The Rouleur Podcast
Rouleur Conversations: Rouleur 132 – Age & Experience
Rouleur editor Edward Pickering and photojournalist James Startt leaf through the latest edition of the magazine, Rouleur 132: Age & Experience, which is out now.
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- Duration:
- 1h 14m
- Broadcast on:
- 09 Dec 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. Linked in, the place to be, to be. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no No, no, no, no, no. No, no. No. No. Honestly, when I started this, I thought only I had to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch, whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of CD-Tails. [Intro Music] Rula is the world's finest magazine of cycling and cycling culture. Established in 2006, Rula interviews the world's biggest cycling names and covers the world's biggest cycling races. Visit our website at Rula.cc and subscribe to support our in-depth features, long reads, independent journalism, stunning photography and immersive cycling coverage. I'm Edward Pickering, I'm the editor of Rula, and this is Rula Conversations. There's a new edition of Rula out this week, number 132, with the theme of age and experience, and I'm going to leaf through the magazine along with photo journalist James Start, plus friends and guests to talk about the features and hopefully inspire our listeners to take out a subscription. Which does remind me that listeners to Rula Conversations are eligible for a 15% discount of the price for a full subscription to the magazine. Go to Rula.cc/subscribe and enter the code podcast15. Subscribing enables us to keep making this beautiful, immersive, high-quality magazine. We're eternally grateful to all our members for their support. And the latest edition of the magazine is indeed beautiful, immersive and high quality. And James Start, if there was a theme that resonated with you and me, age and experience must be the one that's right up there. Indeed it does, I'm not going to calculate or combine age or experience. The combined age of our knees, James, is over 200. Exactly. So yeah, but it was definitely the one I saw, the schedule of different themes this year, this is one that spoke to me right away. Very, very deeply to age and experience. We both have quite a lot of both. But let's start with the cover. And we'll talk about the feature that produced this cover a little bit later. But it's another cracker. It's a beautiful, mint green, Leniano jersey against a plain background. Photographed by you, James, and covered designed by our resident genius Art Editor, Enric Adele, who I should say recently walked away with two commendation prizes at the Professional Public Association Annual Awards. He was highly commended in both the design of the year and cover of the year categories. And I watched this magazine coming off the presses, James, down at our printing partners, and it just looks amazing. I would say this, James, but this particular magazine, the best looking we've ever produced, just beautiful and starts with the cover. Yeah, absolutely. It's a tremendous issue. And yet we don't really know. There's so many unknowns when we go into it. You know, more times than not, things just work out. And we surprise ourselves sometimes. And this cover is just one of those examples I photographed. I don't know how many jerseys when I was in Torino photographing the feature with Herbie Sykes. And he has this amazing collection of jerseys. I mean, all of the iconic jerseys he has. I mean, Eddie Merck's Rainbow jersey, the pink jersey, yellow jersey. I mean, you just name it. He has it. And yet, when we're laying it out with the art team with Enric and with their own eke and the art team, we're hammering back and forth with which image might be a potential opener. And I was really drawn to this Langano jersey, not because it's like the most iconic, because it's one of those jerseys that was always there for so long in the history of cycling. And, you know, I don't think I ever want to tour to France or anything like that. But it was, it was worn by, you know, so many great riders and, and then the colors. And mint green, and it's not quite so less like Bianchi, but it's got its own thing along with. I love the, I love the, when you see it, the sort of burgundy collar. And it's sort of hard to get it to come out in the picture, but it's just a stunning combination. And it's very understated and subtle and just spot on. Yeah, it was amazing watching it coming off the presses. So let's have a look at the features. First up, Grace Brown, the world and Olympic time trial champion. Rachel Jerry, our staff writer, went to Zurich where the world's took place to have a chat with Grace and came up with this excellent interview. Interesting thing about Grace Brown is not just that she's a world and Olympic time trial champion and the edge based on the edge winner, she's retiring right at the top. Yeah, that's incredible and takes courage to do that, you know, and maturity, I guess, experience, you know, she had a tremendous career and to draw the curtain on such a distinguished career at the summit. I mean, when she's literally on, you know, having one of her best heads had one of her best seasons, that takes a lot, but it's, it's also something that I, I respect highly and I think he gets a lot of respect from everybody. Yeah, the interview is actually really interesting on that because Grace Brown comes across, I guess I'd describe as an entirely normal, sane, balanced person who happens to inhabit the body of an elite athlete. And she even says in the interview, she doesn't have that killer instinct that riders like Lotto Kapek in Demi Rollinger have, she takes victory and defeats with the same kind of equilibrium. I think that has informed her decision to retire that she knows and understands that there are other things in her life, she wants to build a life for herself back in Australia with her family. And she's had a great time being a racing cyclist, she's achieved great things but she's entirely in ownership of her decision. And Rachel was kind enough to send me some audio from her interview, so we're going to hear from Grace Brown now. Even though when you're on the bike you obviously have this kind of winning mentality, it doesn't quite like always come across to your demeanor like off the bike, which is, yeah, quite a nice thing in a way. Do you think like part of the reason why you're choosing to retire is like, are you finding it like quite mentally exhausting to like be that different person on the bike into a kind of, I don't know. Because you do have, I suppose for you, like you're making a bit of a switch every time you race to try and be like this winner that maybe doesn't come as naturally to you as it does to others. Yeah, in a way it's like, like I don't, for instance, like I see people like Demi Vollering and Lotto Kapek, you can see how hungry they are and they hate losing like they really hate it. And if I lose, I'm like, oh well, I think, yeah, sometimes when you're like talented in a way and you like have got the ability to win, like I feel I should have that, like I should be like them. I don't quite, yeah, I don't, like I'm sort of like letting down my ability by not being as like onto it and like really like winning mentality all the time, but I don't know if that's, it's not so much why I'm stopping. I think, for me, a lot of like what's motivated me is the self-improvement and like getting the best out of myself and, you know, that side of, rather than specifically beating other people. Now, like I've sort of done everything to be my best and I can see what that is and I am not searching for answers anymore. There's no lack of what if I, you know, what if I really committed, like what could I achieve or if I made these changes or whatever, like I can see what I'm capable of now. And, yeah, also just like each, each win is almost like a diminishing return. So that was Grace Brown being interviewed by Rachel Jerry and one more thing about that feature, James, the photography by Eloise Mavian of Taunanti CC is absolutely on point expertly laid out by Henry. There's a