Domestique Cycling Podcast

Remco Evenepoel won his fourth straight world time trial title in Montréal by 57 seconds from Filippo Ganna, and now he goes for something no man has done: the time trial and the road race at the same Worlds. Tadej Pogačar is out. Paul Seixas and Isaac del Toro finished one and two on this circuit two weeks ago. Mathieu van der Poel has just ridden 174 kilometres alone in Luxembourg. The 2026 World Championships road race is on Sunday: 273.7 kilometres and twelve laps of Mount Royal.
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We start with the weekend. Evenepoel put time into Ganna on every section of the time trial, while Ganna rode a negative split. We also get into why a 40 kilometre time trial is its own discipline, and why pacing it confused so many riders. Then we look at the road race team by team.
Belgium have Evenepoel and Wout van Aert, and no dedicated helper for Van Aert. France bring Seixas, Sivakov and an eight-rider team we expect to race to blow things up. We also cover Great Britain with Pidcock and Adam Yates, Denmark, Germany with Lipowitz and Brenner, Ecuador without Carapaz, Italy with Ciccone, Pellizzari and Lorenzo Finn, Van der Poel's Dutch team, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia with Roglič, Spain with Enric Mas, Switzerland, and a US team with McNulty and Simmons.

Enric Mas is the winner of the 2026 Vuelta a España, the first Spanish winner of his home Grand Tour since Alberto Contador in 2014. Four Vuelta podiums, three of them second places, and at 31 he finally has the one that counts. Primoz Roglic is second at 2:15, Felix Gall third at 2:44.

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Bram and Ethan go through the final week: two more sprint wins for Matthew Brennan, who finished his debut Grand Tour with five, the Jerez time trial where Mas lost only 33 seconds to Roglic, Sepp Kuss riding from eleventh to fifth on the queen stage, and Tobias Halland Johannessen finally winning one in Granada after years of second places.

Then there is the argument. The organisers took general classification times with 9.8 kilometres to go on the final stage, so the last lap did not count. There was no crash and nothing overtly dangerous about the circuit. Is a Grand Tour that has to disable its own classification to run its finale still a twenty one stage race?

After that it is Canada. Remco Evenepoel won GP de Québec, Isaac del Toro beat Paul Seixas in a two up sprint in Montréal, and Evenepoel finished fifth after spending too much of the race in the middle of the group. Del Toro and Seixas both look like Worlds contenders now. The elite men's road race is on 27 September, on many of the same roads.

Full Worlds preview next week.

Finlay Pickering finished the Vuelta a España sick, and he tells Aidan Burgess he never once thought about climbing off. The Jayco AlUla rider spoke to us on the morning of the final stage in Granada, a day after Mikel Landa's win on the Collado del Alguacil and two days after the worst day he has ever had on a bike.

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He is honest about what went wrong. A good time trial, then a stomach that stopped working, then 30 minutes lost on stage 19 and a top 20 on general classification gone with it. His reason for staying out there is the best line in the episode: a DNF on ProCyclingStats is not something he wants next to his name.

There is a proper masterclass in here on racing in the heat. Pickering does not think the heat was his problem at all, and he has little patience with the idea that the Vuelta in August is a surprise. Saunas, a training block in Spain, 20 minutes at a time, every day, building slowly. He explains exactly how he does it and why most people get it wrong by cooking themselves once and never going back.

He also makes the case for Enric Mas. Pogačar crashing out changed the race, but Pickering argues the winner still had Roglič, Kuss, Carapaz and Gall to beat, and points back to the day Mas chased Pogačar down on the road. His view on racing the best rider in the world is simple: you do not want to fight a guy who is nought and 26.

Plus stage 20 from inside the bunch, Landa as a hero from his childhood, the Worlds without Pogačar, a losing bet on red at the Monaco start, and the supermarket start line in Granada.

Enric Mas reaches the second rest day of the Vuelta a España in red, 2:06 ahead of Felix Gall and 2:10 ahead of Primož Roglič. The man with four Vuelta podiums and no Grand Tour win is now the favourite, and Bram and Ethan spend this episode working out whether he can actually finish the job.

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Mas took 27 seconds at Calar Alto and another 25 on La Pandera, and Movistar have controlled this race in a way nobody expected from them. That leads to the argument that runs through the whole episode: with Tadej Pogačar out and his season now over, does this Vuelta come with an asterisk next to it? Bram says it should not. Ethan says nobody looks up who crashed out twenty years later.

Then the heat. 41 degrees on the road to Loja, riders taken to hospital, and Sunday's stage into Córdoba cut by 79.5 kilometres under the extreme weather protocol. Both hosts think the measures are the right ones and both think they are aimed at the wrong end of the day, with the Vuelta moving finishes later for television rather than starting in the cool of the morning.

There is a lot of good racing in here too. Wout van Aert won twice in three days and controlled the whole finale in Córdoba, Visma are on five stage wins with three of them from Matthew Brennan on his Grand Tour debut, and Jakob Omrzel and Marco Brenner produced the two surprises of the week. Bram and Ethan then look at the final week: the Jerez time trial, Peñas Blancas, the brutal stage 20 to Collado del Alguacil, and a Granada finish that is not a parade.

Plus the Tour of Britain, where Tim Wellens took the overall and UAE filled the podium on the final stage in Earlston. Ethan was at stage 1 in Lincoln to see Lewis Askey win.

A heads up on the end of this one: Bram's internet dropped in the middle of the Tour of Britain section, so the episode finishes earlier than usual.

Finn Fisher-Black joined Aidan Burgess on the first rest day of the Vuelta a España, four days after Tadej Pogačar crashed out of a race he was leading by nearly four minutes.

He is honest about his former teammate. People assume Pogačar wins so often that a bad day cannot really hurt, and Fisher-Black says that is exactly backwards. Everyone starts each race the same, everyone wants to win, and nobody turns up to a Grand Tour without doing the work. He explains how the news travelled through the bunch, how quickly the racing stopped, and how close his own team came to being caught in the same crash.

Then the race that is left. Fisher-Black rides for Primož Roglič, who was hit by a car on a training camp only weeks before the start and could barely get on a bike. Nobody in the team knew what they had until the racing began. He talks about how you read Roglič's mood, why the calm version is the fast one, and why he thinks the last week will be the best one.

There is also the tactical picture. With UAE no longer policing the race, nobody seems to want the job, and Fisher-Black explains why that opens up breakaway after breakaway, why he still fancies a move with Jay Vine and Pavel Sivakov in it, and how much freedom he gets while his leader sits second overall.

Plus the Monaco time trial and rolling out of a casino, the warm-up he makes up as he goes, the hail on the Font Romeu stage and the hotel that took the peloton in, the five-star reviews that got deleted, the mattress in the background of the call, the drink bottle scrums, and why he still wants to go back to the track.

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