We sit down with one of the smartest bike racers of his day, and the oldest grand tour winner, to hear stories of what it takes to win bike races and outfox the competition.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Chris Case: Hey everyone. Welcome to Fast Talk, your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host Chris Case here with Trevor Connor. To win bike races, you often need both a big engine and a cool head. While the legs can get you into the ladder stages of a race, it’s with smart racing and good tactics that you’ll increase your chances of taking the top step of the podium.
And while most people are happy to do their intervals and sprint training, few put as much time into studying the nuances of cycling race dynamics. But our guest today has made a living from it, both as a racer and as a comment. Chris Horner was always known as one of the smartest bike racers of his generation, and he continues to analyze races and educate his fans through his YouTube work, the Butterfly Effect, and Beyond the Coverage.
Today, Chris does what he does best, takes us inside some of the biggest bike races in the world to help us understand the art of tactical racing, explaining the good decisions, the poor decisions, and as Chris likes to say, who were the knuckleheads. We also discuss how amateur race dynamics can be very different, and how you can take what you see at the Tour de France each year and apply it to your local racing scene.
So get ready for story time with Chris Horner. Let’s make you fast. Before we get into our conversation with Chris Horner today, I’d like to tell you about our sponsors, Mira. Back on episode four 13, we had Dr. Shali on the episode to talk about the immune system, gut health and performance. And it was a great conversation that you had with him.
Trevor,
[00:01:38] Trevor Connor: we geeked out.
[00:01:39] Chris Case: You totally geeked out.
[00:01:40] Trevor Connor: I think the worst geeking out. We didn’t even put in the episode, but you had two guys who loved immunology and boy did he know his science
[00:01:48] Chris Case: right. It impressed you.
[00:01:49] Trevor Connor: I was very impressed and we had fun and I think he enjoyed it so much that he became a sponsor of the show.
That’s right. So really appreciate that and and really appreciate somebody who has that sort of knowledge of the science.
[00:02:04] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:04] Trevor Connor: Being part of the show.
[00:02:06] Chris Case: Absolutely.
[00:02:07] Trevor Connor: But yeah, I’m actually just getting back from my nephew’s wedding.
[00:02:10] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:11] Trevor Connor: And
[00:02:11] Chris Case: you look a little hungover.
[00:02:13] Trevor Connor: Yeah. I just told you this. Don’t go out drinking on a Sunday night with a bunch of 25 year olds.
[00:02:18] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:02:18] Trevor Connor: It doesn’t go well.
[00:02:19] Chris Case: You’re over twice their age.
[00:02:21] Trevor Connor: Yeah. Isn’t that frightening? That’s just,
[00:02:24] Chris Case: it should be for you. It’s not so bad for me.
[00:02:27] Trevor Connor: It’s pretty scary. But yeah, I paid for that. But my nephews love to remind me that back when I was racing full time and they were 10 and 11.
[00:02:37] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:38] Trevor Connor: They thought it was really funny to give me wet willies, which is gross.
You lick your finger and you put it in my ear.
[00:02:43] Chris Case: That’s disgusting.
[00:02:44] Trevor Connor: And I kept trying to explain to them. I am going to an important race. I don’t need to get sick. Please stop doing that.
[00:02:52] Chris Case: They did not care at all about your racing. No,
[00:02:55] Trevor Connor: and my ne my, my nephew was like, at the wedding, he was like, so do we ever get you sick?
And I was like, yes, yes you did. And finally at 26 he’s like, oh, sorry. But it’s a good example of no matter how careful you are, things happen.
[00:03:12] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:03:12] Trevor Connor: You can’t, you get exposed.
[00:03:13] Chris Case: You can’t choose the timing of when you get sick. It’s almost inevitable when you’re racing all the time and you’re kind of riding the edge of high fitness and weak immune system.
[00:03:24] Trevor Connor: Yeah. So you’re looking for something that can help you. And I am a big believer in something that’s going to help your natural system fight infection better. And you know, back in that episode, that’s what we talked with Dr. Chalice about and they have their product, Sune md, which is all natural ingredients that have been demonstrated in the research.
And he sent me all the research. It was fun research to read products that they don’t do magical things, they help your immune system, which is what you want.
[00:03:57] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:58] Trevor Connor: Do its job, better to fight infection, to tackle whatever is affecting you. So it’s a good product. I’ve been using it now. I’ve had a few times this spring where I started feeling something come on and tried it and been quite impressed ’cause it seemed to prevent me from getting sick in the last few springs I’ve had something.
So this is new for me and appreciate it.
[00:04:23] Chris Case: Excellent. Well if you want to learn more about supporting your immune system during heavy training and competition, visit sera md.com/fast Talk and use code Fast talk 15. That’s F-A-S-T-T-A-L-K for 15% off your first order. Let’s get on with the show.
[00:04:45] Trevor Connor: Well Chris, welcome to the show.
Been excited to get you on Fast Talk.
[00:04:50] Chris Horner: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Been looking forward to it.
[00:04:53] Chris Case: Thank you.
[00:04:53] Trevor Connor: So I’m gonna start with a couple stories and then let you go with this. So I don’t know if you remember this, but something I always enjoyed. You came and finished out your career in North America.
You and I are. You’re three months older than me, so we’re basically the same age.
[00:05:08] Chris Horner: We’re both getting old is what you’re saying.
[00:05:10] Trevor Connor: And we were both racing in our late forties, and I used to love to come up to you at races and go, God dammit, Chris, you’re making me the second oldest guy in the race. And I don’t know if you remember, but we had one race where that kind of caught your attention and we were in a boring part of the race.
So you came over and talked to me and we spent 30 minutes talking about they have all these U 23 race, but they don’t have as old as dirt teams.
[00:05:39] Chris Horner: They need all guys team. It’s like we were talking about. So I’ve had that conversation often with a lot of different people where I think they do need a 40 plus European pro team.
Why not? I mean, they’re always trying to build and find the youngest and youngest. Okay, well we see 19 year olds and 21 year olds like TA Pacho winning Tour de France stages and winning overall classifications four times now. Let’s see some old dudes win the tour. De Frances. Yeah. Then I’ll be really impressed.
[00:06:06] Trevor Connor: What I remember is I asked you, I’m like, so what would our Jersey be? And you just looked at me and went, rust, of course. Rust.
[00:06:12] Chris Horner: Yeah, of course. Rust and every other, we can throw in every old sponsor that you could possibly have and highlight them as how you can still win bike races. Because remember, I, I won the bolt.
I was almost 42 years of age. I was a month away, three weeks away from turning 42 and my official racing age was 42. ’cause they always go through the end of the calendar.
[00:06:33] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:33] Chris Horner: So officially I was 42 years of age when I won and that was about six years older than the next Grand Tour winner.
[00:06:41] Chris Case: I think part of the reason both of you can say this, not only do you have the work ethic perhaps to have the engine at that age, but.
The episode today is about being smart while you race. And I think that has a lot to do with it. Not everybody could just go to the front and bludgeon themselves and do that into their fifties, because that’s just not,
[00:07:05] Chris Horner: yeah,
[00:07:05] Chris Case: what’s possible. So you guys think while you racing, and that’s what today’s episode’s about, and I think that plays a huge role in you being able to have that career deeper into your forties than most people would have.
[00:07:19] Trevor Connor: And so we’re gonna try to dig some secrets outta you here. But what I wanna start with, because you are known as the master of Smart racing, and I, I want to quickly share with our listeners a story of you. This is going way back, I can’t believe this is almost 20 years ago. It was White Rock, a race up in Canada.
I think it was 2008. It was 2008 or 2009, one of those years. And going into the final day, it was a road race. And as I remember, so Canada had their top team at the time in the race that was Symmetrics and Andrew Pinfold with the team, I think was like two seconds ahead of you in the race. And HealthNet, which was the US’ top team at the time, was also there.
You were there, seamless, and you were in second place overall. And I remember watching your strategy in that race and it was brilliant because they were trying to crack you. The whole idea here was, let’s get rid of Horner first and then we will race one another. And it’s a hundred mile race. For the first three quarters of that race, they were attacking.
They were trying to put you in a difficult position. And I remember watching you and you were very smart. You only went with the moves when you absolutely had to. You were very smart, very good at getting other people to cover the moves, to do the work for you since you weren’t burning matches. And then the last quarter of that race, we move on to a smaller loop.