portrait of Grace Brown reflected in the glass of a window, I guess, and you can see her looking both directions on the opening spread of the cup, which kind of symbolises her looking back at her career, looking ahead to the rest of her life and seems equally happy doing both. So excellent feature, brilliant words, brilliant pictures, brilliantly laid out, I loved it. Next feature in the magazine is what cycling has taught me, and this speaks to the experience part of the theme of the mag. We asked the simple question, what a cycling taught you to a variety of individuals. They didn't specify whether this needed to be profound insights or small details. But there are insights from Audre Caudal Gajor, Guillaume Marta, Rachel Nalen, Garrent Thomas, Mark Beaumont, Lizzie Diagon, also some media figures like Becca Charlton and Peri at Gwyneth, and also you and me. So James, what has cycling taught you? We have these sort of sayings in cycling, racing within yourself and things like that, knowing your limits, right? Knowing your limits as a rider isn't just saying, "Okay, I'm no good at this, and I'm not going to be any good at this." Knowing your limits is also knowing your strengths, and it's also building your strengths, minimizing your weaknesses to be the best you can be. And that's the way a cyclist goes about their career, but that's something that, even though my own personal cycling career is decades behind us now, it's something I've thought about often as a photographer, as a musician, as I play guitar and an abandoned. Those are things that have always come back to me as a photographer. I mean, I understood instantly, I was really good at very spontaneous stuff. My first love was street photography, which worked well with my sports photography, but some of the more elaborate kinds of photography, like complicated studio setups and stuff like that, I just didn't really have the patience for it and wasn't very good at it. And any time I tried to do too much of that, I kind of failed, and that doesn't mean I can't improve certain aspects. I think my sense of light, for example, has gotten much better as a photographer than it was when I started. I'm much more in tune to that. But I learned that where my strengths were, and I made my name as a cycling photographer firstly, a racing photographer. And that's because the sport of cycling taught me to know who you are and to push those strengths and limit your weaknesses. So, yeah, cycling has given me a lot of different lessons in life that I've often gone back to. Yeah, it teaches you a lot of cycling. Sometimes it's literal. I've always said that my interest in cycling is its interaction with the real world. And as I said in the magazine, cycling leads me down all kinds of rabbit holes. It can be history, geology, culture, psychology, chemistry, science, music, whatever. And in that way, it's a conduit for me to learn about the world, just because it happens out in the real world. So, in that feature, we've got our wisdom, James, the wisdom of our experience, but also that of many other esteemed figures in cycling. The next feature is an interview with the Canadian cyclist, Mara Rolden, with a headline, "Life on the Road." And this feature came about. It actually happened at the Tour de France this year, some. I don't know if you remember, James, when we were in Nice at the Gondà arive of the Tour. You introduced me to a friend of yours, Chris Gutowski, who runs the Siniska cycling women's team, and we're chatting. And he said, "I've got this cyclist on the team, young cyclist. She's moving on next year, but amazing character." She grew up on a bus, and this immediately piqued my attention, chatted a bit more with Chris about her, and decided we need to have this story in the magazine. How many people let alone cyclists who grew up on a bus driving around North America? So I sent Curtis Gutowski, a Canadian writer, who interviewed Alison Jackson for us last year to meet her, and sent to her photographer, Carrie Medig, over to shoot her, along with her family's bus. And got this feature out of it. The most amazing, compelling, inspiring character emerges from this feature, Mara Rolden. She signed for DSM for the next three years. She's 20 years old, just struck by her energy, enthusiasm, life force. She's a real free spirit, but also a real talent at cycling. I guess the next few years are going to be a process of harnessing that talent and not putting any constraints on that free spirit. Another feature, another amazing set of pictures. Yeah, Carrie's pictures were just stunning, and as we edited them, the photo team had an abundance of choices. The opening image is just so great. It celebrates life, it captures her, this sort of, you know, vagabond road trip spirit that seems to be her life, and it's taken her into professional cycling now. And yeah, she's a tremendous talent, and it's going to be really interesting to see how she evolves with DSM. You know, it's going to be a very different mentality from the bus that she grew up in, and, you know, her success there, you know, will be somewhat dependent on her ability to adapt and integrate the science of sport that they're so good at, which takes a lot of mental energy. So it's going to be really interesting to see how she evolves. You know, I should say for context, like the reason she grew up in a bus was her parents, both workers translators, and just had the urge to live a parapetetic lifestyle, bought a bus. I think they went on one holiday once and enjoyed it so much, they thought, "Well, why can't we live like this?" And their jobs aren't tied to any particular place. There are certain rhythms to their year, and they go to certain places regularly, warmer places during the winter, and then move up north in the summer. And Rollden just discovered cycling by accident, really, just got mountain biking, got persuaded to do a race, kind of realised she was good at it. But, you know, that lifestyle wasn't necessarily conducive to training, and she didn't really do much training, she rode for fun. I think she'd barely been on a road bike when she rode her first road race and did really well in it. And I think adaptation may not be her challenge. I think she's probably adapted to more situations and is more happy with the lifestyle of a professional cyclist than any other 20-year-old who's going into the world tour. And she's pretty good. She's had decent results. I mean, she's only young and very inexperienced, and she's just looking at her results, you know, top 20s in decent stage races. So, like, the Britannia ladies tour, Tour d'Alabneer femme, the Tour d'Alabneer, which is a very, very tough race, and she was 16th in that. She got a stage win, I think, in the Volta Port de Guile Féminina. So, she's already doing pretty well, and she's really yet to learn all the detailed stuff about being a pro. I hope our readers get two things from this feature. First, that they appreciate this amazing, compelling, unique character, and also that they follow her story and racing results with interest. So, that was "Life on the Road," an interview with Maro Rolden by Curtis Gillespie. The next interview in the magazine was a very different kind of interview. Herbie Sykes interviewed Fabio Filine, who is imminently retiring, not necessarily through choice, portraits by you, James. My main impression of this feature was that Filine's story is not the happiest. I mean, he comes across very intelligent, very grounded, but maybe he's not achieved the potential he felt he had. He's had a few headwinds over the course of his career. He's very reflective, introverted, introspective character, and so I think maybe professional cycling has been an ordeal for him. Absolutely. I mean, he was considered to be like the next emoser or something, just the next great Italian super champion going into the pro ranks. And then, you know, as it happens, you know, an injury here, a crash there, they get derailed on this, a bad choice of a team. At one point in your career, this or that, and you just don't quite realize the potential or the promise that you seem destined for. He's strong enough to, you know, obviously, choose a lot of jobs as a very solid team rider, you know, an occasional winner. He wanted to race for at least one more year, but, you know, sometimes choices are made for us, and that was the situation here. So, you know, Herbie saw that and wanted to sit down with him, look back over a career that, you know, could have perhaps been different, but wasn't, and what that entails. Herbie goes into some depth in the feature in this, and I recommend our readers, you know, get into this feature because it is an interesting story, kind of a warning as well. He was chucked into the Tour de France at age 19 by Fouton Civeto, his team, and these days riders are maturing younger, they're better trained, better conditioned, and may be able to handle that kind of experience better. But this is back in 2010 where the idea of a 19 year old racing the Tour de France was pretty outlandish, and they basically chucked him in because it was a weak team. He had had some good performances, and he was the only one making headlines in the team, partly because of his youth, and being put in the Tour de France at age 19, he didn't finish, he didn't have a good experience. That psychologically and probably physically damaged him a bit. I remember interviewing him at a Trek camp, maybe in 2015 or 2016, and he had been suffering terribly, like he had been ill, he couldn't, he just couldn't get the power. He was just in a bad way, and he was very open and frank with me, I'd never met him before. And, you know, we got through the interviewing kind of pigeon English and a small bit of Italian, and he was really open and honest, like brutally so, to a surprising degree, you know, cyclists sometimes need to lean optimistic, you've always got to think there'll be bad times ahead. He was convinced he would never be the same again, and it really came across our interview, I actually felt quite bad for him. Injured at the wrong time, ill at the bad time, at the same time, he's won 14 races, he's well known, he's managed to carve out a 15 year career as a professional cyclist. So I think at the same time, things didn't go too badly from him, he was doing very well, and I think this year he just had a bit of bad luck, he was, the plan was a little trek, he was going to help Chaconi at the Giro, and if that had all gone to plan, it could have been, you know, he would have been at the Giro helping Chaconi, who's really in his peak years these days, could have got an extra years contract worth of that, but as it happened, Chaconi got injured, I think, they sent Jonathan Milan as the leader in the Giro instead. So, Felina was a surplus to a crime, it ended up not riding a grand tour this year, and when you're on your one year contract, and you haven't shown yourself in the biggest races, that's when things get sticky. So, kind of left that feature, and your photography reflected this, James, I mean, the photography was absolutely on point here, I kind of left feeling both impressed at his ability to survive a professional career and be a well grounded individual at the same time as feeling a bit bad from that he never achieved the heights that maybe others expected of him, and I think the person who's hardest of all on him was himself. So, that was Songs of Innocence and Experience by Herbie Sykes. The next feature is called Past and Present, and it's an interview of Charles Kust by Maria David. I caught up with Maria earlier and she told me all about meeting the oldest living Olympic gold medal winner. I'm joined by Maria David who wrote Past and Present, which is an interview with the cyclist Charles Kust and appears in Roodo 132. Maria, welcome back to Roodo Conversations. Hi there, Ed, thanks for having me on. First question, who is Charles Kust? Basically, he's a guy that wasn't that well known until the last few years. He's basically a road cyclist and a track cyclist. He's raced for various teams, say, over the 1950s and 60s, but his most noteworthy thing is that he's actually the oldest surviving French Olympian. Having won gold at the 1948 London Olympics at the Herne Hill Velodrome in the four kilometre pursuit. So, obviously, with the Paris Olympics taking place, they wanted to have a real star person involved in the opening ceremony and as part of the Olympics. And Tony Estangay, who was in charge of developing these Olympics, actually managed to get in touch with Charles Kust and have him involved in the opening ceremony. He actually went to Charles Kust's house for this feature to interview him along with James, our photographer, what's it like to interview him? It must have been like a window on another world. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it really was actually. I have to say, I was actually quite honoured even to have had the chance to go and visit him. He was very approachable and it was actually the mayor of Boi Colomb, which is the suburb of Paris where he lives. So, the interview was actually organised via them and the lady just gave me his address and James and I arrived there. And even at the time when we arrived at the block of flats, we weren't sure which floor or which flat he was actually in. But as soon as we arrived, then there was someone in the foyer, another resident who saw us and said, "Oh, are you here to see Charles?" And everybody, they just said, "Oh, yeah, Charles, he's really well known now. Those are journalists who are coming to see him." So, I think he was actually quite a sprightly guy, you know, because he was there sort of doing probably his own team interview. He's what, 100 years old? Yeah, he celebrated his 100th birthday on the 8th of February of this year. He's actually looking pretty good for his age. Looked on the story, they had some incredibly interesting stories and also from the photographs that he had some really interesting memorabilia in souvenirs of his time as a cyclist. Yeah, I mean, he proudly displayed everything in his flats. So, as soon as we arrived, you know, he showed us this presentation case that had his gold medal from the London 1948 Olympics, plus a couple of other medals. The one that he got for the pre-day nations in 1949 and also his legion done a... It's quite a nice resonance, wasn't it, that the Olympics being in Paris this year and he won his gold medal in the London Games. And it was Team Pursuit, he won, the French team beat the Brits in one round and the Italians in another to win the gold medal. Yeah, that's right, yeah. So, I think they got through all the qualifying rounds, then they beat the Swiss, I think in the quarterfinals, and then they were actually up against the British team in the semi-finals. And that team actually included Tommy Godwin, and they all knew each other, because I think they'd done a few races, certainly in the year preceding the Olympics, where they'd competed against each other at Hearn Hill and other fellow drones around Europe. And they knew that the Brits were going to be a tough team. In fact, they were deemed to be the favourites, I think, at that time. And somehow they managed to put on their best game race, they gained that bit, and they beat the British team in the semi-finals, and at that time they also broke the course record for Hearn Hill. And then they went on and were up against the Italians, interestingly, and that was actually an easier team for them to beat. Yeah, and interestingly, he came back over for the London 2012 Olympics and actually met some of his competitors from the 1948 games then. Yes, he did. Yeah, that's what he said. Yeah, he was a guest of honor. I think there was a luncheon that took place in London. And he said that he was approached by a guy, and the thing is there was a bit of a language barrier. I mean, Charles Cross doesn't speak any English, and I don't think any of the British guys spoke French, but they did recognise him. So I'm not sure who it was. Maybe it was Tommy Godwin who sort of went running up to him and sort of said, "Oh, Charles, Charles, and then they were really surprised to see each other." And they ended up sitting next to each other, and although they didn't necessarily speak each other's language, they still had a great affinity over the lunch. Then, as you said, he wasn't just a trackie either. He was actually quite successful as a road, but he won the GP de Nacional. That was the classic time trial. If that was still going, I think that would be up there with the monuments in terms of its history and prestige. 