Long Distance Lounge

Life Inside the Tour de France with Cycling Journalist Andrew Hood

• Tim Sweeney's TWIN THIEVES MEDIA • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Longtime cycling journalist Andrew Hood talks to host Tim Sweeney about his journey from small town daily newspaper reporter in Colorado reporting on ski vacations of the royal family to becoming a prominent figure in cycling journalism for Velo. Plus, how to plan your trip to the Tour de France, what it’s like to be inside the circus of world’s great bike races, and the craziness of camping out with cycling fans on the side of a French mountain. They also discuss the current state of cycling and the evolution of the sport in America. Having forged a media career in an era that has seen disappearing print outlets and the birth of social media, Hood offers career advice on the importance of being adaptable to change in your professional life and how community journalism was an ideal training ground. 

Hood has covered dozens of editions of cycling's spring classics as well as the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España, along with numerous world championships in road, track, and mountain biking. He’s also covered multiple Olympic Games and reported on bike races across six continents. His work appears in the Outside cycling network, and he has written for The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, the Washington Post, and many more. 

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Background

02:41 - Journey into Cycling Journalism

09:05 - The Evolution of Cycling in America

14:56 - Community Journalism and Its Impact

19:01 - Breaking into the Cycling World

22:48 - The Rise of American Cycling

34:55 - Covering the Tour de France: A Journalist's Perspective

43:24 - The Challenges of Reporting in a Fast-Paced Environment

46:36 - The Fan Experience at Cycling Events

50:24 - The Publicity Caravan: A Unique Cycling Tradition

52:33 - Exploring Alternative Cycling Events

57:20 - Riding Iconic Climbs: A Cyclist's Journey

01:01:28 - The Current State of Cycling: Trends and Predictions

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Long Distance Lounge podcast is produced by Twin Thieves Media

For more information, visit TwinThievesMedia.com

Follow Tim Sweeney on Instagram at @tesweens

Logo by Kyle Johnston Designs


Speaker 00:

Hi there and welcome into the Long Distance Lounge. My name is Tim Sweeney and this is a podcast where we travel kind of virtually to meet people doing cool things with their lives in cool places. And this one's no exception. We're catching up with an old friend of mine named Andrew Hood. He is a journalist who covers the world of professional cycling. So he spends his life putting his microphone in the face of guys dressed in lycra who go really fast up and down mountains. Andrew's based in Spain. He's been married to a Spanish woman now for a while. He's American, I should say. And I met Hoodie, as he's known to a lot of us, way back when, when I was just a journalist out of school for a small town newspaper in Colorado. And he was coming in doing some freelance work for the paper because his life was a lot cooler than ours. He was covering professional ski races in the wintertime. Then he was heading off to Europe in the summer to cover pro bike races. And this is when I believe bike racing was really exploding. So it's always been huge in Europe, obviously, but we'll talk with him about that. He's made a career out of this, which is kind of amazing, actually, starting from the print journalism world, working with the Denver Post and the Vail Daily and other newspapers and stringing, which means kind of freelancing and just hustling, hustling. He's really hustled to make this whole thing work. And now he's two plus decades on doing this, still doing it. And he's one of the big voices in the world of cycling. He's a very, very good writer in my opinion. If you read his writing on cycling, it's tight, crisp. I've always admired that about his writing. And he really tells the story well. So we'll hear from him about how you might want to go see the Tour de France or one of these other big bike races in Europe. I know a lot of people want to do that. It's a bucket list travel thing for some fans. Um, I've talked to a lot of people in the U S who want to do that. And Andrew can tell us how he's going to give us a little insight on how you can plan your trip. Um, we're also going to talk a bit about the changing landscape of media because he has lived it all from print journalism to now where things might be being broken in tweets or whatever you call them now on X in 20 words or less. Um, but we'll talk about, How he's kind of evolved with the times and had to evolve to keep the career going. Anyway, without further ado, let's get into it with Andrew Hood, a professional cycling journalist based in Spain. Hoodie, or Andrew Hood as he's known by his pen name, I guess, his real name. How are you, man? Thank you for joining me. Yeah, good to see you, Tim. It's been a while. It has. A long time. We go way back, so for anyone... listening, you should know that. You slept on my couch one time. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah, that was way back in the day.

Speaker 01:

It

Speaker 00:

was way back. You're established now. You're gallivanting around the globe as a big time cycling journalist. So let's start there. You're from Colorado. That is where you once or twice crashed on my couch because you were a big Denver journalist guy and you would come up. I was working in Vail, Colorado as a cub reporter, I guess you'd say. And you would come up and help put out the paper. And I remember going, yeah, this guy, he's good. You could really write and you still can write, I must say. How the hell did you end up where you are now, which is in Spain, traveling the world, following cyclists everywhere. Cool life. How did you get there?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, it was kind of a combination, really, of just being at the right place at the right time and having kind of a vision or not really a plan, but like, Taking advantage of opportunities when they came my way. I remember like way back in the day, back in those Vail days, a buddy and I, we were working at the Vail Daily where, you know, that's kind of where it all started for me and some of our communal friends. Basically, we said, what's your dream job? And we said, covering the World Cup skiing in the winter and covering the Tour de France in the summer. And man, back in those days, that was a pretty elusive dream. The media landscape was very different. It was really just the old legacy media. There was no internet yet. There was no iPhones. All the social media didn't exist. So back in those days, it was like getting a gig with the AP, maybe working for a real specialized magazine. or working for one of the real big major newspapers that might cover the Olympic sports or covering the tour. And those were literally like three people had those jobs in the world. So it was kind of like shooting for the moon and somehow I landed here.

Speaker 00:

Yeah, and you've kept it going, which we'll get into that. I want to talk about how the media landscape changed because you've been front row seat to all that and survived it, which is even more impressive. But you grew up in the Denver area, Denver proper or near Denver?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, my parents moved to Denver when I was in high school. So my junior in high school moved from Chicago. I was actually born in Texas, lived in Georgia. My father had a corporate job. We got bounced around when we were growing up younger. Lived in Chicago and then moved to Denver when I was like 16. And that was like a life changing experience, right? I mean, like living in Colorado in high school, you know, having the Rocky Mountains right there in your backyard was just, you know, just changed everything for me.

Speaker 00:

Right. So is this how you got into this world? Because cycling in the U.S. then was not what it is now as far as there's like this crazy group of people that hard, hardcore people that follow cycling. It's grown a ton in the last 20 years. Or am I speaking out of turn there?

Speaker 01:

No, no, you're exactly right. I mean, you know, cycling's always been like this participatory sport, right? Everyone rides a bike growing up as kids. The bike racing scene... It's a European sport really in terms of its historic roots. But American cycling has always been there. It's always been kind of a fringe sport. It's certainly become more mainstream now thanks to the Tour, thanks to the successes of all the Americans that have gone there. Now we've got the Tour de France Femme, the sport's growing with gravel. More people are racing. A lot of people are riding their bikes. So cycling, I think, in terms of participatory sports in the United States, I think it's like right there, number one, two, three, with golf and running. So cycling has always been there, but it's like bike racing. That was a niche of a niche of a niche, for sure. Yeah, I mean, when I moved to Colorado, it was, you know, as I was always just a big kind of keen cyclist, but a high school buddy of mine, his dad, was a master's racer, you know, like an over 35, which seemed like ancient when we were 16, right? Right. So we'd go to the races with him every weekend around Colorado. And that's when the whole kind of Colorado scene was really booming. You know, had the old Coors Classic bike race. That's when the 7-Eleven team got its roots really from Colorado. So you had all these like, you know, original pioneering American cyclists You know, the Greg Lamonts, the Davis Finneys, the Ron Kiefels. And these guys were riding weekend criteriums. And my friend's dad was racing against like Len Pettyjohn, who was like a legendary race organizer and building up teams and stuff. You know, so we were like thrown into this culture, you know, when I was like 16, 17 years old. So we would ride, train, you know, just we would ride all over Colorado on our bikes. I'd go with my friend's dad and his training groups. And I dabbled a little bit in racing, but never on the roadside. It was like I did a few crits and I crashed. And I was like, my cojones aren't that big.

Speaker 00:

Yeah, you do need those for sure. You need those on the

Speaker 01:

roadside. And then, you know, about the same time, you know, the whole mountain biking thing started taking off. So, you know, kind of like right there in the early days, not really knowing it. You know, just being there right in the early days of cycling. But even at that point, I never imagined being a journalist or writing about it. It was just a passion journey for me at that

Speaker 00:

point. Right, that this could actually be a job someday. It's funny you mentioned that. I just remembered even as a kid growing up in Massachusetts, one time there was a cycling race in my hometown, which is suburban Boston. And they did like, I don't know why this number sticks in my head, 88 laps around this kind of loop in the center of town. And you just went up and watched them. And it was insane. I don't even know what level it was, but like you would get glimpses of the sport, I guess. This is like in the probably late 80s or something. But then not again, you know, until the Tour de France became like broadcasted all the time on TV. And it was almost like a travel show when it first started for people in Eurovision. kind of following with one eye. So take me back. You get through school, graduate from, did you go to CU?

Speaker 01:

Yeah. Yeah. CU Boulder. Yeah.

Speaker 00:

Yeah. So you finished there. You're a journalist right away, I guess, doing Denver. Well, you worked for the Vail Daily up in the mountains where a lot of you guys met and are still friends with that whole crew, I guess. Then you worked out of Denver some. The cycling thing starts picking up. I mean, there's guys, was it like I may have the wrong year, but is there like Tyler Hamilton, people like this who are like before Armstrong started winning races, it starts to take off. And you're, as you said, is that like right time, right place. And you start going over a little bit to Europe and how does that evolve to where you're doing it kind of full time?

Speaker 01:

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, it was definitely being in the right place at the right time because, um, yeah, I finished university at Boulder, uh, I started working around some of the front range newspapers, Longmont Times Call, Boulder Camera, doing a little bit of freelance for maybe the Denver Post. But getting a clip in the Denver Post, man, that was a big deal when you were a 21-year-old kid. Yeah, because it's all established journalists who've been there for 20 years and stuff, right?

Unknown:

So you're just trying to break through with a bunch of other guys, essentially.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, yeah. I mean- The newspaper industry, man, it's just so sad to see it just absolutely be decimated by new media because for so many years, it was the newspaper, newspaper wars, that hunt for the news. You really were on the front lines of informing basic society of what was going on and started dabbling in different things. And yeah, so- I was traveling a lot. I was kind of like obsessed with traveling. So I went to Asia. I went to South America just doing backpacker before I got too serious. And then just came back my mid-20s and landed the job at the Vale Daily, which was just, you know, it was like journalism 101, but like real life stuff, you know. You worked up there, you know. It was like you covered school board meetings, you know. You covered a forest fire. You covered ski racing. You wrote about... Vale Resorts, which was this mega big Wall Street level company. The diversity of stories there were just insane. And being in a daily newspaper, again, this is all pre-internet. So remember the back in those days, man, the Vale Trail, the Vale Daily, they were like 160 pages a day. And you

Speaker 00:

had to fill that thing up. Yeah. First D Valley. Yeah. It's funny. I kind of forgot that because So you were a few years ahead of me at the Vail Daily, which is kind of the established big paper. My first job out of school was the Vail Trail, which was becoming the Daily Trail. I was privately owned, family owned, working for your buddy, Dave Williams. Nice of him to hire me. I was 22, I think. Yeah. And I'd done some sports stuff through college, you know, internships and things like this. But you're right. I always tell people still to this day, that's probably the most challenging day-to-day job I had. Because if you want to write, which I did like you and still do, but not made the journalism career out of it like you, you kind of have two choices, which is go to a big newspaper, especially if it's sports or something. Be doing agates like box scores and just almost like a glorified intern, right? And proofing and editing things here and there. And you have to wait your turn to actually write. Or you go to a smaller community like that and you kind of get the fire hose fired at you basically. Because I was covering two municipalities, Minton, Avon. There were fires. There was an environmental attack. It was crazy. And they were, you know, the cub reporter. I'm at town council meetings trying to figure out what the hell a Vale Resorts lawyer is talking about to the town council about properties. It's just like you said, you learn everything and you screw up along the way. It's quite stressful because it's in print the next day and you can't take it back. But yeah, I guess you had the same experience, but you do feel like, okay, now I can kind of do anything. I've survived this.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, it's interesting too with community journalism, you know, where, you know, you would see the parents of the high school kid football game that you wrote about, you know, you'd see them that next week at the game and they'd get in your face. Or, you know, you wrote about, you know, somebody's business or somebody's, you know, a politician or whatever. when you work at a big daily, a national daily, or a major metro daily, you know, you were kind of immune from all that.

