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Welcome back to Spin Cycle, Escape Collective’s news digest.
The World Championship elite road races are this weekend and they should provide quite the spectacle (let’s all keep our fingers crossed for no race-winning moves 80 km from the finish).
As we’ll see in today’s newsletter, those in continental Europe may have been able to spot competitors zipping across motorways to get to Zürich, while Remco Evenepoel took time during his week off between the TT and road race to finally partake in his annual tradition of letting everyone know he’ll be staying at Soudal-Quick Step. Phew.
Away from the Worlds, Lachlan Morton is saving wildlife as he circumnavigates Australia, of course.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year ✨
And there it is, put to bed once again: Remco Evenepoel will be staying at Soudal-Quick Step, the team he is contracted to until the end of 2026, for at least another year.
After 2024’s failed move to Visma-Lease a Bike, this year’s rumours concerned the revamped Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe squad, with Red Bull team boss Ralph Denk refusing to comment on potential negotiations to sign the Belgian, which only ever adds fuel to the fire.
Having already said he hadn’t heard anything and was staying put at the Tour of Britain, Evenepoel confirmed again, definitively this time, during a press conference on Friday morning at the Belgian team hotel for the Zürich World Championships that he will still be a Soudal-Quick Step rider next year, which is always what riders who definitely didn’t think about moving have to repeat.
“I’ll stay where I am, that’s pretty clear,” Evenepoel said, clearly. “No transfers.” Gazzetta dello Sport reported the night before that transfer discussions had fallen through.
If only Evenepoel could have been pretty clear about all of this and put the matter to bed months ago when he definitely wasn’t playing contract footsie. Weird.
Anyway, see you this time next year for 2025’s instalment of the Remco Evenepoel transfer rumour mill! Can’t wait!
Lachlan’s Animal Rescue 🦜
Lachlan Morton this week ticked past the 10,000 km mark on his Ride Around Australia attempt and is well on the way to beating the 14,000 kilometres in 37 days record by almost a week.
So, all but assured of a new fastest time, the 32-year-old had the time to not only spot an injured bird by the side of the road but get off his bike to move the animal to a safer location and call animal control.
WIth EF being the best marketers in the whole damn sport, they had cameras on hand to capture the wholesome and genuine moment. Would they have bothered if the bird hadn’t been brand-correct pink? Who knows.
Award for best comment on the Instagram post goes to the meme account i_simp_alaphilippe, who said: “Fun fact: Lachlan once saved an injured squirrel from the side of the road. That squirrel grew up to be Ben Healy.”
Feed Zone 🥖
🇬🇧 At the Road World Championships, Great Britain’s Cat Ferguson won both the junior women’s time trial and road race, while Australia pipped Germany to the Mixed Team Relay gold medal by less than a second, with Italy third.
👨🍳 A masters gravel racer who’d planned to ride the upcoming UCI Gravel World Championships has been denied participation in the event after it was discovered that he gave someone else his number and timing chip at a qualifying race, reports Gazet van Antwerpen. Luc Bellings, a successful Belgian chef, had a teammate ride for him at the Houffa Gravel Fondo, and that teammate ultimately had to slow down at the end of the race so as not to finish on the podium and have the ruse revealed.
✏️ Strava now allows users to ‘quick edit’ and manage who can see their activity, hide specific workout data like start time, change the title of an activity and add any media to it. This update comes after users voiced privacy concerns about Strava’s direct messaging feature, introduced last December.
🤞 There will be a women’s Milan-San Remo in 2025, held earlier on the same day as the men’s event.
🌈 Next year’s Road Worlds will feature a women’s U23 race, while U23 men who have a professional contract will not be allowed to compete in the event.
👕 The Pro’s Closet is set to close down in October, announced CEO Jonathan Czaja. It’s possible a buyer will be found and the business revived at some point, but in the immediate term, dozens of employees will lose their jobs in the closure. In the days before the news became official, our Joe Lindsey had this report on the company’s troubles.
🇮🇹 There is a good chance Mathieu van der Poel will be at the start line for Il Lombardia this year, Het Laatste Nieuws reports.
🇧🇪 The Belgian newspaper also says Brussels is in pole position to host the 2030 World Road Championships, with Belgium already set to host the cyclocross and track world championships that year. The official decision will be made at the UCI congress in Zürich this week.
🤭 A couple of mind games from Lotte Kopecky ahead of tomorrow’s Worlds road race? “They are starting with a very strong team, but it has already been shown several times that they do not always get along well,” she said of the Dutch squad, who are her main rivals. “You see that on paper there is one clear leader, but there are also others who are eyeing the world title. There are several women in the Dutch team who can and want to win.”