4th in Paris-Roubaix rode the Tour de France twice in the Giro d'Italia four times, and he was an all-round great cyclist, wasn't he? Yeah, I mean, he considered himself to be an all-rounder. I mean, yes, certainly he took part in quite a few road races. And in fact, he said that that helped him when taking part in the four kilometre pursuit races. And also, the surface at Hernhill, he said, was actually quite well suited for him. I know that a lot of trackies didn't enjoy racing at Hernhill because they said it was too harsh. It was a tarmac track. But he said that that actually helped him because he was actually a road racer. He classed himself as a ruler. So, yeah, he took part in the Tour de France, although he wasn't necessarily so successful at that. He said that he always seemed to be unlucky enough to either fall ill or have some kind of injury just before then. And he seemed to have more success at the Giro d'Italia. But I think for him, one of his proudest moments, aside from winning gold in 1948, was when he finished ahead of Fausto Copi at the Grand Prix de Neston in 1949. So, I mean, that race was 140 kilometres, and I think he finished probably about five minutes, almost five minutes ahead of Fausto Copi. Yeah, but I guess that makes him one of the greats. Maria was a fascinating story and also just felt like a real, just a window onto a different time. I felt like I could see right back to the pre-second world war days. And I think there's no other feature in this magazine which exemplifies the theme of age and experience. Maria's feature, past and present, is in Rulo 132. Maria, thank you for joining us on Rulo Conversations. So that was Maria David. James, you were there as well when Maria did the interview of Charles Costa. What was your impression of him? Oh, he was wonderful. We spent an afternoon together, very alive, you know, very, very responsive, and, you know, was totally in the conversation even though he's, you know, 100 years old, huh? So, you know, we chatted about the past about winning the Olympics at Hernhill. He actually was a pretty decent road rider too. And, you know, he was riding with all the greats during that time, you know, Jiminiani, Bobi, all those guys. So, you know, quite a good career. And then, but a lot of it was about, also about this year's Olympics because he was going to carry the torch, the Olympic torch at some point, but he didn't know when, you know, he'd been in constant contact with the Olympic Committee. And he didn't know exactly when. He just thought it was going to be kind of when the torch went by his house or somewhere in his neighborhood, you know, even for 100 yards, right? And then I'm watching the Olympic opening ceremonies, and, you know, the torch is, you know, being carried by, oh, Nadal, I think Carl Lewis, you know, one champion after the next, and all the French champions. And then it reaches its end. And who do I see? Like the last man there is Charles Coast, so floored to see Charles there, that, you know, he's like the next last person. And it was so meaningful and touching that, you know, the oldest Olympic champion was literally the last person to carry the Olympic torch before lighting the flame in Paris. And it was so poignant. And I was just so happy for him, you know, and he was so unassuming and had no idea this was, this awaited him, so I can only imagine what it must have been like for him that day. It was very special, I'm sure. The next feature is one of my favorites, The Jersey Collector by Herbie Sykes, which has given this magazine its cover image. Herbie's been writing for real life for many years, and the genesis of this feature is quite convoluted a few years ago when I was editor pro cycling us. Holiday Shopping is here, and Amazon Live has got you covered. Shop for the perfect gift from the comfort of your home with Amazon Live's shoppable video experience. Discover the hottest products from influencers and shop while you watch. 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Every day brings new challenges from expert coaches who train and speak the same language as you do. Level up your workouts with Peloton tread. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit 1peloton.com. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com/results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. To a Facebook post that Herbie had made about a jersey he had come across, or he bought a job lot of jerseys in Belgium. He said he had this one jersey where a man had got in touch with him and this very, very rare cycling jersey happened to be the one for a team that his mum raced for before she had to stop racing, having children, which was this guy here. He had been looking for this jersey for decades and Herbie reunited him with this jersey. We had a regular slot in pro-cycling called Journal, which was just a six or seven hundred word column by different contributors. Herbie wrote a piece about the experience of giving this jersey to this guy over the magazine. When we're working out the themes of this mag, a ruler for aging experience, I thought a wider piece about Herbie's jersey collection might be an interesting addition. I had no idea how it was going to turn out, as you rarely do with Herbie's features. We sent you over to take some photos of the jerseys, as we mentioned, Herbie sent me the words. What you both came up with between you was one of the most interesting features I think we've ever run. We're going to hear a little chat I had with Herbie about cycling jerseys, but I think the conversation was about much more than that. I'm joined by the esteemed Herbie Sykes, cycling and football writer, italifile, Manchester City supporter and collector of cycling jerseys. We'll get to the jerseys in a minute Herbie, but your story in the magazine starts with a friend of yours called Alan and his stereo. Yeah, I guess because Alan was a guy I knew many, many years ago when I lived in the UK used to sell high-fi and things, and he was an audio file. He was extremely obsessive about music to a point where he actually quite struggled to listen to music because he found himself listening to his high-fi. So he's a guy that had several record players and spent many, many thousands of pounds on his stylers and had different tables for different records. So yeah, it was just kind of illustrative of this obsessive strand that some of us seem to have. So yeah, he was God bless his soul. So yeah, he would invite me around to his house and he would have bought, if he wanted to listen to Pink Floyd, he would use a different high-fi system to the one that he would use for Miles Davis or John Coltrane or Richard Strauss. As metaphors go, I thought that was pretty good. And the point is about Alan that he was, in all other respects, completely utterly normal. Yeah, absolutely, he's the most normal ostensibly, ostensibly the most normal. But it was as if he's normal, see, or his normality was kind of disguised almost because as regards high-fi, he was as mad as a box of frogs. He was a lovely man, but he had this parallel life and this parallel world, which was his high-fi obsession. And I think a lot of collectors, obsessives generally have that. I mean, I know an awful lot of Alan's in the cycling paradigm in the cycling world, so there's one particular guy, for example, that I know when he buys things and he buys a lot of cycling-related memorabilia. He always, the people that he buys things from, are compelled or obliged or invited to deduct a zero from the price in any communication, any electronic communications. So, yeah, cycling seems to attract a great many Alan's, let's put it that way. And you're an Alan yourself, and I say this as an Alan person as well, you've got a specific collecting urge in cycling, you tell us a bit about that. Yeah, I collect, I mean, for me cycling is principally an Italian sport, in the sense that I live