Speaker 02:

That's

Speaker 01:

true. So when you were like, you know, back in those days at the community level, I remember just how much impact the media has on people's lives. And you really learn that. I took that to kind of heart too. It'd be like, you know, if I was writing a story about myself, you know, what's fair? You know, you have to learn those lines, you know, because it's always changing. in terms of being fair, being informative, but you want to make the story spicy enough so people are going to read it. But you have to be balanced. So those guardrails are just constantly changing as the media landscapes change. But yeah, those years in Vail were amazing. So when I was there in the 90s, then I got the job. Part of my journey was I got this dream job of being the ski editor at the Vail Daily. What a job, right? So basically it's like just writing about everything to do with skiing. And again, under that portfolio, man, it was everything from the corporate side of things, land acquisitions, mergers, you know, IPOs, stock options, all the way to the other side was the recreational aspect of it. The industry of skiing, you know, all the apparel, the ski tech, the gear, the racing, the competition, the weather, the mountains, you know, it was a fascinating beat. And so it, When I started doing that, that's just about the same time the internet hit. It was like the mid to late 90s. And that just opened up a huge new venue for media content, right? So you had all these websites that wanted content. So I was right there in the front lines, very lucky to be in a place like Vail that anything that happened in Vail was inherently interesting. You know, we had a lot of high profile people coming to Vail. You know, Princess Diana came to Vail. It was her first vacation after she divorced the Prince Charles.

Speaker 00:

Charles, yeah.

Speaker 01:

So, you know, she came to Vail. I was the ski rider. So I started covering Princess Diana in Vail. And man, I was just making money. I was just selling stories to the Denver Post. You know, at the time, my boss was like, you know, so long as you let us print it first, you know, you can... because they were not paying us very much money in those days. As you remember, right? So they were cool about it. It's like, okay, if you wrote a story for us and you want to pitch a similar story to the Denver Post or the AP or to a website, they didn't have a problem with that. So that's when I started really getting into kind of these- That's the hustle. Yeah, that's the hustle. Hustle, hustle, hustle, basically. That's the hustle of the life. But it was like, in fact, the irony is now where I work, is Outside Magazine.

Speaker 00:

Yeah, Outside Media. Now

Speaker 01:

there's a new company that has bought Outside Magazine and that's where I started really way back in the mid-90s doing some online web stories with Outside Online was one of the first major high-profile titles to really go heavy on the internet. So I started selling them stories all the time as well. So the circle kind of goes around.

Speaker 00:

Yeah. You know, I was standing at a, I don't know how I... I think Dave, the editor, he would send me to do just, hey, we don't have anything today. Take your skis, go to the mountain, find a story. And I'm like, what does that even mean? Go find the stories and talk to people on the chairlift. And that was the more like fluff stuff. There was a lot of real journalism though, you know, and you learn a lot. I remember Steve mentioned the Princess Di thing. I was standing at a party in Beaver Creek as a reporter. Don't ask me why. I turned around and five feet away, was former president Gerald Ford. And I'm like, what am I doing here? Like, what am I, and what am I going to write about? You know, it's hilarious. It's just some, some gala, some afternoon thing. And cause he lived there, he had a house there, you know, the chairlift went right over his house. But yeah, that it was, it's a bit the center of the universe, a place like that, because people, famous people come to town and then things inevitably happen. So for someone like you, who's like hustling and sharing stories, there is always that, or someone picks up the phone and says, they know you're there. Right. And they say, hey, we need 500 words on this, this, this, and you can go do it because you're connected. So when does, because when I met you, you were done with the Veil Daily and you were, I think, working more in the front range and you were coming up to kind of help out, put out the papers and stuff. I guess your buddy Dave was at the Daily Trail and you were, then I know you started to get into that cycling world because this is when things started taking off for you. Americans in the bike racing world. So at some point, you know, you know that sport and you're working on it, but it must have been a lot of legwork to kind of establish yourself in that world. This is a European game. I think you've even got stories about competing with the Euro journalists just for FaceTime with people, right? Like you're fighting over ski and even in ski corrals and places like that. This is a, this is a European thing. So at that time you have to kind of nudge your way in probably on more ways than one. Correct?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, it was interesting. I was working for what later morphed into ESPN online. This was 1996 out of Seattle. It was back with this startup money and stuff. And so they said to me, they said, we have a guy covering the Tour de France, but he said, we have $1,000 of extra budget. Would you go there to be his assistant? Kind of like help him out, you know, just... That's all we can pay you is a thousand bucks. And again, going back to that dream, it's like, yeah, covering ski racing. Because in those days I was covering kind of the European or the American side of the ski race, the North American legs of World Cup. You know, it was Lake Louise, it come to Vail, Aspen, different places. So I was already had half of that equation was kind of happening. So then the guy said, hey, would you want to go to the tour for a thousand bucks? And at that point I was already kind of full-time freelance. I was working maybe seasonally. Because I got a seasonal gig with the Denver Post covering. I was stringing for the Denver Post pretty regularly. And they always needed extra warm bodies around the holidays. So I was doing just old school legacy media, copy edit, deadline. It was like stressful job, old school deadline stress. So I was doing that in the winters. They paid me fairly well, pretty good day rate. I was freelancing. So the guy said, hey, go to the Tour de France. I was like, yeah, sign me up. And then the guy that was going to do it quit over money. He felt like he wasn't getting paid enough. So I said, they said, well, how about, you know, we wanted him to cover, you know, the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta a España. Would you be interested in doing that? And I said, hell yeah. So it was like a hundred, it was a hundred dollars a day. They paid me a hundred bucks a day, no expenses, no expenses. So you're like losing money? Yeah, kind of losing money. But you know, it was like in those days, They still had the European currencies against the US

Speaker 00:

dollar.

Speaker 01:

And I just said, how can I say no to this? So I figured I'd go once. And yeah, maybe the first year I lost money, but I saw it as an investment really in terms of here's an opportunity, let's go with it. So for the next couple of years, I kind of did the summer in Europe and then came back in the winter and did skiing Denver Post thing in the winter. That's how I started going up, helping out you guys, Devo, on the weekends or during the week or whatever it was. And then I started going every year to Europe chasing these bike races and off to the races, as they say.

