating in the year 2009 from

9:1914 hours a week to 18 hours a week as he stepped up to the U23 category, which he raced two full years as a U23 with building up to 18 and 20 hours to then be ready for World Tour Racing by age 20, starting World Tour. Not winning the Grand Tour. I had that kind of stuff. Grand Tour podium in 2014. Grand Tour win in 2015 and 2016, which his trajectory he changed did some different things. His body changed, I would say. Right. Yeah. So, but not all junior world champions go on to be something. Look up, Michael Burke. He was the junior world TT champion multiple years in a row. I was taken care of him when he was 19 winning the U23 TT and he's become a modest domestic. Sorry, Michael. Oh, yeah. No, there was actually a study and this was very clear that it is most likely that if you win a world championship title, you will never win another world title.

10:22Was the vast majority of all the cycling literature out there. And USA swimming, a totally different sport. There's some really good information regarding individuals who medal as juniors in those earlier age groups that the highest likelihood that that one in five or one in 10 will still medal as a senior. So having junior success in that sport is still not at all a predictor of then senior success. So, do you think that the people who are meddling as juniors are maturing sooner and therefore not progressing to become senior champions or they push too hard as juniors and then lose some motivation and therefore their talent or fitness levels or whatever. Fatos and they never can't go beyond those expectations that people set for them or is it way too complicated to say? I would honestly say there's a lot of different pieces to that.

11:23I currently work with a fellow who is an elite performing local cyclist owns most of the KOMs on the climbs around here. He was a runner who was running a lot as a very young athlete and kind of got pushed too hard to the point where some even overall health outcomes not able to run, not able to finish a proper collegiate running career got on the bike. It is an absolute rocket going uphill. Has a huge engine but was starting off even osteophenic which we know in cycling is an issue over time without bone loading activity or if you have red S the energy deficiency and aspects there that again is able to perform but has limitations health and side of things as well. You can have somebody I would believe that is a young junior who can healthily have a high training load be high performing but I do not believe that's going to be the majority

12:28of young athletes that they can do what those few outliers can and have done. I do think they are outliers. How many times have we seen high school superstar move on to the college level as running that is the easiest example when they are milder to jubbles as a freshman and they implode. I wanted to contrast these two because I just told you about that study that finally the next pogachar where they are going. It is all about youth now and the age is trendy down. We have to figure out how to identify them at 14. Here is a study similar directed study but kind of opposite belief. This is a study from 2006 titled Success and Elite Cycling, a prospective and retrospective analysis of race results. It talks about well you are seeing the age going up and was addressing that and they looked at 8,004 cyclists who had a professional career and then compared ones that started as

13:30juniors versus ones that started later on. It was almost a cautionary tale where they were saying basically everybody gets about 10 good years. They pointed out what you said which was sometimes high performance results at a younger age actually hamper development. You might get some quick results but your development overall as an athlete might not be great and kind of made the point in the study of if you only have 10 years and you are going to hit some of your best physiology in your late 20s and you are getting results at 18,19 you are going to be coming off of your 10 years when you should be coming up to your peak. This one from 2006 is almost saying the opposite. Yeah, that it does take time. I think you have, sometimes people think about training and responders and non-responders. You look at a lot of physiology, papers, we did this intervention for often 12 or 16 weeks

14:33of short amount of time because it fits in a semester and these people did respond and these people didn't. They were responders, non-responders. If you have a longer period of time then you have delayed responders and they may be having even more amplified response but it just simply takes a lot more time for that to develop. I know I have coached some of those individuals that were pretty good as a starting point but it took four, six, eight years for the absolute best of what they were able to do to be expressed and was it all training related? Absolutely not. There is a whole host of factors. I think some of the age discussion has to come back to a little bit of that psychological and psychosocial development too which is why I have a little bit, maybe more of a concerning look at trying to push very young riders to these extreme levels of demand in competition and performance because I mean even just think of development with the prefrontal cortex.

15:36What's the general age for proper development of your prefrontal cortex which is, for judgment, risk taking, long-term planning, mid-20s and guys tend to be older than gals even on that so it might be early mid-20s for more women and maybe a little bit more later mid-20s for guys. Professional cyclist Lauren DeCrazanzo agrees there isn't a right age for top pros. Let's hear her thoughts. Maybe there is more to turn road racing than there is gravel for sure. I mean I don't think you can generalize, make any general statement like, oh people who are younger are better. Like just because Hade is the best and he's younger doesn't apply to other people. I don't think he makes it. Everyone is just so so different. I am 35 now and I am way stronger than I was when I was 20, 25. I think that it's also different for women. I think women do get much stronger as they get older. I'm much better than the 20-year-old Lauren.

16:37But yeah, I don't think you can make that generalization. I think it's so individual. So I coached and manage the specialized junior factory team around year 2000. I had eight riders that all were aspiring young go-gitters right under 18. So the VO2 maxes measured were from 50 to mid 70s. The guy with the 50 max VO2 qualified for World Cycle Cross Championships twice. It'll be in his late 20s or 30s. So he raised that whole time. One of them won the national cross-country mountain bike championship in the under 18. Quit and never raced again. I think you have that. Yeah, totally toasted. The others tried trathlons and fell by the wayside. And only one of those eight is still racing. And he matured late. Yep. Really late. He's still racing. So those eight, the variety of outcomes and successes at different age markers,

17:40I think is a valid argument to it's so individual. Right? It's so individual. Yeah. Could we at that time from those eight, pick who was going to do what? No, with accuracy for sure. I stole the 150 to go home. And he had great success. We have absolutely destroyed this outline. That's right. We have covered every single thing in the outline. That's what I said. We have just jumped around. I love it. I wouldn't trade this conversation for anything. Great conversation. No. I just had to make fun of that. But that was actually where we're going to end is is it individual? So Chris put the stats in. And since so you have a Chris since the 1950s, the average age of the Tour de France winner has been 26.7. But what I found also interesting is that was before 1950 before 19.5. So yeah. And in that time, interestingly enough, there was the youngest winner of the tour ever, but that was the second tour in 1904. The guy was 19. And the oldest still to this day, a 36 year old one in 1922.

