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.
Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle, Escape Collective’s news digest.
After the welcome barrage of stage racing last week we are now left bereft. It feels like when you come to the end of a great TV series and then struggle to find something to fill the void. In hindsight, why did we have three concurrently running stage races last week and then zero this week? Where is the sense in that? Guess we'll have to wait for O Gran Camiño, not to be confused with an imagined Christmas album from The Black Keys, on Wednesday.
Until then, we've got a bit of cleaning up to do from the Middle Eastern races, and cycling industry PRs are "circling back" on their BS once again. Oh, and we have news from the world of Peter Sagan.
When I finally win the lottery there will be signs 🎰
There's been a lot of chat about billionaires recently on the podcast and in the newsletter. So today let's change it up a bit, let's talk about, well, if not quite trillionaires, then at least Billionaires with a very capital 'B'.
On stage 5 of the UAE Tour, the road parallel to the race route was closed so a VIP, presumably a sheik, could watch the race live with his own eyes for more than the usual few seconds afforded to fans as the peloton zooms past.
If you are someone worth hundreds of billions, this is certainly the way to spend your money. Just saying.
In other scenes emerging from the Middle East's month of bike racing, this fairly heartwarming video posted last week shows riders chucking a multitude of bidons at the feet of two kids by the side of the road at the recent Tour of Oman.
Let's not look into the fact that this likely signifies the lack of fans along the rest of the route, with the riders desperate to dispense with their bottles as they climb and needing a fan, or child, to aim at so as not to get fined for littering. Really, this is quite a funny quirk of bike racing. So long, Middle Eastern races, see you next year!
Fake leaks🚰
Spotting unreleased products in-race is all part of the game for our colleagues who cover bike tech, pouring over race footage to spot new ... bikes, wheels, socks (probably) ... you get the picture.
But while some teams and brands take leaks more seriously than others (like the iconic road.cc video uncovering a new Pinarello on top of an Ineos car), it appears some PRs have become sentient and are now trying to plant fake leaks to get the unreleased products of the brands they represent into the public eye.
It's one thing to put a new piece of kit out there in a race and hope a keen-eyed reporter spots it. But it's another thing to email journalists with the subject line "LEAKED IMAGE" of a rider and saying "there may or may not be unreleased product in this picture!", before following that up with "any comment regarding what you can see in the image from the [BRAND] is: 'An official announcement will follow soon'."
Props, we guess, to the PR for trying to subvert the unreleased-product-spotting-industrial-complex, but come on, don't take the fun out of both leaks and unreleased tech! It's one of the only things we have left!
Feed Zone 🥖
🤕 Chris Froome suffered a broken collarbone in a crash during the opening 10 kilometres of Sunday's stage 7 of the UAE Tour. "A CT scan confirmed a fracture to the right clavicle. Chris will be examined tomorrow [Monday] by an orthopedic surgeon to find out if an operation will be necessary to stabilise his fracture," his Israel-Premier Tech team said.
🏁 The race is on to see which active rider can reach 100 victories first: Alexander Kristoff (97), Arnaud Démare (97), Tadej Pogačar (91), Elia Viviani (89), Primož Roglič (88). Can anyone beat Pogačar to it?
🤷♂️ Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) received his second yellow card of the season after deviating in the sprint of the UAE Tour's stage six. His first yellow card (at the Tour Down Under) was more than 30 days ago (by only one day!) so he does not receive a 14-day suspension. If he keeps it up the Dutchman could be in line for a 30-day suspension for six yellow cards within a 365-day period.
👨⚕️ Eli Iserbyt has undergone a successful operation for a narrowed femoral artery.
🌞 Pavel Sivakov won the Ruta del Sol overall, with Clément Berthet (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) second, 23 seconds back, and Q36.5's Tom Pidcock in third a further three seconds in arrears.
🇵🇹 Jonas Vingegaard won the final day time trial at the Volta ao Algarve to take the overall victory by 15 seconds over UAE Team Emirates' João Almeida with Visma-Lease a Bike teammate Wout van Aert finishing second in the TT.
👋 With the end of the cyclocross season coming at Sluitingsprijs Oostmalle on Sunday, Sanne Cant raced the final race of her career and finished in fourth place, out-sprinted for third by Hélène Clauzel and the victory taken by Lucinda Brand.
😮 Only six days post-collarbone break, Egan Bernal is apparently not just back on his bike, but climbed the Col d'Èze (on the same the Tour des Alpes-Maritimes also went over the climb too).
🇦🇪 UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Tadej Pogačar won the UAE Tour at a canter this weekend just gone, presumably to the delight of the United Arab Emirates.
Worst picnic ever 🥗
A meal posted on Instagram by Picnic-PostNL's Oscar Onley with no extra details concerning when, where or why he would eat such an abomination. It's like if you asked an AI-image generator to dream up a delicious meal. Does the slight (very slight) artistry of the ketchup on top make it better or worse? We're not sure, to be honest. Top five finishes overall at the Tour Down Under and UAE Tour suggest it's working for him, though.
Cycling on TV 📺
Tuesday February 25th
No live racing ...
Wednesday February 26th
O Gran Camiño - Stage 1
(10:30-12:15 ET/15:30-17:15 GMT/02:30-04:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes
Thursday February 27th
O Gran Camiño - Stage 2
(10:30-12:15 ET/15:30-17:15 GMT/02:30-04:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes
Friday February 28th
O Gran Camiño - Stage 3 (ITT)
(10:30-12:15 ET/15:30-17:15 GMT/02:30-04:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes
🤝 Yay team friendship of the week 🤝
Sometimes, when you zoom in on a bike race, you realise that the teams and riders all blur into one and most are just trying to get through to the next day while lending a helping hand to anyone who needs it.
Witness here the Ineos Grenadiers car realising there isn't a Lidl-Trek car behind them to support a dropped Daan Hoole so they give him a bottle as he makes his way up Jebel Hafeet at the UAE Tour.
Now, at first glance, we thought that it was a Movistar bottle being handed out (bottles often get swapped and jumbled up between teams, who will then have an amnesty at the end of a race) to only further increase the levels of friendship on display.
But no, it's a Maurtens logo. Wonder if there's been any beef yet between the two big Ms of the peloton yet over how similar they look. Anyway, this was a nice moment showing bike racing as a co-operative human endeavour rather than a cutthroat winner-takes-all sporting contest.
And finally ...
This is your official one-week warning that Peter Sagan will be competing in Let's Dance Slovakia beginning this Saturday March 2nd (we will aim to have it listed in Cycling on TV in Friday's edition).
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
"Here are some pics from one of my local laundries - Laundry HQ in Hornsby, a suburb of Sydney, Australia," writes in Gareth Davidson, attaching today's featured laundromat. "It’s only a block or two away from the major thoroughfare for those heading north on many of the best rides in and around Sydney."
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 Gareth Davidson and Caley Fretz 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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