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Welcome back to Spin Cycle, Escape Collective’s news digest.
It’s here, the 2024 UCI Road World Championships. The time trials were up first to remind us which nationality everyone is (the nation state of Soudal-Quick Step thankfully does not exist) and to get us acclimatised to the locale (Zürich, Switzerland).
The road races begin from Thursday and are always a treat; we’ll have previews of both the women’s and men’s elite races later this week. In the meantime, let’s dive in to some of the action so far, from Remco Evenepoel’s slightly chaotic Sunday TT win to a French 17-year-old with a great command of the English language.
Greedy, greedy, greedy 🥇
With two Olympic titles taken in the summer (and two gold bikes to ride for the next four years), you’d have forgiven Remco Evenepoel, who also made a statement podium at this year’s Tour de France, if he eased off the gas as we headed into the autumn.
However, after recovering from illness and warming up at the Tour of Britain, the 24-year-old defended his time trial rainbow jersey in Zürich, beating Italy’s Filippo Ganna by just six seconds.
The feat was made all the more impressive by the fact his chain fell off in the start hut a minute before he was rolling out … and his power meter was broken.
“The chain was my own fault,” Evenepoel told Sporza afterwards. “I’ve had it before in the Basque Country. I shouldn’t have done that backpedaling, but it can happen. We ride with large chainrings, then everything is so meticulously adjusted. My own fault.”
In his post-race press conference, Evenepoel also elaborated on riding to a winning effort based only on feel. “It was a blind time trial, so I don’t think it was my best one,” Evenepoel said, in words that will be hard to stomach for everyone he beat on Sunday. “I think I could have gone faster today, but of course, if you don’t have the numbers, you don’t really know what you’re doing.
“In the first kilometre, I kind of turned the power meter on and off again, but it didn’t work, so something must have gone wrong when the chain dropped. It was pretty difficult without the numbers. I think everybody knows how much I ride by numbers, and I had made the plan to win the time trial on the climb, but that was not really the case in the end.”
On the podium, Filippo Ganna used his experience of standing next to Evenepoel in second spot (having finished runner-up behind the Belgian at the last two Worlds and the Paris Olympics) to show compatriot and bronze medallist Edoardo Affini how to pose with the much smaller winner for the podium photos.
Evenepoel’s technical difficulties weren’t finished just yet, however, as on a Monday recovery ride his gold road bike suffered a puncture, leaving him sitting on the side of the road with Victor Campenaerts filming him.
UAE could become record breakers 🤯
It’s not news that UAE Team Emirates (with a lot of thanks to Tadej Pogačar) have had a spectacular year. Their winning 2024 continued into September with nine victories, bringing them up to a total of 75 for the season. Filippo Baroncini’s Super 8 Classic victory over the weekend also meant 19 of the team’s 30 riders have won this year, a feat only ever previously achieved by Mapei-Quick Step in 2000, although they did have 41 riders on the books at the time.
A useful graphic shared by UAE Team Emirates manager Matxin shows they have eclipsed the totals of the 2018-2019 Quick-Step squads and are now within 10 wins of equalling Team Columbia-HTC’s record back in 2009.
According to the team’s schedule, they have 20 race days left (21 if you include the Worlds road race, where Pogačar is one of the favourites). Can we dare to hope for full-strength squads being sent to the Cro Race at the start of October and then the Tour of Guangxi too as they chase down the record? We can only dream.
Bonus stat (courtesy of La Flamme Rouge) is that UAE have 40 WorldTour-level victories this year, Pogačar has 22 and then Visma-Lease a Bike are the next most successful team with 18 WT victories. In other words, Pogačar alone has won more than any other full squad. Crikey.
Feed Zone 🥖
🤩 Grace Brown followed up her Olympic TT gold medal with victory in the women’s Worlds time trial event, beating the Netherlands’ Demi Vollering by 16 seconds with American Chloe Dygert third, 56 seconds back. A perfect send-off for the retiring Australian and our Matt de Neef has more on the story here.
👏 It took 18-year-old Brit Cat Ferguson (Movistar) just her third professional race to achieve victory, winning the opening stage of the Tour de la Semois.
🙅♂️ Davide Formolo (Movistar) was disqualified from the Tour de Luxembourg on stage 3 after adopting the banned ‘super tuck’ position. Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) snatched overall victory at the stage race from Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) on the final stage 5.
⛰️ There is a good chance Mont Ventoux will feature in the 2025 Tour de France route, the president of the Vaucluse department, Dominique Santoni, told La Marseillaise, who hopes for a summit finish rather than just the race’s passage over the climb.
🤕 Jay Vine was in medal contention at the Worlds time trial event until a hard crash left him bloodied (photo not for the faint-hearted) and he had to settle for fifth place. “It’s heartbreaking to think about what could have been,” Vine said after. “Luckily he suffered no concussion or fractures,” UAE Team Emirates’ Dr.Adrian Rotunno added. “Laceration to left side of forehead (fixed with 3 stitches at local hospital) and superficial abrasions to his shoulder. He should be cleared to compete in the road race next weekend.” Vine, you’ll recall, spent months this season recovering from injuries in that awful Itzulia crash.
🤕 Netflix’s Tour de France Unchained series has been nominated for best sports sports documentary at the upcoming Emmy’s.
🙏 Richard Carapaz will no longer participate in the Worlds road race next weekend as the Ecuadorian shared on Instagram that he has to head home where his daughter had to undergo emergency surgery. Sending best wishes to the Carapaz family.
📰 For more on the latest from racing, tech, industry and culture throughout the week, check out the most recent edition of Daily News.
Cycling on TV 📺
Tuesday September 24th
UCI Road World Championships – Junior Women’s Time Trial
(02:20-04:55 ET/07:20-09:55 BST/16:20-18:55 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
Wednesday September 25th
UCI Road World Championships – Elite Mixed Relay Time Trial
(07:50-11:55 ET/12:50-16:55 BST/21:50-01:55 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Time Trials
(04:50-12:55 ET/09:50-17:55 BST/18:50-02:55 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s and Women’s B Road Races
(04:35-07:30 ET/09:35-12:30 BST/18:35-21:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
Thursday September 26th
UCI Road World Championships – Junior Women’s Road Race
(03:50-06:30 ET/08:50-11:30 BST/17:50-20:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Road World Championships – Junior Men’s Road Race
(08:05-11:45 ET/13.05-16:45 BST/22:05-01:45 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s H1-2 and Women’s H1-5 Road Races
(02:50-05:10 ET/07:50-10:10 BST/16:50-19:10 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s C4-5 and C3 Road Races
(04:35-07:30 ET/09:35-12:30 BST/18:35-21:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
Friday September 27th
UCI Road World Championships – U23 Men’s Road Race
06:35-11:10 ET/11:35-16:10 BST/20:35-01:10 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s C1 and C2 Road Races
(02:20-04:40 ET/07:20-09:40 BST/16:20-18:40 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s and Women’s T1-2 Road Races
(04:50-06:35 ET/09:50-11:35 BST/18:50-20:35 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
🫢 Children swearing of the week 🫢
You know what the Road World Championships mean? Children winning world titles on live television and then being asked to describe their emotions also on live television.
With that in mind, congratulations is due to Frenchmanboy Paul Seixas, who took the junior men’s world time trial title and in his post-victory flash interview delivered a few pleasantries before saying how he really felt (skip to 15 seconds into the below video): “Being World Champion, it’s a fucking dream … it’s fucking insane.”
So young, so talented, so fluent in a second language that he can swear in it too!
And finally …
It’s nice, and also slightly peculiar, that Michael Matthews and Tadej Pogačar are best buds. Yeah, they are neighbours in Monaco but we just wouldn’t have stuck those two together necessarily.
Anyway, seems like Geraint Thomas is recovering from his all-inclusive holiday shot followed by a Benelux Tour chaser, and is living proof that the off-season doesn’t really exist like it used to as he joined Pogačar and Matthews for three extra hours of training than he had originally planned to do.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“Passed this laundrette in Paris before watching the Olympic time trial,” Joe WS wrote the other month, attaching today’s featured laundrette. “It felt like it could be anywhere in France, the sort of of place a group of tired journalists might congregate and sadly watch each others’ clothes go round, wishing for their own laundry budget.”
As always, we are accepting your laundry photos (especially ones with the doors open so we can Photoshop riders inside the drum) to star in Spin Cycle. Either send them via the Discord or shoot me an $email: [email protected]
Until next time …
That’s all folks! Thanks to Joe WS, Lucian Stănescu and Kit Nicholson for contributions to today’s edition and a big thank you to all of you who have signed up already as Escape Collective founding members. If you haven’t there is no time like the present. To smooth the process just click this link here and hit the Join Today button in the top right of the page.
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