Speaker 00:

So which era of bike racing and bike racers is this, just to give people an idea of how it exploded? Because as you said, we say it again, right place, right time, but things just go crazy in the U.S. around bike racing for a couple of key reasons. So what's the era?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, well, it's actually interesting. I kind of hit this middle kind of shoulder region of cycling in the United States because Greg LeMond had just retired in 1994. You know, he was the first American to win the Tour de France. He was part of that first 80s boom of cycling. And then in the 1990s, man, there was this lull where there were not a lot of great racers, not winning big races. Armstrong was just coming up. I think 94, you know, he won the world title in 93. So Lance was coming up, but he was not a big name really at that point. And then, you know, there really weren't a big Americans, you know, Lance didn't win the tour really until 99. So there was kind of this lull in terms of not a really a whole lot of headline grabbing Americans racing at that moment. But, you know, in terms of the European racing, you know, because he could get that access that same day, real time access now via the internet. So, you know, writing about Miguel Indurain, Marco Pantani, you know, all these guys, Tony Rominger, you know, all these guys that were the stars in those days, you know, we didn't know at the time what they were doing because there was some other stuff going on,

Speaker 02:

which

Speaker 01:

would later play out over the next, really, it's kind of started in those mid nineties with the whole EPO and the doping and everything. But so yeah, for the first couple of years, it was just really kind of old school European bike racing with European names, And then that's when Lance got cancer. I mean, he went to the Olympics in 96. I mean, his big goal was to win the gold medal in Atlanta. He didn't win it there. He wasn't feeling great. And then I think it was that fall they diagnosed his cancer. And so everyone at the time thought, well, here's the guy who just won the world championships, which is a big deal in cycling, in 94. And he was still quite young, 24-ish. Everyone thought he was going to be the next big star. Suddenly he gets cancer. And so American cycling was really almost on its knees. And then 1998 had this massive doping scandal with the Festina affair where it was pretty lurid stuff. Great as a journalist, man. I mean, don't get me wrong. These doping scandals were wild to cover. I mean, back in those days, I mean, the internet was there, but it was still pre-iPhone, you know? Yeah. You still had to file your story. You still had to meet deadlines. The news was coming out of still kind of more traditional lanes.

Speaker 00:

Yeah, so you're not just live tweeting things and stuff. You have to find people, talk to them, get sources, not say a source says this or I'm hearing this. How about the language and all that? What is that like in that period? Because the whole world zeroes in on the sport in a way like it hadn't before, not in a good way. So are you, as you're head spinning at first or like licking your chops as a reporter, all those hours of, you know, covering town council and other things kind of come in handy at that point because you have to be like a journalist in a way, right?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, oh, for sure. It was, on the language side, it was definitely frustrating because everything was in French, Italian. I spoke Spanish at the time. There was a funny story I remember when, because I studied abroad in Mexico and did a lot of traveling in Latin America. So I kind of had like the Latin American lilt and kind of language and even the vocabulary is different. So I remember one of my first press conferences was with Miguel Indurain, who was the big Spanish superstar of the day, you know, pre-Tour de France press conference. Miguel, big, big, comes walking in, sits down. You know, this was like just literally hundreds of journalists all pressed in. Everyone's getting their tape recorders in there, no iPhones yet. And then Indurain starts speaking, you know, Spanish, Spanish, which is rapid fire, you know, mouth shot. Right, right, right. I was like, what the hell did he just say? I'm like, I speak Spanish. So I had to like listen to my tape recorder, slow it down. But yeah, you know, you just have to, you have to pick up Spanish or you have to pick up French, you have to pick up Italian. It's a great way to learn languages by covering

Speaker 00:

international cycles. Thrown into the fire, basically. Yeah. So you bounce back and forth, Europe, summers, back to the U.S. You're living like this amazing snowbird, almost, lifestyle of your retiree dream world, I guess, when you're 20-something, 30. What about now? Where are you now? Where are you based? And how has that evolved over the years covering the sport or in your life?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, yeah. So on a personal side, I met... I met a Spanish woman who is now my wife, Maria Jesus, who I love very much. We are happily married now since early 2000s, got married. And so I live basically, I didn't realize this when I got married, that when you marry a Spanish woman, it's a package deal, right? You can not only marry her, but you get the whole family, you get the hometown, you get this whole extended world, and you become part of that, which is fantastic. which is in many ways has allowed me to stay here. I mean, if I'm honest, I'd probably be, I might've probably gone back to the States at a certain point to, you know, was it sustainable in the long-term? I don't know, but having a base here was key. And of course being married made that much easier. And with that comes what they call in Spanish, enchufe, which is basically context, right? So when you need paperwork done, you need to call the plumber, you have to get your car fixed. It's not going on the website and looking at some rating service and figuring out which person to go to. It's like, no, you call up your uncle who works and he can give you, oh, yeah, go talk to Luis. He's been my mechanic for 30 years and he'll take care of my car. Same in France, probably, in terms of paperwork, getting stuff

Speaker 00:

done. Oh, yeah. You don't get me started on the paperwork thing.

Speaker 01:

Yeah.

Speaker 00:

Okay, so Spain's been good to you in many ways. So all that happens, Armstrong comes back, brings it to a whole other level in the U.S., back to the hustling thing. I guess people are coming to you now because you are in a place where news is really happening. I mean, this is beyond being a local reporter in Vail. Everybody in the U.S. wants the news, what's going on there, and so does this just take your, I guess, opportunities to another level for you career-wise?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, in a lot of ways, for sure, because, you know, with Lance and his arrival as the Tour de France winner, you know, really, and he was, at the time, people maybe weren't around in those days or just kind of forget, you know, he quickly became an A-list sports figure in America, right? I mean, he was up there with Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, you know, Lance, I mean, he was a brand, you know, from 99 when he first won, you know, by 2002, right? You know, he was going on Letterman. He was dating Sheryl Crow. You know, he had all these big time, you know, riding mountain bikes with President Bush.

Speaker 00:

Livestrong bracelets and everything.

Speaker 01:

Livestrong bracelets, everything. I mean, he was a worldwide phenomenon. And yeah, so there was plenty of media opportunities there. And it was interesting, too. You know, I actually started stringing for the Dallas Morning News, which was like the big daily newspaper of record. In Texas. Because he's from Texas. Yeah, he's from Texas. So got a lot of work through them at the time. And it's fair enough to them. Right from the start, they were like, don't ignore these stories about doping. Because the stories were starting already. People were saying, how can you do this? You had cancer. You had chemotherapy. How can you crush everyone? Yeah. And so that story unfolded over the arc of Lance's racing career. He retired in 2005, but he's come back with his media project. He has his podcast. He has some other things going. So he's still a voice, but he's definitely removed from the daily conversation in cycling. He has his voice via his own personal platforms. But again, those were really dark days, again, in cycling. We've kind of come out of it, there's this whole new generation that's really leading the way for international cycling, which people kind of believe is on a much cleaner level than it's ever

Speaker 00:

been. Yeah. So I've been to the tour a few times living in France and pumped in here. We met up and had dinner at a couple of nice places, which is fun. But you live in this circus and there's people watch it, especially in the U.S., who want to come just see a day of it, which turns into like 10 minutes, actually. If you see one day, depending on how the Peloton is stretched out, what is that like? I guess just quickly, how do you cover a day as a journalist of the Tour de France? Because it is a giant moving circus, as I said, and it's going like 150 miles or more some days across crazy places. You are there at the finish line to do interviews, I assume, pretty much always. Then you have to kind of chase them. How does that come together? How does a journalist, because you're not in a helicopter, clearly.

Speaker 01:

Yeah. A lot of time in a car. There's two parallel worlds in the Tour de France. One are those of us who have credentials. We get a press badge and plus a sticker that goes in your car that says press in all fronts. And that allows you access in and out of the race course every day to get you into the start, gets you into the finish. Without that, There's no way to get close to the race, as you found out. Then there's the other world of the fans trying to watch the race. Maybe we can talk about that in a minute. Yeah, for sure. Because it's a great experience going to the tour, and there's a lot of good tips that I could share with people about how to do it. Absolutely. But yeah, basically for us, covering the tour, you basically rent a car. It's very expensive. You rent a car. These days, you're looking at at least $3,000 to $4,000 to rent a car. you know, for a month. You basically need it for a month. You know how expensive gas is in Europe. You know how expensive tolls are in Europe. So just right there, you're looking at about at least five grand just for a car, gas, and tolls for the month, at least.

Speaker 00:

And then you need hotels and all that stuff.

Speaker 01:

Then you need 30 nights of hotels, 30 days of eating, 30 days of drinking. Of course. Yeah, 21. Because, yeah. I mean, these days, you know, we're not fueled by... rosé and uh long rouge you know but back in the day that was an essential part of our daily routine uh my liver survived thankfully yeah um

Speaker 00:

but you're showing up that you kind of follow the race in the car or whatever but you've got to get yourself to the finish line before they do anyway and of course you can take you don't have to go on the on the that day's course but You're not out there like on the roads watching them go by as a journalist, which is what a fan would do. You need to be there when they get there. So some days I guess that's a two-hour drive. Some days it's an hour because they're doing a giant loop and coming back not so far from where they started. But you have to get yourself there, do the interviews, capture whatever you're capturing, file a story. Then you're checking into another hotel. I guess, which he will promptly leave in the morning and then go to the next. Is that kind of how it works? It's not like following a baseball team or something, obviously.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, no, it's definitely basically 24-7 operation. I mean, we get up, you know, you have to book your hotels months in advance. I already have reservations for this summer's Tour de France. You know, as soon as that route is announced, you're booking hotels because the teams obviously need the hotels, all the race officials need all the people working on the tour. They got literally thousands of people that build the apparatus of the race every day. Maybe not thousands, but several hundred people put up the fencing, put up the start finish areas. They've got the podium girls, got all the race officials. They got the UCI people. All the teams have at least, I'd say maybe 60 people on the race. So that's 30 hotels per team. And then you have all the tour groups coming in, you know, trek, travel, all these big groups. So hotels are a premium if you want to be close to start and finish every day, which you don't want to like have to drive an hour and a half after every stage. So basically our routine, you know, get up pretty early, you know, seven, eight o'clock. I mean, back in the day, I used to try to bring my bike and ride, but that's impractical really. I mean, you might be able to ride your bike maybe five, seven days in the course of a month. Everyone these days are running. People get up in the morning, meet some friends for a run, 45 minutes just to blow out the cobwebs. Then basically the French breakfast, you go to the start, you get there two hours before the stage starts. You go in there and you're talking to the riders, the team managers, the sport directors, sometimes the race officials if there's a controversy with the course. But mainly we're talking to the riders and to the team coaches and stuff. You know, chasing the news, somebody crashed, somebody lost time, what the expectations are. You know, the news, plus you're trying to do some features on, you know, these days it's real interesting in terms of how they train, the nutrition, how they prepare. The bike tech is always interesting. New wheels, you know, the technology in cycling has changed so much in 25 years. It's crazy. It's crazy. They're like cars. Yeah, they're like Formula 1 cars. So a lot of our reporting now is on that kind of stuff. So then, yeah, getting from start to finish, you have two options. Basically, you actually can drive the race course, or now they have this thing called the Orcore, which is a start to finish on public roads. So they have kind of a system with these kind of arrows that will lead you the way. But you're in traffic, you're in with the public, so if you get caught in a traffic jam, you're just caught in a traffic jam. But there is a way for us to get into... You know, you drive into the host town city that's hosting the finish. There'll be a way for us to get into where the press room is. Usually that press room is going to be like a massive gymnasium or some sort of sports center or Congress Hall. Sometimes we're in tents on the top of a mountain. But we used to have a race radio, which has the frequency, which has all the information about the breakaways, about the action in the race and the splits. And with my former editor and boss at Velo News, John Wilcoxon, a legendary cycling journalist who's been doing it since the Merck's era. I used to drive John around for quite a few years. I learned so much from him. And we would go in the race every day. So we'd go to the start, get our information, but we'd have to leave before the peloton. So we'd drive down the road. And then every day there's like an airplane that flies right above the race that beams this kind of closed circuit signal.

Speaker 02:

Oh,

Speaker 01:

geez, really? So if you go too far up the road, you lose the signal. So you'd have to kind of stay within a sweet spot. So we would drive ahead, listen on the race radio, see who's in the breakaway. You know, especially if like, you know, an American rider was in the break, escape of the day, you know, we'd wait for them to drive past. Then we'd get behind them and follow them along. And it was just a whole different way of seeing the race. It was about as close as you can get. And then also, lately, they've been offering motorcycle access for print journalists, where you can get on the motorbike and follow behind the race and head behind the race. And that's really where you just see... how insanely dangerous it is. You've done that? You're sitting there holding on really good? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've done that quite a few, maybe five or six times over the years. But then you just see how crazy it is with the fans on the road, how dangerous it is. I mean, cycling is a truly dangerous sport. I mean, it's just a testament to how well these professional men and women, how good they are at bike handling, how they can descend. You see these roads in Europe, man. It's like they're flying down these roads at 80, 90 miles an hour. Well, 70, 100K an hour. You know, you see it. You go skiing. You're coming back. And it's like, you know, one side down, man. It's 300-meter drop into some gorge. There's no fence. There's no barrier. And, you know, unfortunately, people have died in this sport. And it's a tragedy that that happens.

Speaker 00:

I was having this debate with a friend. We were on a mountain bike ride. And he's a very good mountain biker. And he was saying, oh, the bike skills in mountain biking is so much better. And I was like, you don't understand how good those guys are on road bikes, how good they can handle. bikes and you see it when they have to, like when they have to do something at high speed, how adept they are just controlling the bike. I mean, it's clearly in mountain biking, you have obstacles so you can see how good those guys are, but road cyclists, I think the lay person thinks it's just like straight ahead. It's all about fitness, point it downhill and have the guts to do it, but they are very, very good at handling bikes. And when things go wrong, you can see it that the reaction time they have at such crazy speeds, um, Anyway, I want to talk about the fan perspective because that was, I think people, there's so many people with this on their bucket list of travels, go see a cool sporting event, and they see the madness on the side of the road, the Dutch corner and all these different things in different places. First of all, craziest thing you've seen fan-wise. I mean, it is getting dangerous where people do stupid things as well. We have mountain bikers launching themselves over the peloton. That guy does it every year. You just wait for it. The cyclists must think that's insane. But what have you seen that's crazy? And then I know you got a couple tips on how to see it. And maybe the Tour de France is not the one to go and see up close. You've got opinions on that as well, right? So I guess, go ahead. Give us the Andy Hood secret sauce to this.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, in terms of crazy stuff, like you said, it is absolutely insane. You've seen everything from... People dropping their drawers to moon the Peloton, to people lifting their shirts to flash the Peloton. There's some really quite original and funny costumes people come up with. Remember the guy back in the Armstrong days with the big elk antlers on his head? I mean, the Superman. And they

Speaker 00:

want to run beside them, too, for some reason?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, they want to run with the Peloton. And that's, you know, that's one of the great things about cycling, right? It's like how close fan can get to these guys. It's not like, it's not in a stadium, right? So, yeah, I mean, that whole fan experience is, you know, it's an all-day commitment. You know, you have to get up there early and you want to go on Alpe d'Huez. You know, you need to get there the night before. I mean, one thing that's maybe most people don't know is, you know, Just trying to get close to the race is a challenge because now, especially with some of the terrorist attacks they've had in France with people driving and into crowds and stuff. So the security kind of bubble around the tour is much more strict than it used to be. Like back in the day, you could just drive your car up the night before or even the morning of, park on the side of the road. you know, bring your jugs of wine, bring your baguettes, bring your saucisson, just make a day of it, right? And you can still kind of do that, but physically getting there, like there's a perimeter now around, especially the major mountain summit finishes where you know, the roads are closed maybe 10Ks before the climb.

Speaker 00:

Right, yep. And at a certain time, too, you can't get past a certain point as well, right? The day before or the morning of, they start shutting down roads nearby, so you have to have a plan. Yeah,

Speaker 01:

yeah. You almost have to leapfrog. You know, if you're going to come to the tour for several days, it's basically you have to kind of leapfrog. You'll see the fans that do, you know, there's all these hardcore fans. You'll see them every day on the road, these Belgian fans or the Wild Van Aire fan club or... you know, the Slovenians that come from Pogacar now, you know, they'll be there every day. What they do is they'll be at the, when the stage finishes, you know, they'll have their party, they'll finish up, but they'll pack up either that night or the first thing in the morning and drive to the next day's course and post up. You know, so if you're trying to just get on the side of a road somewhere across anywhere in France, that's usually pretty easy. But if you're trying to get to the mountaintop finishes, they'll opt to as the Mont Ventoux You know, that you need to be there almost the day before. And we've done that where we've gone up Mont Ventoux and we got up there the night before and just made the whole party scene and done stories about that. And it's crazy. You know, it's like people up there all night long. People are setting up DJs with the Euro tech music. You know how the Euros are. They love to dance. They love to chant, and they love

Speaker 00:

to sing. It's an opera and ski scene,

Speaker 01:

basically. It's opera and ski. It's on the side of some frigging mountain in the middle of the French Alps. It's pretty surreal. And then finally, another big draw during the tour is the publicity caravan. This is wild. It's a whole crazy thing. It's a mix of kind of quiche, kind of like gaudy, kind of almost, it's kind of like some weird, something from the

Speaker 00:

past. Brand giveaways. So we should explain, it's like a caravan that comes before. So if you're out there, I guess, back up, best place to see them is on a climb, the riders, because it stretches out. So you're watching, it's not just like, foom, like a tennis ball going by. If you're on flat ground, that's the case. But if you want to watch them The Peloton gets stretched out on a big climb, so you at least get about, whatever, 15 minutes of entertainment if it's really stretched out. But before this, before the Peloton comes through, like, whatever, an hour or something before, is basically a promotional caravan, if I'm describing it correctly. Every brand that has a sponsorship on the tour, that sponsors a tour, has got, like, a little truck or something. And then there's people doing giveaways. They might be throwing, like, little pound cakes or whatever the hell it is. Keychains. And you kind of need to have a head on a swivel because you can get blasted by something. I mean, I had a keychain fly by my ear and I was like, what the hell is this thing? And it's entertaining in a way, but you look at the street and you're like, there's this shit everywhere on the ground. These little tchotchkes, I guess you'd call it. Am I describing it correctly? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 01:

Spot on. Yeah, yeah. Just random little stuff, like little plastic, you know, little plastic... You know, a lot of it's nothing that you would ever keep, but because you're there at the Tour de France, people seem to like, you know, I've seen like grown men push babies out of the way to grab one of those key chain holders, right?

Speaker 00:

Right. Yeah. It's just branded stuff, essentially a way for the sponsors to get their brand to the people who are lining the streets. So it makes sense on an advertising standpoint, but okay. So I think- Any more advice on Tour de France or we got it covered? I know you believe that there's some other cycling races that are a bit more accessible in this day and age. You've told me that in the past. So big picture, you're an amateur cyclist in the U.S., let's say, and you want to come watch a grand tour. But Tour de France, as you said, is a bit difficult to infiltrate. What are the other spots that you think are– because you go everywhere. It's Giro d'Italia. Spain, you've been everywhere. What would you say is, like, if I want access, a little more low-key access to cycling, but still the highest level, where would you go?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, I mean, you could think about it in a certain way to compare it to, say, you know, American sports. You know, the Tour de France would be like the Super Bowl or the World Series. So let's go with the World Series. So Tour de France, World Series. But you have a whole season to get to the World Series, right? So basically the season starts now. Our first big race has already happened in Australia. And this kind of this past week, things are starting to happen in Europe. So you have kind of like, you almost compare like winter training camps and spring training, which happens in December and January. And that's when the teams kind of first get together. They have all the new riders come in, the new bikes. You know, they'll go. It's all along the coast in Spain. I was just down there in December and in January, going down there always to do interviews and stuff. Check out the new stuff. And that's a great place to be because the big stars are there. You know, they're not racing. They're just training every day. And, you know, you can actually ride with the pros because, you know, they just go out and they're riding on the open roads in Spain. So, you know, you'll see the Peloton will ride by. I mean, if you're fit enough, right? Ha, ha. Yeah, right. That's a big if. Huge if. That's a big if. Yeah. You know, you don't want to be up there kind of doing poles with Remco of Anipool.