here, the genome was always my thing. And through Italian cycling, I suppose I discovered Italy and Italian people and Italian customs and culture. And ultimately an Italian wife, my wife is the daughter of an Italian cycling person, so Italian cycling jerseys tended to differ. This is all terribly anorac stuff, but from French and Belgium jerseys, we refer it to as the Golden Age of Cycling, so broadly speaking, 1946 to 1980. And Italian cycling jerseys were beautifully tailored, they were made of wool as distinct to matter of fact acrylic, and that's what I collect. Broadly speaking, Italian jerseys made between 1955 and 1980, often with the front part, these old jerseys that predates synthetic materials, that's my thing. They were people that only collect French stuff and people that only collect Belgium stuff and people that only collect Tour de France stuff and so on and so forth. But my thing is basically jerseys worn by Italian riders or riders of Italian teams, specifically the Giro d'Italia in that time frame. And what is it about the jerseys that attracts you so much? I think it's my own idiocy, Ed, principally. I don't know, I guess it's, I don't know, I'm sure there are all sorts of highly complicated anthropological reasons for this. I guess it's proximity, I think it's love really, because I love cycling, I'm hopelessly in love with it still after all these years. And the idea of it, I always kind of go back to this idea of the Giro d'Italia in 1909 and what it was and this, you know, this concept of being able to ride all around Italy on a bicycle, 115 years ago when there were no roads and the machinery didn't work. So, I think it's rooted in, you know, this obsession with history and cycling history specifically and ultimately for the love we all have for this sport. I guess that's it, and they very well be wrong, Ed, because as I say, I don't pretend to be particularly balanced where cycling is concerned. Do you have a favourite or is it like, you know, choosing your favourite child or something? Do you love them all equally? Yeah, I probably did, I do have some favourites, I have, there's one specifically, which ultimately, when I, it's a long and probably quite boring story, but I met my wife ultimately through this obsession. I wanted a cycling jersey or a particularly Italian champion, and I needed to create an inventor pretext to interview him in order to try and essentially like one of his jerseys. And it's got a very long, I was living in Lincolnshire at the time, I'm from Lincolnshire, it's got a very long story short. My wife's father was his doctor, and he ultimately gave me one of his jerseys for my 40th birthday, which was 17 years ago. So, yeah, I mean, that I guess would be the one, if I were to choose one, if there was a fire, that's the one that I would keep. I try to limit myself to about 200, I know guys with thousands, I mean literally with thousands, but I have a space in my studio where I keep them, and the space only allows me to have about 200 at any given time. At the outset, you just kind of get them, and you get any number of them, and they just accumulate, and then I think as you get older, probably you kind of refine it down a little bit. So, as I say, I only have about 200 now. But they are really good ones, I have to say, as a cycling nutcase, they are really good ones. Could your collection ever be complete, like, can you collect them all and then you're done? I mean you said you learned to yourself to 200, but will you finish this job? No, of course not, of course not. You might get bored of it, but you'll never finish it, of course not, because there are any number of professional bike riders and any number of teams and any number of races, so no. They have about 15, I think, race-worn Mallier-Ozzler from the Giro, they're quite, well they're very, very difficult to find obviously, because the people that wore them tend to want to keep them. But no, we're completing it now, because, you know, how many jerseys did Merck's wear, for example, how many jerseys did, I don't know, deflaming where or Gimonte or Balbini or Mott are those people, so no, you can't, you've never completed it. I do know a guy actually that has at least 40, I would guess, Freddie Merton's jerseys, he's like Freddie Merton's not case, but no, you'd never do that. I know what you want to really, because the thrill of the ed, ultimately, and you know yourself, I guess, as a collector is finding this stuff, finding it is much better than having it. It's like, again, I don't begin to understand the anthropology or the mindset that informs it, but yeah, when you come across one and you get one, it's a good one, that's actually quite thrilling, believe it or not, it's ridiculous, but there we are. Yeah, no, quite agree. And you've often alluded in your writing, maybe because you're based in Italy, where, yeah, this is a more obvious link, but you write about the kind of, sometimes the overt and sometimes the less obvious overlaps that cycling has with religion, and cycling does seem to be a great sport for trinkets, objects and memorabilia. Yeah, well, I guess it's got a lot of cycling is nothing without its history, you know, and cycling and the bicycle itself, I think, is deeply rooted in European society, specifically in Italian society, because the bicycle bestowed freedom, you know, bike free dates, public transport networks, it predates the automobile and those things. And the bike is a joyous experience, I think, for a lot of people, and everybody remembers their first bike, everybody fell in love with their first bike, and of course cycling is a sport is the great metaphor, the great uphill and downhill for life. So, yeah, of course, it does kind of elicit those parallels, and, you know, the great, the Dolomites, the Alps, the Pyrenees, that stuff is predisposed, I think, to those kind of, those parallels, if you like. And lastly, if you've got any interesting leads, got your eye on any more jerseys for the moment. There's a guy that I know that lives quite close by, but, because there's an awful lot of strategy involved in this, it can be extremely complicated. There's chicenery and statecraft and strategy and all sorts involved in this. There's a guy that lives fairly close by that has three jerseys that I would really, really like to have. I mean, I could talk for hours about the chat. I'll give you an example. Okay. Some years ago, I got wind of, actually, a friend of mine wanted, my youngers are worn by mythical Spanish climate guy named Jose Manuel Fuente, who you will probably be familiar with, some of the listeners may be familiar with. This guy was kind of the anti-ED murps in the '70s, okay, so he nearly won the due to the Italian number of times, but he was a classic Spanish climate, very romanticized, beautifully poetic on a by, mad as a mark, yeah. Anyway, I got wind of the fact that a guy up in the valleto, which is the other side of insurance, this is the other side of the country, had one of these malleoza, but it was in the museum. Okay. And so, and the curator of the museum sort of said, "Well, it's not ours. It's on loan from this guy. It's his." Eventually he gave me this guy's address, and I pretty much camped out at his house. So I knocked on this guy's door and said, "I want Fuente's malleoza." And he said, "Well, you can't have it. It's mine." And I saw and said, "Yeah, but no, but." And I kind of planted the seed that I said, "Look, I will give the museum one of Pantanis jerseys and a Greg Lamont jersey and a financial contribution if you let me have this jersey." And he didn't understand, conceptually he didn't understand why an Englishman would drive from Turin to the other side of Terevisa, which is 400 miles to try and denude him of his price. He'd known Fuente, Fuente had been his friend, yeah. And so, he was looking at me as if to say, "You're an imbecile. Well, leave me alone." So I kept turning up at his house, like a bad smell, yeah. And these are the kind of lengths that these people, myself included, would go to. And ultimately, just to get rid of me, I think, he gave me Fuente's jersey. So it took six months. And this poor man, this dear