July 25, 2025 • 16 mins
The Tour de France is reaching its final legs, with drama, gruelling climbs, and triumphant podiums all playing out across the world.
Craig Geater is up close and personal with the professional cycling world, a bike mechanic with over 20 years of experience working with the Tour de France.
He’s worked with some of the sport’s greatest riders and most successful team, and his currently the head mechanic for Australian outfit Team Jayco AlUla.
Geater joined Jack Tame to break down what it’s like working on something as grand as the Tour de France, his time as Lance Armstrong’s personal mechanic, and the unique nature of the competition.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from Newstalks b.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
By cycle by cycle bycle. I want to ride ble.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I want to ride my busig. I want to ride
my bike.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I want to ride my busy, want to ride.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You see, producer, let me just couldn't resist it. She
could didn't resist it more than you are. Jack Taime
on newstorgsban as the Tour de France reaches its final
couple of leagues. I have been captivated by the drama,
the grueling climbs, the triumphant podium finishes as they play out.
But some are with an up close personal access to
(00:54):
the side of professional cycling that we don't get to
see all the time on our screens. Is Kiwi bike
mechanic Craig Geeta. Craig has more than twenty years of
experience working on the Tour de France. He's worked with
some of cycling's great riders', biggest names and most successful
teams over the years. He's now the head mechanic for
his current pro team, Australian outfit team Jacob Alula, and
(01:16):
he's been on the ground, in the car and no
doubt on the bike throughout the prestigious race. Craig joins
us from France. Kilder, good morning and welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I want to start with a really simple question, Craig,
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm a mechanic for Jacob Lula professional cycling team.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Right and for people who aren't following the tour, they
are one of the teams that's contesting the Tour de
France this year. And what does a mechanic for a
team and the Tour de France have to do?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Basically, we look after all the car as we have.
I think we have about nine team cars here. We
have a bus and a truck. We take care of those.
We wash the bikes every day. Then we prepare them
all and make sure that every all the gear ratio
is for the particular stage that they're doing next, that
(02:10):
the blakes are all working are in proper condition. And yeah,
we and then we follow the race during the day,
and then afterwards we do a transfer to the next
hotel and then we do the whole process over again.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Gosh, rinse and repeat, and for a Grand Tour as well.
It's a pretty exhausting process. I'm going to ask you
about you know how things kind of change over the
course of an event like the Tour de France in
a few minutes, But how does how does a person
go about getting a job like this? How do you
become a mechanic in the Tour de France.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I think I became one by accident. I used to
be a mechanic and my parents' bike chop and rot,
and I was a keen cyclist back then, and I
came across to Europe to watch, to watch all the
big races and race a little bit myself, and I
just happened to be in the right spot at the moment.
(03:04):
We're a smaller professional team needed a mechanic and they
couldn't find anybody else, and they asked if I could
go along and help them, so I did, and they
were quite happy with my work, and they kept asking
and then I eventually, after a couple of months, became
full time with them and it just went from there.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It's amazing a So how many bikes would a single
team use, and across the course of the Tour de France.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
We would use we have three road racing bikes per rider,
that's eight riders, and we're down to seven riders. Unfortunately
we had one crash out. And then they have two
time troll bikes for the time trolls, a race one
and a spare one, which is identical all the bikes.
(03:55):
So there's five bikes per rider which are just for
that rider, and they're all in exactly the same measurement,
so they're identical bikes, so if the rider needs he
can get on any one of them at any moment
and just continue as normal.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, it's obscene really when you actually break it down
and you do the numbers. So you've got forty bikes
across eight riders for an event like the Tour de France.
Not only do you have to know your way around
a bike, not only do you have to be pretty
mechanically minded, you must be you must have to be
incredibly detail oriented Craig.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, you have to be. Everything's measured by millimeters here,
so you have to be as precise as as possible.