That’s harder because it has this very steep climb that you keep repeating. And first time on the small loops we hit that climb, you attacked. And it was, now I’ve saved as many matches as I can now I’m gonna try to crack everybody. And you just attacked and attacked until you won solo and took the overall, and it was some of the most brilliant racing I’ve seen.
[00:09:12] Chris Horner: So that is how you do it, is you have, if you don’t have the numbers, first off, the most important thing to do. Is you cover the guys who are a threat to you and you let everybody else go. That’s a threat to them. So if you’re racing two different teams, normally if you’re trying to win the general classification or trying to win the stage or something like that, you start doing the math really quickly that okay, there’s two teams that can control the whole race.
So if you have a six rider, eight rider team and you look at, and you’re there by yourself, but the other teams have six or eight riders, then you understand that they can control the race, but you cannot control the race. Mm-hmm. But sometimes you might be able to control them. So if you can control that one team that can control the race, now all of a sudden you put yourself in a better spot.
So you look at a team, let’s say it’s a six or eight rider team, usually that’s how you go into most of these bike races. European, Peloton, you’re RA always racing with seven, and then you go to the Grand Tours, you’re racing with eight riders. And so if you are racing against Vima. Over at Catalonia that just finished yesterday.
Then you’re going into the last stage. They have a seven rider team, but only Jonas is the only guy they can race for because no one else on that team can realistically win. So you only have to stay with Jonas. Then there’s six riders will help control the race for you. So if you go back, of course to Canada, what you’re talking about there, then I look for the two strongest teams, or for sure the one strongest team is what I would prefer to look for.
You control the important guys on that team. You don’t have to control the three that don’t matter. Mm-hmm. If the guy can’t climb, if he can’t sprint, if he doesn’t have the strength to even make it to the finish of the stage, but he can help control the beginning parts of the stage. You don’t have to worry about those three guys because even if they make it in the break, this guy will get dropped.
This guy can’t win the sprint, this guy can’t climb. And so you don’t have to worry about those three guys. You have to worry about the main guys that could actually affect the race, that that can either win the race or win the general classification. So you don’t even need to look at it as the whole team.
You just need to watch the important guys. So there in Canada, at that point in time in my career, it was sometime after about, I was probably 30 years old when I started getting a feeling for tactics. Racing them correctly. When I realized that I don’t care if you have your B rider in that break, you have to race for your a rider.
And so I just worry about the A riders and the team has to be a team that’s capable of controlling that race too. Right. And so I’ve had many times where we have someone in the break. I you got the wrong somebody in the break, so Yep. You guys can’t win. So, and then they always end up chasing and then they bring it back.
But sometimes you have to actually go over and verbally have it out with someone from the team to remind them that, no, I’m not just gonna go to the front. I’m here by myself. I’m only watching you. So if you don’t wanna pull it back, then I guess we both lose. And then eventually they put their team on the front, is how that normally works out.
And then they bring you deeper into the climb or deeper into the stage. And the further you get into the stage, the more everyone’s gas and fuel starts to drop at different rates, right? Fitter riders keep the full tank of gas going late into the stage. Lesser quality fitter rider drops gas. So if you attack at 20 miles into the stage, you guys are about even.
But if you start attacking at 80 miles into a hundred mile stage, he might be down here and then when you attack, there’s nothing they can do about it. So the latest you can attack in a stage, assuming that you can tactically keep it all together to get you into that point, no one can do anything about it.
[00:12:50] Trevor Connor: I had that experience where I was in the leader’s jersey in a point race, and on the third day, a breakaway went up the road and there wasn’t really anybody I was spotting in that breakaway. And a rider from this one team came up and yelled him. He was like, why aren’t you chasing that? And I just like you, I didn’t have a team.
I was on my own. And I went, do you know how badly I have to finish today for one of those guys to beat me? I’m like, they can win. They can go up the road, that’s fine. And he’s getting really angry at me. And finally their team got on the front and brought it back. And after the race, apparently they were just complaining about me that I didn’t do my job and get on the front.
And I’m like, why would I chase that down?
[00:13:28] Chris Horner: Right.
[00:13:29] Trevor Connor: So the whole purpose of this episode was to talk about smart versus, I don’t wanna use the word dumb, but let’s say not smart racing. Not smart.
[00:13:37] Chris Horner: No, go ahead.
[00:13:38] Trevor Connor: There you go. And you’ve just touched on a big one, which is. Don’t immediately get on the front and chase everything, assess the situation and know when to do the work, when to burn a match and when not to.
And you’d be surprised how often the answer is actually, no, you don’t need to burn a match here. But let’s throw that question to you. What are some other really big ones where you go that’s really smart racing versus, yeah, you need to up the smarts here.
[00:14:07] Chris Horner: Most the races you watch, you need to up the smarts of what you’re watching.
And that’s because they’re young kids. They’re a 20-year-old, they just started racing. They haven’t learned tactically to perfect the sport. They’ve learned how to train, they’ve learned how to diet. That’s the stuff that they absolutely have to learn. Otherwise, what happens, they get dropped. And so when you’re watching races, you can go back into T pcha racing.
Uh, 21 Tour de France and such. And you can see the mistakes that he made. If you look at the 21 Tour de France, their team strategy wise, and I know their directors, I, I raced for son Deval and I raced for Lamprey, which is hin, which is their main director driving a car. And Maro Genti is the manager of the team.
And so I was teammates with Mario Jane in 97 with FDJ and I was, he was my manager with Sonya Deval. And he was loosely the manager there at Lamprey too. He was associated with the team, not official manager, it was Copeland that was the official manager. So when you look at UAE Team Emirates and you take the 21 Tour de France, they’re still working with the same tactics that we began the video with.
That if they have someone in the break, they don’t have to chase.
[00:15:24] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:24] Chris Horner: But if you have Brandon McNulty, if you have. Rafael Micah in the front group. If you have other guys that are threat on their general classification, like Ru Acosta, the Portuguese Road World Champion from 2013 if you have him, that they were all teammates of Teddy Boccia and they’re covering attacks left and right in the 21 Tour de France in the first week.
And they believe that they have someone in the break that they don’t have to chase. And that’s ridiculous because they’re only racing for one guy. His name is Todd Poot. So if the other teams are smart, no matter who you get in that break, if they’re not a threat, they’re not the highest on general classification in that break.
You don’t have to chase. They’re racing for Todd Poot, so they’re gonna have to chase and all they did UAE team members during that 21 tour to France. The first eight stages, all they did was waste energy and wear their team out for when TA PCIA could have really used their team in the later stages. Now, after stage nine of the 21 Tour de France, they flipped over and they started racing intelligently for TA PCIA solely and doing it the correct way.
But they really made a lot of mistakes early on. And now you see Uua e Team Emirates, at least as far as tidy pcha is concerned tactically they’re racing spot on for ’em. Now, when you take other writers on their team like Almeda at last year’s, Walta ESP Spana in 2025, now there they failed dramatically.
They went back to their old style of tactics where when you started the 25 volt asan and you have Jonas Vgo, that’s not the Jonni VGO of 23, 22, 23, and not even 24 really, but 25 Jonas’s form had dropped. He was still better than everyone else in terms of GC racing. But his level had still dropped, so he was only micro bits better.
So now Jonas Fgo had to be perfect. He couldn’t just drop everyone solo like we’d seen him do in 2023 against Ta Pacio at times. And we’d seen him win O Grande Camino and Torino ACO and just drop solo riders. Last year, Jonas’s form had dropped. Why it had dropped, I couldn’t tell you for sure. He said he gained some muscle.
He said he changed his crank length, so maybe he changed something else in his training. But he said he added muscle and he changed his cranks. And so something had dropped Jonas Amigo’s form at the 25 Volta Spana. So there, if your Uua 18 member, Al Mea Al Maa, they had a legitimate chance of solidly winning against Jonni vgo.
But they raced tactically a nightmare at the 25 Wata Spana, and they left Al Maa on crucial stages, isolated and alone. And then they lost the overall classification to Jonni because they were trying to win stages. When you’re trying to win stages with Juana USO solar and such, I think it’s a waste of time, especially when you’re trying to win stages with Jay Vines Solar and Juana USO over helping al Maa try to win the general classification.
If you’re a big team like UAE team member, it’s winning stages. Even as a fan, if I’m just speaking to you as a fan, I think is ridiculous. To watch a riot like Juana USO battling with breakaway rioters, you’re supposed to be battling against the best in the world, or at least the best at that race, not with B riders that are going up the road that aren’t our threat on general classification while trying to win stages.
He’s basically. Juano cherry picking stages.
[00:18:43] Trevor Connor: Yeah,
[00:18:44] Chris Horner: so Le winning against Breakaway Rider. I can appreciate Jay Vine winning against Breakaway Rider. I can almost appreciate. But Juan, a USO winning breakaway stages with breakaway or stages with breakaway rider is ridiculous. He’s paid, he should be battling against Jonas vgo.
That’s what we as fans wanna see as a writer that’s paid that good, that much needs to battle with the best in the world. Not drop time on stages so that he can go up the road in the breakaway later and then, you know, cross the line with his hands raised because he’s 30 minutes down on gc. You should be battling for gc.
You shouldn’t be battling against breakaway writers.
[00:19:18] Chris Case: Yep.
[00:19:19] Chris Horner: So we will see those tactical mistakes made every day of racing. When you’re watching in Europe, you see it every day all the time. And literally my channel is about, you know, butterfly effect beyond the coverage is about coaching. Some people might call my channel a recap.
I do not do recaps. I coach, I tell stories and I analyze the races for you at home, but I am not a recap channel.
[00:19:40] Trevor Connor: Since we’re talking about the tour, we’re talking about vgo, we’re talking about Todd A, I’ve got a hot take or a question ’cause I want to get your take on those. ’cause this actually bothers me.
It’s something I see teams do all the time. So I’m gonna use the example of Vgo and Todd A, but again, I just see this strategy pulled in the tour and Grand tours all the time where you have one of the tour contenders on the key climb. In one of the stages, they get their whole team on the front. So last year you had Vigo, he was gonna make his big move.
They were going up a big climb. His whole team got on the front and raise the pace and the whole team blew up and they went, oh, they’re doing great for vgo, they’re setting him up. But the whole time Todd’s just sitting on vinegar’s wheels. I’m sitting there going, you’re working for both of them.
[00:20:30] Chris Horner: Okay, so that was the 25 Tour de France.
When we look at it as a whole, you called it out as a mountain stage, but that was every stage. Literally they were doing it on the flat stages, stage one. They were trying to blow it up, split it, do everything they possibly can in the crosswinds. And what they did when we look at it is simply put is they dropped Simon Yates.
Okay? Simon Yates is their second lieutenant for VIIs bike. The mistake they made is they rode every stage. They tried to make it complicated. Todd Pcha had learned since 22 and 23 tours that he doesn’t have to cover Wild Van Art anymore. At the 22 Tour de France, the whole UAE team kept worrying about what Wild Van Art was doing.
Why do you have to worry about Wild Van Art? Wild Van Art’s not gonna claim with Ta Pcia? And they kept worrying about, wow, van Art. At the 22 Tor de Frances that worked int Pcha, stuck his neck out on the line on stage 11 that called de gr. On stage is magical stage. Everybody should watch it. It was magical.
If you don’t like that stage, you don’t like bike racing, so you should never watch another bike race again. But that was a tactical mistake. So what this Meis bike didn’t understand from the 22 Tour de France on stage 11 was that yes, that tactic in some ways worked that Todd Pcha was worried about wow van art and worried about other writers throughout the 21 and 22 Tour de France and stuff like that.
But what was happening now in 2025 is Todd had learned that all I have to do is follow Jonas.
[00:22:01] Trevor Connor: Yeah,
[00:22:01] Chris Horner: I don’t have to worry about what the other guy. So he just followed Jonas and VIIs bike on stage one, dropped their second Lieutenant Simon Yates. Which they needed to save so that later they need to keep all of their climbers on every tour in the France that you’ve ever watched.
SMA should always keep their climber guys like Sko Mateo Jorgenson, and certainly Simon Yates, even at Tess Benu at certain times in tours, if they kept him fresh when he was climbing. Well, I know he is not climbing so well in the last few years, but there was times when Tes Pannu could climb fairly well.
You needed to keep all your climbers the first week of the tour as fresh as you possibly can. And last year, 25, tour de Frances, they decimated their whole team, the whole first week of racing. And Poey had already learned throughout the big massive mistakes of the two tourists of France that he had lost earlier in his career that, oh, I only have to follow Jonas now.
So he followed Jonas, and when you look at stage one and they dropped Simon Yates, that does what Simon Yates has dropped. He’s no longer a threat on gc. Now, if Simon Yates does attack in the mountain stages, but he is 10 minutes down. Who cares. Now Ade knows he doesn’t even have to follow Simon Yates when Simon Yates is a quality writer.
I mean, this guy is quality. He’s not first page. My first page writers for GC guys of course is Pogi Jonas Remco, Napole Ro Glitch, and Isaac del Toros made the first page. He’s head of Ro Glitch and Remco even in some ways Roit certainly ahead of him in terms of current time at this moment, Remco is a different omi.
She, he, he’s a bit different writer altogether in terms of you never know what you’re gonna get outta Remco, but he’s always gonna be entertaining. So he is first page without a doubt. But when you look at what Vis SMA did last year, every stage they rode to just decimate their team. And by the time he got to the final week of racing when it really mattered, and remember Tha Baot had and knee injury, we didn’t know it, but he knew it.
And T Baot crashed it just before the last week of the Tour de France. He crashed that had upset his alignment of his body, I’m sure some way, and that’s probably what caused the knee injury. And so then if you had multiple threats on gc, if you had a fresh Mateo Jorgensen, which he was done and dusted, I mean they, they had smoked that kid.
They had destroyed Jorgensen. Their own team had destroyed him. They dropped Simon Yates multiple times. No one was left with any energy to possibly do anything to help out Jonas. And so now Poey, even with a bad knee, knows he only has to follow Jonas. That’s what he did. He was willing to give up stages.
It was amazing. The stage wins that he gave up to Ben O’Connor and to our Inman. Mm-hmm. Later like stages, right around 15 on the mountain stages. He said, I don’t care about you guys. Go in the stage. I got a bad knee here. I’m gonna do what? I’m just gonna follow Jonas because he is a threat to me and he’s the only threat to me here.
That’s what he did. Jonas would have to ride more on the front. He blew himself up. Patti Bacio won the Tour de France again for fourth time. So it was epic Mistakes made for three weeks all by vial Lisa bike throughout the whole tour.
[00:25:11] Trevor Connor: So thank you for saying that. ’cause that’s my feeling. ’cause I see world tour teams too often just go to that pro of, put the whole team on the front, blow ’em up so they don’t always do the smartest things where I’m the same as you.
I’m like, why aren’t you keeping Simon Yates in contention and forcing PAG to have to cover two writers?
[00:25:31] Chris Horner: And more, so I’ll go even more than that. Keep Jorgenson too and sku.
[00:25:35] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:25:35] Chris Horner: If you have Jorgenson Sep and Adam Yates there, you have to keep all four. The only way to beat Poey is to keep all four, but again, because of years past, because of that 22 Tour de France stage 11.
Mm-hmm. They believe the director, sportif, and possibly even Jonas themselves, believed that they cracked ta Pcha with the pure power and speed that the team had on stage 11. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all. Ta Pcha just pulled up the cold, the telegraph, and then going down to descent. The groups 25 writers strong.
His teammates didn’t show up till the very near the bottom, which was Raphael Micah. When you’re get, when you’re going over the top of a tour de France mountain stage and you’re dropping down, these descents are 30, 40 k. It’s crazy how long they are.
[00:26:23] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:24] Chris Horner: You have to eat, you have to drink, you have to hydrate, you have to put calories in the body, simply put calories in the body.
But when you’re in a group of 25 riders and your tidy baot, none of your teammates made it. None of them made it soer catastrophic mistake. It was theism at his absolute best on that stage 22 Tour de France where he made a mistake after mistake, he couldn’t get back up to Tady Boccia, Brandon McNulty made mistakes.
The only writer that Tady had that didn’t make a mistake was Raphael Micah. He was brilliant. He did everything he could, but found his way back on so late that by the time they’re dropping down the descent, there’s 20, 25 riders in that front group, but Pogi iss by himself, but jumbo Vima. Now this Maisa bike had multiple numbers in there.
