Rouleur Live opened its doors to a sold-out crowd for another year this Thursday, beginning a weekend celebrating cycling culture.
An in-depth discussion between former world road race champion Alejandro Valverde and Tour de France stage winner-turned-Eurosport-presenter Juan Antonio Flecha kicked off proceedings. Valverde spoke about his impressive career and life in cycling, in which he took 133 professional victories, including a Vuelta a España title and 20 Grand Tour top 10s, as well as four Liège-Bastogne-Liège and five Flèche Wallonne titles. Nathan Van Hooydonck was up next, speaking with Hannah Walker about how he has made the best of his forced early retirement from cycling last year by now working in commentary.
Rachel Jary spoke to Ben Healy, Pfeiffer Georgi and Olav Kooij about taking the next steps in their respective careers. The trio have all had big wins so far, but are looking to find more consistency in a peloton where the competition is hotter than ever.
As the growth of women’s cycling has skyrocketed in recent years, Zwift’s Kate Veronneau gave the audience a perspective on the role that the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift has played in that development. Lidl-Trek’s Ellen van Dijk and AG Insurance-Soudal’s Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio – both experienced road captains – gave their view from inside the peloton.
Some big names closed out the evening on stage, with Jonathan Vaughters and Doug Ryder speaking to Ed Pickering about team management in this era of cycling. Vaughters is a former rider and is the longstanding manager of EF Education-EasyPost, while Ryder currently heads up the Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team. Finally, Tom Pidcock took to the stage with Matt Stephens and revealed all about winning Olympic gold, his turbulent off-season and his goals for the future.
For the second year in a row, we also had another stage at Rouleur Live, sponsored by Zwift. Before an exciting hour of Zwift racing, we had guests such as Marlon Moncrieffe, Markus Storck and Link My Ride having some smaller audience discussions.
We also had 84 brands exhibiting the finest bikes and tech in cycling, with many unveiling brand new products for the first time. For example, REAP exhibited its Type 300 Prototype gravel bike, Jae Kaes was handpanting some of LOOK’s 795 Blade RS framesets with some of the brand’s iconic colourways. Lake also showed some newly-released shoes, while PNCHR began work on their wall mural which will come to life throughout the weekend. Pinarello’s flagship road bike, the DOGMA F, was also shown for the first time in a highly limited-edition Zwift and Watopia-inspired colorway.
Here’s a gallery of all the best moments from the first night of Rouleur Live 2024.
