Grassroots to World Tour with Luke Plapp

02/07/24 • 49 min

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

As things are wrapping up on a fantastic Aussie summer of racing, I’ve got one more piece of Australiana for the pod: three-time Aussie national road champion Luke Plapp.

This was a really cool pod for me to record. Both Luke and I are members (and started out) at the Brunswick Cycling Club, here in Melbourne. I happily took the opportunity to go back to the Brunswick Velodrome to catch up with Luke a few weeks ago, in what was the early phase of his build-up to what he hopes will be a breakout season.

Even though he’s still only twenty-three, it seems like ‘Plappy’ has achieved a lot in a short space of time. Before turning pro with Ineos in 2022, he was a decorated track cyclist, picking up Olympic and Commonwealth Games medals, as well as a junior world title.

It’s been such a fast rise, I was really keen to get the whole story from Luke: going from a sports-obsessed kid in Melbourne, his time on the track, and turning pro with one of the biggest teams in the world.

I also wanted to know about how he’d adapted to life as a pro in Europe and to hear about the challenges that he faced having turned professional with limited exposure to racing and living over there.

Like a lot of champions, Luke has a great ability to recognise and work on the things that will help him improve. It was really eye-opening for me to have such a humble conversation with someone in his position. I think it’s a great listen because of this, and there is a lot in his approach that could be of real interest to you guys at home.

Indulge in the last rays of the Aussie summer, and give this a listen; you’re gonna love it!

Cheers!

Mitch

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

As things are wrapping up on a fantastic Aussie summer of racing, I’ve got one more piece of Australiana for the pod: three-time Aussie national road champion Luke Plapp.

Indulge in the last rays of the Aussie summer, and give this a listen; you’re gonna love it!

Cheers!

Mitch

Previous Episode

The first Race Communiqué of the season

Life in the Peloton is proudly brought to you by MAAP

Welcome to the first Communiqué for the 2024 season!

First off, I’m delighted to say that my good mates Luke Durbridge and Tom Southam are back with me for another year.

If you haven’t heard it yet, the Communiqué is our pro racing specific podcast, and I couldn’t think of a couple of better guys to have on board to get some great insight into the races.

As well as being good friends of mine these two have years of experience in pro cycling with Luke currently racing for Jayco Alula and Tom who is a DS at EF Education Easypost.

All through the racing season we will be diving inside the pelo with Luke, hearing the view from the team cars from Tom and, of course, I’ll be providing my own armchair style take on the racing!

For this first episode we’ve got an early season theme. After a good few weeks at home Luke is well settled in Perth, getting ready to start racing without having done any racing back in Australia – something he’s – amazingly – never actually tried before!

He reflects on the difference between starting early at races like TDU or kicking off in the more traditional European style.

We discuss our thoughts on the way that the top riders tackle the off-season these days (or don’t!). He also has some cracking tales from his legendary local bunchie - which I’ll leave for you to enjoy.

I’ve been on the ground at the Tour Down Under of course, and I’ll bring you up to speed with the latest racing news, as well as a few of the things that grabbed my attention at the first World Tour race of the season.

It’s also been a busy period for Tom, who was DS-ing the early season Australian races. He takes us a bit deeper into the world of the DS and talks about some of the tactical detail of the recent races, as well as getting our thoughts on the why recently retired riders do so well in the team car.

It was really great to get things going again making this pod. We all love the racing, whether we are doing it ourselves, talking about it, or even just watching and reading about it.

Getting back together and getting into talking about the races was really exciting after the short break. Let’s hope it’s the start of a big year to come.

Sit back, relax and have a listen to The Communiqué.

Cheers!

Mitch

Next Episode

Life in the Peloton Chronicles: Making it

Chronicles is a new podcast that I’m excited to be bringing as exclusive member content for 2024. This is a short excerpt from the longer episode. To listen to the whole thing and future episodes become a member of The Pelo.

For this series, I’ve got together with my good friend and former team (and room) mate Svein Tuft. As a few of you will know, ‘Sveino’ is a fascinating guy, with a unique perspective on pretty much any subject out there.

Both Svein and I love to dive into new topics – take them apart and discuss ideas, theories, and trends from every possible angle. Back in our racing days, we would spend hours - in the saddle or hotel rooms, chewing over ideas, challenging each other, and looking at ways to learn and develop our understanding of the sport.

This is what we wanted to recreate with Chronicles. It’s a chance for us to get together and get stuck into the topics that interest us in and around pro cycling. We’ll be listening to people’s stories, asking questions, doing the research, and gathering the information that allows us and you to get to grips with these key parts of the sport and the wider culture of pro cycling.

First up, this month we started with a question that we have both been looking for the answer to: how do you turn professional?

This was something that jumped out at us when we thought: why us? How did we make it, and not others? What did we do so differently or well? Or was it just luck?

To unpack this subject, we wanted to get as many angles of the conversation as possible, and we have a whole host of people with a range of opinions and expertise.

We kick things off with a man who wrote the book, ‘How to Become a Pro Cyclist’, Jack Burke and asked the question, if turning pro really is something that you can engineer, or if it’s too random even for people who ‘get’ how the system works?

Svein spoke to a key figure in the US racing scene Jonas Carney, the former manager of Human Powered Health, to discuss what a team looks for when selecting riders, whilst I spoke to my old boss Matt White of Jayco Alula about how teams work with agents to find new talent.

Sticking inside the teams, we also caught up with Sebastian Langeveld from EF Education Easypost who oversees scouting riders for EF and asked him if it was all numbers and data these days or if there is such a thing as the X factor.

We also spoke to two current riders, James Whelan of Q36.5 and Riley Sheehan of Israel Premier Tech, who gave us opposing stories of what happens when you get to the World Tour too easily and how hard it can be to have to battle through the ranks.

Just as we hoped there was so much great stuff that we could get stuck into here, turning pro and how you do it is a massive topic that certainly doesn’t have a simple answer. And as always with Svein, the fun part was exploring the subject! Have a listen as we do our best to understand all about it.

Cheers!

Mitch