Spin Cycle is Escape Collective’s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on the website (obviously) or click here to have it delivered straight to your inbox.
Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle.
Today we've got some antics from the Giro, ASO getting stuck in to the Paul Seixas hype, and a wonderful prologue at the Tour of Estonia. Never imagined we'd get to write that last one.
Oh, and Jim Ratcliffe has done a complete about-face and turns out he and his management team are reasonable, nice guys. Just kidding, they're apparently locking up a sailor in his office and threatening to burn his house down.
Ratcliffe's scorched earth policy 🔥
It's official. Dave Brailsford is back at Netcompany-Ineos as Team Principal. Mr. Maximal Gains himself, the now-former CEO John Allert, is getting the hell out of there after securing the new co-title sponsor to keep things afloat and ensure the British team remains in the chase for fourth or fifth overall at Grand Tours.
Speaking of floating things, Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe has been in court this week as he attempts to force British sailor Ben Ainslie to hand over the "£180m boat" the pair built together for the most recent America's Cup.
The pair fell out publicly in early 2025, at a time when Ratcliffe was also squabbling with both the Mercedes F1 and the New Zealand rugby team that he was funding.
But the revelations in the America's Cup court filings, published by the Telegraph, reach a new level, with Ainslie claiming that the chief executive and chairman of Ineos Sport, Jean-Claude Blanc and Rob Nevin, told him that Ratcliffe would "burn your house down" unless Ainslie turned over the team's assets and intellectual property.
"We have a phrase at Ineos: ‘scorched earth’," Ainslie says Nevin told him. "It means that if you don’t give Jim what he wants, he will burn your house down."
In response, Ainslie reminded Nevin that at the time of this conversation, back in November 2024, the sailor was hours away from competing in the first race of the America's Cup in Barcelona. Therefore, this probably wasn't the best time for a chinwag of this nature. Nevin is said to have then expanded on this sentiment, saying that "the only instance in which Sir Jim had backed down from a dispute was one concerning the state of the People’s Republic of China."
Charming. Oh, and then a few months later in January 2025, Ainslie and his colleagues apparently found themselves locked inside their Northampton office by an Ineos employee and two security contractors with chains and padlocks who had also fixed 'No Entry' signs to the outside of the building. Ainslie and his colleagues managed to escape via a fire exit.
Good vibes only on the good ship Ineos!
Nature is healing at the women's Giro 💆♀️
While Anna van der Breggen stormed into pink and declared she feels better than before her mini-retirement (alright, boasting), we couldn't help but notice a couple of roadside fan moments that warmed our hearts.
Firstly, this man who picked up Marlen Reusser's politely discarded sunglasses and handed them back to the car instead of pocketing them himself. In a world of kids at bike races screaming incessantly for bidons, this man is a much-needed breath of fresh air.
Not to say we're against the subversive indoctrination of the next generation into bike racing via collecting bits of plastic, but sometimes they do bite off a bit more than they can chew.
Did we do a good job with this story?