So Pogi doesn’t have the option of going back to the car because what if he goes back to the car and Jonas was attacked? Or if Garant Thomas is going up the road with a Vima Lisa bike, then Jumbo Vima, all of a sudden he’s a threat on general classification too. There could be a French rider that’s a threat on general classification that I think it was Bardet or something that was a bit of a threat too.
So if any one of the three, four riders, that’s a slight threat of general classification. ’cause we’re only on stage 11. So if any one of those rider that’s a threat on general classification goes up with one of the yum Bo SMA riders. Now Pogi has to chase so he doesn’t have the ability to go back to the car, get
[00:27:43] Trevor Connor: food
[00:27:43] Chris Horner: and say go back.
Remember, you gotta go back 25 guys. 25 guys all stretched out. Then you have to go back to your car, be in the win, grab food, get the food, and come back to the front. They’re going to attack you. Jummas going to attack you all the way down that descent. And if they get a gap on you while you’re getting the food back there from the car.
You may never see those guys again. If it’s Wild Van Art with Garrett Thomas or Wild Van Art with Jonas, which would be the nightmare scenario, you would never be able to bring that back all by yourself. Going down a descent that’s, you’re already doing 80 K an hour or 90 K, sometimes a hundred K an hour, you can’t pedal the bike any faster, so you can’t bring those guys back.
So Poey just forgot to eat on that stage. He bonked, you know, one Coke, one Snickers, and he would’ve still been in the race leader yellow Jersey after that stage. But Vima Lisa, but then Mbo SMA still believed that their tactic of just power and tidy baat is what won them that stage. But if you would’ve taken a writer like myself at the 2013 Walta Spana on the kangaroo stage.
If tactically I fell apart on the Roo stage, I would’ve lost the 2013 Volta Spana, and I raced it perfectly. But on that stage, if had I raced it any differently and, and not figured out what was going wrong on the roo, I would’ve lost a Walta Spana in 2013, and I’d be sitting here, not the oldest grand tour winner in the galaxy.
[00:29:07] Trevor Connor: I love the, not the world. Not the world, the galaxy, not
[00:29:10] Chris Case: the world.
[00:29:11] Chris Horner: Yeah, it sounds better. I, I know I can say the universe, but the galaxy just sounds better. Right?
[00:29:16] Trevor Connor: Yeah, that sounds really good. You’ve been listening to us breakdown smart racing with Chris Horner. Things like reading the race, picking your moments, and knowing when to go hard and when to recover.
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The phrase that it’s not necessarily the strongest person who wins the race. It’s the person who has the most energy left at the end of the race. So what are some thoughts on when do you burn matches? When do you attack? When do you conserve? How do you, when you’re in the Peloton, make sure you’re staying in the right place, but not expending too much energy to be there?
Let’s talk a little bit about these energy games. So you have it for when you need it at those right moments.
[00:30:53] Chris Horner: Okay, so there’s two different types of energy levels. There’s the guys, first page writers, we’ll call ’em, you know, the Ty Ot, Jonas Feeney Go when they’re on their best first page writers, those guys have this abundance of energy where they could do, almost tactically, they have to do big mistakes, you know, take you back in 22.
Tour de France, stage 11, he forgot to eat. Mm-hmm. They put out too much energy. Tell you ba gotcha this. Okay, so now let’s get away from the first page writers, because they have so much energy that. They’re going to be there at the finish of the race 90 plus percent of the time. But let’s go into a rider that’s a page two rider.
So we go into a rider, let’s say an Al Maida type rider, a Simon Yates, Adam Yates, those type of riders, they have to be more perfect, right? You can even say, if you wanna go back in my time, you can look at a writer like Richie Port. And so these writers are capable of winning. They’re capable of winning a grand tour.
Albea doesn’t won a grand tour. Richie Port was going podium at the Tour de France and stuff. These type of writers need a little more help, and they have to be tactically perfect. So they have to save energy everywhere they possibly can. They can’t be. If you’re on a first week of the Tour de France, which is historically, normally flat, first, seven, nine stages, usually seven stages, and then one or two little bumpy stages, maybe in the first nine before you take the rest day.
But that first week of racing, you have to always be out of the wind. You have to always be hydrated, you have to always have calories. You still can’t overeat when you get at the hotel and gain a kilo or something like that. So you still have to be watching. There’s tactics and, and saving energy are not only on the bike.
I know a lot of times we’re talking right now about on the bike how to save energy, but off the bike you can save energy too. My boy, Garrett Horner, he’s the second half of Butterfly Effect and beyond the coverage and he was down in San Diego and it’s the first time he’s raced in the heat and he got done doing his category three races.
He’s trying to upgrade to a CAT two. He’s incredibly fast, but he’s down the first time in the heat. He finished his bike race. And he stayed around to watch his teammates race the pro race. And then he stayed around afterwards for some photos and then he stayed around and he talked to some journalists afterwards.
Next thing you know, he was three hours in a hundred degree weather when he’s coming from Bend, Oregon where it’s been sixties and fifties and forties and maybe a week of 70, and then back to sixties and forties and thirties that he is training in. And then he goes down to a hundred degree weather. He has to understand that those three hours that he wasted in the sun, not hydrating, not eating enough, and you never can if you’re sitting in the sun.
And then the next day he cramped out. So he made it into the front group. He is got a shot at winning against a two three category field and he cramped out on the last lap and he didn’t get in the, to the top 10. I think he finished 12th or 13th, but he wasn’t able to race for the win. And immediately when he told me what happened, I cramped in the race with a lap to go.
I said, it’s a 45 mile race you that can’t be from today. That had to be from yesterday. What’d you do yesterday? He said, I hung out. Watched the pro race. Then I did pictures with the team. He left the light on in his truck, the car battery died. He had to get someone to help jump his Tacoma and stuff in a hundred degree weather, right?
[00:34:08] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:34:08] Chris Horner: And so he got no points, no USA cycling points in order to upgrade to category two, which was the main reason he went down there. And so he’s all upset. And I said, okay, but you did learn something really valuable. That tactics don’t just apply. Saving energy doesn’t just apply to the bike racing, which we’ll get into in a minute.
But it applies outside the bike too. It applies 24 hours out of the day, is what I’m saying. 24 hours out of the day, you have to be. Watching and how you’re saving energy now. Okay, so that’s a great example of how you save energy out of the bike Race. You don’t stay for the pro race when it’s a hundred degree weather.
You eat more calories, you have dinner at a reasonable time. When you’re supposed to, you hydrate the whole time. So the next day you don’t cramp. Okay? That’s out of the race. Now we go into the race. How does a page two right? A really save energy? Most importantly, you have to understand the course and what you’re looking at.
So if you’re on a flat week of the first week of the Tour de France, and there’s some slight crosswinds in 2014, I’m riding for lamprey and I’m not the outright team leader. It’s Ru Costa, the 2013 Road world champion. And so I am noticing right away with lamp Ray when we’re in the crosswind stage, where maybe it’s the final, it’s close to the final days of the first week of racing.
So it must have been around stage eight, give or take a stage. There’s a slight crosswind for 80 miles of this stage. It was unbelievable.
[00:35:32] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:32] Chris Horner: And I’m, I’m watching TJ Van Garner, he’s riding for BMC and I’m watching the BMC guys riding. He’s probably in 30th, 50th position in the Peloton. I’m right. I’m just a couple guys behind him and I’m watching, he’s got two guys riding out in the wind.
So you have the front part of the Pelotons all echelon over, and then it’s single file, but no one’s really racing. This is the com period, but we’re still going fast enough to where if you’re pulling just a little bit of cross wind on you for 80 miles, you’re gonna have some fatigue. When we get into the last, I think, if I remember correctly, there was two big mountains at the very end of the stage.
So you did like 80 miles of flats and then you went into the last two big mountains. And so if you’re pulling 80 miles worth of 20 extra watts before you get into the final two mountains. You’re gonna be smoked. And so I’m watching TJ Van Gardy has two riders in front of him. They’re echelon over even though he is 30th position.
So the front of the Pelotons echelon over nobody’s panicking. It’s a calm period in the bike racing. ’cause the real panics gonna come when we get into the two last climbs. And so the front of the Pelotons echelon over, you go 30 guys back, single file, and you see two guys from BMC Echelon, Dover, and then you see TJ getting the draft.
So he’s getting the same kind of draft that the first team up there is giving their race leader too. And then you look at the lamp Ray guys, myself and Ru a Costa had no teammates at all for 80 miles. And so I get on the radio and I say, Hey, Ru Costa’s got no teammates looking after Rui. Were. A crosswind.
It wasn’t a massive crosswind, not the kind of where you see the wind, the trees blowing.
[00:37:06] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:37:07] Chris Horner: But it was enough of a crosswind that you could save. Probably 20 watts, I would guess so 20 watts, Ru Costa and I pulled extra. Then the team on the front for all the favorites of the tour de fronts that year.
And by the time we got into the last two climbs and they started attacking, then we’re kind of smoked by then. I had my lung injury in 2014, so I already had that causing problems too. Ru made the front split. I did. And in between the climbs, he is left with nobody to go back and get ’em bottles and stuff.
Of course he gets dropped by the favorites going up the last climb. And so you have to save energy even on the flat stages, even off the bike. You have to save energy and now you’re going to the mountain stages, the big mountain stages, and you have to start thinking of the different strategy that’s gonna happen on this stage.
[00:37:52] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:37:53] Chris Horner: Okay. Another prime example, we’re going back into my time spent with Lotto and we look at Cadel Evans and my job at oh six and oh seven Tour de France, my sole job was to be over the penultimate climb with Cadel Evans. Mm-hmm. Go up the penultimate climb, certainly go over the penultimate climb and go into the final climb and do the first 5K of the final climb.
So Canal has to have somebody with him. If he flats, he’s screwed. If he has to go back to the cars, like the 22 tour de front stage 11 ta Baot, he’s screwed.
[00:38:26] Chris Case: Yep.
[00:38:26] Chris Horner: So he has to have somebody with him. Mm-hmm. So prime example, how to save energy for a rider that maybe I’m a page two rider. During that year, when we get into the final climb, there’s usually 15 of us left and I’m there.
So I’m a page two rider, not the top of page two. Cadel Evans, at that point in time is page one rider at the Tour de France. ’cause he’s battling to win the general classification. But he has a team with only one climber with him, me. So we get into a stage, there’s a lot of attacking going on. There’s multiple climbs.
30 50 riders go up the road. Canal Evans is up there and he is by himself in that. Group of 50 and we’re 30, 40 miles into the Tour de France stage and one of my teammates comes up to me and he’s like, you’re supposed to be up there. I said, no, I’m not supposed to be up there. You are supposed to be up there.
He goes, you are supposed to be climbing with Cadel Evans. I go, no. My job is to climb with Cadel Evans at the end of the stage, not the be. You have to do the beginning so that I can do the end. If I have to cover 30 different possible attacks, that could possibly split the Peloton in half. And that’s what happened.
A huge, like one third, one fourth of the Peloton got away. It was one of those crazy stages where you see most of the GC favorites up there, but no one has quite all of their super do Mystiques, and maybe one GC writer missed it. Okay, so my teammate’s yelling at me. He’s like, you needed to be with Cadel.
He’s up there all by himself now. And I said, no, I don’t need to be with Cadel. You need to be with Cadel Cadel. My job is to be there on the penultimate climb and the final climb, and I am not a quality enough rider at this moment, at this stage, at this season, at this Tour de France to cover 30 attacks that could possibly split the Peloton in hopes that I’m up there.
When it does, I have to tactically save every bit of energy I have because I know I am the only writer on this team that can go over with Cadel Evans on the penultimate climb. If I’m not there on a penultimate climb and Cadel Evans can’t go back to the car because there’s 20 guys attacking at the front of the GC favorites, and he bonks on the last climb.
The whole general classification’s over. ’cause that’s our only card we have to play is Cadel, making it to the final and going up and racing for gc and someone has to be with him. And the fact that I had to tell a writer that at that point in time when we’re 30 miles, 40 miles into the stage, that no, this is your fault, not my fault.
When you look at it, you, it’s ridiculous. I cannot waste that kind of energy on every mountain stage. I need to save everything and play what I believe is going to happen in this race, which means, on the pun, ultimate climb of the Tour de France. Which is what makes the tour different than Spain and Italy is that the penultimate climb at the Tour de France is always wicked fast.
Always. It’s always full gassed. Best super do Mystiques are riding on the penultimate climb a hundred percent of their power trying to do what? If we look at the modern tour de Frances, then Tourist de France, then we see it’s jonas’s team with super do mystique going up. Penultimate climb a hundred percent.
If you look at Uua team memoirs, it’s super do mystique going up. Penultimate climb a hundred percent. And so even if you go back into oh six and oh seven, it’s rider like Andy Schleck and Carlos Saro riding for Yvonne Baso. That’s going a hundred percent up the pen net climb. So. If that is 95% of the tactics on the mountain stages of the Tour de France, I have to play 95%.
I can’t play the 5% where the Peloton split and 20% or 30% of the Pelotons went up the road before the penultimate climb. I have to play the penultimate climb card because I’m not good enough to play everything before. And the penultimate climb. And the final climb and getting bottles and keeping Cadel Evans out of the crosswinds and all that stuff between the penultimate and the final climb.
When you have to save all that energy, you can’t be in the sun after you’re racing. That’s a hundred degree weather. You have to eat correctly, you have to be in the races, and you have to save energy on the flat first week of racing. You have to save energy in the mountain stages. You have to save energy on the first two or three passes of mountains before you get into the penultimate climb and the final climb so that you can be there for that final climb.
Now, there is the exceptions to the rule. If your first page, you can waste energy because you recharge at night when you go to sleep, it’s like recharging a battery.
[00:42:39] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:39] Chris Horner: So if you’re tidy poot, you only spent 10 or 20% of your energy on one of the flat stages, you could recharge 20% of your energy that night.
If you’re Chris Horner and it’s oh six and oh seven at the Tour de France, and you’re a second page writer and you’re writing for Cade Evans, I can’t recharge 50 or 80% of my battery overnight. If I only spend 20, 30, 40%, you can probably recharge that. But if you spend everything you got, you cannot recharge your battery a hundred percent each night.
So that’s the importance of tactics, is trying to figure out when and where you can save energy that you possibly can to be there at the finish. And most importantly, before the racing even begins, you have to understand who you are, what you’re capable of doing.
[00:43:23] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:23] Chris Horner: If you think you’re going to win the tour De Frances, you can’t even be top 30.
You’re a knucklehead. Okay? So you have to go into the racing, understand what you’re capable of doing, what your team leader is capable of doing, what your team captain is capable of doing. And a team captain is not always your team leader, right? Mm-hmm. That’s not a team. They make that mistake all the time.
Oh, he’s the leader of the team. Leader of the team is the guy who can place the highest on general classification or can win that one day monument. The captain of the team is the guy who controls the team during the race to bring it so that the leader can win at the end. And then you have to understand if you’re just a super do mystique, do you have the tactical ability to control the eight yourself plus your seven teammates and a grand tour?
Or are you better off just staying quiet and doing what you’re told because someone else on your team is better than that? Are you capable of leading your sprinter out? Are you a sprinter? All these things you have to understand the biggest thing, US fans, us people, and I think it’s the world in general, but certainly us, and I know this ’cause I’m us, of course, but most people think he wanted it so badly he made it happen.
You can have some motivation that you want it so badly, you can push yourself beyond what you’re capable of doing for a one day race. And that’s what makes the monument so hard. It’s a one day race, so guys can push themself above what they’re capable of really doing. But in a grand tour. You cannot do that in back to back stages.
And so if you’re not capable of winning, you have to understand that okay, I’m not capable of winning the overall general classification, but am I capable of winning a stage And then you have to start playing your tactics for stages versus general classification? Or are you like, I was in oh six and oh seven, are you a super do mystique?
’cause most important role is to ride for your team leader.
[00:45:04] Trevor Connor: Yep. So let’s bring this back. We have a whole lot of listeners who are racers. None of them are gonna be doing the Tour de France. How can you translate this to them? So they’re doing categorized racing you here in the us, maybe a little bit over in Europe, but kind of that more maybe 50, 60 mile race.
40 mile race. If it’s a stage race, it’s probably just a weekend stage race. Take all this and kind of summarize for them, what would you say are the three most important? Here’s what you need to know to race smart at the local races. And here are the things that just make me shake my head. Don’t ever do this.
[00:45:44] Chris Horner: First off, good tactics do not always win you a race. Good tactics are defined by tactics that percentage-wise give you the best odds of winning. So it does not mean you’re gonna win today, but if you ran good tactics, it means it could help you be closer to winning or it could possibly help you win. And it could certainly avoid you being called a knucklehead.
So, but good tactics simply put, A lot of times I, I see in comments on my channel and the butterfly fact is that they say, well, he didn’t win and he used your tactics. And I never, I have never said that if you use good tactics, you’ll be guaranteed to win. Good tactics will help you win. It will get you closer in time.
So if the best you are ever going to get is five minutes to the winner, you can’t expect that you are going to win just because you have good tactics. What it does is if the rider who’s the strongest in the race does a bad tactic and you do good tactics, now you’ve increased your odds of winning. So you’re playing the odds.
You’re the Vegas house. Vegas plays the best tactics they possibly can, and they still lose a ton.
[00:46:45] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:46:46] Chris Horner: But somehow those buildings and that strip got built because they win more than they lose, right? So that’s what defines good tactics, is how often they work for you. And so if you’re doing a 40 mile race and you’re racing domestically, the most important thing that you do is no different than over in Europe is you look around and you see who are the strongest team there.
If you’re racing by yourself, you yourself can never control a peloton. That’s the biggest problem I have when you’re watching European racing in and they don’t let the guys who crash and the guys who flat use the cars to get back to the back of the Peloton. I think they should. I don’t think you should be able to hold onto sticky bottles, but can you draft off of the car?
I think you should be allowed to. As long as it’s still a peloton that you’re coming back to, you should be allowed to now. I mean you can’t do the whole stage. But what I’m using that analogy for is that no one guy can control a whole Peloton. Okay? So you look for someone that can control the Peloton.
If we go back to our early conversation, you look for the team that can control the Peloton. That’s the most important tactic that anyone can learn racing domestically is can this team control the Peloton? I can’t control it ’cause I’m racing here by myself where I have one teammate, but this team can’t.
So then you look at that team and you say, okay. Do they wanna win in a field sprint? If you win into a US pro level, criter, most likely every US pro team that’s doing criterium, they want what? They want a field sprint. So if you’re not a sprinter and you look at that team, if you are a sprinter, you look at that team, you go, this team wants a field sprint.
You know, Legion of Los Angeles won a field sprint a hundred percent of the time. They’ll tell you it’s 99 point something, but whatever they want a field sprint. So if you’re a sprinter, you look at that team, all you gotta do is follow their sprinters. If their sprinters aren’t in the front brake, you have to assume that Legion Los Angeles is going to pull that brake back, even if they have a rider in that group.
If he can’t win, if he is not the fastest sprinter in that front group, and we’ll say it’s five guys or 10 guys, and he is not the fastest. You gotta assume they’re gonna bring it back, right? Because what they want a field sprint, it’s easy. So if you’re a field sprinter, follow the field sprinting team.
It’s that simple. Follow the fastest guy on the field sprinting team. And more often than not, not a hundred percent of the time, but more often than not, they’re gonna bring it back. It’s gonna be a field sprint. So there’s your most simple tactic right there. Now, I’ll give you one other tactic. If you’re a really strong, say you’re the strongest rider in the race, but you can’t beat the Williams brothers sprinting, and you can’t beat all those top quality us sprinters, but you’re the strongest guy you can get out there in the break.
You can drive the break, you can have fun, the whole hour and a half of racing. If you’re doing the pro race, then you have to start playing tactics correctly. And then if you’re racing by yourself, you have to say what? Okay, well the easiest thing when you’re trying to get in a breakaway, ’cause that’s what you wanna break, right?
You don’t want a field sprint, you’re gonna lose. So your only odds of winning, assuming you’re racing for the win, and my tactics are only for the win. If you’re racing for the win, then you need to be in the break. If you’re racing by yourself and you don’t have teammates, the best tactic to employ is that you never create the brake, and especially in the first part of racing near the very finish of the race, you might have to try to create the brake.
But in the first part of racing, you cover the brakes. You don’t create the brakes, you cover the brakes because you can cover at least twice as many breaks as you could if you’re trying to create a break. Creating a brake requires so much more power and so much more energy than it does to follow breaks.
So you would follow brake more than you were trying to create ’em. Now, once you get in the brake, you have to do your work. You have to pull on the front, and you have to assess the situation really quickly. If you’re in a five or 10 rider breakaway, you have to start looking right away. You first off, you’re always gonna have to have a Sprinter team in there if you don’t have some kind of guy from the three top teams in the US criterium racing.
This is same with masters too. If you don’t have the three best teams in there, if you’re in a group of five or a group of 10 and there’s no one from the three best teams in the race there, you can be assured that break’s probably not going anywhere, at least early in the race. If it happens at near the finish of the race, the last 20% anything’s possible at that moment, assuming you’re strong enough to make that kind of possible happen.
But if you’re not strong enough to make that kind of possible happen, you have to play the numbers and you have to think that you need at least one guy from each of the three strongest teams there. Otherwise, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna chase every time. They didn’t arrive there as the strongest team in the race magically ’cause it happened that day, right?
You’ve seen it happen 10, 20 races, two years, three years, five years ago, from five years ago till now, you’ve seen this team dominate domestically racing. They didn’t magically appear at that race that we’re talking about at this moment, this fictional race at this moment. As the best team, they’re the best team because they have shown that they’re the best teams, so they can most likely pull your group back.
So you almost always have to, in the first 80%, have at least one, one member from each of the three strongest teams in the race. Because if you have one member from the three strongest teams in the race, you have three fast, three strongest guys in the group. It’s a given ’cause they’re from the three strongest teams, and you have the three strongest teams back there not chasing.
So it’s a six point swing. You know, the guy missed the three pointer on one side. You got the ball, you went back the other way you shot, you hit the three point. That’s really a 6.3 swing. They missed three. You gained three. So you have three of the strongest riders in the race with you and three of the strongest teams not chasing back there.
And on top of that, they’re probably blocking for their teammate in the front if they’re happy with that move. So, and you’ll know if they’re happy with that move or not, because he’ll be riding on the front of the brake. If he’s not riding on the front of the brake, they’re not happy with that move.
They’re chasing back there. They’re trying to bring you back. So there’s easy ways, and I’ve had it many times where tactics, you have to look in the group you’re with and you have to do a quick calculation of how many writers from each team. So I, I’ve seen it where I’ve been commenting on the Butterfly effect and beyond the coverage stories of, well, such and such happened, and maybe they didn’t have radios for these races that I was covering, doing for the butterfly effect.
And I’ll get a comment and they’ll go, Chris. They don’t have radios. How would they know who’s there and not there? The guy’s teammates pulling on the front of the front split at the Peloton split and one third of the pelotons going up the road and team Nios pulling on the front. You could assume their race leader made the front group.
You don’t need to visually make eye contact. Someone else from their team, from iNOS saw that their race, their agonal made the front group. If we’re going into, so let’s say the 2019 tour de front and they’re pulling on the front, whatever it happens to be, if we take a race like, like that, and we are using that team.
If iNOS is pulling on the front and then it’s probably Team Sky or something. If they’re pulling on the front, you can assume their race leader made it. I don’t need to put eyes on Aon Bernal if I see iNOS pulling on the front of the group to know that he’s probably made the front group what someone from them put it on.
So you have to start doing real calculations quickly that way. And so if you’ve got three different, four different teams pulling on the front, you can assume that each one of those four teams has their team leader in this group. And so you know them. So then you gotta start calculating, okay, who may have missed it?
Okay. Well I see such and such teams not pulling on the front. So you look at the French team and you say it’s a G two R or something. Roman Barde didn’t make the front group ’cause they have one guy in this front group, maybe they have two and you can’t find the second one. But the one guy’s not pulling on the front.
So you know if they do have two, it’s not Roman Barde that made the split. So. Tactics. You have to play like that in the us just like you do over in Europe. Tactics are the only 100% that sound, no matter what bike grace you go to, it is a hundred percent sound and the only time it doesn’t count. I’ll give you a prime example.
My boy, like I said, he is a category three, but he was category five last year and he had a lot of speed. I mean, this kid’s averaging two, he’s averaging 270 wat he’s 140 pounds, averaging 270 watts for five hour bike rides, training rides four times a week, not one time. And he did it one time that month.