And we're here with four mechanics, so sometimes if we're
having difficulties with something, we can rely on our teammates
to double check or look over it to see that
you're correct or something needs aesting slightly more. But yeah,
(04:51):
but no, it's everything. It's a bit like Formula one
but on push bikes.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, So how would the bikes that your cyclists are
riding and racing at the moment, how would they compare
to the bike that I'm riding to work?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
If our bikes, well, they're supposed to be the top
of the line bikes. Obviously we're sponsored by Giant Bicycles,
which are very good bikes, and then kate X is
a part of the Giant family, so they supply the handlebars, wheels, saddles,
(05:29):
things like that. And then we have Shimanos, so our
bikes at the top of the line that we can
possibly get and they're actually really really good bikes.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, yes, you'd hope. So if you've got the world
to be a cyclists racing them through the Pyrenees, So
what do you reckon that you know that plebs that
average punters watching the Tour de France, What do you
reckon that they don't properly understand about the athleticism of
the cyclists and the tour.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, for the cyclist, that's it's a whole different world.
It's a twenty four hour job. You can't just go
to work and ride your bike on a Friday and
then finish work and go to the pub or down
to McDonald's or anything there. Everything they do recovery is
super important. They do their training, They then come back
(06:24):
and get the massage to make sure that all the
muscles in the body are as supple as possible and
everything's working correctly. And then their diets are so heavily
not restricted, but they weigh their food. They weigh there.
They know exactly how many calories they're taking in and
(06:45):
how many calories they need to have taken in to
be good for the following days.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, and it is the following days. This is the
thing that I find amazing. It's not just that you
have a massive performance over one hundred and seventy k's
up over the Pyrenees or the Alps or something like that,
but then you've got to do it again the next day,
and the day after that and the day after that.
So as someone who moved it, who grew up a
bike shop, who moved to Europe and was doing a
bit of racing, is obviously a pretty enthusiastic cyclist. Like,
(07:12):
how what do you think when you look at them
racing at their peak? You know, when you're seeing the
best guys duking it out on top of you know,
Von Tue or something like that, what are you thinking.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
To start with? When you're actually here and you're you're
you're working around them and you see them all in that,
you get a bit of a shock to start with,
because they're all the most of them, you know, the
GC contenders, the general classification guys who are leading the race.
They're tiny. You look at them and you just think
they're young. They are young kids. You know, most of
(07:45):
them are in there early to mid twenties now where
that's sort of changed over the years. You normally peaked
sort of in the mid to late twenties, but now
these young kids are coming straight out of Matthews and
demolishing the world and cycling. But yeah, they're they're they're
really tiny. They're small people. They're definitely not your rugby
(08:09):
player and they they Yeah, it's just phenomenal how fast
they go, how much power they can put out for
the size of them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, it's the power to weight ratio that's really key
with it all, isn't it. I Mean some of those
top contenders, they're what sixty sixty five kgs maybe dripping wet.
So you worked closely with Lance Armstrong for years is
his mechanic. What was that experience like that? What was
he like to work with? Obviously there's a fair bit
of additional history that comes with his experience in the
(08:41):
Tour de France, but what was your experience.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I actually really enjoyed it. I was a little bit
nervous to start with. I was in the team before
I ended up becoming his mechanic, and he just said
this aura about him where he was just a scary
looking guy. But when you got got to know him
and start working with him, he was actually probably the
(09:06):
most the sort of the person with the most sort
of Kiwi attitude that that's not a Kiwi. He was
laid back and quite funny and joked around all the
time behind the scenes. He was just also your sort
of typical young American kid sort of style. And I
actually really enjoyed it, and it was it was a
(09:28):
lot of fun that it just didn't look like that
for the that he was like that to the to
the public, because you you only sort of saw one
side of him through the media, where he was always
being attacked and things like that. But I actually really
enjoyed my time there. I learned a lot from him too,
about the bikes, you know, the way he he measures
(09:49):
his setups and all that sort of thing as well,
which which I hadn't seen before, And it was he
was really professional and also millimeter by millimeter and and
and he was a hard working athlete as well. So yeah, yeah, no,
it was good.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Do you feel like the tour has you know, they've
obviously done it kind of a lot of work and
cycling over the last few years, but do you feel
like they've sort of moved into a new era from that,
from that, you know, from the Armstrong era and from
all of the controversy around doping and stuff, do you
feel like they've kind of managed to rewin the trust
of the cycling public and the sporting public at large.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, for sure. It's definitely clear that the sport and
as a whole has cleaned up and it's much better now.
