Jostling For Position: Insights and First-Hand Accounts From the Golden Years of Spanish Cycling

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Warner Bros. Discovery’s broadcasts will have analysis from three-time overall winner Alberto Contador, and seven-time stage winner Phillipe Gilbert. There will also be reporting from Sander Kleikers, Laura Meseguer and Louis Pierre Frileux.

Sheree: It’s been four years since your first Vuelta for Eurosport and now you’re very much a key part of the Eurosport family. His last race has been a continuous sign of affection. His teammates have enjoyed every single kilometre of racing; the rest of riders applauded him at the start of the last stage in Arroyomolinos, and so too they paid him tribute at the finish in Madrid. Laura Meseguer is a freelance graphic and type designer based in Barcelona. She works for both commercial commissions and personal projects. She specializes in book design and all sorts of typography projects, from lettering for monograms and logotypes to custom typefaces. From 1992 till 1996 she worked for different studios, since then till 2003 she was a partner at studio Cosmic in Barcelona. In 2003–2004, she took a year off from her regular work to study type design at the post-graduate course Type]Media at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, the Netherlands. Rumba, the typeface she designed as part of this course, was selected for the TDC TypeDesign Competition 2005 and garnered the ATypI Prize Letter.2 2011.

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Laura: I find it behind the interviewee’s own experiences. I’m sure that everyone has interesting stories to tell, they just need to dig in their souls and talk with passion. My friends always say that I ask thousands of questions while I’m listening to a story. It’s not that I’m nosy – I love to hear other people’s stories about their lives and jobs, it gives me a bigger dimension of life and the world. The people at the Vuelta, we know each other very well, but they believe that I was a hostess and then I became a journalist,” she said. “But it’s not like that, I was working in communications and then I developed in journalism. But that was the only space we had as women, I mean, there were no women in the teams and only in the organisation as hostesses. And it’s interesting because when you speak to women who are 30 or 20 years older than me, they said it was the same situation.

Fue un día increíble de rodaje. Primero con Igor Antón a solas y después acompañados por Pedro Horrillo. Flotaba en el ambiente esa sensación de buena onda, de sintonía perfecta y de querer que se alargue la tarde sin mirar el reloj. Every stage of both competitions will be available on Eurosport, discovery+*, the Eurosport App and GCN+ across Europe, with GCN+ also showing coverage in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and North Africa regions. Laura: Yes, it was the first time. I was looking for a shot of adrenalin but it was pretty relaxed, I must say. I went to Mexico for holidays and I practised underwater diving with a friend of mine who is an instructor. That was a real adrenalin rush and a good experience and I wanted to overcome the fear of it. It’s not that I’m looking for risky adventures all the time! Normally in my spare time I like travelling, discovering some places and cultures, meeting friends for long conversations, reading, going to the cinema and spending time at the gym in the morning.The Friends of the Podcast subscription programme was also launched, offering exclusive monthly shows. Let's look at a few examples. When the American athlete and Olympic champion Allyson Felix became pregnant, her main sponsor, Nike, forced her to break her contract by offering her 70% of her salary without guaranteeing that she would not be financially punished if she did not reach her pre-pregnancy sporting level.

The roads of the Tour were lined with fans who loved this year’s race and fierce critics in equal measure. The relative absence of high mountains and time-trials made for a more open race, full of questions until the very last moment, but I was sorry not to see one more stage in the mountains. Laura: Well, I would love it. But all of us also have a life outside of cycling even though we are all passionate about what we do. I really love what I do and, at least for me, it’s easy to spend as much time as I can with the peloton because I’ve already been following their stories all year so I understand very well their position and how they are. But the cycling calendar is so long, it’s so big and with so many races. I’d have to do some serious negotiations with home! But, of course, who wouldn’t love to cover more and more cycling? Laura: It was called “Surviving Le Tour”and it’s true I spend one month eating super bad because I totally forget to eat. I focus so much on work and then three weeks later I’m run down and I have to go to the doctor. At the Giro and Vuelta the hotels are quite nice, but not at the Tour. It’s not that we want luxury, but after a hard day’s work you really need to rest. Laura: I think it gave the show that people were demanding and brought some calm after a polemic Giro and a hard Tour with a lot of crashes. The route was just amazing with all those tough finishes and the stages in Paнs Vasco after 33 years. A lot of ambitious riders gave emotion to the fight for the general classification and this brought new revelations as Chris Froome and Bauke Mollema and some new names unknown to a Spanish audience. It’s fair to say that his fourth Tour victory hasn’t captured the popular imagination in the same way as if one of the his contenders had managed a first win. First stage win

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The Tour de France takes place 1-23 July, while the Tour de France Femmes is immediately afterwards, 23-30 July. Laura quizzing the soon-to-be world champion PhilGil at the Vuelta (image courtesy of Laura Meseguer) Covered the World Championships in Harrogate with daily podcasts. Hosted our first ride –the Wold Championships –at the Wold Top Brewery and appeared before more than 600 people at the Royal Hall. Not right now, but you never know what will happen in the future. For example I never thought I would end up working with cycling either! In any case it would be something serious in the area of reporting or interviewing, which I like to do so much. Only a few months after that Vuelta, she left the construction company, and stepped into the unknown as a cycling journalist, heading to races with little knowledge, but a lot of willingness to learn. Sixteen years later, Meseguer has become one of the most esteemed journalists and is highly regarded in the professional peloton.

The Cycling Podcast returned to the Tour de France with sponsorship from Jaguar and Eurosport. The Telegraph became a media partner. 2015 It’s super exciting,” Meseguer said. “Because when these guys, like Alberto, were this young, they were not as good as Juan Ayuso and Carlos Rodríguez.”Equally, some sprint stages were a bit dull, both for the public in general and the commentators who had to report on it, who were often seen at the end of the day leaving the box with weary eyes and dispirited smiles. So what do you tell those who compare you to Sara Carbonero [TV-reporter and girl friend of Real Madrid keeper Iker Casillas]? He recalls that he arrived exhausted to his debut at the Tour de France in 2005 after a very intense first part of the season and twenty days of preparation in Sierra Nevada. Unlike other big riders, his ambition for the victory has driven him to expand horizons beyond the French tour winning seven Grand Tours: two Giros d’Italia, two Tours de France and three Vueltas a España. Laura: We lived in Argentina and Chile because my father was the local delegate for the Agencia EFE and our house was in the same building where the agency was located. In fact, to enter the house you had to cross the editorial office first. I grew up between teletypes, old computers, papers everywhere, telephones ringing all day long and journalists. When the agency was empty it turned into my playroom. Thanks to my father’s job we were used to have people at home visiting us: personalities from the Argentinean and Spanish cultures, show-business people and very often the Spanish journalists living in Argentina or Chile. I remember our house crowded with people for dinner such as for the typical asado argentino (Argentine barbecue). So I also grew up listening to amazing stories and surrounded by very interesting people. Soon I realised that journalism was a very demanding profession as my father spent most of the day working in his office. In addition to this he and his friends who used to come into our home were truly passionate and dedicated to their work.