S8 Ep70: Life in the Peloton – Tom Southam

06/03/20 • 72 min

In this episode of Life in the Peloton, Mitch Docker talks to Tom Southam, one of his sports directors on the EF Education First team, and answers some listeners' questions from the postbag.
Southam was born in Cornwall, England, and raced in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy as an amateur before turning pro for the Amore e Vita team in 2003. He also rode for Barloworld, Drapac-Porsche and Halfords-Bikehut before ending his racing career with Rapha Condor, where he also began working as a sports director.
Check out Mitch's back catalogue as well as his new series Talking Luft, in which you can hear more from his regular guests, on the Life in the Peloton feed.
Episode sponsor
This episode is supported by Beer52, the craft beer club. All our UK-based listeners can get a case of eight beers for the price of delivery (£5.95) by going to beer52.com/cycle
Keep in touch with Life in the Peloton
Keep up to date with everything that’s going on with Life in the Peloton at my website lifeinthepeloton.com
Check out my range of Life in the Peloton merchandise on our Etsy store too, from beanies and caps to embroidered tees, logo tees and much more. Visit the Etsy store.
Or follow on social media:
Instagram: @lifeinthepeloton
Twitter: @lifeinthepelo
Theme music
The theme music for Life in the Peloton was composed by Pete Shelley, who was lead singer of the punk band Buzzcocks. It was commissioned by the production company behind Channel 4’s coverage of the Tour de France in the 1980s and was used as the theme music for the nightly highlights show. Pete died in December 2018. We were given permission by Pete’s widow and his manager to continue using the music for the theme tune to Life in the Peloton. To hear more about the music, listen to the Andre Greipel episode of Life in the Peloton.

Previous Episode

S8 Ep69: Our Giro stage 21: The call of nature

Our Giro reaches Milan after three weeks on the virtual road. We set out from Budapest in Hungary, then spent a few days in Sicily before making the familiar journey the length of Italy, visiting the Dolomites and the Alps and now it's the last leg.
Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe look back to the 2017 Giro, won by Tom Dumoulin, who famously had to stop to answer the call of nature by the roadside on the stage to Bormio.
We speak to Dumoulin about that day and his Giro victory in general.
There's also the final member of Ciro Scognamiglio's Giro Dream Team, the last visit to the kitchen for Lionel and finally we remember some of our favourite memories from the four editions of the Giro The Cycling Podcast has covered from start to finish.
Thank you to everyone who has joined us on the journey – we hope you've enjoyed listening to Our Giro as much as we have making it.
The Cycling Podcast is supported by iwoca and Science In Sport.
OUR THANKS
We'd like to say a few thank yous to those who have helped us make Our Giro.
• Our title sponsors Iwoca and longest-standing supporters Science In Sport
• Our producers Adam Bowie, Will Jones, Jon Moonie and Tom Whalley and Jonathan Rowe
• Amaraterra for providing the soundtrack to Our Giro
• Graham Watson and Simon Gill for the wonderful Giro photographs that have graced social media
• Our voice artist Flavia Cappellini, who tells us where we are each day
• Ben Lowe of Veloviewer and everyone at RGT Cycling who plotted and created the route for Our Giro so you could ride along. Was it the first digital Grand Tour?
• Stacy Snyder for her beautiful mugs and cappuccino sets, which sold out in a combined 18 minutes and to Marco Pinotti for connecting us with the cycling school near Bergamo, which will receive a donation from every Giro cup and mug sold
• Greg Andrews of DVineCellars for curating the Giro d'Italia and Baby Giro cases of wine
• Felicity Cloake, The Guardian's award-winning food writer and author of One More Croissant for the Road, for casting a forensic eye over Lionel's cookery efforts
• François Thomazeau for playing us out in such fine style at the end of episodes
• Seb Piquet, for lending us the Voice of Radio Tour once again
• Andy Storey of Prendas for assisting with the Coppa Italia of cycling jerseys
• Ciro Scognamiglio for being Ciro
• David Luxton and everyone at David Luxton Associates
• The shadowy figure of race director Daniele Frieberincini, the toughest Giro taskmaster since Vincenzo Torriani, for devising the route and setting the rules
• And most importantly, to you, our listeners for tuning in and for all your feedback. Thanks for joining us on our journey.
COMING TOMORROW
There won't be a stage of Our Giro tomorrow and the regular podcast will take a week off but we will have a new episode of Explore, our show about adventure riding and bikepacking, Lizzy Banks and Tom Whalley return with an episode of Service Course, and Mitch Docker's Life in the Peloton will feature EF Education First sports director Tom Southam.
PRESS CONFERENCE
In the next couple of weeks we will do a press conference episode where we answer your questions. To ask us anything you like about Our Giro or professional cycling, record a voice memo on your phone and then send it to us by email to [email protected]
OUR NEW CLOTHING RANGE
We have teamed up with Katusha to produce The Cycling Podcast Collection. The launch range is a cycling jersey and a t-shirt in both men's and women's cuts. To check out the range go to our website.
LIFE IN THE PELOTON
While we've been doing Our Giro, Mitch Docker and his old Orica-GreenEdge teammates have been remembering Their Giro when they won the opening team time trial of the 2014 race in Belfast.
WATCH OUR FIRST FILM Our first film, And So We Rode... is available for Friends of the Podcast to watch now. This is the story of Larry Warbasse and Conor Dunne packing their bags and going on a bikepacking trip in the French and Italian Alps after their pro team Aqua Blue Sport folded mid-season. It costs £15 to sign up as a Friend of the Podcast and you will be able to watch the film as well as listen to all our special episodes. thecyclingpodcast.com/join

Next Episode

S8 Ep71: Service Course | Episode 10 | Unbroken record

In this episode of Service Course join Lizzy Banks and Tom Whalley as they take a look back at the track team from Derbados that took on the world and turned the track scene upside down.
Team Huub Wattbike have been the leaders in technical innovation in the world of track cycling since they burst on to the scene as Team KGF back in the 2017 British National Track Championships.
Since then, they've pushed the UCI rules to tipping point and watched the UCI push back with many different rule changes, ultimately leading to the banning of trade teams from track World Cup events.
Being down but not out, Huub Wattbike simply decided to end on a high. May should have seen them attempting to break multiple track world records at altitude in Bolivia but that dream was also scuppered when they found themselves stranded in Tenerife during their final preparations.
We also take a look at some of the latest emerging tech and speak to Callum Skinner about his Hindsight glasses just launched on Kickstarter.
Service Course is supported by Science In Sport.
Music is courtesy of epidemic sound. This episode was produced by Tom Whalley.