Is there TOO MUCH 💰💰💰 in Cycling? | The Gruppetto with Rob Hatch Ep.1 | Eurosport Cycling

Eurosport’s Rob Hatch talks through the opening weeks, and key moments from the UCI World Tour and Women’s World Tour seasons. He is also joined by Eurosport Cycling’s Orla Chennaoui and Adam Blythe as they debate the impact of new money arriving into cycling.

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Hello everybody I’m Rob atch and welcome to the groupo now there must have been some mistake somewhere by somebody at Eurosport as well as have my voice all over the coverage they’ve decided to send the camera as well before they realized that mistake I thought we’d

Better get on with it anyway so we’re here we’re ready for episode one we’ve invited you to Spain we’re going to take you on a few Travels With Us meet our experts as well today we’ll be looking back at the first few races that we’ve seen on Euros sport this season as well

As catching up with a few members who are usually found in the Breakaway here on the gretto we’ll bring you all the best of the racing we have on Euros sport so without further Ado there’s been plenty so far this season hasn’t there let’s rewind to opening weekend

And begin with omop newcloud there were two huge stories one for a Serial winner the other a rare moment of success there aren’t many races that Mariana fos modern cyclings goat hasn’t won and so cly not many she hasn’t ridden but a first appearance at the Flemish opener

Saw Dutch success with the visma Lisa bike star breaking the Este Works dominance L keki made a move on the B Andre but it was nothing more than an early selection Longo borghini tried her luck then on the mood it would be keki again with the same story on the boss

Bed four would come to the line ending with a Sprint for fos and a new race on her alares for the record that is now 249 Professional Road victories for the Dutch star another Milestone is just one win away VI M Lisa bike dominated the men’s race forcing an early split and

Then accelerating away to another which was started by lead Trex Tom squeen Matel Jorgenson looked to have taken his chance on the way to Herberger but he was brought back on the final climb of the day Neils pollet then attacked but he was marked by Yan tratnik the SLV

Rider eternally appreciated but rarely rewarded this would be the day where it all fell into place a first ever Cobble classic win for Yan tratnik a day after his 34th birthday the day was made even better by teammate wat for winning the Sprint for third fard and tratnik would

Then head to altitude and there would be no repeat of the visma Lisa black dominance at thr bian the headline there came in capital letters and VI the return to racing of a certain Tad pogacha remember him UA Emirates taking one of the winds that will go down in

History the damage was done just as the TV Camera started rolling 81 km to go yes 81 km to go when the attack was launched almost Unthinkable with the rider in question not impossible nobody behind could react and a modern classic Was Won by the young master of modern

Cycling yet again there was a strong performance from laan Tom sing he was second and the impressive young Belgian Maxim V third earlier in the day in Sienna L keki again did the business her teammate B ofal the European Champion crashed as the race entered its brand

New finishing Loop and the business end Lizzy digan and Amanda Sprat were looking strong for leadle tri they also had Sheran Fernand Roy as an option with Italian Champion Elisa Longo borghini also in the mix strength in numbers has always been well the strength for Este

Works Pro time and again it will prove to be the case Demi Faller attacking and the world champion following before hitting the small group with a move over the top with 10 km to go Longo borghini was with her until the final climb but kopeeki rode away on Via Santa Katarina

And at the Finish unlike the year before this time there was no doubt this time Estee Works were Smiles after pin and Adriano been won by Mato jensson and yonas vinor respectively of course he was winning everything early season the first Monument of the season was upon us

And at the longest race of the year it was to become the fastest ever Edition despite the NY on 300 km distance the bunch reached Sano after leaving Milan well near enough Milan it was pava in the end in over 46 km per hour yep I’m

Reading here because 46 km per hour a crazy speed to break a record that had stood since 1990 as usual the action took place in the final half hour or so and as always that period was one of the most pul sating of the entire cycling season all the talk beforehand had been

Of a lightning Ascent of the Chessa by UA Emirates that to Aid an assist their leader T Pacha in his quest to win The Classy Chima but the emirati squad were missing in action at the bottom of the hill budged out of position and despite then taking control well they couldn’t

Make it hard enough for their leader they’d try again on the Podge up but not really becoming the Pogo this year sorry he attacked twice and almost got to Gap the final time just a few hundred meters over the top everyone was on the limit then and it took an amazing acceleration

By the world champion mat F pool to close the gap and put out the fire once at the bottom both Soo and Pitcock would try their look that was before mvdp became MVP of this particular race he pulled them back to set up yasper Philips his teammate to Sprint home from

A small group that included pson bettiol and former winner Mic Michael Matthews of Ja Lula and of course T poacha completed the podium Alpine the kerik taking the win for the second year running one of the features of any gretto is of course conversation although if you try to make the time cut

Things can of course get a little heated on that front I’m going to need a little bit of assistance every week to make that time cut and luckily here at Eurosport we have an embarrassment of riches don’t we all of our experts will be joining me at some point and we’ll

Get some special guests along as well first up helping me make the end of of this week’s race our Breakaway star presenter AA shenoi and of course her sidekick Adam BL and you Daniel Lloyd fans don’t worry he’ll be along at some point soon what is there left to say

About has been said already because she’s still right up there at the top despite the Kopi and people are that dominating things elsewhere that’s a thing about her acting that I that I love and we’ve talked about this on air a lot her love for winning her appetite

For winning the celebration that she gives as she crosses the line is magnificent but be one in an era okay the predecessor to SD works also I mean they’ be been the dominant team in women’s racing since forever um but the way they are winning right now often makes them appear unbeatable and

Sometimes they are frankly unbeatable so what Mariana does is even more impressive because we talk about the psychology of winning and the psychology of racing to be able to believe that you can still not single-handedly she now has an incredibly strong team around her but nonetheless to be able to take a

Race like that into your own hands to take SD works on on her terms is what makes her so impressive because SD Works already going into opening weekend had dominated the UAE women’s tour and we were already sort of scratching our heads and thinking how do we make this really

Interesting I mean it’s no disrespect to SD works it’s full respect to them but it doesn’t become the most dynamic storyline if they continue to win and then just when we needed it opening weekend om news and she comes takes to win absolutely storming stuff and we’ve

Written her off before we’ve said before that’s it she’s had her time and even then we were saying goat and that’s you know wonderful and Nic her time maybe that it’s caught up with her and she comes back and now she’s winning again and again and you know after as well

Taking wins at the a wi at the first ever TR to France fam she’s taking off the things that a great should be taking off I just think with her she she started back in the era like when Nicole cook was around that like Beijing Olympics 2008 she did the road race I

Think she was second there and I think if you go back all the way there successful then and still successful now with a lot of that with a lot of ups and downs and that’s for me it’s not the race wins that makes her the go it’s the

Way that she can still perform at the way she does yes okay if you look at it greatest of all time on paper yeah men’s and women’s like flat out the greatest of all time by a long margin but it’s the way she’s able to race when she

First started win bike races win for five or six years consistently then start to really struggle with other riders coming through being challenged a lot more so it wasn’t that she stopped winning but winning became a lot harder for her and I think as the years of Gone

By it’s increasingly got harder and harder and harder and harder and then if you look at now before omu we were just SD Works SD Works work getting bored of it almost cuz it was just like we’re going to expect them to be racing each other she comes along Voss and it’s not

If you get Voss in the condition she’s in it’s not just Voss is there because she knows what she’s doing it is that but she’s got the legs to do it and if you put them two together it’s done like it’s done there like no matter how good

Keki was that day if she was 50 and 20% better than Voss and she could not drop her she’s still not going to beat her I think we’re not far off being able to break SE works as dominance but we’re not anywhere near there at the same time

However if we get the rumors materializing and Dam varing maybe skipping Camp to UAE Team emor U adq um then that would change the Dynamics an awful lot I think I hope that would be a lot of fun I think it be a lot of fun but I think she’d struggle

Massively I really do think she’d struggle to win as many bik races does just because of the whole team setup the Riders around everything with it it’s like if you know like Chris F or whoever it was moved teams they’ve won the Tour of France won something like that they

Move teams F’s a different case there wasn’t it because of the crash but just for roit or even phip Philips are today you know Al the talked last week about maybe ah he’s putting himself up for sale he’s got Alex carera to to sort of negotiate his next deal and he’s saiding

Oh well my future might lie away if he looks at today and see what Fonda Paul did for him and racing in that team it’s the same thing it’s strength in numbers certainly in the classic well here’s the thing SE Works don’t seem to be trying

To keep dami do they you know they’ve already announced that La is staying until 2028 uh if they wanted to keep dami they would maybe be throwing a lot of eggs in her basket right now so maybe they’re happy enough for her to go yeah I’ve not heard this rumor mill about Phillipson

Where was he rumor to go I’m going to guess anywhere basically he was putting himself up for sale and saying you know I’m quite like where I am I’m doing rather well but let’s put the price up a bit do you know he’d fit quite well into

UAE wouldn’t he you he was there already as well well yeah I think he’d fit quite well in there you think him and pagat are obviously very good friends yeah and I think they’ve not got that Sprinter yet pagat yes he’s he can win the Tour he can win these races but philipson

Would run a very different program until it got to the tour I think it would be a huge mistake would they like Sprinter for philipsson yeah look at how much he has benefited from having mature doing his lead out I think a lot of riders if they’re built say if I don’t know

Philips was on let’s say 500 Grand a year and then UAE offered him 600 Grand a year I’m sure he’d go I’ll probably stay but if he’s on let’s say he’s on I don’t know 1.5 million now and then UAE say we’ll give you two and a half

Million you like it’s a lot of thinking to do you really have to decide how much you love the sport and it this goes back to all bike riders right when they go oh just love it I just love it do it for free like come on do it for free you

Don’t love it that much like everyone loves riding a bike but everyone grew up riding loving it winning take the money away and see how much everyone loves it hi Rob I’m here in Milan Sano we onite with the guys and we’ve been talking about uh some issues in cycling and uh I

Think like uh for the fair play um it’s not always Eagle uh about the number of stickers and the vehicles the teams have so I have a personal experience in 21 in the tour like it was a heat protocol on and uh the organizers uh decided to give

More stickers to the teams and we received also stickers but we didn’t have uh personal and and cars able to to drive to the tour so we were like uh with the same amount of of cars and help and some other teams got like up to 16

Cars and they plan to have uh every 20 minute service on every climb so get got uh every 20 minutes ice water drinks service everything so it makes a huge difference obviously talking about certain teams the teams that have dominated so far this year in men’s cycling vimma Lisa bike and UAE Emirates

Having that little bit of extra budget to have extra people to fuel on the course and we all know how important fueling is can I jump on my soit box here because at full respect yeah might get Dusty pH respect to Philipe everything he knows about

This sport I cannot claim to have a fraction of his knowledge or his experience obviously however we go however I’m just not on board with talking about salary caps capping the sport we need to talk about investment about growing the sport about making it bigger yes maybe sharing the money

Around but not by teams who enjoy a larger budget sharing it out finding different ways for the smaller teams to come through and get more investment and that’s all about R structure team structure in the finance structure but if we’re talking about capping anything I feel like we’re so Naval gazing

Sometimes in this sport whereby we see our pie and we see the slice of the pie and I remember chairing this debate once at the UCI which was like an open floor debate with all the main race organizers and all the main team bosses and sports directors and essentially this

Discussion was supposed to be about how we grow the sport and whether there’s a streamlining of the calendar and making it more Gen X friendly whatever and I was stunned by the reaction from almost everybody in that room who was more concerned about keeping their slice of

The pie rather than making the pie bigger I was wondering that was coming in but it absolutely drives me insane we need to step outside of this sport we need to see it in a global sporting context in a global business context and realize there is so much more that we

Need to be doing to grow it not to contain it when people started talking about the rumor about Damie varing being offered 1 million EUR to go to UAE and all of a sudden straight away it’s yeah but is that good for women’s cycling does that trickle down to the Grassroots

Come on if we’ve got one of the best riders in the world getting a blinking good salary for her career then we get proper talent coming through and seeing this is a viable alternative to football or American football whatever it might be and actually investing and growing in

This sport if we’re talking about salary caps in a sport that struggles for Finance or budget caps and and just one last thing sorry but what the third team that we didn’t mention in the big budget teams is anyos grenadiers money is not a guarantee of doing well so what are we

Going to say your budget is Cap if you’re successful will let you keep the budget because you’re not winning quite so much it doesn’t make sense to me is there any sympathy there as an ex Rider position we’ve not been in for Phil there is it’s it’s not just for Phil

It’s for the riders that are doing the job so what Phil’s there complaining about is ultimately the UCI ASO whatever race it was are giving out car stickers so you’ve got the car stickers for it for in each race and you get a number of stickers so in each I don’t know how

Many teams so credited Vehicles belonging to your team credited vehicles that means you’re allowed to drive on the course you’re allowed to stop at certain points with a sticker on your car in extreme witha a heat protocol you get to the point where you need more fluid on board you need more drinks

Everyone can provide more drinks and more fluid what Phil was saying is they give out so many stickers to all the team let’s say 10 each six each that not each team has got that amount of cars that is um it helps them perform but if in that race

Situation I think for the the UCI ASO they need to say right how many cars has everyone got just go and ask the general manager whoever it is quick email around the teams let us know if you want to give out stickers but we don’t want to

Give teams an extra Advantage if you’re looking on the day an advantage of being cool keeping the Riders you know keeping them fresh for more safety than anything the heat protocol I think that should be fair enough across all boards but it comes into them performance but is

Phil’s not complained about salary CPP and he’s not complaining about how much budget the teams have all got because ultimately the budget’s going to training camps they go into extra equipment this that and the other yes it makes a difference but the biggest difference in cycling as it’s always

Been is riding your bike training as hard as you can be you might not have this heat protocol stuff but if you ride your bike enough and train harder than anyone else you’re going to be a lot better all this year there’s been the talk of the big four going to the Tour

Of France how are they getting on we’ve had Remco Evol starting like a house on fire winning in figa the F he then won in the algar he was pretty good in pin you’d have to say maybe the team could have been a little better and there’s

Also the the the team time trial with the weather affected stuff that affected the race as well Primos RIT didn’t ride until P top 10 but no better than that which is a strange result for Primo wor he had in years in a one week straight stage

Race yeah yonas vgo went to Gran Camino and you know walked the entire Camino himself I think didn’t he he won all three main stages apart from the the neutralized prologue which didn’t really count uh don’t say that to the winner of course didn’t count for the general

Classification and who else we’ve got ah yes T pogacha who has raced twice won once and ended up on the podium once as well um how are they all getting on I’m not getting overly excited about Tad going for the overall I think he’ll go

For it but I think Tad will go in just to win win win the way that he’s been the last couple of years that step to yonas is still quite a big step and it’s not a big step which is unachievable but it’s a step back where he has to take

His foot off the gas a lot in terms of the way that he rides the way that he adjusts himself to the bike so I think jro full gas try and win it you’ve got two out of the three grand Tours there and I think when he goes to the tour

He’ll put himself in a position to go for the overall Victory but I just think if he loses a bit of time he’s not going to be upset about it cuz he’ll just go Every Mountain St every chance you get win win win win win but also with that

For me that brings in is he going for the overall is he not going for the overall because you can’t let him out your sights and that draws Remco out that draws Primus out hard to lose time as well exactly until even well until he unless he drops completely away and I do

Wonder about the pressure that will come from the sponsors because it’s all very well to win Strat bian with an 80 km solo nothing compares to winning the tour France and I think really in terms of bang for buck you want your lad winning the tour to France for the third

Time and finally bettering y finger go and getting the better of visma Lisa back again I just think no matter what else happens for them that has got to be the most important objective i’ say yes but at the same time if TDY wins the jro

Massive tick and a tick for the sponsors if he comes to the tour to France and just says look I’m going to see how it goes I want to be up there but I’m going to try and win as many stages as I can let’s say that that that guy could get

Five stages six stages maybe don’t you think that would have to be his objective from the beginning no he can’t win at all that way cuz that’s what he’s no no no no no to go for stages and give up the GC right from the very very

Beginning and say actually this is going to be my strategy because the problem is if he goes for the GC from the start you’ve already run out of half of the tour to France’s options of winning a stage for example if you look at last

Year and he was well beaten in the end but we’re looking at well into week two I mean when did he drop out of attention in the third week thir week and so by then you do you’ve got to race that far to know whether or not you’re going to

Win the trade of France when you know you’re not going to and by some margin you don’t have very many chances left to win a stage I heard it from last we oh I know I heard it from on the name checking I don’t know if they want me to

Say that or not but he was saying in the tour a couple of years last year there was a lot of arguing and you could hear it verbally between Tad Rafa m in the team about what they should do should they go it’s on the road and other teams

Could hear it and if you hear that you’re like they are not settled whatsoever so I think T by the sounds of it he wants to race like a looney he wants to race like we see Tad now just going for it all the time and that’s

What I’m excited about him going to the Tor France even the Paul roit vinga go very quick from you Alla vinga go for the win for the tour yeah vinga go for the win I think Rog glitch for a second partly because of what we’re saying and

And the jro is going to be won if all things been equal I think Tedy will win the jro and that will take so much out of him I think it would be abnormal to be able to be in contention for the two to France so I think yonas

Primos and I don’t know if Remco will finish I think Yas pre um Yas Remco Primus dnf really go to the Welter again and Tad maybe third someone else I’m not too sure you can see that chat in full on eurosport.com and the euro Sports cycling YouTube channel follow us on

Instagram as well @ eurosports cycling we of course got into all sorts including previewing the upcoming cobal Classics E3 saxo classic is the first of those the mini tour of Flander starts and finishes in the town of harl Beaker that’s live on Euros Sport and Discovery

Plus from 1: p.m. GMT on Friday the 22nd of March hint Kim in flers fields takes place on Sunday the 24th with both the men’s and women’s races live check your Regional schedules and the territory restrictions for where and when you can watch that race well the finish line

Arch is just up the road the time’s ticking down and I think we’re just going to about make it for this first episode of the gretto next week I don’t think we’ll have any problem making the time limit because it’s the world champion yes matcha fod pool who will be

Joining us on episode 2 of the gretto if you like what you saw feel free to share and we’d appreciate it too if you follow us on @ eurosports cycling on our YouTube and Instagram channels the live racing is on we hope you enjoy that so until next week goodbye