18:44So you know, things were different back then. Right. But so before 1950, 26.7, from 1950 to 2010, 27.6. That's right around the cusp when you were saying earlier, there was kind of this push towards older winners. That was the Wiggins, the Cadet Levin's era. So from the year 2000 to 2018, the average age of the winner of the Tour de France was 30, which I believe is the highest it's ever been. Yeah. And then directly, yeah, succeeded by since 2019, we'll say, which would, you know, egg and d'arnal and a bunch of tadeys and some Jonas. A couple of Jonas. Yeah. And so that averages out to 24.9. Well, all of a sudden, the Tour de France, the yellow jersey contest and the young rider contest became the same thing. Yeah. So I'd ever saw before. Yeah, very rarely. So question. So white jersey is U25. Correct. Correct. And when was it introduced, actually?

19:46Good question. All of that. Because at this point, it would make no sense to have a white jersey on it, like in this day and age of the pat. If you look at the past 10 years, exactly you would actually say, well, why shouldn't it just be U23? Which to me, one of these questions is, what is U23 now? And I pose that, you know, as a, it's a step, but it's not the step it used to be. So the white jersey first appears in 68, but it was for the combined classification. It first appears in 75 to symbolize the future, like the youth competition, right? Finneon wins it and wins the yellow in 83. Ulrich did the double in 97. Contador did the double white and yellow in 2007. Schleck did it in 2010. And since then, it's only been Bernal in 2019 and Tade in 2020. So yeah, it's actually, there's more earlier in a way. Interesting. Yeah.

20:46So again, in that time sense, it's clearly changed as a standard of like, I would be surprised that there were a lot of overall top three finishers that were white jersey, where now again, winners or top three of the top. Tade, and then we can... A large percentage if you do even the one, two, three podium. I'm getting different statistics. Okay. That's okay. Under the age of 26, you're down. You can question me 25. Yeah. I have for both of you is you saw that dramatic shift, where in the 2000s and you saw it in that study that I just cited, they were going, now, you know, the, the best are going to be older. And they were pushing the age older and older and older and looking for those older cyclists. And then all of a sudden, it flips and now it's like, well, we got to look for 20 year olds. We got to end this year, sexed us. And I will admit to you when they said they were taking him to the tour de France's first grand tour ever as a race leader. I'm like, he's not mentally ready for that and he proved me wrong. But he's like, that's crazy.

21:47And what's even crazier is it worked. He got fourth, but will he come back? He is French. So there's a good chance he won. Yeah. We just recorded that. Super. This dramatic shift from, oh no, we got to look older and older. To now we got to look super young. And what is driving that? Is it just as simple as people follow trends? And I go, well, we got some young winners. Now we got to look for young riders as opposed to what you are saying is we just got some unusual individuals right now. And we should be looking at all ages and looking for the talent. What's going on here? I mean, there's a lot of pieces to this. We can go back to, you know, an interesting time in cycling. We'll just say in the 1990s, some, some top quality riders coming up that were young and very successful, that skipped the U23 ranks. Fabian Consular was one of them. Somebody told me that one of the reasons was the U23 field was actually

22:48rife with doping. And they were trying to prevent having some of these riders get put into that place because they were doing testing in the pro ranks at this point. And so that it would be less of an issue by putting them in that different realm, that different, you know, U23 racing circuit and associated in individuals management and potentially, you know, bad choices being more made available. It's hard for me to totally buy that at the time. But I do know, I have my old DVDs of Consular, winning those stages of PeriNise as a maybe 20-year-old, 19-year-old, 20-year-old, and being an absolute phenom, relatively speaking, but there was not the expectation on some of those young riders at that point to win a big major race. They were still in a U23 age, even if they were on one of those big pro teams,

23:52they were not expected to be the team leader. They weren't expected to pay potentially even finish the grand tour. They would finish maybe to do first 10 days, the first one they do. And then two weeks or more, if everything's doing okay after two weeks, they can continue on. But there was clearly more even of a developmental aspect within the pro teams that now clearly anyone who's selected for the Tour de France or 12-0, like you got to be there start to finish. Like that is a very rare exception that any rider would ever be brought selected for one of the grand tours and not be there to be at the finish. Well, so here's the question I have for you guys, because there was kind of an unusual situation here where that kind of 2015-ish to 2018, you actually had unusually old winners of the Tour de France. And then COVID hit, and that brought about the retirement of a lot of riders. And I wonder if then you had an unusual situation where I think traditionally,

24:59if you were 21, it didn't matter how strong you were. Your team would be saying, oh, we've got a 28-year-old, it's his time, your time will be in a few years, your fetch and water bottles. And the 21-year-old would even think about going for the win. You had a much more post-COVID, a much more open field where suddenly those young riders went, I don't have this guy who's a guaranteed podium finisher that I have to work for, I can go for it myself, and that's part of what happened. That's an interesting concept. I don't think we'll prove it, but it is definitely an interesting. Yeah, I think the mentality within some of the teams of willing to let a rider just get whatever they can, when they can, is maybe more of a change from some of the historical attitudes that, again, there was more of a earn your way to that leadership. You had to have built up that

26:00support from your teammates alone, as well as maybe even some of that, you know, respect from others, but especially within your team, and that was not necessarily being granted to the new guy. To me, maybe this is what you're saying, teams are a little bit more willing to take a risk on a younger rider because there have been some young riders recently, who've proven that that can pay off, whereas before you had to prove yourself, before you worked your way up to the level where you're the single leader of this team. Now it's kind of like, well, we'll let the road decide. We've talked about the young Frenchman Paul Sexas, right? And there was a young American on that tour team with him. I don't recall his name as I'm sitting here, but the interviewtee, multiple times during the tour. How does it feel? You know, supporting this 19 year old, he said, the guy is mentally tough, mentally focused. He's a great leader of men. That's how he was described. Yeah. He's interesting. Yeah. So his team obviously picked him at 19 to be the team leader. So, well, that in and of itself is a statement that he's an anomaly because

