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.
If you managed to do anything else except watch the Olympics this weekend, then good for you. But level with us, how on Earth did you manage to resist all of that swimming, volleyball, table tennis, and a decent chunk of bike racing before then drifting off to the soothing scenes of the surfing competition in Tahiti? It’s all been absolutely glorious and already feels like the Olympics has been going on for weeks. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
For hardcore cycling fans, it’s nice to see athletes you’re familiar with being appreciated by a wider audience, even if some of the name pronunciations from your national broadcaster will drive you up the wall. And considering cycling is one of the bigger niche sports, you can only imagine how infuriating it must be for diehard fans of say … judo to hear lay people on TV and social media give their expert opinion on what they’re seeing after only five minutes of tuning in. But that’s the fun of the Games!
Erm, what did we just watch?! 🤯
Who knew mountain biking could be that thrilling?! We kid, of course, but honestly for those who are mostly road racing or nowt (me), nothing quite gets you invested in mountain biking (or time trialling, for that matter) quite like the best athletes having a once-in-a-four-year-cycle chance of winning.
Tom Pidcock’s race was sublime, showing more guts than an abattoir. What made it even better (in between the BBC’s comical insistence on trying to get you to change channel to the horse dancing) was the French fans booing him as he crossed the line to become double Olympic champion. That’s some real cross-channel rivalry action right there.
You know someone who likely wouldn’t have been that moved by the exhilarating racing based on their reaction to a mechanical issue early on? Romania’s Ede-Károly Molnár, a potential Iain Treloar/Taylor Phinney love-child, who while his mechanic toiled held a peace sign up to the TV camera and then took a bow.
Slip ‘n’ Slide 🛝
Let’s follow up with something that will make you feel as if your lot this Monday isn’t so bad after all.
As an in-race mechanic, your job is to be primed to react to bad situations, rushing out of the car to fix whatever has gone wrong with your rider’s machine. So, after your rider, USA’s Taylor Knibb, has fallen four times on a super slippery time trial course, the last thing you needed was to slip yourself as you hurriedly delivered a replacement bike. Thoughts and prayers with the mechanic, thank you for your service.
Fortunately, Knibb, a triathlete, took the whole thing in her stride, admitting she was “probably the worst bike handler out there,” as told to Cycling Weekly, before adding: “Regardless of what happened today, hopefully I’ll continue the sport [of road cycling]. But who knows, I might not be allowed back.”
What’s more, pollution in the Seine river, where the triathlon events are supposed to be held, threatens the cancellation of the swimming leg of the race. Poor Taylor …
Batten down the hatches
More drama for the USA in the women’s mountain bike event (won by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot), as Haley Batten’s late surge to a silver medal was protested by the Netherlands’ Puck Pieterse, accusing Batten of accelerating through the feed zone without taking a bottle on the final lap to gap her rivals.
Race officials studied the footage and then allowed the medal ceremony to go ahead, with Batten playing down the incident in her post-race press conference, CyclingNews report.
While Batten was allowed to keep her medal, she was fined 500 Swiss Francs (CHF) under the UCI rule of: “Failure to respect the instructions of the race organisation or commissaires (using the pit lane without feeding or heaving technical assistance)”, with that bracketed bit added to stipulate the exact instructions that were ignored, with accelerating through the feed zone not being a specific rule-breaking manoeuvre.
The third-place Swede Jenny Rissveds didn’t have a problem with Batten’s move, and Pieterse said afterwards she believes the puncture suffered late-on when she was second on the course cost her a silver medal, with the Dutchwoman eventually finishing an agonising fourth. Thank goodness the course was, in the words of Tom Pidcock, “bland,” otherwise we may have had more spice than we could handle.
Having said that, Ferrand-Prévot’s French teammate, Loana Lecomte, thankfully walked away from a crash in the rock garden descent that left her unconsciousness and needing to be carried out on a stretcher. A photo after the incident shows her smiling and walking with a bandaged arm and chin, with cuts to her cheek.
Australian Luke Plapp wasn’t as fortunate in his crash during the rainy time trial, with the Jayco-AlUla rider crashing and sliding underneath the barriers, taken to hospital and needing abdominal surgery. His team say the rider is in a stable condition and his compatriot Grace Brown visited with her gold medal to cheer him up.