Unknown:

Right.

Speaker 01:

You can ride off the back of their little Peloton, and they can't tell you not to. In fact, they don't seem to mind. So they're just like, they're out doing a five-hour ride, and you'll see fans, people now these days with the iPhone, it's even easier. You'll see fans will go out and ride with the pros as long as they can, or they'll go up and hang out on some of these climbs that they do. There's a famous climb down there called Col de Rates, which is a climb down near Alicante. And it's where a lot of the pros in the winter do their power testing and they'll go up there and just do some training intervals and stuff. And so there'll be almost like a race feeling up there. Not a lot of people, but several dozen fans will be there hanging out, watching Pagachar go by. And it's just random. You have no idea when they're going to show up. That's kind of a nice spot. But then a lot of these early season races are just the best way. Like next week, I'm going to... to, it's called the Volta Agave, which is in Southern Portugal. You know, great winter weather, usually in the 60s, low 70s. All the big hitters are going there. You know, Roglic will be there. Vingago is going to be there. Remco normally is there. Geraint Thomas is there. A lot of these races are the first races of the season. Sepp Kuss will be there. So, you know, as a journalist, it's a great place to be, but as a fan, you know, You go to the start, and that's when you can really get close to the riders because you go to the Tour de France, all the team bus areas all fenced off. You can't even get close to the riders anymore at the Tour. But if you go to a race like Paris-Nice, the Criterium du Dauphiné, which is in June, which is kind of like almost like the playoffs for the World Series, that's when everyone is already really riding in top form. They're in Tour shape already in June. And, man, you go to the races. This is in the middle of France, you know, around Lyon, you know, around Ancy. That's where these races are held. And there's maybe, you know, there might be a couple thousand French fans hanging around. But, yeah, it's a great place to see the racers up close. And, you know, they're not as stressed out. The tour is a big stress time for those guys. So you go to a race like, you know, Paris-Nice. You want an autograph from these guys. It's a lot easier to do that. you know, like these other races. And it's a lot, it's a lot better time to visit because especially the Dauphiné, it's one of my favorite races of the year because it's like the Tour de France, but it's unlike the Tour de France because it's not the crowds, it's not as hot, it's not as, you know, there's not that much stress around the whole event. So, and the place where you get to hang out in France and you could get good food and just a good wine.

Speaker 00:

Right. So as a journalist, there's probably more accessibility, but as a fan, you can kind of see the inner workings because that's, I mean, I worked in the golf industry. That was the fascinating part is I got to go in the tour truck and, If you get a glimpse of that as a fan of cycling, you'll probably see them like working on the bikes or them chatting. You just see the inner workings that you don't really get to see on TV because they're covering a race, right? And you might just bump into things you wouldn't see. What about riding? I've kept you a long time here because you've got some cool stories, but you've probably ridden some of these. I've ridden a few of these, not to say stages, but let's say coals or climbs. Um, and if people, I think they do make, they make a trip of that where they want to see the race, but then they might go ride something else nearby. Um, I guess fair warning for the amateur cyclists. This is no joke. Some of these places, I mean, I've done a few of them just to climb and I'm clearly not built like a, um, 50 kilo cyclist, but it's hard work, but it's quite an experience. So you can go watch the race, but then go do another climb that might be an hour or two away. You've done some of them, I assume, just to get a taste for it. Any favorite climbs?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, like you said in

Speaker 00:

France. It didn't kill you.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, all those climbs are just mythic, right? I mean, Alpe d'Huez, Mont Ventoux, the Tourmalet. I

Speaker 00:

did the Tourmalet. It was brutal.

Speaker 01:

The Tourmalet is brutal.

Speaker 00:

I did the Tourmalet. They're all brutal, man. It was way too hot. It was way too hot. And people are like, did you do the loop? It's like a 200K loop. I was like, no. No, I rode to the base of the climb. I did the climb. That was enough. Back down. Yeah. You get appreciation for the fact that these guys are just aliens. I mean, when you ride one yourself, just do one, and you can't even comprehend the speed that they do it at, which is cool. As you said, you can be there. It's not in a stadium. So you can go on another day, the day after, and ride the same ride they do because no one will be there in a way, right? And there'll be the chalk drawings on the ground. And you get the feeling, but you won't deal with the crowds. And it's unique in that way, the sport.

Speaker 01:

Oh, for sure. I mean, all those climbs are, you know, if you're a cyclist, you know, it's like bucket list stuff, right? That's what a lot of people do, you're right. They come over, they'll watch the race, they'll do these climbs. I know a lot of the organized paid tours, you know, sometimes they're quite expensive. But if that's, you know, if you've got the money, that's the best way to go. Because a lot of these paid tours... will have kind of access to the race that you don't get as a fan. And I know like some of these paid tours that you are riding on the stage some days and they'll have like a viewing area set up just for the paying members of like on Alpe d'Huez. I don't want to mention names because a lot of people do it. I don't want to play favorites, but any of those high-end cycling tours, if you got the money, it's definitely worth it if you're like a keen cyclist because- They have mechanics. They've got massage every night. They've got five-star restaurants. I mean, it's like living. That's the best way to get into it as a fan if you've got the cash. If you don't have it, yeah, you can kind of wing it as a freelancer. But riding those climbs was amazing. I mean, the best place to go really, like right at the base of Alpe d'Huez, there's a camping ground. And one year, way back in the day, I went there after the tour. After the tour had finished, I drove back down there in my rental car. I posted up in this campground. Whole place was full of cyclists. There's a swimming pool there. There's a bar in the campground. Yeah, I think back in the day, it was like 20 bucks a day to camp there. So I stayed for the whole week. And just every day, rode, you know, rode out to Wes a couple of times. Glendon is around the corner. Galibier is on the other side. And it's just like, it's just like, you know, going, if you're a golfer, going to play at Augusta for a couple of rounds, you know. Yep. Or Pebble Beach. So, yeah, my only advice to anybody who does that is swallow your pride and put a compact on your front chain ring because you'll need it. Unless you're really, really fit. And