27:03there's not many 19 year olds in the world that you could say that. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, Joan of Arc was pretty young, right? Yeah. Pretty strong leader. I mean, you think of a founding of our country. I think those guys were pretty young. We're in a different situation now. It's just kind of this interesting thing though of like, age of leadership and, you know, again, who is entrusted with that? And so like these younger athletes are earning that and truly leading successfully. I want to know what happens to him physiologically, Paul Sexas. What happens to him physiologically in the six months following his tour, right? I wonder. For sure. Is there a physiological price that's going to be so high and the expectations on him next year are going to be so high. Will they be matched? Mark your calendar, Trevor. We're going to have this conversation in a year. Every year. Every year for the next five years. I want to see the long term personally too. Yeah. I mean, we're going to see so much pressure applied to him at worlds this year because it's people expect everything from him now. Yeah. Right? For a 19 year old

28:08to go from the tour and the pressure cooker he was in to go to worlds and, you know, it's going to be him and Todd. That's what the talk's going to be about and maybe vendor pool. I do think this says something to the mentality. I do think there's a bit of a change in that younger generation where mentality used to be it isn't my time yet. I got to put in my time. I got to fetch water bottles. My time will come later. And the younger generation now is saying, I'm not going to wait. It's my time now. Yeah. The younger athlete is ready. They should be given the opportunity. Here's Coach Adam Mills and why this is a good thing. Finally is my feeling. Finally, cycling has put themselves at a level with all the other major sports and where they're allowing young superstars to be young superstars. Those barriers have been torn down. They goodness. You know, in all making analogy from basketball guy. I love watching NBA basketball like Michael Jordan was I think it's sophomore or whatever he was.

29:15He was pretty young when he came to the NBA. A lot of superstars now are as young or more so. Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Steph Curry. What once used to be an oddball like young person coming into this high level is now more normalized and cycling is finally getting there. And I love it because hopefully we see these superstar young athletes become the face of the sport, which the sport can then leverage to create like more of a fan following, right? Because Tani is only young 20s and he's done so much. And if he stays in the sport until he's 30, he will have had like legitimately in a 11 or 12 year pro career, which is rare. I remember watching him win to Rikhael, Tony on 2019 and we were all like, who's this guy? One thing that I'd like to bring up is the style of racing. So if you think about again, from a physiologic perspective, younger riders are going to have more generally speaking more fast, which five or more anaerobic capacity and it takes longer time to develop that big diesel aerobic

30:16capacity. Not that they don't have a huge VO2 max as young riders. They absolutely do, but in some cases, over time, riders are able to develop a greater fractional utilization of their VO2 max. So over time, the racing with some of those older winners of the grand tours clearly would suit a very high extreme sustained output, but less about explosive attacking and course selection that the race organizers are doing are probably potentially playing a little bit of a part in that in having courses that are more dynamic. And then the racing situation, if there's a lot more attacking that younger rider making each selection versus like that diesel who's just getting popped off in today's racing style and format is not going to have as much success. Even if they have a little bit higher VO2 max and a higher even sustained FTP, if that anaerobic capacity work

31:17leading to that separation just completely changes the dynamics. So I think there is an interaction between all of these things because if you took one of the most successful riders of an older rider and put them against the type of racing happening right now, you might not have success. So today, today's course was all about being punchy. It was only 100k and carapass. You know, he takes him a long time to get that diesel firing and with all the attacking, he got dropped and he came to this race with high expectations. That's a good point because back in the 90s and 2000s as I remember, I mean, at both stages were six hours. I just got a standard there very long. Now six hours is actually extreme, a little more unusual, but it makes for a more exciting race because those races field was just kind of going steady for a long time. Yeah, you can take the note, yeah, take the snooze and wake up for the last hour and also just away the teams, you know, the sky lead out train in the mountains of just like rev it up, rev it up, rev it up, rev it up,

32:18and then let it go, but not an attack punch and knock people out. So that's an interesting point. In their effort to kind of modify the Tour de France and make it a more exciting race, they've actually created a course that's a little more suited to a younger, explosive rider in that way. 2026, Tade was total finishing time, was 74 hours, we'll call it. 2017, when Froome won his last, it was 86 hours. It's a big difference. That's a 15% almost 40% duration. Yeah. And it's again, the same general distance. The next year, 83 hours, 82 hours for Bernal when he wanted in 2019, but it's the last few years it's dropped a lot. Yeah, I think that dynamic racing style and format clearly will favor a younger rider. I've ever the first time they introduced that short mountain stage was like under 100 kilometers. I was like, oh my god, they're going to tack off the line. It was such an exciting. Yes. Exactly. That's all that's trainer warm ups. Everything

33:23required or else you are not going to make it. I never forget the first time that they're warm up on trainers for a mountain stage. For a road race. A warm up. It's crazy. Yeah. Join us a cycling this November 13th, the 14th and Colorado Springs for the National Coaching Conference where coaches across every discipline will come together for two days of lectures, panels and hands-on facility access at the Hibble Sports Performance Center and the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center. Tell you, I've been to dozens of coach conferences and this is unlike anyone that I've ever been to. Friday afternoon, our in person attendees will get boots on the ground access to two of the best sports science facilities in the country. We'll have the chance to visit the Colorado Springs Velodrome. There will also be planned group rides and happy hours to network with coaching colleagues and USA cycling staff. Earn up to 10 CUs in person or five virtually and hear from confirmed speakers like Dr. Paul Larson, high performance director Jim Miller, Craig Griffin, John O'Hale Stone, Paul Manning, Mike Derner, Taylor Warren, Jason Boyton,

