This week Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie are back and joined by one of the most illustrious and recognisable voices in Belgian cycling, Sporza’s veteran commentator and reporter Renaat Schotte. 

After the usual news round-up, we review the action from the cyclocross Worlds in Hoogerheide, where Fem Van Empel and Mathieu van der Poel went double Dutch by taking the women’s and men’s titles respectively. 

Defeat for Wout van Aert meant disappointment for Belgium, although spirits there will have been buoyed by the latest evidence of Arnaud De Lie’s prodigious talent at the Étoile de Bessèges. With Renaat’s help, we find out more about a rider who is already being hailed as a Tom Boonen-Philippe Gilbert hybrid. 

Neilson Powless took overall victory at Bessèges - and the American would be most people’s choice as the rider of the early season. We hear from the EF Education-Easypost man about his early-season success, why he’ll try his hand at the cobbled Classics and why his Native American ancestry is so important to him, especially when things are going well on the bike. 

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The Cycling Podcast was founded in 2013 by Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie.