Spin Cycle is Escape Collective’s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on this website (obviously) or have it delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up here.
Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle, Escape Collective’s news digest.
The Giro d’Italia is here! The first men’s Grand Tour of the season. Don’t listen to the naysayers doom-mongering about three weeks of Tadej Pogačar-shaped dominance, it will still be fun whatever happens.
Before that, though, we’ve got a plasterboard debacle in Frankfurt, the normal-human Geraint Thomas pops up once again, and Peter Sagan is back!
A PSA to the people preparing for a boring Giro d’Italia 🥱
Don’t let them steal your happiness. Enjoy a Grand Tour like your watching Norwegian television of a reindeer herd migration, or a roaring open fire. What do you want instead? This?
Absolutely plastered
Being a professional cyclist spending the year on the road is not an easy life. No matter how much you get paid or how much you win (most riders get little of both).
So, when Oliver Naesen and Stan Dewulf are tucked up in bed in Frankfurt, the night before Eschborn-Frankfurt last Wednesday no less, the last thing they needed was a huge piece of plaster crashing down on top of their weary bodies in the middle of the night.
“I was scared to death,” Naesen told Het Nieuwsblad. “We are sleeping and then the ceiling comes crashing down. All on us.”
“I had been doing stretching exercises and Oli suddenly said: ‘Wow, what a big crack over our heads’,” Dewulf added. “But we just went to sleep … until half past twelve at night. Suddenly a bang, not normal! Oli said: ‘Stan what is that!?’ The debris was not light. If that comes from a height of 2 meters, I think it will be punishing, my first race of the season and I could have died.”
The next day at the race, Dewulf finished 82nd and Naesen DNF’d, so you can strike having plasterboard fall on you whilst sleeping from the list of potential marginal gains.
Feed Zone 🥖
🤕 Anna Henderson will require surgery for a broken collarbone she suffered after a fall at La Vuelta Femenina.
👨⚖️ Nacer Bouhanni and Arkéa-B&B Hotels are taking the Tour of Turkey to court, L’Équipe reports, demanding millions of Euros in compensation for the sprinter’s serious injuries resulting from a crash at the race two years ago.
😬 Bora-Hansgrohe sports director Enrico Gasparotto has dimissed Emmanuel Buchmann’s claims that he was promised co-leadership at the Giro d’Italia before his surprise non-selection. Meanwhile, leadout man Danny van Poppel has his claws out in a manner that he should be careful, lest he entice Antonio Tiberi, saying he is maybe better than his sprinter Sam Welsford, who is also not part of the Giro squad.
♻️ Rick Zabel (30) has announced his retirement after 13 years in the peloton, vacating a spot in the Israel-Premier Tech squad for Joe Blackmore, who will step up from the Academy squad.
💨 The fourth stage of La Vuelta Femenina was the fastest in Women’s WorldTour history, with the stage winner Kristen Faulkner averaging 46.754 km/h.
🇨🇴 Egan Bernal will be at the start of the 2024 Tour de France. Dane Cash has the story on Ineos Grenadiers’ various glimmers of hope.
🤒 A harmless skin disease has been the cause of Astana-Qazaqstan’s Ide Schelling’s poor performances as of late, the rider said on Instagram.
👩⚖️ According to Dagblad De Limburger (sounds tasty but can I have mine without pickles?), Amy Pieters is taking SD-Worx Protime to court to make the team recognise she has an indefinite contract and to pay the outstanding wages she says she’s owed.
💸 It’s official, the Bora Bois will be Red Bull–Bora-Hansgrohe starting at the Tour de France. Everybody say “heart palpitations” on three.
🇳🇴 Wout van Aert is planning to return to racing at the Tour of Norway on May 23-26, reports Het Laatste Nieuws.
👋 Luke Rowe (34) has announced he will retire at the end of the season, a year earlier than originally planned.
🇸🇪 The Tour of Scandinavia will not take place in August as planned due to financial issues. Abby Skujina Mickey has the story here.
🙏 Jonas Vingegaard will be able to ride this year’s Tour de France in good shape despite his Basque Country crash, Visma-Lease a Bike sports director Merijn Zeeman told Wielerflits. The Dane will not, however, be at the pre-Tour training camp in Sierra Nevada or at the Critérium du Dauphiné on June 2.
🇪🇸 Woohoo! We’re all going on a summer holiday foreign Grand Départ in 2026 as Gazzetta Dello Sport reports Barcelona will host the 2026 Tour de France Grand Départ. We can still file copy and record podcasts on the beach with cervezas in hand, right Caley?
Cycling on TV 📺
Saturday May 4th
Giro d’Italia – Stage 1
(07:30-11:45 ET/12:30-16:45 BST/21:30-01:45 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
La Vuelta Femenina – Stage 7
(08:30-10:30 ET/13:30-15:30 BST/22:30-00:30 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Grand Prix du Morbihan Femmes
(04:15-05:30 ET/09:15-10:30 BST/18:15-19:30 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Grand Prix du Morbihan Hommes
(09:30-11:35 ET/14:30-16:35 BST/23:30-01:35 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Sunday May 5th
Giro d’Italia – Stage 2
(06:30-11:45 ET/11:30-16:45 BST/20:30-01:45 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
La Vuelta Femenina – Stage 8
(06:00-08:00 ET/11:00-13:00 BST/20:00-22:00 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Tro Bro Leon
(09:05-11:05 ET/14:05-16:05 BST/23:05-01:05 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Elfstedenronde
(09:45-11:45 ET/14:45-16:45 BST/23:45-01:45 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+
Monday May 6th
Giro d’Italia – Stage 3
(06:30-11:45 ET/11:30-16:45 BST/20:30-01:45 AEST) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
New favourite team name just dropped featuring a familiar face 🔥
Somebody call 9-1-1, Sagan in a Pierre Baguette jersey, oh woah!
Yes, the retired Peter Sagan will be racing on the road again at the Tour de Hongrie with the fantastically named Continental outfit Pierre Baguette Professional Cycling Team. Are the team French? Somehow not. They are a Slovakian squad backed by the Slovakian packaged sandwich makers Pierre Baguette.
How much speed has Sagan lost after seven months out of the WorldTour? Why is he doing all of this if, as our Joe Lindsey reported this week, he only has a teeny tiny shot of qualifying for the Olympics? Depending on the former world champion’s exploits in Hungary will this become known as the Battle of Baguetteysburg? Guess there’s only one way to find out.
And finally …
Could this be considered some sort of bad omen before the Giro? The regular-human version of Geraint Thomas is selling his bike!
If only he’d chucked it up on the excellent classifieds section of our website … god damn it, Geraint.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“Here’s a photo of a grubby but serviceable hostel laundromat in Portree on the Isle of Skye,” writes in Becky Hartman, attaching today’s laundromat photo. “We’re in Scotland for a three-week bikepacking trip and after two days of constant torrential downpour everything needed a wash.”
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]
It’s a bank holiday (but why should the banks still get all the credit) 🏦
Despite the over-financialisation of housing, money, and other public goods we generally need, at least banks got the branding deal of a lifetime by being awarded eternal naming rights to British public holidays! Thank you, financial overlords!
Therefore, the next edition will be dropping on Tuesday, May 6, not Monday. See you then. Pogačar may have won the Giro by then … KIDDING.
In case you missed it 🫣
Something that escaped our desk in recent weeks: Turns out Remco Evenepoel is a massive Gooner, attending an Arsenal game last month as he recovered from injury, a team he’s been a fan of since he was a kid.
Following on from mascots chat on this week’s Placeholders podcast (and the recent Tangents pilot too), the conversation continued over on the Discord. Let me introduce you, in case you were otherwise unaware, to Gunnersaurus. There’s a great Athletic article meeting the man behind the green furry mask(?), and for real heads here’s also an impression of what an Adam Curtis documentary on the post-Wenger, pre-Arteta era would sound like.
Until next time …
That’s all folks! Thanks to Becky Hartman, Phil Long and Matt de Neef 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.
Every edition of Spin Cycle is available for free on our website in order for you to be able to share it with your friends, so please do! You can give them this link to take them to our most recent edition.
And if you’ve been forwarded this email from someone else and want to receive it straight into your own inbox while it’s still hot, you can sign up here.
What did you think of this story?