man, ultimately just caved in. He just kind of said, "Yeah, just take it. Just leave me alone." And six months well spent. Yeah, yeah. And ultimately, and I do have it, and it's extremely beautiful if you know the story of Jose Manuel Fuente and Spanish cycling and you know, the giro d'Italia of the 1970s. You can see the story of Fuente actually in Stars and Water Carries, you know, the famous, or is it the greatest show on Earth? One of those 1990s, iconic 1970s films anyway. So we've gone from excellent stereos through jerseys, grand narratives to Fuente all in the space of one magazine feature. It's a beautiful feature, Herbie. The jerseys are beautiful. The writing is fascinating. So thank you very much. I'm very glad you have this obsession. So that was Herbie Sykes. James did you enjoy rummaging through Herbie's jersey collection? Absolutely. I mean, I love the history of this sport. That's one of the things that attaches me whole to me so closely to it. My father was actually a historian, so a sense of history is something that's important to me, and that's one of the things I instantly bonded with. And it's not only that cycling is a sense of oral history. Stories are handed down from one rider to the next champions, one champion to the next, one journalist to the next, et cetera, et cetera, but also it's artifacts. And jerseys like the bikes and some of the equipment are part of that. And then in addition, you know, for some of these collectors, I've met several collectors over the years. And they all have a sort of personal connection to their collection, you know. I recently ran into a guy who was a huge Rick Van Loyfan and had pretty much every jersey by Rick Van Loy and that was his thing. And Herbie's collection was very personal as well. I find that kind of personal attachment to these collections very interesting as well. Do you collect anything, James? I've collected many things over the years. I've had abundant CD collection. I guess I would say I have a guitar collection, although I try to keep that pretty reasonable because you can only play so many guitars, and I don't like to collect things that I don't use. I wouldn't say that I have a collection of bikes because bikes for me are tools. They're like my cameras. They're just my tools. And I don't get quite as fixated on the object as much, but in terms of collection, the things I actually consider myself collecting, I guess it would be more with my music collection. Apart from collecting psychological scars, I collect cycling magazines, which I guess means I'm maybe in the right job. I, like you, am very attached to cycling's past and its chronicles, and when I first got into the sport, magazines were my only real window onto it apart from Tour de France coverage during the summer. So I built a little collection of cycling magazines during my teens, winning, cycling weekly, etc. I went off to university. Both my parents moved houses at various points. My cycling magazine collection disappeared along the way. So when I started up as a cycling journalist, I started collecting again. I just built up my copies of cycle sport and pro cycling as I was working at those magazines. I started buying magazines on eBay. My wife must never know how much I was spent on our magazines. I've got, now I've got quite an extensive collection. I've got full sets of winning, pretty much full sets of international cycles sport, pro cycling. I've got a good few decades worth of cycling weekly. I mean, I had a very early morning car trip across the UK to Birmingham to pick up many decades worth of cycling weekly, which I've managed to pick up for a song on eBay. And the funny thing is I'm not obsessed with having them all. I just like having them. I'm not going to go back and try and get, you know, early decades of cycling weekly because they, it'd be impossible because they may, they pretty much disappeared. It'd be too expensive. There won't be any magazines from the 1890s still around. So I'm not obsessive about it. I just, I like having them. I find it useful for my job. I've indexed and archived them all. So I know if I need to research a certain rider, I can just find out I don't have to leave through 30 years worth of cycling magazines to get them. And most importantly though, I like the way they make me feel. I like having them. I like looking at them. I like the colours and they provide me with a bit of inspiration for the job I'm doing now. And I hope that when we put an addition of ruler together, that somebody out there somewhere will have the same reaction to it as I do when I'm looking through my old mags. Maybe a few of our listeners are collectors. First of all, if you are, you're among friends. Second, why not let us know what you collect, whether cycling related or otherwise. You can email me at edward@ruler.cc and maybe you can do some more work. Maybe on the website on various people's cycling collections or just set up a support group. Next up, James, very quickly, ArtCycle Andy Warhol. Tell us all about this. I love Warhol. I always have. I think he's absolutely one of the three greatest artists in the 20th century. And along with, I'd say, Matisse, probably my favourite in Rothko for different reasons. And I was like, but you know, he had to do something on bikes. I mean, the bike is a popular tool. This is the king of pop art. Did he never use it? And I started researching it. And I saw some pictures of him with a bicycle. So he rode a bicycle. And then finally, I stumbled across very late in his career a series of photos he did of a New York City bike racer. And this was proved to be the very last gallery exhibit that he had while he was still alive. And he would take these pictures of people and things and stitch them together in groups of four or six or eight. And you know, Warhol, you know, he was known, his early work would, you know, it would be of maybe Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor or something. But then the work would often be like the repeated face of Marilyn Monroe or a Campbell soup can repetition became very important part. And these stitched photographs, hand-sewn photographs, in this case a group of four, go back to that, you know, the genesis of Warhol's work really. And yet, it also, when I looked at the series, you know, it was done in the late '70s, early '80s. And this is when I was getting into bike racing. And I'm like, I believe it's on vintage mossy frame. And he's, you know, he's got a Victoria leather shoes, a super record, a group for a vintage bike racing aficionado like I am. This was, you know, just it conjured up memories of what I loved about the bicycle when I first got into the racing. So I had a lot of fun with it, as I always do, but this was a fun one. Taking you back to your hipster East Coast roots here, James, aren't we? Next feature is also by you, James, interview and shot by you. The individualist, Genevieve Gombeor, who is another rider I wasn't familiar with until you introduced me to her. So tell me again, and our listeners, about Genevieve Gombeor. Genevieve was, she's far from a household name, but she was one of the really great cyclists, female cyclists in the '60s and early '70s. And I sat down with her at the Gromp B De Moriander when I was in Montreal, because this was the 50th anniversary of her victory winning the World Championships there in 1974. And she just, you know, she walked me through, A, what it was like as an international top woman cyclist in the '60s and '70s. She had to do so much on her own, and she was so self-motivated. She had a full-time job as a caretaker, and she was living in Paris, and she was getting up at like four in the morning to go out training. She was a light strapped around her head to make it get her training done, then came back and did her full day's work, and used her vacation time to get to races. And it was twice World Champion. She was a real force. This was before, say, the Jenny Longos, or the Connie Carpenter's, and the whole generation from the late '70s or the early '80s came into the limelight. And so I think cycling had its first, had one of its first real, real booms. But she was just such a strong personality, and she was also very much of an individualist. I mean, she had gotten so accustomed to doing everything on her own, and she raced for herself, and she raced to a man. And, you know, some of her teammates remember as being pretty single-minded, and, you know, wasn't there to make friends. She was there to raise her bike and be as good as she could, a real force to be reckoned with. And, I mean, even today, she said she doesn't even ride a bike anymore, because she wouldn't trust herself. She's just too competitive, and she said that she knows herself, and as soon as somebody passed her, she'd get on that wheel of that person until she just, like, fell off. So she doesn't even want to go down there anymore, but she, like, she's super fit, and she says she walks, like, 80 to 100 kilometers a week. I mean, there's just not a day where she doesn't walk at least 10 kilometers, and I believe when she showed up in Montreal, she was even asking, like, how long was it to walk into the city? Can I just maybe walk instead of take a cab, right? So she's just this, yeah, really intriguing person that I was, myself, only learned about when I went to Montreal, and was really happy to just sit down with her and discover her story, and to bring it to the readers of the ruler, because I think it's a fascinating one. It's a fascinating story, but, in fact, both Geniviv, Grombion, and Charles Coste, love the portraits as well, because, you know, obviously these, they're pretty old, these guys, they've been around a long time. You get that sense of fragility and age, but at the same time, the breadth of experience and the life that they've led and the things they've seen, that comes across as well, and it's really profound, isn't it? It is, and there's a bit of a time capsule, when Charles talks about the Olympics in '48, you relive them from somebody who's there, and Geniviv, it's the same thing. They did travel, and she was racing in Czechoslovakia in the middle of the '68 revolution, or the attempted revolution, and then the Russian crackdown. She was talking about the bread lines that she saw of the locals, and how they would actually share food with her as a guest. You know, it's just incredible anecdotes, I thought, that you only learn when you sit down with some of these people, and then you still remember them and still can tell you them. Because, again, there's this whole element of sort of oral history that is very much a part of our history in cycling, that I think is just so rich and endlessly fascinating to myself. You interviewed Geniviv Gombior in Canada, Mara Rolden's also a Canadian writer, and the next feature is also based in Canada. It's called The Land is in Motion. It's about a region of Canada, a little corner of Quebec, not far from Montreal. It's by Guy Dixon. It's a piece about landscape and cycling, but also history, maybe not always a happy history, and also mainly how all these things overlap. I caught up with Guy to have a little chat about this piece, and that's the next thing you're going to hear. I'm joined by Guy Dixon, who has made his second contribution to Rula, with the feature The Land is in Motion, which is centered around a specific region of Canada. Guy, thank you for joining us. Can you tell a bit about your initial idea for the feature? Well, I was thinking about this this morning. I mean, where do these ideas come from? Because so much of cycling is all about these overlapping stories. We always think very linearly about a race, but really, it's all just the geography and the effect of this writer in a certain way or the town in a certain way. So I think it was really that sort of overlap that attracted me to this article. At the same time, it was the last year, when we first talking about this little piece, it was the 10th anniversary of one of the worst rail disasters in Canada, in a small town called Lac-McGantic, which is actually right near the border with the state of Maine. But that part of Quebec, all of Quebec really outside of Montreal is absolutely predominantly French. So it's interesting that how close it is to the US border. But anyway, it was the 10th year anniversary of this terrible rail disaster. And, you know, I was just thinking with this other story about perhaps, I don't know, regional teams development teams in the area. You know, last year. One of the major races that is poor to both, which is one of the most famous stage races in North America has this one stage, its queen stage is up top Mount Magantic, a mountain in southeastern Quebec. And I was looking at that and I thought, well, you know, a mechanic immediately makes me think of this town, Lac-McGantic, which had this terrible rail disaster. And so it was just a sort of like combination of stories. When that real disaster happened, I was actually still a newspaper reporter, and I was one of the people covering that disaster. I actually didn't get to go to Lac-McGantic. One of the, you know, how it is with some with some stories like a reporter is actually the hub, and people are feeding and copy to that. So I didn't actually go, but it was a big major story that I'll never ever forget, obviously. So it was these combination of things, different stories, but also this anniversary of this terrible rail disaster. The funny thing is, though, it's not funny at all, really, is that the area Quebec is amazing for tourism promotion. And so that whole region is seeing an uptick in promotion, sadly, a little bit because of people going to go to this town to see, you know, the aftermath of this, which seems horrible. And also raises questions about, you know, reporters coming in. You know, these people that aren't asking to have their story retooled 10 years later. So it's a funny feeling of that, and I wanted to actually capture a little bit of that in the piece. So it was this melange of interest. There is a mountain there, which is part of the stage race. There's the town Lac-McGantic. What's the landscape like there? The mountain, the landscape there is absolutely amazing. It is the hiliest up and down. I mean, it's like, I think I said this in the piece is like, made for a pun. I'm sure, you know, just powering up little hills and then blazing down the downhills. These mountains are, I mean, they're called mountains, I come from the west coast. So I'm used to, you know, jagged mountains with jagged peaks and snow captain, that kind of thing. So when I look at this, to me, with my west coast bias, they just look like big hills. But really, they are very rounded, terribly tall mountains in their own right, but they're kind of hidden in this geography. It's not as if you then come to the mountain range and here it is. It's these sort of mountains that are amongst all these incredible hills and up the, it's, and the young writer Carson Miles, who I interviewed for the story. And I said that you look at this geography with a bit of dread, because you know it's going to be tough. And it's, again, it's these sort of mountains that are slightly hidden. So it's quite intimate and it's quite, I just want to say too, not to sound too silly, but the geography really has a presence to it. You almost kind of feel the sort of sense of these sort of hidden mountains and stories of the towns that are etched into the landscape. I know that's a cliche, but you really feel that there. And that was a strong part of the story for me. You just mentioned Carson Miles, the story is also, it's told through the prism of his career, which is a story of doing his best and almost getting to the world and also Michael Woods, who's an established champion, Tour de France stage winner, national champion, and both have got links with the gigantic stage of the Tour de Bose. Well, Carson Miles, he's now 24 and he's this, you know, it is actually a little bit because of the pandemic to, you know, that sort of interrupted so many cyclists careers, but he's never quite made it over that, you know, he's, he's a star guy in the region, but he's never quite made it onto the world tour. You know, just luck just happenstance. You know, there you go. Michael Woods, of course, is our national champion. He's, he's a cyclist who's actually