34:28and Chris and I might actually make an appearance. So let's dive a little into the physiology and I'm going to ask you guys to take both sides. As people who understand this really well and let's bring on the mental side as well, but from a physiological and mental side, what would be the arguments to say we should remain focused on older riders? Are there physiological or mental assets that you just don't have until you're in your late 20s? Yes. Yes. Well, is that take more sides? I'm taking yes. Oh, so Neil has to say no. No. In that respect, the older rider, the development of maximum potential does take time. It's not something that you can completely shortcut. It doesn't mean that some people don't start ahead and can rise up a little bit more quickly, but there is still a component even in the most elite that is going to take several years of development to reach whatever that individual's potential peak is. I think we're saying the same thing. I think it takes the older. I think the

35:31mental aspect, the stamina, the toughness to live in that pain cave longer. Think that takes time. I do think this. Maybe I answered your question wrong, but I think we're saying the same thing. You are to back that up. I did find a couple studies that compared younger cyclists to older cyclists. Did you or spot on what you said before that you hit your peak VO2 max really young? That's not a limiting factor for 21, 22 year old. But what one of the studies showed was at the same relative intensity. So physiological, you know, how your body is feeling, a younger rider is putting out a lower power. So if you have an older rider beside a 20 year old and they're putting out the same wattage and they're the same weight, that younger rider, it's going to be a harder strain on them. And they're saying it takes longer time to get that economy or efficiency. I say, yeah, probably some fiber tape stuff going on with this on the efficiency and economy side. And so actually heat production, that younger athlete's going to be a little bit higher even for

36:34the same output if there's less efficiency. Taking those fast twitches and turning them into at least medium twitches. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got to stretch it out over time. But the other side is that durability, which is a factor in that because you are fatiguing yourself more so you just don't have the durability day to day. So goes back to what you're saying is maybe they've eliminated that advantage of older riders with the shorter races. Yeah, still a three week race and that's a day of like it's still an hour until crazy. Yeah, yeah, it's still an extraordinary challenge. But if you're reducing by upwards of 10 to even 15% of the total volume in that same three week period, to me, that's a very clear difference. In what the demand is going to be and the type of training and the attributes necessary for success, clearly you're going to be having some shift. Here's more evidence that Tade is an outlier because I skipped over a few years in 2020 when he won his first, meaning when he was youngest,

37:38the race was 87 hours. And so in Broglet, who was second, who he overtook on the last day. So he only led the tougher how many minutes was how old 30 earlys, I think, maybe for people say, yeah. So the difference between that 2020 Tade win average speed was 24.7 miles per hour. This year, 2026, fastest ever, right? In terms of average speed, 26.9 full 2.2 miles per hour faster on average. People say that the average power you're seeing, like you saw this year in 2026 compared to when Tade won his first tour is completely different. Like Bernal hitting actually higher peaks this year than when he won. Right. Yeah. He noticed the same thing. He's like, I put you out better power now than when I beat Tade. But still not enough. And so you do wonder, not even close in fact, the margin keeps getting bigger. This is not to put Tade down at all, but clearly, how could you? The first year that he won, there was some circumstance there where

38:45there was probably a little less competition for him to be able to rise up. And he's continuing to improve though. So he does. It does show also that even if you are phenomenal, how to young age that there is still progression and enhanced capacity that can still be expressed for five, six, seven years later, even if you are at the top. It might not be the case for everybody. Paul sex, that's might not improve by 15%. He's probably not done. Probably not getting in the bed, but we'll see. But back to the pick on Paul. His first win. So if I remember correctly and correct me if I'm wrong, that last stage was a punchy TT. It was. And it really wishes helmet was back. He was, yeah, he refused sweating. He was, was lately looked like an amateur out there. Exactly. Unfortunately, ripped off his visor. Yeah. And all kinds of things. And, but it really suited for sure. Yes, it did. And they were very close on time. Yeah. So this course having clearly some impact. I will bring up an argument for being a little

39:50bit older that we have him touched on. And I think Tade is a good example of this strategy. Smarts. You watch some of his early tours. He didn't race the smartest. He could have seven at this year. Yeah. And I remember the one year against Jonas, everybody, those first early stages, the flat stages, you saw Tade sprinting for the win and getting us a couple of seconds here, a couple of seconds there. And I'm going to go, oh my god, he's on beatable to having gotten to the mountains. And Jonas said it's bought on. He's like, Tade is fighting for seconds. I'm fighting for minutes. And then they got into the mountains and sure enough on one of the mountains stages, he took two minutes out of them and won the tour. And I've heard people who have worked at Tade say, yeah, he was wasting energy. He wasn't being smart. He was probably strong enough to win that tour. He just wasn't using his strength right. And now you watch him. He races in my opinion, a much smarter tour. But some of his attacks, he even now are considered, oh, what's he doing? He tends to bludgeon

40:52people. He's not what he wants to bludgeon people. One of these days, if he blows up on one of those bludgeon attempts, a little backfire every now and then though, I wouldn't change it if I'm 99 out of a hundred times. There's had to be an exciting for himself, right? But it's willing to risk. It's a little different of bludgeoning back then. He was killing himself for two seconds. Now when he goes out, he puts two, three minutes into everybody. And there is a mental side where they all go, I can't beat this guy. It demoralizes them. Yeah, we also don't know what's going on inside. Like the confidence now is I can bludgeon people and I'm going to do it because I can and that's going to give me so much of a buffer. Back then it was I want to show people I can bludgeon and I'm only going to get two seconds, but he still had that mentality. I'm going to do it. And now it's with confidence and knowing that he can hold on for 50K. Another thing to think about is the kind of race. Again, what everyone is racing. A

41:56classic is still different than a grant or not that Poggi has not had extraordinary success in classics. Though, if we know, if anyone knows the USA Cycling Development Pipeline for International Professional Development is days raced in Europe is one of the huge defining factors of who's actually going to make it in the world tour setting because literally knowing those, those little roads, how to position yourself, all of those things in terms of classics in La Fland, there's a Rubé, et cetera, position and everything and knowing the course is a huge part of that success, not just straight up engine. You know, you can have the biggest, we can develop massively strong engines here on our big roads in the US. But if you go over to Belgium and you go even in a, you know, a smaller race, if you don't know how to maintain position, how to move up, you don't know when that next right turn is going to go up a 22% grade. All of those things, those that have experience. And again, there's a tactical side of this as well that again, for a grand tour,