Speaker 00:

be in shape when you get there. I did optimize. It wasn't horrible. I mean, I said, hey, the goal here is just to get to the top. So you start smartly and then... Alpe d'Huez wasn't terrible. Tourmalet was a lot harder, I felt like. And we have a bunch here around Annecy that are formidable, let's say, some knows and others. So you can walk out the door and do it. But well, cool, man. Thanks. I guess last question is like, where's the world of cycling now? You talked about this journey. I must be excited. There's some superstars in the sport. What are you looking for this summer ahead as you're, you know, as we say, gallivanting across Europe and getting inside all these different tours. It's an exciting time, I guess, to be a journalist and a cycling fan, right?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, in fact, I'm actually writing a piece. It's going to go up on Velo. I think my headline's going to be, in 25 years covering the sport, it's never been so good, kind of thing. And it's really true. Like you said, the good thing about having been in the sport for so long is that you just see these new generation of riders coming through. As you mentioned, I kind of kind of got the Lance generation for the good and bad that came with that. And then after that, there was a whole new generation that came through, at least in Americans, you know, Taylor Finney, you know, all these kind of great writers, T.J. Van Garderen. And now we're into the Sepp Kuss, Matteo Jorgensen's, Kristen Faulkner, Chloe Duggan on the women's side. You know, so it never gets boring in terms of, it's like, you know, oh, the Tour de France again. It's like, no, the Tour de France every year is like this amazing soap opera, you know, cliffhanger blockbuster movie that has different story, different actors, different, you know, it's like a Marvel super world where, you know, the storyline changes. It never gets boring. No

Speaker 00:

shortage of drama. No, no

Speaker 01:

shortage of drama. Every day, something crazy happens to the tour and it's never boring. And, but the sport is, I think in a much better place, it's a healthier, much healthier place. Um, you know, the, in terms of technology, the, uh, the way the bike tech has changed, just, You know, like you said before, it's like Formula One, the way these guys are training, the way their nutrition works, the coaching, the aerodynamics. People are saying, you know, how can they be going faster than ever before? But when you look at it, there's things that have been happening that can put the sport where it is right now, you know, without going to the dark side. And, you know, you have, you know, this generation of riders that, you know, we have this guy, Tadej Pogacar, right now, who is just doing things that we've never seen and since really like the days of Eddie Merckx. And, you know, and the classics are, you know, really had a boom in the last, you know, 10, 20 years in these one-day races like Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders. We got Mathieu van der Poel, who's the big man these days. So then the women's sport is really taking off so much more professional and deeper, like the Tour de France Femme. And you get gravel racing, right? Gravel racing is just booming over the last 10 years. And so the sport is in the best place it's ever been. And the stories never get boring. It's like at the end of every season, I am totally burned out. I have to disconnect. Like this year, I went to Cambodia for three weeks, go back to the United States, eat chili dogs and have some good American food. But by the time, you know, December rolls around and now it's like, okay, February, like the races are starting and I'm excited. And it's always, you know, hitting the restart button, but it is a restart. It's new, it's fresh, exciting. So it's been a dream. It's been a dream ride and we'll see how much longer I last.

Speaker 00:

Yeah. Well, it's cool to watch. I mean, you've fashioned a career out of it all and took advantage of the opportunities when they came, so. Yeah, it's been cool as someone who got to meet you when I was a young cub reporter and trying to fashion out a career and see someone like you who is like, yeah, you hustle. It didn't come by accident. I mean, you're a talented guy, but you hustled. So yeah, congrats to you, and it's fun to watch because it's fun to read your stuff too because you're a good writer. So where can people follow you and follow your stuff if they're a cycling fan or if they just want to learn more about the sport?

Speaker 01:

Yeah, so Velo News now is Velo. We changed the name a couple years ago. So it's a Velo. It's part of this outside project that some great ideas there in terms of creating a platform, creating kind of a community of all these kind of... They have Outside Magazine, some of these other legacy brands, Ski Magazine, Backpacker, Triathlon, Yoga, all these kinds of things are under this one group. There's a paid package that goes with that. So... There's also some great apps, some map tracking apps. Map My Ride is in there, Gaia GPS, Trail Forks. I mean, if you're an off-road cyclist, Trail Forks is the way to go for cycling, for gravel and stuff. So, you know, it's an exciting project to be on in terms of that and the professional aspect of my current situation. So, yeah, I'm exclusively for those guys. I'm full-time. I've been with them now, well, started with the old Velo News, but now I've been with Outside for like the last five years.

Speaker 00:

You're writing every day during the tour, sometimes a couple stories every day, but Velo is the place mostly for you once the season kicks off. That's where people can go to see your work.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, Velo. We got a podcast going. We got a lot of stuff on social media. We're doing shorts. We're doing Instagram, YouTube shorts. We're doing longer form video. We're doing, you know, getting into, I don't know if TikTok, if we're doing TikTok or not, I think it's, we don't know if it's going to be around.

Speaker 00:

You just don't know it. I just don't

Speaker 01:

know it. Yeah. So like, that's the thing with journalism these days, man, you got to wear many different hats, right? It's like back in the day, I mean, it's one thing I think that I've been able to try to do in my personal career is always to evolve with the times, right? You know, I've had some colleagues of mine that were just like, no, no, all I do is I'm a reporter. I'm a journalist. That's all I want to do. And a lot of those guys don't have jobs anymore because it's like, you got to be able to change the times. And that media goals post, it

Speaker 00:

changes every three months, every three weeks, right? Just where people are going, right? Where are they going to get their news?

Speaker 01:

People are, you know, majority of our users now are on iPhones or smartphones. 80% of our audience, I think, is on, that's true for all media. Uh, you know, people are getting their news from Twitter or from Instagram, you know, from, uh, podcasts, from podcasting. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to, you have to roll with the times. Definitely work hard and roll with the times and don't burn bridges. You know that.

Speaker 00:

You've, you've, uh, you've rolled with the times. Clearly. It's been fun to watch. I thank you for, for joining me here today. It's been fun to catch up and rehash some of the old days, but also, um, get the insight too because you've you've lived it like like no one else so thanks for the time i appreciate

Speaker 01:

it yeah

Speaker 00:

thank you tim thanks for having me it's good catching up brother well that was fun catching up with mr andrew hood cycling journalist extraordinaire he's got some great stories he's an entertaining guy always good to catch up with him too i've seen him a few times as i've gone out and watched uh the tour de france when he comes through town or gone out to meet him somewhere near a stage and had a little dinner and a Good guy, Andrew Hood. And as I said, good writer. Check him out online. Follow him. He's on Instagram. He's on Twitter, X, whatever they call it now, at EuroHoodie. And also check him out on Velo. And now you have some tips too if you ever wanted to go watch a grand cycling tour in Europe. He's giving you the inside scoop on what to do. Thanks again for listening. And yeah, back soon with another episode.

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