well known outside of the cycling families. So, he's, you know, he's, he's a star, but it's interesting how their stories interact interlapped as well. I mean, this mountain mechanic. Again, there's the town luck mechanic, but then there's a mountain mountain mechanic Michael Woods came in second, and that helped his career and then Carson Miles came in first nine years later. And it's helped his career, but it's not quite in the same way. It's sort of like, let everyone remind it everyone that he's out there. He's this contender, but, you know, I didn't quite have the same springboard maybe. So it's interesting. It's the same race, same kind of situation, but it's these different stories. You said stories being etched into the landscape as a cliche, but most cliches also have roots in the truth. And I really appreciated the way that you weave together the stories of those two riders, the story of the race, and the story of the landscape and the disaster. I mean, the disaster didn't make such big news over here, but I gather it. It was big news in a big story in Canada at the time. I mean, Canada, it's both a small country and a massive country. You know, you tend to even know people in other cities really well because, you know, their offices and Calgary your offices in Toronto. It feels small in that way, but this was, it was major, it was massive news in Canada, but it was also very regional. You know, people thought of it as just this horrible horrific disaster in English. It's called the eastern townships and friendships that can't on the list. So it did have a very regional feel to it as well. I think that it's really about the resilience, though, having now visited this town again. I mean, it's just amazing resilience of these people. And of course, here I am taking photos. As part of my reporting and journalists feel this way sometimes. Like, who am I to be here? You know, and sort of obviously they know I'm obviously a visitor or maybe doing something semi official here. It gives you a funny feeling and it's, I really have to say that it's the hospitality of these people and the willingness to tell their story, which is amazing, because, you know, the night that this happened, it was a huge derailment of oil cars. And 47 people died, 63 cars just exploded into fire. So it was really this little town that was completely devastated by this and it's been slowly rebuilt. But one last thing I wanted to mention is there is this sort of open field with a boardwalk that kind of me enters through. And it's sort of a little memorial walkway. And there is a artistic sort of monument there that it's a little, it's just a little sort of, not even a cabin. It's a little space with a wood peak. And it has these chimes in it. And certain chimes sound like the ding, ding warnings, warning sign of at a rail crossing. And I just, you know, when I've noticed that, I just said I'm blown away because completely takes yourself out of the sort of reality. And it's a wonderful memorial. So all I'm trying to say is that this is a town that, you know, suffered terribly and it's bouncing back and it just shows resilience of everybody. It was an atmospheric, fascinating story, but also a story of resilience and perseverance. Guy, thank you for joining us. Guy's feature, The Land is in Motion, is in RULO 132, Agent Experience. Thank you very much for joining us on RULO Conversations. Thanks so much. So that was Guy Dixon talking about The Land is in Motion about Mournway Rontique. And finally, James, you went with the cycling writer, Jamie Wilkins, to Mournway Rontique. And he joined a very exclusive club by riding up not only the three tarmac roads to the summit, but the gravel trail, making four climbs of Mournway Rontique in a single day. He did so on the 51 Seeker. It's a bike. We actually spoke about the 51 Seeker with Aiden Duff, who set up 51 bikes in RULO Conversations Live from RULO Live last week. Just to reiterate, it's a lovely, lovely bike. James looked like a very, very tiring day. Well, I was tired just following him, so I can only imagine what he must have felt like. So, you know, I've known about Mournway Rontique forever. I climbed it many times. And I just love it as a climb, not only for its history, but also the relationship we cyclists have to it. It's such a special climb. There's no ski station at the top. It's just this tower, this old radio weather station. And you come out of the trees, and it is just you in the rocks and the climb and nature as you go for those last six catered to the summit. And I just think it's one of the most existential and essentially perfect climbs for cyclists. We had a great day. The light was amazing, it was in the fall. We came up, you know, I saw corners of the vons, which I rarely see. And we just celebrated the majesty of this climb. Normally, people do the salt ascent last because it's the most straightforward. But he went from salt first, which joins the main climb up to the summit. Back down to Bedouin, did the classic Bedouin climb next. Descended to Malorsen, back up from Malorsen, which I've climbed that side of onto. It's actually very tough, very beautiful climb. It doesn't quite have the atmosphere of the Bedouin, but it's a hard hard climb. And then he went down to Bedouin again, and then up. And the gravel trail leaves from the Bedouin climb quite early on and hops around and goes around the western side of the summit to join with the Malorsen climb. And then he did the final part of Malorsen to the very top. So four cents, got his card stamped four times. And very, very good days cycling. But the scenery there is amazing. It's a climb apart as far as its aesthetic goes. And the bike was a great one. And the whole story of the day is a really compelling one. It's sort of this ever-changing climb. There's just so many different sides to the vons. So many different factors. It was perfect because then we got the early morning sunrise and all, and I made just some stunning images, which, you know, around from sides of this climb I've never seen before. So, yeah, it was a tremendous feature. I really enjoyed it. Also in the magazine, we've got features about Pinarano, Physic, Canyon. We also got Ned Boltingen all of the January, our regular colonists, Question Time with Matei Mohorit, and much, much more. I would say this because I'm the editor. This magazine in particular, I think it kind of conveys the essence of what ruler is and what we're trying to do. The photography is all bespoke. It's taking a great deal of care and attention over how it looks. The features are really in-depth. They've got really broad spread. So, proud of all the magazines we make, James, but this one, particularly, is a great way to end the year. A final reminder that listeners to ruler conversations can get a 15% discount off the price for subscriptions to the magazine by going to ruler.cc/subscribe and entering the code "podcast15" and supporting us in this way enables us to keep making this beautiful magazine. And also this beautiful podcast, our beautiful website, our beautiful show "Rula Live" and all the other beautiful stuff. James, this is the last magazine in the year. It's been a great year. Thank you very much for your input. You've been listening to "Rula Conversations." "Rula Conversations" is made by the editorial staff at "Rula" magazine. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @Rula and on Instagram @rulamagazine or visit our website @rula.cc. This edition of "Rula Conversations" was produced by Joseph Perry of "Content is Queen." ♪♪♪ Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's We Call Home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. All to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado. Chevron.com. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B. But with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com/results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn. The place to be. To be.
Rouleur editor Edward Pickering and photojournalist James Startt leaf through the latest edition of the magazine, Rouleur 132: Age & Experience, which is out now.
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