In the top tier and sort of the top level
World Tour which we're in, and then the next level
down Pro Conte, pro Continental teams, they all have biological
(10:48):
passports now, which is all your blood values put together
by all the mandatory tests that you have to do,
plus any doping tests that you that you do just
in the sport in general, and then those values clearly
show if anyone starts to tamp around with anything, it
pops up immediately on these biological passports. So then they
(11:12):
get sort of they get informed that they're being watched,
and if the values continue to shut around a little bit,
they'll then take appropriate action. But in general, it's really
the sport has cleaned up and it's really good now.
But the thing is they go faster now than they
(11:34):
used to.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, obviously there are other
things that have developed a lot, the bike technology, the aerodynamics,
the nutrition, all of that kind of thing, But I
mean it's still ridiculous watching these cyclists, you know, especially
at the moment we have. You know, two kind of
generational cyclists have been duking it out on all of
these recent tours, Taday Pagacha and Johannes Vinger Guard. What
(11:57):
do you make of those two as cyclists and the
kind of competition that we've seen not only this year
but in the last few years of the tour.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, like it's pretty phenomenal that those two quite far
above the level of the others and they go head
to head and the Grand tours. Vndergard is clearly a
super talented rider and a very good rider, but he
specifically targets the tour whereas Poga. People now sort of
(12:29):
start to claim them as the new successor of Eddie
Merks because he wins all different races and he just
makes it look easy. He's and he's such a nice
person as well. He's always very friendly to everyone. But
he's just a phenomenal, phenomenal rider.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
What's it like when you're in the cars following all
of the cyclists, because watching it on TV, a couple
of things striking me as really stressful. First of all,
how close the fans still are to the cyclist, like
waving flags directly in their faces when they're riding up
mountains at thirty five k's an hour. Then all of
the cars that have to come through in the procession
following the cyclist. It just strikes me as an altogether
(13:11):
stressful experience.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it is. It's there seems to me more people
here this year than in the past years since since
the COVID days. I mean, the tour always has a
lot of fans on the side of the road. But
this year it's it's incredible that every day everywhere they're
just lined up along the road. And there was actually
(13:34):
an incident where the Enios team car actually hit a
spectator who was standing virtually in the middle of the
road and the car was trying to pass another rider
from another team to move up behind his rider, and
the spectator was was one meter out further on the
road and didn't budge and the car collected him on
(13:56):
the way past. And it was actually the spectator's fault,
but the driver of the car was also penalized and
I had to pay quite a hefty fine. But they're
lucky that nobody died or was injured, you know, but
it does there is the odd accident. Over the years,
there has been the occasional accident and death with the
(14:19):
spectators standing so close. But yeah, it's a unique sport
where it's just it's open to the public. It's not
in an arena or a stadium, so it's yeah, it's
a little bit crazy, and it's one of the only
sports that I think that the public can get so
close to the athletes.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah, so you're on the road for two hundred and
fifty days a year sometimes, which is extraordinary, Graig, and
that means a lot of unfamiliar three and a half
star hotels. I would have thought, do you have any
aspirations for settling down at some point? I know you've
done more than twenty years on the tour? Could you
do another twenty.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
I definitely couldn't do another twenty No, how much of
my twenty first tour and it's just a groundhole day.
It's it's nice. I enjoy traveling around. That's that's probably
the nicest part of it. You get to see different places.
But now most of the hotels that we travel to
every year are also quite familiar and feel like home
(15:19):
because you've been there so many times. Yeah, but I
think I've still got a few years in me. I
wouldn't say that many. But I'm also nervous that when
I do stop, I won't know what to do. You know,
I don't I've never done anything else, and I might
find that I don't really enjoy it. So I think, well,
(15:41):
I can I just make the most of doing what
I do until it's not possible anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, that's a great attitude. Hey, I'm deeply envious Craig,
enjoy the last you know, the last dying leagues of
the tour, and thank you so much for giving us
your time. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
No, you're welcome.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
There's Craig Geita. Craig Gita is the chief mechanic for
the team Jacob Alula. He is an Olympic selector. There's
all sorts of stuff for New Zealand cyclists as well,
in two leagues left in this year's Tour de France,
which is his twenty first.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from Newstalks b.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
By cycle by cycle bycle. I want to ride ble.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I want to ride my busig. I want to ride
my bike.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I want to ride my busy, want to ride.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You see, producer, let me just couldn't resist it. She
could didn't resist it more than you are. Jack Taime
on newstorgsban as the Tour de France reaches its final
couple of leagues. I have been captivated by the drama,
the grueling climbs, the triumphant podium finishes as they play out.
But some are with an up close personal access to
(00:54):
the side of professional cycling that we don't get to
see all the time on our screens. Is Kiwi bike
mechanic Craig Geeta. Craig has more than twenty years of
experience working on the Tour de France. He's worked with
some of cycling's great riders', biggest names and most successful
teams over the years. He's now the head mechanic for
his current pro team, Australian outfit team Jacob Alula, and
(01:16):
he's been on the ground, in the car and no
doubt on the bike throughout the prestigious race. Craig joins
us from France. Kilder, good morning and welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I want to start with a really simple question, Craig,
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm a mechanic for Jacob Lula professional cycling team.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Right and for people who aren't following the tour, they
are one of the teams that's contesting the Tour de
France this year. And what does a mechanic for a
team and the Tour de France have to do?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Basically, we look after all the car as we have.
I think we have about nine team cars here. We
have a bus and a truck. We take care of those.
We wash the bikes every day. Then we prepare them
all and make sure that every all the gear ratio
is for the particular stage that they're doing next, that
(02:10):
the blakes are all working are in proper condition. And yeah,
we and then we follow the race during the day,
and then afterwards we do a transfer to the next
hotel and then we do the whole process over again.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Gosh, rinse and repeat, and for a Grand Tour as well.
It's a pretty exhausting process. I'm going to ask you
about you know how things kind of change over the
course of an event like the Tour de France in
a few minutes, But how does how does a person
go about getting a job like this? How do you
become a mechanic in the Tour de France.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I think I became one by accident. I used to
be a mechanic and my parents' bike chop and rot,
and I was a keen cyclist back then, and I
came across to Europe to watch, to watch all the
big races and race a little bit myself, and I
just happened to be in the right spot at the moment.
(03:04):
We're a smaller professional team needed a mechanic and they
couldn't find anybody else, and they asked if I could
go along and help them, so I did, and they
were quite happy with my work, and they kept asking
and then I eventually, after a couple of months, became
full time with them and it just went from there.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It's amazing a So how many bikes would a single
team use, and across the course of the Tour de France.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
We would use we have three road racing bikes per rider,
that's eight riders, and we're down to seven riders. Unfortunately
we had one crash out. And then they have two
time troll bikes for the time trolls, a race one
and a spare one, which is identical all the bikes.
(03:55):
So there's five bikes per rider which are just for
that rider, and they're all in exactly the same measurement,
so they're identical bikes, so if the rider needs he
can get on any one of them at any moment
and just continue as normal.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, it's obscene really when you actually break it down
and you do the numbers. So you've got forty bikes
across eight riders for an event like the Tour de France.
Not only do you have to know your way around
a bike, not only do you have to be pretty
mechanically minded, you must be you must have to be
incredibly detail oriented Craig.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, you have to be. Everything's measured by millimeters here,
so you have to be as precise as as possible.
And we're here with four mechanics, so sometimes if we're
having difficulties with something, we can rely on our teammates
to double check or look over it to see that
you're correct or something needs aesting slightly more. But yeah,
(04:51):
but no, it's everything. It's a bit like Formula one
but on push bikes.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, So how would the bikes that your cyclists are
riding and racing at the moment, how would they compare
to the bike that I'm riding to work?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
If our bikes, well, they're supposed to be the top
of the line bikes. Obviously we're sponsored by Giant Bicycles,
which are very good bikes, and then kate X is
a part of the Giant family, so they supply the handlebars, wheels, saddles,
(05:29):
things like that. And then we have Shimanos, so our
bikes at the top of the line that we can
possibly get and they're actually really really good bikes.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, yes, you'd hope. So if you've got the world
to be a cyclists racing them through the Pyrenees, So
what do you reckon that you know that plebs that
average punters watching the Tour de France, What do you
reckon that they don't properly understand about the athleticism of
the cyclists and the tour.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, for the cyclist, that's it's a whole different world.
