Pavel Bittner on Roubaix pain, sprint instinct and learning to lead - Domestique Hotseat

Pavel walks through his Roubaix from the inside out, the chaos of a race with no breakaway and 100 kilometres of compressed positioning fights, the unlucky touch of wheels with teammate Dylan that put him into the banners, and the long ride to the velodrome with the rest of the day's "fallen soldiers" cracking jokes because nobody was going to cry there.

He explains the mental gymnastics of going into a Monument as a Picnic PostNL rider when the podium is essentially spoken for by Pogačar, Pedersen, Van der Poel and Van Aert, pointing to John Degenkolb's career-defining Roubaix as proof that the script gets ripped up more often than people remember.

The conversation moves on to the sprint that put him on the map: stage 5 of the 2024 Vuelta into Sevilla, where he came past Van Aert in the final 300 metres. Pavel breaks down the split-second decision to follow Van Aert's wheel left rather than stick with the Alpecin train, and how much of a finishing sprint is conscious thought versus intuition built from getting the calls slightly wrong before getting them right.

Looking ahead, he previews his 2026 build with the Tour de France as the centrepiece, talks frankly about Picnic PostNL's reorientation around stage hunting after losing Oscar Onley, and addresses whether his career follows the Van der Poel and Van Aert template of growing into a Classics rider who picks off select bunch sprints.

The episode closes with audience questions about his tattoos, including the "22-22" inside joke with Tobias Lund Andresen that has apparently cursed him to second place ever since.

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