Feed Zone 🥖
🔀 Team GB’s Ethan Hayter decided to skip the weekend’s time trial in order to join up with his track teammates earlier as he prepares to compete in the Team Pursuit, Omnium and Madison events.
🔮 Dstny will stop sponsoring Lotto Dstny at the end of the season due to a difficult relationship with team owner Lotto, De Tijd reports.
😓 Danish rider Solbjørk Minke Anderson (Uno-X Mobility) was hit by a car on the Paris Olympics road race course while undertaking a recon. She suffered a broken collarbone and will no longer be able to compete next weekend.
🥺 Filippo Ganna, second in Saturday’s time trial with other track events to come next week, has told Italian media this could be his last Olympic Games. “I am 28 and Los Angeles still seems far away,” he said.
🐝 Olav Kooij will join Jonas Vingegaard in Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tour of Poland squad beginning August 12.
🇨🇿 Tom Gloag (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the queen stage of the Czech Tour in his comeback to racing after a year out. Soudal-Quick Step’s Julian Alaphilippe took the final stage four as Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates) won the race overall.
👴 40-year-old Luis Angel Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi) won the fifth stage of the Volta a Portugal.
✍️ Mike Teunissen is on his way back to Visma-Lease a Bike to provide lead-out support for Olav Kooij, Wielerflits reports.
💿 Visma-Lease a Bike Performance Manager Mathieu Heijboer says Wout van Aert’s front disc wheel in the Olympics time trial gave him 17 extra watts.
❄️ Cyclocross will 99.99% be an event at the 2030 Winter Olympics, reports Sporza, although Het Laatste Nieuws say it is not that certain but that talks are ongoing between the UCI and IOC.
😬 A worrying video from the Volta a Portugal where Uruguayan rider Mauricio Moreira collapsed while riding due to sickness. His Sabgal-Anicolor team say he is now doing well after abandoning the race.
🤔 Charlotte Kool (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) is struggling with fitness ahead of the Tour de France Femmes avez Zwift. “We just don’t know what’s going on. It’s complicated, so I can’t say much about it yet,” she says on the website of the race’s Rotterdam Grand Départ.
Paris 2024 Olympic Games Cycling on TV 📺🥇
Tuesday July 30th
BMX Freestyle – Qualification
(07:20-10:30 ET/12:20-15:30 BST/21:20-00:30 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
Wednesday July 31st
BMX Freestyle – Finals
(07:00-10:30 ET/12:00-15:30 BST/21:00-00:30 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
Thursday August 1st
BMX Racing – Quarter Finals and Last Chance Race
(13:50-16:20 ET/18:50-21:20 BST/03:50-06:20 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
Friday August 2nd
BMX Racing – Semi Finals and Finals
(13:50-16:30 ET/18:50-21:30 BST/03:50-06:30 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
😱 Belgian outrage of the week 😱
Maybe it speaks to the outrageously high standards and pressure exerted on Belgian athletes by their public and media, but many people took Belgian journalist Jonas Creteur’s tweet the wrong way, either mistaking ‘ultraprofessional’ as unprofessional, or reading sarcasm into his words.
Of course, it would be par for the course for the Belgian media’s response to their riders taking gold and bronze in the Olympic time trial to be to pick holes in how they conducted themselves in their post-race press conference, but Creteur confirmed he was being deadly serious (as Belgians usually are) and more signalling his delight that Van Aert was taking his recovery and preparation for next weekend’s road race so seriously.
Elsewhere, Van Aert’s latest bronze medal adds to an impressive haul at major championships, although it’s heartbreaking that there’s no gold in there …
And finally …
Athletes make huge sacrifices in their quest for gold medals, although an unexpected additional slice of glory is served up in the form of being congratulated by your yoghurt sponsor.
In more serious Pauline Ferrand-Prévot news, the Frenchwoman is stepping away from mountain biking to turn her aim towards the Tour de France Femmes, with CyclingNews reporting a move from Ineos Grenadiers to Visma-Lease a Bike will provide her the launchpad to compete for a yellow jersey.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“I’ve been at the last three stages [of the Tour de France] with the fam and we’re now catching up on some post-Tour laundry at a campsite in Fréjus,” Pete Carson wrote in last week, attaching today’s featured laundrette image, “which can only mean one thing … enjoy!”
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 Pete Carson 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
Enter your email address to get our unique spin on news from the world of cycling delivered directly to your inbox!
Get our unique spin on news from the world of cycling delivered directly to your inbox!
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