43:00there's previews now being done on all the big stages. You know, there's a lot of recon, where in the past there wasn't quite as much of that highly specialized preview in of each of the courses, the riders, all the big riders on the big teams know all the critical stages and even some of the other stages of where they might be able to eke out a little advantage or try to put, you know, other riders into difficulty. So I still think that again, with age and or experience. So if you're not old enough to have experienced it yourself, if you're able to gain experience from good directors and team management, that really helps you prepare. You do even study video of prior races and that knowledge can actually, again, help a young rider that in the past would not have had all those resources more to had to just earn it the hard way the long way. A really good example of this education, European education is Kate Courtney. We're going to switch genders here. Kate, you know, a phenomenal mountain bike racer. She wins the marathon. She wins the cross country. She went and then all of a sudden she jumps

44:02on the road on a kind of a whim and she wins the national road championship. She gets picked up for a lot of reasons by FDJ, but where did they send her to race Kermes and Belgium? They learn how to do this, right? Of course, she wins her first Kermes, but anyway, still, they saw that need for her to understand positioning on these different trains and things. So the European education still exists. And I love to follow up on that. Like I was again fortunate to work with one of our better, you know, female riders in recent years in the past with Evelyn Stevens, who was a college tennis player, started racing bikes much later. So age development, there's no junior results to speak of because there were no junior races that she ever competed in. She was not even new 23 as she started racing her bike. And within two years of starting was on the biggest world tour HTC back then. It's not uncommon for that. That rapid rise, that from running. Physical capacity was developed elsewhere, but then expressed on the bike. And what I was able,

45:03what we worked on actually had she moved to Boulder so that she could ride with me, but more so with other athletes I coached, juniors on the little velodrome, the one that we had in the warehouse. Remember that the Boulder indoor cycling dream? It was scary for a lot of reasons and it was the perfect place for the develop skills riding with the Ekman brothers that are, you know, 15, 16 absolutely ragers and get comfortable being very uncomfortable. Her first big win that next year in 2012 was on the pure to be where she could use her physiology, but she could save energy sitting in the group learned how to manage that. And then she beat really the best of all time. And the women's peloton with Mary Ann of Osby attacking her because she had been able to finally save energy wear in the years prior she had had some success, but she was either off the front or off the back where at that flesh in 2012 she was able to sit in the group for a while as it whittled down and not expand all the energy. So I can't remember the day of the study,

46:03but there was a great study that makes your point where they looked at the spring classics and compared the power data of top five finishers to the power data of people that finished six through 30th. And what was very interesting is those those riders that missed the top five. So they broke the race into quartiles. They were actually putting out more power in the second and third quartile than the top five top five were putting up much bigger power in the final quartile because what was going on was those guys that couldn't make the top five. They were doing more work to stay at the front. Yep. Or regain position. And to make a position where the top five were really good at positioning and saving energy and then had more to give in that last quarter of the race when you win the race. Yep. And that's again a knowledge of tactics, a technique and there's certain things that are going to take some time to develop, learn and be able to deploy. When it comes to the physiology, it's not black and white. Here's physiology is Matt Kassen

47:08on why it's so tricky. Junior development is such a tricky thing to weigh up because you need at the end of the day, there are kids when these guys are getting into like their first world tour of contracts, there are still kids. And it really needs to be a fine, they need to have a good support system around them to make sure that it's kind of what's in their best interest. I think from a physiological standpoint, it's very reasonable to think that some of these younger riders, they're going to more or less have a very similar VO2 max when they're 17, 18 to when they're fully developed. What changes is the durability or their resistance to fatigue. And that's another thing where with the proper training and structure to what they're doing, you can get a lot more out of younger riders. I think one of the big shifts has been again changing how we understand training dynamics when you're young, when you're still going through puberty, high intensities the way to go because you can still really drive up your VO2 max a lot in those younger

48:11years. I think historically when you read autobiographies of former like Chris Froomer or people from just one generation past, it was all about big volume, high miles, 40 hour weeks when you're 16, 17, 18. That sets yourself up for injury, sets yourself up to be not enjoying it anymore. I think the big shift has been more year round high intensity. And then just more structured better training. The last thing would be time off the bike is just as if not more important for people at that level. Having proper recovery, proper nutrition, starting that out when you're 15, 16, 17 is just going to build a much better foundation to build off of. Do I think this is an exceptional generation of talent? Yes, you always have the issue of you can only attract people who are into the sport. It's very likely that there's someone better than Tade Pogaccia out there in the world right now who's just never

49:11ridden a bike or maybe rode it once and just didn't really like it. So it's really about funneling more people access to riding bikes and nurturing that talent in a constructive way. So I think the net is cast wider. We're doing a better job of supporting younger riders as they come up. So I would not be surprised if we see every five years see some phenomenal 18-year-old, 19-year-old just jump up through the ranks. So let's flip this around and ask the question from a physiological and mental standpoint, what's the argument for younger riders? Do they have physiological advantages that you lose as you get older? Well, that's the fast switch, which is developed early on in the Maxio 2 peaks when you're young. So yes, I think they do have physiological advantage early on, but they lack so many other clubs in the bag. This hasn't developed yet. But if I got a big ol' AC, a huge VO2 Max,

50:11man, I can make a lot of mistakes and still beat a lot of very crafty old guys who don't have the same weapons that a young rider may have. So it depends how we set up the course. Absolutely. I think one of the arguments for allowing young riders to do their thing is the fact that there's sort of this unwritten code in the European Peloton about earning your place and all of that. And it's a dogmatic. There's a lot of historical behavior. Let's call it over the logical thing. Can you stay? Pregidist, I don't know. Belgium logic. Yeah, Belgium logic, all that sort of stuff. So I think maybe the point I'm trying to make now about what we're seeing now is there are some people that at age 19 have a really strong head on their shoulders. They have the right attitude. They've taken care of themselves. They're surrounded by really good people who get