It's a twenty four hour job. You can't just go
to work and ride your bike on a Friday and
then finish work and go to the pub or down
to McDonald's or anything there. Everything they do recovery is
super important. They do their training, They then come back
(06:24):
and get the massage to make sure that all the
muscles in the body are as supple as possible and
everything's working correctly. And then their diets are so heavily
not restricted, but they weigh their food. They weigh there.
They know exactly how many calories they're taking in and
(06:45):
how many calories they need to have taken in to
be good for the following days.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, and it is the following days. This is the
thing that I find amazing. It's not just that you
have a massive performance over one hundred and seventy k's
up over the Pyrenees or the Alps or something like that,
but then you've got to do it again the next day,
and the day after that and the day after that.
So as someone who moved it, who grew up a
bike shop, who moved to Europe and was doing a
bit of racing, is obviously a pretty enthusiastic cyclist. Like,
(07:12):
how what do you think when you look at them
racing at their peak? You know, when you're seeing the
best guys duking it out on top of you know,
Von Tue or something like that, what are you thinking.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
To start with? When you're actually here and you're you're
you're working around them and you see them all in that,
you get a bit of a shock to start with,
because they're all the most of them, you know, the
GC contenders, the general classification guys who are leading the race.
They're tiny. You look at them and you just think
they're young. They are young kids. You know, most of
(07:45):
them are in there early to mid twenties now where
that's sort of changed over the years. You normally peaked
sort of in the mid to late twenties, but now
these young kids are coming straight out of Matthews and
demolishing the world and cycling. But yeah, they're they're they're
really tiny. They're small people. They're definitely not your rugby
(08:09):
player and they they Yeah, it's just phenomenal how fast
they go, how much power they can put out for
the size of them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, it's the power to weight ratio that's really key
with it all, isn't it. I Mean some of those
top contenders, they're what sixty sixty five kgs maybe dripping wet.
So you worked closely with Lance Armstrong for years is
his mechanic. What was that experience like that? What was
he like to work with? Obviously there's a fair bit
of additional history that comes with his experience in the
(08:41):
Tour de France, but what was your experience.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I actually really enjoyed it. I was a little bit
nervous to start with. I was in the team before
I ended up becoming his mechanic, and he just said
this aura about him where he was just a scary
looking guy. But when you got got to know him
and start working with him, he was actually probably the
(09:06):
most the sort of the person with the most sort
of Kiwi attitude that that's not a Kiwi. He was
laid back and quite funny and joked around all the
time behind the scenes. He was just also your sort
of typical young American kid sort of style. And I
actually really enjoyed it, and it was it was a
(09:28):
lot of fun that it just didn't look like that
for the that he was like that to the to
the public, because you you only sort of saw one
side of him through the media, where he was always
being attacked and things like that. But I actually really
enjoyed my time there. I learned a lot from him too,
about the bikes, you know, the way he he measures
(09:49):
his setups and all that sort of thing as well,
which which I hadn't seen before, And it was he
was really professional and also millimeter by millimeter and and
and he was a hard working athlete as well. So yeah, yeah, no,
it was good.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Do you feel like the tour has you know, they've
obviously done it kind of a lot of work and
cycling over the last few years, but do you feel
like they've sort of moved into a new era from that,
from that, you know, from the Armstrong era and from
all of the controversy around doping and stuff, do you
feel like they've kind of managed to rewin the trust
of the cycling public and the sporting public at large.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, for sure. It's definitely clear that the sport and
as a whole has cleaned up and it's much better now.
