Placeholder Podcast Escape Collective

With Classics season in the rearview mirror, Kit Nicholson, Dane Cash, and Ronan Mc Laughlin join Caley Fretz on this week's Placeholders to ponder whether anything can or should be done to make it harder for riders to attack from so far out.

Jonny Long, Kit Nicholson, and Dane Cash join Caley Fretz to ponder whether the Ardennes Classics might merit some reevaluation, to discuss World Cup mountain bike racing and the NCL going on hiauts, and to look ahead to a clash between Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar.

Caley Fretz, Jonny Long, and Kit Nicholson talk through some of the side stories that came out of the last weekend of cobbled classics and wonder aloud what can be done to make the sport safer and less full of dumb people who want to throw things at bike racers. Plus, Iain Treloar interviews two confused deer mascots.

From a bar in Belgium straight to your ears: The Placeholders crew preview both of this weekend's Paris-Roubaix races, discuss the Arenberg chicane and the crashes in the Basque Country, and we hear from Emma Norsgaard on what Roubaix means and how to ride it. 

The Placeholders crew comes to you live from Kortrijk, Belgium, this week, where they tackle life's greatest questions (who's better, Boonen or Van der Poel?), debate the merits of goat-based cobble upkeep, and have some Weekly Pain with a real live member.

We're back with a special on-the-ground episode from Oudenaarde, the finish town of the Tour of Flanders. It's wet, it's cold, but we've found a bar and a fire and are ready to talk about a spectacular bike race (even if the last 50 km were slightly less spectacular). As always, for a deep run-through of the women's Flanders, don't miss Abby and the Wheel Talk crew early this week.