🙏 Wout van Aert took his first walk outside since his Vuelta crash this week, uploading a file to Strava showing a 2.7 km walk over 38 minutes.
🇯🇵 A new UCI one-day race will be held in Tokyo next year, the UCI has announced. It will be called The Road Race Tokyo Tama 2025 and will be held alongside a sportive and is one of the events created as part of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics legacy.
🇩🇰 Denmark will also have a one-day WorldTour race called the Copenhagen sprint for men and women held on June 20 and 21.
🗞️ You can find all this and more in our Daily News roundup. All the news you need on one lovely and clean website. Lovely.
Cycling on TV 📺
Saturday September 28th
UCI Road World Championships – Elite Women’s Road Race
(06:15-11:15 ET/11:15-16:15 BST/20:15-01:15 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s H3 Road Race
(02:05-04:30 ET/07:05-09:30 BST/16:05-18:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Women’s C1-4 and C4-5 Road Races
(04:30-07:25 ET/09:35-12:25 BST/18:30-21:25 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
MTB
UCI MTB World Cup – Elite Women’s Cross-Country Short Track
(11:00-12:00 ET/16:00-17:00 BST/01:00-02:00 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, FloBikes🇨🇦
UCI MTB World Cup – Elite Men’s Cross-Country Short Track
(12:00-13:00 ET/17:00-18:00 BST/02:00-03:00 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, FloBikes🇨🇦
UCI MTB World Cup – U23 Women Cross-Country Olympic
(14:25-15:55 ET/19:25-20:55 BST/04:25-05:55 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, FloBikes🇨🇦
UCI MTB World Cup – U23 Men Cross-Country Olympic
(15:55-17:30 ET/20:55-22:30 BST/05:55-07:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, FloBikes🇨🇦
Sunday September 29th
UCI Road World Championships – Elite Men’s Road Race
(04:00-11:30 ET/09:00-16:30 BST/18:00-01:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
UCI Para-Cycling World Championships – Men’s H4-5 Road Race
(03:35-05:50 ET/08:35-10:50 BST/17:35-19:50 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, SBS🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦🇺🇸
Tour de Langkawi – Stage 1 – (Saturday night for America/Canada)
(21:15-22:55 ET/02:15-03:55 BST/11:15-12:55 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧
MTB
UCI MTB World Cup – Elite Women’s Cross-Country Olympic
(11:00-13:30 ET/16:00-18:30 BST/01:00-03:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, FloBikes🇨🇦
UCI MTB World Cup – Elite Men’s Cross-Country Olympic
(13:30-15:30 ET/18:30-20:30 BST/03:30-05:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, FloBikes🇨🇦
Monday September 30th
Tour de Langkawi – Stage 2
(01:30-03:10 ET/06:30-08:10 BST/15:30-17:10 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧
🤯 Colombian chaos of the week 🤯
Here’s a video to get the heart pumping in time for the weekend, as chaos unfolds at the Clásico RCN in Colombia, where first a man nearly gets mowed down by the peloton coming into the sprint finish before a dog also gets involved. What is it about bike racing and sprint finishes that dogs love? They can’t seem to get enough of them.
And finally …
A photo shared by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot as she and partner Dylan van Baarle packed the car up and headed for Zürich earlier this week.
A couple of things. Firstly, look how pleased Van Baarle is with the rear rack job, securely fastening tens of thousands of Euros-worth of bike to the back of a car that will soon be doing 130 km/h on the motorway, if not more.
Secondly, do you and your family play games on long drives trying to spot windmills or post boxes or other such specifics of our manmade environment? Think how much more fun it would be trying to spot riders setting off from the Benelux to the Zürich World Championships, and spotting this vehicle and figuring out that it could only belong to PFP and DvB. You can’t buy that sort of joy.
Weekend reading 📰
Cycling Weekly columnist and time triallist Michael Hutchinson was in The Guardian this week with a piece about how a cat he took in during Covid lockdown turned out to have somehow faked its own death.
Away from cycling, via Canadian Running Magazine, an American ultrarunner has been caught removing accolades from other athletes’ Wikipedia pages while “fluffing” up her own.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“The washers in the laundry room at Glen Nevis campsite were efficient at just 35 minutes,” Matt Crimp emails in, attaching today’s featured laundry photo, “and the dryers offered 3 heat settings, useful for sensitive cycling and walking clothing. Here’s a bonus picture of the dawn from Carn Mor Dearg as well!”
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 Matt Crimp and Caley Fretz 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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Spin Cycle
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