In the top tier and sort of the top level
World Tour which we're in, and then the next level
down Pro Conte, pro Continental teams, they all have biological
(10:48):
passports now, which is all your blood values put together
by all the mandatory tests that you have to do,
plus any doping tests that you that you do just
in the sport in general, and then those values clearly
show if anyone starts to tamp around with anything, it
pops up immediately on these biological passports. So then they
(11:12):
get sort of they get informed that they're being watched,
and if the values continue to shut around a little bit,
they'll then take appropriate action. But in general, it's really
the sport has cleaned up and it's really good now.
But the thing is they go faster now than they
(11:34):
used to.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, obviously there are other
things that have developed a lot, the bike technology, the aerodynamics,
the nutrition, all of that kind of thing, But I
mean it's still ridiculous watching these cyclists, you know, especially
at the moment we have. You know, two kind of
generational cyclists have been duking it out on all of
these recent tours, Taday Pagacha and Johannes Vinger Guard. What
(11:57):
do you make of those two as cyclists and the
kind of competition that we've seen not only this year
but in the last few years of the tour.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, like it's pretty phenomenal that those two quite far
above the level of the others and they go head
to head and the Grand tours. Vndergard is clearly a
super talented rider and a very good rider, but he
specifically targets the tour whereas Poga. People now sort of
(12:29):
start to claim them as the new successor of Eddie
Merks because he wins all different races and he just
makes it look easy. He's and he's such a nice
person as well. He's always very friendly to everyone. But
he's just a phenomenal, phenomenal rider.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
What's it like when you're in the cars following all
of the cyclists, because watching it on TV, a couple
of things striking me as really stressful. First of all,
how close the fans still are to the cyclist, like
waving flags directly in their faces when they're riding up
mountains at thirty five k's an hour. Then all of
the cars that have to come through in the procession
following the cyclist. It just strikes me as an altogether
(13:11):
stressful experience.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, it is. It's there seems to me more people
here this year than in the past years since since
the COVID days. I mean, the tour always has a
lot of fans on the side of the road. But
this year it's it's incredible that every day everywhere they're
just lined up along the road. And there was actually
(13:34):
an incident where the Enios team car actually hit a
spectator who was standing virtually in the middle of the
road and the car was trying to pass another rider
from another team to move up behind his rider, and
the spectator was was one meter out further on the
road and didn't budge and the car collected him on
(13:56):
the way past. And it was actually the spectator's fault,
but the driver of the car was also penalized and
I had to pay quite a hefty fine. But they're
lucky that nobody died or was injured, you know, but
it does there is the odd accident. Over the years,
there has been the occasional accident and death with the
(14:19):
spectators standing so close. But yeah, it's a unique sport
where it's just it's open to the public. It's not
in an arena or a stadium, so it's yeah, it's
a little bit crazy, and it's one of the only
sports that I think that the public can get so
close to the athletes.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah, so you're on the road for two hundred and
fifty days a year sometimes, which is extraordinary, Graig, and
that means a lot of unfamiliar three and a half
star hotels. I would have thought, do you have any
aspirations for settling down at some point? I know you've
done more than twenty years on the tour? Could you
do another twenty.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
I definitely couldn't do another twenty No, how much of
my twenty first tour and it's just a groundhole day.
It's it's nice. I enjoy traveling around. That's that's probably
the nicest part of it. You get to see different places.
But now most of the hotels that we travel to
every year are also quite familiar and feel like home
(15:19):
because you've been there so many times. Yeah, but I
think I've still got a few years in me. I
wouldn't say that many. But I'm also nervous that when
I do stop, I won't know what to do. You know,
I don't I've never done anything else, and I might
find that I don't really enjoy it. So I think, well,
(15:41):
I can I just make the most of doing what
I do until it's not possible anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, that's a great attitude. Hey, I'm deeply envious Craig,
enjoy the last you know, the last dying leagues of
the tour, and thank you so much for giving us
your time. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
No, you're welcome.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
There's Craig Geita. Craig Gita is the chief mechanic for
the team Jacob Alula. He is an Olympic selector. There's
all sorts of stuff for New Zealand cyclists as well,
in two leagues left in this year's Tour de France,
which is his twenty first.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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