51:13them what they need, whether it's physical or mental. And they are capable of handling that situation. And they should be allowed to show off their talents. But I don't think it's I think it's pretty rare. So that's the tricky thing is spotting the people who have the capacity to handle the pressure, the workload, the stress, all of those things and letting them thrive in that environment. And then there's the people. I don't know the story super well, but I feel like Brandon McNulty is a good instance, a good example of somebody who had really a whole lot of talent. But the people around him said, you're not ready yet. And they put them on this slower trajectory. And he's turned into a really big talent. But he probably wouldn't have gotten there if he had just been thrown in the deep end. And so that's the big question I have for the two of you is that mental side. If we get obsessive about looking for that next young talent, yeah, we might find a Tade, we might find a

52:14sex dose. But I worry about how many 14 year olds who could have a very good career were killing because we're forcing them to perform and raise their level before they're ready, particularly mentally. Is there an issue with that? Yeah. I mean, you know, you think about physiological power profiling and we can look at capacity and kind of changes in rate of gain. And while, you know, somebody is on that trajectory, they have this kind of an output, you know, 10 watts per kilo for a minute already. They're doing awesome. They're in a, you know, that's a pro level anaerobic capacity. But what's their psychological profile look like? And again, if there's certain deficits that are so far off and their capacity to handle things that they got the physical goods, but the mental side isn't there or in putting them in that situation is going to cause harm. That to me is the kind of relative risk. It would just be like the one guy I work with who's physiologically able to climb at a world tour level. But if you put them in a pack of 200 guys

53:18going downhill and in and or at, you know, 50k an hour, I wouldn't feel very comfortable doing that. I would feel like that would be doing a very grave disservice and potentially, as we know, a terrible risk being taken not worth the reward that that pro contract is not worth risking ultimately, you know, that health because doesn't have the requisite scale in the time course required to gain that maybe just doesn't make sense for some folks. Interesting case that he would be to look back to see where Paul sexist has come from. What was his trajectory? The two their cremesses through this, you know, through the French system. Think about the pressure on that kid from the French from the national aspect. There hasn't been a Frenchman win the tour since. You know, you know, yeah, what's that 30 years? Oh, yeah, 70s. So 50 pressure on that guy where Tati comes from Slovenia. Yes, there's been a recent Slovenian multi-time world champion, but there's not that national pressure on that guy.

54:18So it's going to be really how did they prepare this kid? We think he survived the tour. We're not sure. Yep. I'd love to know is there a book out there? The history of bolt. No, they're not. But would that be interesting to see the case study of that young character? I think it'd be really interesting. Yeah, another thing even that crosshair. I remember I talked with a journalist years ago about it was either Vanderpole or the North's like road program. And again, these guys that came from an extraordinary cycle across background as junior, new 23 highest level of successes there. Absolute heroes of that sport, but it's an hour long race. I'm guessing. But in quotes, because it's the hardest hour if you've ever done a cycle across race and they're extraordinary. But there was all this concern of are they going to be able to do road racing that's so much longer. Well, again, the format of the kind of races where they initially had success is where that anaerobic capacity, high VO2 max skill sets all being deployed, which they had extraordinary

55:20capacity and continued to develop greater and greater endurance. And these guys are absolute superstars. No, they're not winning GC grand tours necessarily, but my gosh, are they impacts within the peloton and the sport? Sapcus, great example. He has verbalized, I don't want to be a team leader. I love my job. And he's great at it. He's great at it. And I don't want the mental aspect of this. I don't want to be that although he did win the Walta one year. Yeah, Walta zero. It was well. Yeah. Yeah. And did they let him win it? Did they real primrose back in? I think he's still what I've done it. I do. But who knows who knows? But he has his room through and he has his stadium. He wasn't loving life. No, there are riders who have physiological capacity. But again, that psychological profile doesn't fit what it takes to be a GC leader. Like the demand, the pressure, the expectation, the leadership side. Again, there's probably wonderful soldiers who are not going to be the best generals. And there are great generals who

56:23are not necessarily the best soldiers. And you know, things are not always equal across that distribution of capacity in one realm to another. Well, how often have you seen a super domestic riding for a tour contender who starts dropping their team leader at the tour and you go, oh my god, this is the next phenom. Yeah. The next year, they have the leadership on their shoulders and they completely cracked. Yeah. Because it's so much easier to ride like that when the pressure is an on you. Yeah. And especially you might see that in a third week of a grand tour. And if they were able to just do a rolling tour for the first week, go and do absolutely nothing. Just make time cuts on some days to conserve energy to be that hero in the third week for their team leader. That again, you see that third week, the heroics, but like if they were able to be an hour or two hours back in the first week by just rolling it, that's again, it's a great tactic and strategy employed by the team to deploy that weapon at the right time. So I'm going to ask you a question about national pressure. How many Americans end up being team

57:27leaders in the grand tours? We send over 10, 12 Americans a year that are at that level and they end up being domestic. Are they never given a chance or because they're in suddenly in this European setting, no, no, we're going to ride for our guy and you're going to be a great domestic and they make a good living at it. Yep. But how many since l'answer are, I mean, TJ won the white jersey, right? In 20. He dropped his team leader, TJ dropped his team leader. So I just, does our system not prepare our young people to be grand tour leaders? Some of the guys have been over there. I've actually heard both of them saying, A, we just want to get over there and be in a domestic making good money. It's just a good career. I'm fine with that. But the other side of I've heard them say, if you want to be able to do it, and this goes back to the younger argument, you need to go over there really young because that whole, the whole racing over there is designed to build you to the grand tour racing over here is not.

58:31The very different style of racing. Totally. Yeah. And you mentioned McNulty, there's a couple others of that same vintage that are really good American riders. Yeah. I mean, there's those questions early with some big teams signing some riders. It's like where they trying to block their development or just keep them, you know, keep them cooled off and not reach that highest potential that they might have at again, have heard stories of these kind of things where very promising young US riders were on some pretty big teams, but didn't get necessarily all the same opportunities. You're saying there's prejudice against American riders potentially. Maybe not prejudice, but just, you know, it's a tactical thing. Yeah. Ultimately takes them all to learn languages, you know, fit in. Oh, yeah. There's one day that I spent in Eddie Merck's garage working with a bunch of young riders. The Almeida twins were there. McElberg was there. And in that setting, these guys are the future. We wait and see. We've watched the Almeida brothers

59:33really try and struggle. We watched McElberg turn into a super domestic with his time trailing skills. So those were Europeans who never made it to. So I mean, it's not exclusively by nation, but again, a developing yeah, that teams can make they have, you know, potential to change trajectory of careers for sure. Based on the race selection that they put them in the trajectory of support, etc, can clearly like really help somebody to launch in the right direction. And also maybe not make it easy. So before I know we're getting to the magic witchy now, but we haven't talked a lot about women. And in today's news, they talked about a woman named Flour Moore, a young Belgian woman at age 20, becoming the next female phenom out of Belgium. So that's young for a woman because most of them do, they do develop later. So is any of the discussion we've had today and a different show? Would it be a different conversation when we were talking about females versus

1:00:38males? I think it would be a very different conversation because you look at the male professional system versus the female, there is a whole structure to develop male athletes where with women, you really go from the amateur ranks right up to the top pro rank without a lot in between. And there isn't a lot of handholding like you have with the men. We do see the depth and the this year's Tour de Femme, the number of women staying in the race at the front is getting bigger. And it used to be that you might have a couple of women everybody else was off the back. Now it's it is improving and the depth is improving and they are getting more money coming to the women cycling to develop it. But how much of these arguments and discussions we've had today are applicable to the female pelican. I don't know. To some degree, I would separate mountain biking out from road cycling to because I feel like with just for gender, you talk about it. Yeah, because of the advent of Nica and things like the bear team, there are young, very talented female American

1:01:42cyclists who have a bit of a pipeline trajectory to mountain biking, but it's not there for road, yeah, I would make sure Kate Courtney who gets that was already laid by the other yeah, through the mountain, but that's what you're saying. She her pipeline was was not mulling also keep in mind. I mean, this is where we really have to tip our hats to women. US is leading, I believe right now in metal counts. But it's what 60 something percent of those metals are from women higher percentage of cycling metals. Yeah, we would not be leading a metal count if it wasn't for our female athletes. And so it's really important that we are developing that side. I agree. I think that development pathway is clearly a lot different, you know, for women versus men. And I mean, even I know the number of elite and professional women cyclists that played a totally different sport in college. There were division one soccer players or there's a lot of soccer players actually that had high level performance in other sports before they came

1:02:48to cycling is really again, you don't see that with guys like how many elite male road cyclists were good at another sport or high level in another sport before they started cycling. Yes, pretty few. I mean, there's a handful exactly. Literally. Yeah, that's also the level. Yeah, it's peak much later. Yeah, yeah, exactly took time to develop that skill set and tactics and capacity and all those things. Yeah. So it's like in women, that's like almost more the like we're finding high level capacity athletes who then can get on a bike and succeed pretty quickly. Physical physiological, psychological development occurred elsewhere. And then they just get that specialized tactic skills on the bike and are able to come to a pretty high level where, you know, there's just less development from that junior in our road cycling again mountain bike heck yes, because we have cyclicross in the mountain bike, the high school mountain bike leads absolutely of really opened up a lot of opportunity. So I think we will finish this out with the hardest

1:03:53question I'm going to ask you guys the whole day. So it sounds like we've really landed on no, it's not one or the other. It's not older is better or younger is better. It's really you have to take it on an individual by individual basis. And as two people who have developed a lot of very successful athletes, how do you know which is which? How do you look at an athlete and go, you're going to be great at 21 versus you need time. And you're going to be at your best later on. In my experience over time, there's a psychological side that is expressed early for those who have that capacity to perform in pressure situations is maybe part of that. So like those who are actually able to produce those highest power numbers in a race with a number on and execute and have a good finish will do better than those who are a Tuesday hero. They hit the highest watts per kilo of anyone in the group, but it was just Tuesday on their own without pressure expectation or a

1:04:54tactical requirement. And so to me, there's a psychological element that has to be paid attention to and I think is the that is the area that has the greatest opportunity. Are you a killer? Are you not a killer? And do you like the pancake? Right. So my group of young people that I worked with at the really high level were typically brought to me Sean Kelly brought Evan a poll to me. Said this kid, you need to sneak him into your program while you're here. He's going to be something special. So he'd been identified by Sean Kelly as somebody who was going to be special. The Alameda brothers, some of them have succeeded, right? Some of them happened. So they were identified by the best of the best in Europe at selecting talent, but yet comes down to that individual. Evan a poll love as the pain cave and he is a killer. Can he catch a pokey? I don't know. It's going to be fun to watch, isn't it? So Andy was talking about, you know, there's killers who have success. And I would say there's kind of two maybe really three types of cyclists who

1:05:58succeed. Number one, those cyclists who like to hurt themselves can have success time-trialing climbing. You can just go deep in that pain cave. Your friends with it. You're not afraid of it and you go there and you can be ahead of everyone else. Most people can't just do that. The other kind of cyclists that are really successful, those who like to hurt others that are willing to do whatever it takes to finish in front of you. They will fight to the absolute limit to the death and go for it every single time. The most successful that third type, the unicorn is those who can both hurt themselves and will go very deep and have even more joy in hurting others. The that's they are the kill those are the true. I want to go hard because I want to hurt myself. Not to hurt killers, right? Those are the ones and then, you know, I had two brothers, you know, one of them was type one. He could go and put himself in the cave deep, absolutely successful. The younger one just wanted to beat his brother. So he was always motivated to kill others.

1:06:58And he also learned to enjoy the taste of his own blood. The thing I find interesting about them is the one who likes to hurt themselves. They will ride a bike the rest of their lives because even when they don't ride, they'll internally motivate the one who likes to hurt others. As soon as they're race careers over, they hang it's a bike. They should do it. They get fat right. I would put myself in the unicorn category. I race to hurt other people for sure. Yeah, like that. It's a tactic again. It's a skill set. It's a psychological profile. I was racing against my peers, Paralympic racing. I was racing to win. I didn't think about hurting other people, but I would do anything to myself to win. Yeah. I love grants response to me many episodes ago, where I brought that up because I told them I would sometimes go to races and walk around the parking lot to find somebody to really piss me off to get me angry because then I would be like, I want to destroy you. I'm more the just live in the pain cave. I enjoy hurting myself,

1:08:03but I race my best when I'm also like, I have to beat you. I have some external and grab that rifle horrified. He's like, why would you race on anger? Oh, it can be an incredible fuel. Yes, but you have to know how to manage it. It's all a race story on myself. My very first Paralympic road race in Europe, we were in Austria. Of course, I was stupid enough to wear the stars and stripes. I didn't want to put a target on my back. Anyway, so it's somewhere along where rolling along everybody's happy. There's tax, we're going to roll back in, and there's a long climb to the finish. This Italian guy comes back, rolls up right beside me, and he swings a fist. He hits me in the solar plexus. So hard. It sent me out the back of the group. And it took me a minute to get my act together back again. But when I caught back to the back of the group, I attacked through it so nobody could hit me again and rolled up to the breakaway and won the

1:09:06race at the last second because they didn't know I was coming up on the back of them. I was pissed. That's powerful. Anger is a very powerful tool. Yeah, but you talk about it. I'm targeting my back. Not only did I have serenostripes that didn't I won the first race of the week. So yeah, that's going to be tough. They were after you. Oh, absolutely. It was people who think that racing in Europe is like a local, I don't know, fund ride. It is full contact sport. Don't think it is not. Well, guys, you know, the routine. You've got one minute to give you your most salient thoughts. Here's what we'll do. One of you will go first. One of you will go last. So you guys can fight over who gets which. Every time we've done that, we end up saying the same thing. So I'll let you lead out. So the purpose today was to talk about the current surge of young riders. And is it the trend? And it will it stick kind of thing? And what are the

1:10:06upsides of the downsides to youthful riders winning grand tours? I think. And I've said it in the episode that is a very individual thing that there's going to be young riders who succeed and last a long time. There's going to be young riders who succeed and flame out. There are going to be guys who come a slow boil and who reach their peaks and their mid late 20s and get rolled into the 30s before they have great success hard to predict. I've been presented with a lot of young riders who people have sought them out and identified them as going to be great. Some of them have been great. Some of them haven't. So I don't think there's a selection process that's going to beyond physiology, which is going to help us identify who those great new riders going to be regardless of age. Chris, you want to go next? I would say that a the discussion here today hinges on a few people that are current outliers in a lot of ways. And I don't know if we'll see that develop into a full-fledged trend over the next couple decades. We'll see. We'll have to wait and see.

1:11:12I would reiterate what I said earlier, which is I think it's great in some ways that young riders have been given a chance to succeed and flourish and attempt things. It's only if it's done in a healthy way, though. And I think we didn't really talk about how this applies to the parents or coaches out there listening. But I would say there's so many factors involved in trying to understand when to push and when to hold people back from themselves, from the sport, from the dangers, all of those sorts of things. So I think it takes a team of really talented people that know the sport and know the pressures and know what it's like to be in those races at a certain level to fully understand whether somebody's ready for that or not. So it's a tricky thing. So mine is going to kind of flip around what Andy said and kind of be a warning, which is to be careful about jumping on trends, which we all do. And even saw it in the science. I made a point to pointing out a 2006

1:12:17study when you had some older winners of the tour going, yeah, well, this is the way it is. We got to focus more on older riders. And right after you have Tadeh, we and all of a sudden, the study going, oh, it's now younger riders. And let's figure out how to identify them. The danger with jumping on trends is the starting to push people before the ready or missing talent. That's great talent. It just doesn't happen to be the age that you're expecting. So yeah, you know, we've had some trends. We've had a trend towards older tour winners. Now we have a trend towards younger tour riders. I'm sure it's going to go back to older at some point. And don't get too caught up in this. And to me, just continue looking for great talent. Yeah, I mean, not to have a second take at my one minute, but just stop with the ageism. If people have talent when they're 45, let them race. If they have it when they're 18, let them race, you know, like express it when it comes to them as long as it's done in a healthy way. Neil and I will both agree with this. If anybody starts feeling that the best age for

1:13:17Tour of France winner is mid fifties, we're on board. I think it's possible. Just not reasonable. Everything's possible. Nothing's reasonable. Yeah, exactly. I'll be healed up. Don't worry. I'll be be a bionic soon. Well, so riding off the trend thing. So when I first started working with Andy, I was definitely known from testing that the guy that told everyone to slow down to go easier zone two, and then I did a lot of work with the suffer fest, which high intensity training. So then I became the high intensity guy. My message did not change in either one of those. The low intensity work needed to be balanced with appropriate specific high intensity. And then I became really dialed in on the really high intensity and having better targets. So that trend, whether what you're seeing right now is invoked or not is maybe not the entire picture. Look at the big thing. And what I would say that's maybe missing from a lot of the discussion. We see the physical physiological output capabilities. But are the psychological profile and psychological needs

1:14:22being met for some of these developing younger riders? And are they being supported appropriately? Is I think where the the attention should be placed? Not whether they can physically do it. But are they actually in a well supported place to be able to do that and continue to have good psychosocial development beyond this short period in their time of lives where they might be the best in the world? Very good. Thanks guys. That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. Don't forget we're now on YouTube. Give us a like and subscribe there and help us grow our reach. As always, remember that the thoughts and opinions expressed in Fast Talk are those of the individual. Join us on social media at at Fast Talk Labs. For access to our endurance sports content and continuing education for coaches, head to fasttalklabs.com. For Dr. Andy Pruitt, Neil Henderson, Lauren DeCruzenzo, Adam Mills, Matt Casson and Chris Case, I'm Trevor Conner. Thanks for listening.