Spin Cycle is Escape Collective’s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on this website (obviously) or click here to have it delivered straight to your inbox.
Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle,
What a weekend of racing that was. The Tour of Flanders delivered and then some. My favourite moment was the TV news in Flanders ending with a shot of a young man passed out, face down on a picnic table, surrounded by half-drunk beers. Hope his Monday is going okay (it's not).
Before we shift focus to Paris-Roubaix, let's relive some of the lesser spotted or more curious moments from Sunday.
De Rounde up 🇧🇪
A few loose threads that need tying up before we switch over to Paris-Roubaix ...
Don't take the piss
Arkéa-B&B Hotels conspired to provide some entertainment in the snoozy opening kilometres of the race, attacking just as everyone else decided to stop for a nature break. Every story needs heroes and villains, and it was good to see Arkéa step up to the plate and have at least some effect.
Poel-ing faces (sorry)
Thanks to Escape Collective member Harris who was there on the Kwaremont during the race and captured this photo of Mathieu van der Poel gurning up a storm, if you could even call this a gurn. We're not exactly sure what it is, we didn't know a human face could do this. Is this the secret to being as good a bike racer as Van der Poel is? To scrunch your face up impossibly small on one side? It's like he's doing a human-generated imitation of an AI-generated image.
Good cap, bad cap 🧢
And, as promised, we remain on Pauline Ferrand-Prévot hat watch, having bemoaned her forgetfulness of not putting a clause in her contract to stipulate that she doesn't have to wear hats (which she hates) on the podium.
After coming second at Flanders and stepping up to the podium, she captioned a photo of her collecting her plaudits with a police officer emoji. She is really not happy about it.
What discussion could have been so important to miss the race for? 🤔
Thanks to the eagle-eyed Joseph O'Connor, who spotted these three men still huddled around their table in the VIP section while Tadej Pogačar was solo over the Kwaremont. What on Earth were they talking about that was more important? A mega-bucks business deal? Some scintillating personal gossip? A loathing of Pogačar so deep they can't bear to watch?
We're desperate to know, surely someone knows them? Belgium isn't that big of a place, come on Het Nieuwsblad, find them!
Feed Zone 🥖
🤯 A great stat from La Flamme Rouge: "Since the 2022 season, Mathieu van der Poel (7), Tadej Pogacar (7) and Remco Evenepoel (4) have won 18 of the last 21 major one-day races (Monuments, Worlds, Olympics). The only exceptions are Mohorič and Philipsen at Sanremo, and Van Baarle at Roubaix."
🤕 Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) suffered a concussion in her fall at De Ronde and spent the night in hospital as a precaution.
🙏 Two people died during Saturday's Tour of Flanders sportive, one of whom was the former Cofidis rider Stéphane Krafft (45). Our thoughts are with both riders' families.
🌧️ Check the weather forecast for Roubaix on your preferred meteorological app: rain is forecast for Sunday.
😫 John Degenkolb broke his elbow, collarbone and wrist in a crash at the Tour of Flanders and will therefore miss Paris-Roubaix and likely won't return to racing for a couple of months.
🤒 Mathieu van der Poel admitted post-Flanders that he'd been ill and on antibiotics in the lead-up to De Ronde but said it didn't change the result.
Stage start of the week 🏀
So, the individual time trial that kicks off the Tour of the Basque Country today begins inside Vitoria-Gasteiz's basketball (or should that be basqueetball...) arena, and also has a drone following selected riders. This is the future right here.
If you need further basketball/cycling goodness, here are UAE Team Emirates at the same arena the day before accurately displaying the upper body strength of your average professional cyclist (although they are doing a pretty good impression of Michigan State's first half appearance against Auburn last week).
Cycling on TV 📺
Tuesday April 8th
Itzulia Basque Country - Stage 2
(09:30-12:00 ET/14:30-17:00 BST/23:30-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Wednesday April 9th
Scheldeprijs - Women
(07:00-09:00 ET/12:00-14:00 GMT/21:00-23:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Itzulia Basque Country - Stage 3
(09:30-12:00 ET/14:30-17:00 BST/23:30-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Scheldeprijs - Men
(09:45-11:45 ET/14:45-16:45 GMT/23:45-01:45 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Thursday April 10th
Itzulia Basque Country - Stage 4
(09:30-12:00 ET/14:30-17:00 BST/23:30-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Friday April 11th
Itzulia Basque Country - Stage 5
(09:30-12:00 ET/14:30-17:00 BST/23:30-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Mountain bike
UCI Cross-country World Cup, Araxa - Short Track, Women Elite
(11:30-12:30 ET/16:30-17:30 GMT/01:30-02:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes
UCI Cross-country World Cup, Araxa - Short Track, Men Elite
(12:30-13:30 ET/17:30-18:30 GMT/02:30-03:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes
Should probably buy some more ink for your busiest weekend 🖨️
The one drawback of having the women's Flanders finish straight after the men's is that both are hard to cover as thoroughly as you would ideally like, but this is coming from our selfish point of view. For fans on TV and the roadside, doubling up on racing action never hurt anybody.
And while we generally applaud the Flanders Classics organisation for their attitude and work towards equality in racing, if we're splitting hairs the optics are not super good when the pile of men's start lists in the press room are printed in full colour, with no expense spared, whilst the women's lists are in boring black and white.
And finally ...
Wout van Aert rode his (probably large) heart out this weekend, which is good to hear after we were told he got boo'ed on the Dwars door Vlaanderen podium last week, which isn't nice.
Luckily, there was one café along the Flanders route that put a sign out showing support for their home hero, knowing he'd be riding past on a recon ahead of Sunday.
"Explore a course and come home with 36 free eclairs," Van Aert posted on Strava along with a photo of the sign put out to catch his attention, which is easy to understand even if you can't read Dutch.
Corrections corner 😖
Apologies for incorrectly stating that the winner of Paris-Camembert got their body weight in cheese, apparently that's a myth. "Sad news on the cheese front," writes in friend of the programme José Been. "Loockx only got five Camembert cheeses, around one kilo at most, and a bottle of champagne."
Also, in the chaos of the Australian time zone change after successfully scraping through the American and British switch overs to summer, we got some of the channels and timings wrong. What's worse is that Frank Rome (yes, that Rome) emailed in to let us know. We were so ashamed of ourselves.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
"Hels and I just stumbled upon this unique laundry in our caravan park here in Queenstown NZ," writes in David McCook, attaching today's featured laundry photo. "Hels even opened the doors for you – before she saw that someone’s clothes were in the drier! There can’t be many like this outside Disneyland!"
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 Joseph O'Connor, Timbe34, Harris, José Been, Frank Rome, Nick McKey, Caley Fretz and David McCook for contributions to today’s edition and a big thank you to all of you who have signed up as Escape Collective members.
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