I’m talking four times a week, 270 watts, 140 pounds, and we’re going to his first category five real bike race, his first stage race that he was doing. And so we get to Baker City and I love to using my boy as an example. This is perfect because the night before he starts the road race, he comes in and if you looked at the road race, it was flat.
It had one climb just on the further side of the middle of the stage one, one decent climb, and then it would drop down as through valleys and then a small little bump to the finish. They finished out, so I’ll call it 80 miles. I don’t remember what it was, but something like that. Uh, and so he comes in the night before and my boy, his name’s Garrett Horner and we’ve been doing the Butterfly Effect beyond the coverage for four or five seasons, right?
So when he starts the category five race comes in that night before and, and he says, well, this climbs gonna be easy ’cause it’s the middle of the race. Now when you’re watching the Butterfly Effect and beyond the coverage, I only do the European races in the biggest, maybe I’ll do something in the US but it’s pretty rare.
But I do the biggest races in the world, which mean they have the biggest, strongest teams, which means everyone has seven team members and eight team members. But when you go over to Baker City, category four, five race, they’re gonna hit
[00:55:51] Trevor Connor: every pause. Super.
[00:55:52] Chris Horner: You don’t know these guys and there are no teams, right?
Right. There are no teams. So you can’t predict the tactics. So my boy, Garrett, all his knowledge is, comes from the butterfly effect. So doesn’t always dawn on me because I’ve been racing, I was 25 years professional. I’ve been riding my bike. Training road bikes since I was 13. I’m 54 years old now, so my whole life is dedicated to bikes and I’ve done the biggest seven Tour de France.
I’ve done four or five tour Spain, one zero. And so the night before Baker City, it doesn’t dawn on me that I have to remind my boy who is only, he’s never raced, right? He is never raced. He’s come and doing his first agent. It doesn’t dawn on me until he says that, well, when I go up to climb, it’s gonna be easy and going up to climb anyway, so I don’t even have to worry about that climb.
I just have to worry about this bump at the finish. And I started laughing. I said, you’re doing the four or five race. You’re not doing the butterfly effect and beyond the cover races where they have teams controlling this race that you’re going to experience tomorrow is wide open. Sto. To go into your question to me at the beginning of this, what can the riders take tactically from our conversation today?
If you’re doing US pro races, you can kind of take what European races is gonna be like. Main teams will control the field. You, you have to look at those main teams. They have to control the race at least until the last 20%. Now we go into your lesser lower quality. Master races, amateur races, the female races, especially the female races, those, because they don’t have huge teams, huge budgeted teams, they’re racing more at the level where there there is no control.
So when you go into a race where there’s absolutely no control, tactics can’t help you much. It’s brute force. It’s being able to fix things. So your tactics have to be, if you get into the break early, are these guys working right away? So yes, you are working, you’re in a five rider break, the two other guys are working with you, but two are sitting on, okay, so you look at a two sitting on.
Are they sitting on because they can’t, because remember, you’re at an amateur category three, four race. These guys can’t sit on the first 15 miles, right? And so you have to think that tactically. So for me to tell my boy the night before his first stage race, baker City four five category race, what tomorrow will be the best advice I can tell him is, I don’t know what tomorrow will be.
You have to be prepared for everything. You have to be prepared that in the first few miles that if a break goes, you have to look at those riders and you have to visually spot, are these guys capable? Do they look like they’re capable? Okay. And you can spot a lot visually. Can you see the guy? Is he 20 pounds overweight?
Okay. When you go to the pro races, the US Pro Criteriums, the US Pro quality races, the European races, no one’s gonna be 20 pounds overweight. When you go into a four or five race, which is, could be some of the viewers you’re watch it, they could be 20 pounds and 30 pounds overweight, right? So if you see a guy that’s 20 or 30 pounds of overweight and you don’t have the eye to see.
For sure to be able to tell the strong riders from the not so strong riders. Then the most simplest thing to look at is his weight, right? It’s this, it’s the simplest, probably most honest thing you can tell is that you look and you go, okay, this guy’s 20 pounds overweight. There’s no way he could do 80 mile race, so you don’t have to worry about that guy.
If you get in a break with four guys that are 20 pounds overweight, most likely it’s not gonna make it. So you need to get in a break that immediately because you are doing four or five races. Remember the good guys? Reach four or five and they jump out of it quickly. So you don’t ever have a good guy that’s a four or five forever, so you don’t have five years worth of time of telling if he’s good or not.
So if you’re doing the four or five race, the quickest way to tell, because you are an amateur. He’s an amateur, and you guys, none of you guys know what you’re doing and you’re all knuckleheads. The most simplest thing I could possibly tell you. Is that don’t let somebody that’s got leaned out ripped calf muscles and his legs looks fantastic.
He’s incredibly tan. He looks like he doesn’t have an ounce worth of tha on him. Most likely that guy is at least trained properly. He’s probably still a knucklehead ’cause he is a four or five, but he at least has trained his bike and he might be able to pedal it for 80 miles. Right. So those are the most simple tactics you can take out of doing the amateur races you’re doing is hopefully you’ve done enough to spot a couple of the guys who have went good.
My boy tried to, to look at Strava and check out some of the guys from Strava and stuff and I said, you can’t, you don’t have enough time tonight the night before the race to look at 50 guys as Strava things to find out if they’re good. So, so that won’t help you. Would it help you if you wanted to spend a week doing it?
For sure. Any guy going, doing a race that tactically doesn’t know what they’re doing, could look at someone’s Strava and go, well this guy averaged more watch than I do. So he’s a guy to watch. So that, that, that could definitely play in your part. When you get to the amateur races, unless you got a lot of experience and if you had experience, you wouldn’t be an amateur.
There’s not a whole lot I can tell you other than looking at the guy immediately, see who’s pulling through. If you’re in a group of five or 10, if everyone’s rotating through, rotate through with them, do your job on the front, you’ll get top 10. Right? So that, that’s the best you can do. But until you have actual teams, and this has been the theme of our whole conversation here, is that if you have teams, they can control the Peloton.
If you don’t have teams, the Peloton cannot be controlled. So then the next best thing you can do is that if a brake’s going up the road, you’re doing an amateur race. As you find the guy who is leaned out and fit looking and say, we’re gonna do some work on the front of the Peloton. We’re never gonna see these guys again.
Unless of course they’re all 20 or 30 pounds overweight. So, so that’s about the best tactic I could possibly give you. And what I had to tell my boy that night was, yes, you need to be very careful. ’cause when you hit that climb, even though the European peloton would never go up to climb halfway in the race.
All out. It’s pretty rare. Be ready to go. If you’re in an amateur race at any moment, you can’t stay at the front, stay near the front, never on the front. At the front is not on the front. At the front is near the front. On the front is you’re an knucklehead. So the only time you’re on the front is when the break goes up the road and you realize you’re in such a, you’re in such an event that no one back here is gonna get organized together.
So you gotta try to get guys organized and you gotta get the front and hopefully the light bulb turns on for everybody and they gotta work together.
[01:02:04] Trevor Connor: And one thing I will quickly add in that breakaway, you know what I always tell athletes is. You get in that break, you spend a couple minutes giving it everything to get separation from the field.
Once you have that separation, then you start assessing everybody. Are they working together? Are there strong guys here? What are the tactics here? And then you have to make that second assessment of whether you think that breakaway is going anywhere or not.
[01:02:27] Chris Horner: Exactly. And the easiest way to make that assessment is are they rotating through?
If they’re not rotating through, it’s not going anywhere. So most likely there’s, ’cause there’s always somebody back there that’s gonna chase full gas and
[01:02:39] Trevor Connor: mm-hmm.
[01:02:40] Chris Horner: They’re never, they don’t even know why they’re chasing. They’re just chasing, even at the pro level racing here domestically, I’ve gone up to small teams and I remember going up to a really small team.
It was Jelly Belly at the time, and navigators was a much bigger team with stronger riders. ’cause we’re talking about, I think 2005, oh, break up the road, jelly Bellies is working on the front. I said, why are you guys working on the front? He goes, ’cause we missed the move. Oh. You’re working on the front ’cause you missed the move.
I knew that. I knew you missed the move already. But what I’m asking you is why are you working on the front before navigators works on the front? Because
[01:03:15] Chris Case: right.
[01:03:15] Chris Horner: Navigators missed the move too. So if navigators missed the move and you guys missed the move, it doesn’t matter if you missed the move. ’cause navigators missed the move they have to work on the front.
