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Tour de France Stage 19 | The Sir Wiggo & Johan Show
00:22:58
Johan Bruyneel and Sir Bradley Wiggins peel back the curtain on the tactics, strategy, and pivotal moments that shaped Stage 19 of the 2025 Tour de France, offering sharp analysis and insider perspective you won’t hear anywhere else. Zwift: Zwift...
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- [00:00]
Johan Brunel
In terms of visma today. Right. I think, I think somebody, I mean, did they listen to our show when yesterday you said, you know, they should do. They should do something that they haven't tried yet, which is basically do nothing. That's what they did.
- [00:16]
Bradley Wiggins
They did. But there was no end result for doing that. You know, I kind of feel like that worked had they won the stage. The stage was within touching distance.
- [00:28]
Johan Brunel
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [00:29]
Bradley Wiggins
And you know, if, if, if Jonas was prepared to lose everything in this Tour in the previous days to not finish second and try and win the Tour, we, we, we, we understood that. But I kind of feel like he should have thrown everything at today to win the stage because he could have stopped with 5k to go and had a coffee and still not lost a podium place here at the time, you know. I'm the 2012 Tour de France winner, Sir Bradley Wiggins.
- [00:56]
Johan Brunel
And I'm Johan Brunel. I directed my teams to nine Tour de France victories. Welcome to the Sir Wiggle and Johan show, our daily show where we dive deep into the tactics behind every stage of the Tour de France. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to our show as every day presented by Ketone IQ. We're going to talk about stage 19 shortened stage today. We'll talk about that in a minute. Minute. With finish on Laplana, the last big mountain stage, we expected some fireworks. We, we had some, but probably not in the right groups. I'm here with Bradley Wiggins every day. Brad Blady, what's your main takeaway of today's stage?
- [01:42]
Bradley Wiggins
Probably the stalemate between the top guys. We saw Tade attack on the climb in the final. Jonas was able to stay with him. I didn't expect. Well, I was, I was hoping Jonas wouldn't attack Tade at that point and do what he's done every other stage. But I did think that he had a chance to win the stage today and, and Arman was floating there, 7 seconds, 8 seconds just in front. And I kind of feel like if they, if he opened up his sprint 100 meters earlier than he did, he would have got him on the line and won a stage. And I, I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't at least attempt to do that.
- [02:17]
Johan Brunel
Yeah.
- [02:18]
Bradley Wiggins
To salvage something in this Tour de France.
- [02:21]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, yeah. For me that's, that's the main, the main takeaway also, you know, we have, of course we have Arsenal as a nice stage winner, second stage win, but the, the, the anti climax a bit right between those two guys and especially I think that here the, the weight of this was on Jonas because today didn't have to attack with a 4 minute 25 second advantage. Brady.
- [02:50]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah, I was gonna say, I was gonna ask you why you thought that today did attack, but we'll talk about that in a bit. I'll talk about our first sponsor. Anyway, we're sponsored by Zwift. This show sponsored by Zwift, recently rolled out its new Cog and Click product. You can use it on almost any bike you already own, even one from Walmart. Point being, your bike doesn't need to cost $5,000 and it still feels like you're on a top end. Smart trainer, Zwift ready trainers are available from all the top manufacturers. Wahoo. Garmin Elite, Jet Black and Decathlon, setting a new benchmark for indoor training. All Zwift ready trainers come with the new Zwift Cog and Clicks installed, making them ready to ride from the box. No extras needed. And if you knew, if you did, you know that now outdoor rides count towards your Zwift fitness score and trends. All you need to do is link your bike computer to Zwift companion app. It's that big a development for Zwift.
