S10 Ep71: Kilometre 0 – Danish Dynamite, part one

The long-awaited Grand Départ in Denmark gets underway with Friday's opening time trial and Copenhagen, a city that celebrates the bicycle, has never been more ready. Danish cycling is enjoying another wave of success with the likes of Mads Pedersen, Jonas Vingegaard, Kasper Asgreen among the ten home riders on the start list. But, like most cycling stories, the history of Danish cycling is complicated. This two-part episode of Kilometre 0 borrows its title from a brilliant book about Denmark's football team that took the world by storm in the 1980s, and tells the story of the rise, fall and rebirth of Danish cycling. In this part, Lionel talks to Brian Nygaard, who worked closely with Denmark's only Tour de France champion, Bjarne Riis. Of course, there is a heavy asterisk against Riis's 1996 Tour win because it was fuelled by EPO and came in the middle of the sport's darkest days – although the depths of skulduggery were not truly brought to light until the Festina affair two years later. As CSC team manager Riis was then a key player in the next big doping scandal to blight Tour – the Operacion Puerto blood-doping investigation which forced his team leader Ivan Basso out of the 2006 Tour on the eve of the opening time trial. Brian had a front row seat for that. Kilometre 0 by The Cycling Podcast is supported by Supersapiens. Supersapiens is a continuous glucose monitoring system that helps you make the right fuelling choices. See supersapiens.com The Cycling Podcast was founded in 2013 by Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie.