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.
Spin Cycle
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Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle, Escape Collective’s news digest.
The Tour Down Under is underway, with the women getting things going on Friday and the men following next week. Very jealous of everyone experiencing both summer and bike racing whilst I am not privy to either of those things currently. One year we’ll make it down there.
In the meantime, RCS put on one hell of a show earlier in the week …
Biting the hand that feeds 🤔
Finally, we got a glimpse of the Giro d’Italia routes after they were unveiled on Monday evening, with the Albanian Grande Partenza intact (after that was rumoured to be the reason for the delay). In fact, the Albanian prime minister was present for the ceremony. So does this mean whatever the disagreement was between the two parties has now been put to one side? Well, not quite …
In between various video montages, we got to hear from the a whole cast of characters, including RCS CEO Urbano Cairo and the aforementioned Albanian prime minister Edi Rama.
Gripping the Literal Prime Minister Of A Country by the arm, Cairo precedes to lambast the man likely giving him millions for the honour/arse-ache of hosting the Giro d’Italia.
“We’ve had 15 starts abroad,” Cairo says on a stage being beamed out across the internet. “Guess who paid the least?”
Even if you don’t speak Italian, the awkwardness in the room is palpable.
To his credit, Rama fired back: “It was really difficult to strike a deal with RCS President Cairo,” Rama countered. “If Greenland ever needs to negotiate with Trump, they should call Cairo.”
Oh, RCS, never change.
What were they thinking 😡
We thought long and hard about whether to include this story, as sometimes things are not worth giving oxygen to. However, in proof that not all press is good press, we think it’s important to cover this story just in case you come across chain lube company Green Oil any time soon.
First reported by road.cc, Green Oil posted a now-deleted video to its social media accounts earlier this week linking Sir Chris Hoy’s terminal cancer diagnosis to his use of rival company Muc-Off’s chain lube.
Hoy’s management company TGI Sport contacted Green Oil owner Simon Nash asking for the video linking Hoy’s cancer diagnosis to “PTFE bike lubricant exposure” to be removed, and road.cc says the videos were taken down following a call between TGI Sport’s legal team and Nash. During this call, Nash is also said to have apologised to Hoy, although no public statement has been made at the time of writing.
Not all news is fun and whimsical. This is real piece-of-shit stuff. Think we’ll leave it there.
Feed Zone 🥖
💰 Finally some good news for the Ineos Grenadiers! The team is close to bringing on board a major new sponsor that may be a headline sponsor later in the year or in 2026, Gazzetta dello Sport reports.
Cycling on TV 📺
Saturday January 18th
Women’s Tour Down Under, Stage 2
(19:30-23:00 ET/00:30-04:00 GMT/11:30-16:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺7plus/7mate
Down Under Classic
(03:30-04:45 ET/08:30-09:45 GMT/19:30-20:45 AEDT) 🇦🇺7plus/7mate
Sunday January 19th
Women’s Tour Down Under, Stage 3
(19:30-23:15 ET/00:30-04:15 GMT/11:30-16:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺7plus/7mate
Cyclocross
UCI World Cup, Benidorm – Elite Women
(07:30-09:00 ET/12:30-14:00 GMT/23:30-01:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺🌐 UCI’s YouTube
UCI World Cup, Benidorm – Elite Men
(09:00-10:30 ET/14:00-15:30 GMT/01:00-02:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺🌐 UCI’s YouTube
Monday January 20th
No live racing …
This week on the Spin Cycle podcast … 🎧
The gang discusses the news that Tour de France organisers are thinking of adding the Montmartre laps we saw in the Paris Olympic road race to the Tour’s final stage 21.
Here’s the Spotify link or find it in all of the other normal places you find podcasts.
🏏 Near miss of the week 🏏
“Watching the cricket from the comfort of the couch tonight and Jay Vine popped up in an on-the-ground promo interview for the Tour Down Under,” writes in Greg Harmer. “Next minute he was nearly cleaned up by a 6. Much more entertaining than G’s walk on the ground before the last game here on Saturday (which I saw live).”
And finally …
Polish cyclocross is on one once again. Sea, snow and sand. The three ‘S’es you need for any cyclocross race, obviously.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“Do you want a laundry photo from Somaliland?” asks Timbo Pinot, sending today’s featured laundry photo via Discord towards the end of last year. “I’m here observing elections. Unfortunately though only laundry I can find is in the hotel so pretty industrial and no real Somali-ness in it.”
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: jonny.long@escapecollective.com
Until next time …
That’s all folks! Thanks to Greg Harmer and Timbo Pinot for contributions to today’s edition, and a big thank you to all of you who have signed up as Escape Collective 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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Spin Cycle
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