- [03:46]
Johan Brunel
Bradley. We start the stage, I mean, we got the news yesterday evening, right, that the stage was going to be shortened because there was a, actually a cow disease on the Col de cz. I mean, already that I would think, you know, if you still have a plan to attack shortening the stage, getting a climb out or two climbs out, it kind of, I mean, this was obviously in favor of the guy who was in the lead, but it was still plenty hard. Instead of 4,500 meters, it was 3,900 meters of elevation. Still a big mountain stage and only 95km. So full speed from the start before we get to the climb. We have, as we expected, little track doing the first 12, 13 kilometers. I guess Jonathan Milan wins the sprint and secures, I think it was already secured yesterday. Now for sure, the green jersey. And then we get to the first climb. Straight away it's this Col du Pre, which was the horse category climb, which really hard, really hard. And straight away we see the attacks going left, right and center. The first guy I was surprised to see in the move was Primos. What did you think when you saw Primos go?
- [05:05]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah, I mean, with a short stage like that, he had nothing to lose. We've seen he's got better every day in this tour and I did think it was an opportunity for him not knowing who would chase. And if anyone would chase as hard as they did to potentially get a stage win in this tour, and I think that was. That was purely it. Primos, he's tried everything else this tour in terms of climbing up the GC slowly. He's got a teammate who's on the podium, who looks secure on the podium. So I think that was his attempt to try and win a stage in this Tour, not knowing that UAE would chase as hard as they did.
- [05:40]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, yeah, I can understand the initial idea of attacking and getting away. I'm a bit critical about what happened afterwards because, I mean, it's a great opportunity to try to win the stage. And if you get the distance and the room, of course, Primos has the capabilities to win a stage like this. But I think that once they were off the Col du Prix, after the downhill of the Rosalon, Primos was there in no man's land for a long time by then. I think with that, I mean, it was clear that UAE wanted to keep it tight. We even saw also UNIX start to pace because Vauquelin was dropped and Johanneson could get up. So then I think it was clear that there was no stage win available. And I think the director should have said to Primos, okay, that's it. We're not trying anymore because we. There's still the risk that Florian Dipowitz was under pressure from Oscar only. And I think they should have called him back, you know, not spend. I mean, at least be there in the first part of Laplania, because those. Those 20km primos did there on his own were. Obviously, that was suicide. He couldn't. He would not win the stage, and he was not able to do anything for Fluorine Lipowitz. So, yeah, just to be a bit critical. Right. And it's, of course, always easy to criticize when you see the results, but not great tactics from the car, I would say.
- [07:16]
Bradley Wiggins
No, no.
- [07:17]
Johan Brunel
So then, you know, once we saw. Once we saw UAE was controlling Bradley, I was thinking, okay, this is going to be going to run into the. The call of Laplana and UAE had more riders than. Than Visma, if I'm not mistaken.
- [07:36]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah.
- [07:39]
Johan Brunel
One or two.
- [07:39]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah.
- [07:40]
Johan Brunel
They had like four. No.
- [07:41]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah, yeah. And they were riding hard. Tim Wellens was riding really hard today to keep that gap down.
- [07:49]
Johan Brunel
Yeah.
- [07:50]
Bradley Wiggins
And then, you know, I think we were all thinking what would happen. It was very similar to Hodakam. We hit the climb and Tade did make that move, and he made it good. But once he's, you know, he seems to back off again like he normally does. And I thought that that was just testing the waters to see what everyone had and that he would soon go again. But that wasn't to be. And Jonas for the first time didn't attack off the back of it. Yeah, and, and that is from that point onwards then that the tactics sort of went out the wind or the textbook or what we thought would happen, you know, it was, that's where the anti climax began.
- [08:22]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a bit, you know, I mean we could say disappointing. But you know, let's also not forget this is after three weeks of racing and. Yeah, yeah, you know, and especially if, I mean it's clear that Pogacha obviously doesn't have the freshness that he had in the Pyrenees. That's, that's, you know, that's obvious. And so, you know, if, if you don't really have to, then I think, you know, he just wants to play it safe. You know, he won four stages already. It's not going to change anything. And he knows that if he doesn't do anything wrong, he's winning the Tour. So Anyways, before we start to talk about the last climb, Bradley, I want to talk about our presenting sponsor, Ketone iq. As every day ketones are widely used in the peloton and in every other endurance sports. Personally for me, I'm very a fan of this format. The 10 gram ketone IQ shot, no caffeine, no sugar. It's been proven that it boosts athletic performance. In a placebo controlled study with trained athletes, Ketone IQ boosted average print power by 19%, peak power by 13%, cut fatigue by 10% and spiked blood ketones five times in just 20 minutes. Additionally, it also helps for a faster recovery. Ketone IQ has teamed up with team Vismaly Lisa bike, very dominant team here in this, in this Tour de France and with the University of Leuven to explore recovery and high altitude adaptation. Their key findings improve blood flow, higher muscle oxygenation and better endurance and stamina. So take your shot. Get 20% off your order@ketone.com the move using the code the move ketone.com the move with the code the move. Okay, Bradley, as you said, we get to La Plagna. Tim Wellens. I mean what can we say about this guy? He was pulling in the valley. He pulled, I mean super, super hard at the start of Laplana and not much happens, right? Not much happened except the only thing we saw was Roglic get dropped at the bottom normal and then Decathlon takes over and they set the pace for, for Felix Gal, which, Which worked out fine. I mean, I think the interesting thing on Laplania was more the races within the race for fifth, for third, than the battle for. The battle for the. For the win.
- [10:58]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah, yeah, that's the way it looked, didn't it? But you know what? In this Tour de France, nothing really makes sense anymore in the way the riders race. The tactics that are deployed, it's. It goes against sort of the traditions of cycling in terms of what you think's going to. That makes it more exciting. It keeps us question, questioning things all the time. But when it comes down to it, there's only two riders that have anything in this Tour. And, and hats off to Arisman today. He took his opportunity right at the right time and committed and he's won both his stages like that in this Tour.
- [11:31]
Johan Brunel
So, yeah, personally, personally, I think that today stage Bradley, today's stage of Arman is more impressive because he, he, he went away from the group of favorites. He didn't go from a breakaway, right. And on, on superbanier. He was, he was in a breakaway and he kept it. But this was really impressive. I mean, even if, I mean, he's a guy who's not in gc, so obviously he knows that when those two guys go full gas. Now the question is, and this is probably, this is probably why aren'tsman had a chance. Is that so? They tried once, but then afterwards he never went full gas.
- [12:10]
Bradley Wiggins
No, he didn't.
- [12:11]
Johan Brunel
Right.
- [12:12]
Bradley Wiggins
But when Taday was riding on the front, he was bringing the gap down himself, you know.
- [12:17]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think he was, I think he was not. I mean, he was, he was. Obviously we can talk. I mean, I want to talk a little bit about the visma tactics. I, I just want to highlight what the performance of Arends month. Two stage wins, two. I mean, one in the Pyrenees, one in the Alps. First Tour de France. Still a young rider and I mean, basically Aronsman saves the Tour de France for ineos.
- [12:43]
Bradley Wiggins
He has done. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a sort of the resurgence of him really, because he hasn't done much for a few years, has he? Since that Vuelta stage win when he was up there on GC as well. But he's come, he's come to the fore this year and he's really, you know, come of age and it's so easy to dip your head after you've won a stage of the Tour and, and just ride Grupetto And. And, yeah, say your Tour's been so. So to come out again today and target this and. And ride the way he did, that's very impressive. But, you know, I think that's got a lot to do with the team. He's in Brailsford, perhaps being back on the race, you know, Brailsford would have rallied the troops and made sure they didn't dip their heads. They. We spoke about them the other day when they were riding on the front, and we couldn't question, understand why they were doing that, but they were always looking to perform a role of some sort and play a part in the race, and they've done that. They've. They've come away with two stage wins.
- [13:41]
Johan Brunel
What I really find impressive about Arnold's man, also, Bradley, is, let's not forget, you know, this guy did the Giro and he was actually going for GC in the Giro and it didn't work out. You know, it's. It was a disappointment. And he came to the Tour just to check what it was. He goes away with two stage wins. That's pretty impressive.
- [14:00]
Bradley Wiggins
Crazy.
- [14:01]
Johan Brunel
Yeah.
- [14:01]
Bradley Wiggins
It just shows you, doesn't it, how cycling works sometimes?
- [14:04]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, it was nice to see. I mean, I just saw a little clip after the finish. He was interviewed by Michael Bogart, who was the Dutch guy who also won Lapland. He won in Laplana, if I'm not mistaken, in 2000, maybe five. I don't remember now. It was five. I think it was 2005. Yeah. Ex teammate of mine in Rabobank. Great rider. Great rider. But, yeah, I mean, I was listening a bit to the Dutch commentary on Eurosport, and it was. It was very, very exciting. They were. They were pushing. Pushing. Yeah. So Bradley Ironsman wins, Jonas second, Bogacia third. More importantly, Lipovitz secures third place. I think that was the. The race of the day, basically. Right?
- [14:57]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah.
- [14:57]
Johan Brunel
Yeah. So, unfortunately, Oscar only didn't have it today. I mean, still, great performance, but Lipovitz was just a bit.
- [15:05]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah, he just. Just slipped often in the last couple of K there. Oscar, he's a great Tour. And I think if you'd have told him at the start of this Tour you're going to finish fourth, he'd have took that. But I'll tell you who I mean. Lipovich surprised me today because he's had a few tough days, by his own admission.
- [15:20]
Johan Brunel
Yeah.
- [15:20]
Bradley Wiggins
And he's made those tough days himself. Like yesterday, he had half the stage riding on his own. So to recover and be consistent, as he has done through the Mountains and through three weeks of a Grand Tour, you know that he's well deserved for that third place.
- [15:33]
Johan Brunel
And the guy has a big engine. The guy has a huge engine because, you know, you could also see once he saw that because there was not an attack, just Oscar only just couldn't hold the rhythm anymore. He looked back, he was on the radio asking and, and they told him to, to go pace. I mean then he paced, he paced basically to the finish. I thought personally that was, that was going to be the guy who was going to prevent Ironsman from, from winning the stage. Because if it was, if it was Jonas who had to go himself, I mean, he was going to wait. So. Yeah, yeah. Super, super impressive performance of. It's also Felix Gal moving up to fifth place also really, really good. And Toby as Johanneson moving up to sixth place for, you know, X. I mean that's quite, that's pretty cool. So.
- [16:22]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah, yeah. And Vaklan, he just suffered in this last. He suffered in the Alps, hasn't he? And dropped a little bit more every day.
- [16:29]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, we could see, we could see that coming bit by bit, you know, he got worse and worse and today he, he cracked. I mean, he's still in the top 10. I think he's, he would have taken that before, before the start of this Tour de France.
- [16:41]
Bradley Wiggins
But yeah, big, big surprise for me. And another ride of the day was Ben Healy secure in top 10.
- [16:47]
Johan Brunel
Very impressive. He's just very, very. Yeah, he's just incredible. Yeah, very impressive. He was hanging on there. I mean the guy can climb and I mean he's, he's fighting for top 10, but he was there with the top seven, eight, you know. Now what I want to ask you, Bradley, in terms of visma today, right, I think, I think somebody, I mean, did they listen to our show when yesterday you said, you know, they should do, they should do something that they haven't tried yet, which is basically do nothing. That's what they did.
- [17:19]
Bradley Wiggins
They did, but there was no end result for doing that. You know, I kind of feel like that worked had they won the stage and the stage was within touching distance.
- [17:31]
Johan Brunel
Oh yeah, yeah.
- [17:32]
Bradley Wiggins
And you know, if Jonas was prepared to lose everything in this tour in the previous days to not finish second and try and win the Tour, we, we, we understood that, but I kind of feel like he should have thrown everything at today to win the stage because he could have stopped with 5k to go and had a coffee and still not lost a podium place here at the time, you know.
- [17:55]
Johan Brunel
True, true. True, True, true.
- [17:58]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah. 50 meters earlier.
- [18:00]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, Well, I mean, it's not just about that, because that's difficult to calculate. Right.
- [18:04]
Bradley Wiggins
I mean, I mean, I did, I did wonder whether he, in the back of his mind, because that was the first stage he's beaten today on a summit finish in this tour.
- [18:12]
Johan Brunel
Yeah.
- [18:13]
Bradley Wiggins
I wonder in the back of his mind whether he thought if he went earlier today would come with him, Tade would go over the top, Tade would win the stage and he would still would lose the stage. And I wonder if there was some sort. Well, you know, we're not going to take you to a stage win. I'm, you know. Yeah, if you want to win the stage, you have to go yourself. I mean, I don't know. That's the only thing I could think of.
- [18:31]
Johan Brunel
No, I know. I mean, I, I don't know if he really thought that Pogacha was going to bring him to Aren'tsmann and then, you know, beat him in the sprint. You know, I saw, I saw a quote here of Grisha Nirman who was interviewed about, about you know, today and, and he says, he says it was close, but unfortunately we didn't win, said Rishon Yerman, head of racing of Visma Lisa Bike. What was our plan to follow because we were sure that UAE and today would go for the win. It was no longer possible to make up 4 minutes 30 today. We wanted to win and this was the way to beat today to make him work. But he clearly wanted to win himself and they miscalculated. Hats off to Taiman and Ironsman and Ineos. I think the guy who miscalculated was Jonas. Not today. So, I mean, yeah, listen, it's debatable. They tried something different. He did beat Pugach, but he didn't win the stage. So, yeah, you can't, you can't really be satisfied with that, I think. Right.
- [19:38]
Bradley Wiggins
No, no, no. And that's the Alps done now, isn't it?
- [19:43]
Johan Brunel
Yeah, that's, that's basically, I mean, okay, we know that the GC is over. You know, tomorrow's a, Tomorrow's a difficult phase. Before we talk about tomorrow, I want to talk about our daily Ventum trivia. Here we go. So the question about yesterday was a recent addition to the high mountain finishes at the Tour. The Col de la Loze is quickly gaining infamy for decisive duels and GC Jacobs. What feature of this climb makes it unique amongst other climbs used in the Tour? What feature makes it unique? And the answer is it Features a bike only section to the summit purposely built for the Tour de France. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Today's question about stage 19 is. In the final kilometers of the difficult climb to La Plagne. Riders will pass another historic alpine sporting venue. What is it? Riders will pass another or have passed another historic alpine sporting venue on the climb of La Plagne. What is it? Send your best guests to ventumracing.com the move and you enter into this year's grand prize contest. $5,000 of store credit towards any Ventum bike you want to buy. You don't want to wait until the end until Sunday. There's still a standing discount running 10% off the whole site using the code the move. 10 and 20% off any NS1 build with the code NS120 tomorrow stage Bradley, we can see the profile here. Not an easy stage. I mean From Nantua to Pontaria, 184 kilometers, 3,000 meters of elevation. Yeah, this is a stage, man. I mean after the Alps to have.
- [21:41]
Bradley Wiggins
To do this and so many, yeah, so many stage teams still haven't won a stage. It's the last chance for, for a lot of people barring Paris, which will be a bit different to what it usually is this year and that remains to be seen how different. But I think it's going to be like it has been every other day. It's going to be out the blocks. Everyone's going to be trying to get into the breakaway and we could have a, a decent sized group going away tomorrow that everyone completely out the GC or we know. I can't see it being a sprint of any kind tomorrow.
- [22:15]
Johan Brunel
I think there's no chance. No chance.
- [22:17]
Bradley Wiggins
No. It's a good 20, man. Something like that.
- [22:20]
Johan Brunel
Yeah. I think it's breakaway for sure. It's, it's. It cannot be a GC day that the battle is over. You know, I mean nobody's gonna drop anybody of the GC guys. You know, there's nobody who's gonna get in even though, even if those clams. The first climb is a bit longer but you know, it's, it's 4%. You're not dropping the guys in the top 10 on climbs of 4%, 6%. So I think it's breakaway.
- [22:44]
Bradley Wiggins
Yeah. Yeah.
- [22:45]
Johan Brunel
We'll be back to comment about that stage tomorrow. Thank you, Bradley.
- [22:49]
Bradley Wiggins
Thank you.
- [22:49]
Johan Brunel
See you soon.
- [22:50]
Bradley Wiggins
Okay, see you later, mate.