’cause they’re the bigger budgeted team and they’re expected to win here. And I wanna say this was probably 2003 when I think about it might have been racing with Saturn or something. And we were here at the Cascade Classic in Bend, Oregon, and, and he just looked at me, he just started, you know, F you. And I was like, okay dude, I can’t help you out.
I can’t help you out. If I point out the navigators missed the move and that they have a bigger budget and more of a favorite guy to win the general classification than you guys have on your team, or you’re pulling the front. I can’t help you out. Sometimes you need to turn the light on, but if you turn the light on and the guy still can’t see.
Then you can’t help that guy out. So, and I just say, have fun. I literally just said, have fun. And went back to the group and sat on the Jelly Belly team, pull it. Right. And they pulled the whole time until they pulled the break back and then navigators went up the road, made the next split with us and they missed the split.
Of course.
[01:04:09] Trevor Connor: Yep. Quick story to share with you, ’cause you’re talking about that era third NRCI ever did. Right at the start of one of the road stages. I got in a breakaway with you, Ben, Jack Mains and one other guy. My first pro break ever we’re rotating. I take my pole, I’m pulling it like 550 watts, killing myself.
I pull off and it was either you or Ben goes, don’t slow down the group. And I’m like, I just did the hardest poll I’ve ever taken. We were away for 20 minutes. And I still say that is the hardest 20 minutes of my life. I have never been happier to get caught by the field.
[01:04:50] Chris Horner: You know? And in that, and that’s really like, there’s such a difference between the guys who are doing it full time.
[01:04:56] Trevor Connor: Well, when I managed Team Rio Grande, that was a talk I had with them, which is, you know, look, you wanna race at the Tour de France, you gotta be a genetic super freak. You wanna be a domestic pro? I’ll argue 70, 80% of Cat three, cat two cyclists have good enough genetics that they could go to pro. Are you willing to make the sacrifices that it takes to get there?
[01:05:18] Chris Horner: Are you willing, as you said when we started this conversation, there’s a difference between being tied a boccia and then just being a pro rider. But I think you can make anybody pro that’s dedicated, that has some reasonable amount of a, a low quality of giftedness to ride the bike. But you don’t have to be, you know, the hand of God didn’t have to be on you to be pro.
Those are the first page writers, but the rest of us, I think, can do it with hard work, dedication, mentally knowing your tactics, racing smart and doing that. And I’ll see if I prove that right with my boy Garrett, because I think he’s pro level right now, but he’s still making amateur mistakes that we’re gonna fix up.
Like, you know, spending five hours in the sun at a hundred degrees after your race was an amateur mistake. So we’ll fix all that stuff and see if we can’t make ’em pro. But that’s what I always told him. You can be pro in two years, but you gotta do everything right.
[01:06:07] Trevor Connor: Well, he’s got the right person teaching him how to be smart about this.
So. I’ll have to check back with you in a year. So
[01:06:12] Chris Horner: it’s a fun project. We’ll see how it goes. Yep. So, and that’s what, just to let your viewers out there know the whole foundation is about, because the road scene has disappeared so much and so much gravel scene and all that stuff that we’ve made. The cycling foundation to bring kids along.
My kid was eight, not Garrett, but Wyatt was eight. So we started the foundation to bring these kids along so we can make more roadies out of ’em and stuff. It was funny ’cause I’d get all these bike library bikes with the bars, you know, the stems flip up and the bars are all so high and I’m just flipping that stuff down.
I’m turning it into. A full European road bike machine and handing it to the kids and I’m like, no, everyone here is gonna not only ride like a pro, they’re gonna look like a pro too. So our foundation has a ton of bike libraries with bicycles in our library that we donate to the kids. They get to keep ’em, and then people that, just older adults that need ’em.
We have those sized bikes in our library too. If people come to Ben and need to use a road bike, we got those to loan out to. And then we put on five cycle cross events, five criteriums in one downtown pro big time event in Downtown Bend where we closed the whole thing off. So yeah, I do my part for the cycling world to try to get everything going.
[01:07:20] Trevor Connor: That is great to hear. So great that you’re doing that.
[01:07:24] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[01:07:24] Trevor Connor: Well, Chris, I hate to say it, this has actually been our longest recording in a while, but a real joy to talk with you. Are you
[01:07:30] Chris Case: surprised?
[01:07:31] Trevor Connor: I figured
[01:07:32] Chris Case: it would be,
[01:07:33] Trevor Connor: but probably time to wrap it up. And here’s the challenge I’m gonna give you. We end our episodes with what we call our one minute take homes.
So you have one minute to give what you think is the most important message for our listeners.
[01:07:47] Chris Case: Do we have the,
[01:07:47] Trevor Connor: we have a five minute timer. We can restrict you to five minutes.
[01:07:51] Chris Horner: No, we can do it all in one minute. One minute. Most important thing is I absolutely believe is to ride your bike as much as you possibly can and enjoy it.
So I don’t even need one minute, I’ll detail further out ’cause we still have another 55 seconds left. But realistically, when everyone’s doing all their intervals and all their sacrifices and doing rides that they’re not having fun with, make sure you enjoy riding your bike. Go out there, pedal your bike, pedal it as often as you possibly can.
It’s the day-to-day riding will help you become the fastest you possibly can. Riding a hundred miles on Saturday, but never touching your bike. This next six days of the week does nothing for you compared to what it would be of doing everyday riding. And if you’re working a full-time job like I have been since I haven’t been riding.
An hour and a half ride is so much better than one hour. It’s night and day difference. I started doing, when I finished riding, I was doing one hour rides and when I changed it to an hour and a half, it’s only 30 minutes more, but it’s 50% more in terms of training. So if you don’t have much time, OU for an hour and a half, that’s the magical number I think, where you can go out and do the group rides and still enjoy riding your bike.
And if you wanna be pro, ride your bike a lot and enjoy riding your bike.
[01:09:03] Trevor Connor: I think what I would say is you’re hearing just the complexity of races, how difficult it can be and how it’s not just about how strong your legs are. Yes. Obviously that’s a factor, but there is so much more to it and just. Go back, listen to this.
Listen to a lot of the little bits and pieces that you hear here, because ultimately that’s how you learn to be a really smart racer. I don’t think we went into this episode saying, we’re gonna give you the A, B, C, D, E, F of how to be smart. I don’t think you can actually make that list. I think it’s just constantly hearing these little things.
What did happen in this race? What happened over here? What were the little tricks you used over there? And you need to listen to all those and that over time adds up to making you a really smart racer. But I think often that’s the hardest part. That can take the longest. I think that’s why even at the world tour level, you see, as you said, these young guys who have all the fitness in the world, but still don’t yet really know how to race.
Smart.
[01:10:07] Chris Case: Yeah. That subject alone could be another episode because we didn’t get into the fact that some people race. For others. Yep. And some people race for themselves regardless of the role they might be playing that day. And that affects things a lot. I mean, to piggyback on what you’ve said and sort of put it in my own words for the take home message, it’s yeah, you, there’s no replacement for experience.
You know, you have to get out, you have to race, you have to make mistakes. Everybody will make mistakes. And those are, as we all know, sometimes more powerful lessons than if you just went out and you were strong and you just won all the time. Because to simplify, that’s kind of Todd a. He’s that first page rider.
He can kind of make mistakes and get away with it. Most of us are not that person.
[01:10:57] Trevor Connor: Yes.
[01:10:57] Chris Case: Experience. You just have to get experience. You have to be observant. You have to, yeah. Watch how other people race. Watch the mistakes they make. Say, yeah, I am not gonna be that guy. I’m not gonna be that knucklehead and learn.
[01:11:09] Trevor Connor: Agreed. Well Chris, real pleasure to get you on the show. Thank you so much.
[01:11:13] Chris Case: Yeah, thank you Chris.
[01:11:14] Chris Horner: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[01:11:16] Chris Case: That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast. Be sure to leave us a rating and a review. And don’t forget, we’re now on YouTube.
Give us a like and subscribe there too and help us reach new audiences. As always, remember that the thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talk are those of the individual we love your feedback. Join us on social media at at Fast Talk Labs for access to our endurance sports knowledge base. Continuing education for coaches as well as our in-person and remote athlete services.
Head to Fast Talk labs.com. For Chris Horner and Trevor Connor. I’m Chris Case. Thanks for listening.
