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.
The world keeps turning, somehow, and so today we wave farewell to a legend, a wild Jonas Vingegaard has been spotted in the unlikeliest … actually, likeliest of places, and you’ll never guess what but the UCI seem to be doing weird rule things again Who’d have thought!
A medium-to-large group ride 🇨🇴
We already know the cult fanbase of Colombia’s Rigoberto Úran is something else. Last year he even managed to pull Wout van Aert under his spell, freighting him over to Colombia for his eponymous sportive/music festival and giving him the red carpet treatment which included getting facial treatments and dancing the night away underneath a glittering outdoor marquee.
But this year, in what will be his final Giro del Rigo as a professional rider, the crowds really turned out for it, with 10,000 cyclists joining him out on the road and also gathering inside a football stadium in Medellin where he was presented with the Medalla Categoría Oro by the mayor, the highest award it’s possible for the office to give.
Nice one, Rigo. It’s hard to imagine almost any other cyclist or country turning out in these numbers. Simply crazy.
Orange is the new black? 🍊
There was startled panic this week at the prospect of a monochrome peloton, with a CyclingNews headline titled: “The UCI are taking control of the colours,” where an updated rule change specifies that teams must avoid kits that look like Grand Tour leaders’ jerseys.
We dug out our colour wheels and checked. So, no more yellow, pink, red, green or white jerseys, what’s left? Orange, lime green, black, turquoise?
Or as UAE Team Emirates boss Mauro Gianetti put it: “Eight teams have a blue jersey, there’ll be even more next year…” But blue is also the Giro’s points jersey … argh!
However, a closer reading of the rule change put in place a few months ago seems to put more of an onus on non-Grand Tour stage races to avoid leaders’ jerseys that resemble trade team kits, in order to help officials identify riders to avoid making mistakes in race results and when handing out penalties (important to keep the UCI slush fund healthy).
But the rules are so unclear that surely the likes of Visma-Lease a Bike at the Tour de France and EF Education-EasyPost at the Giro d’Italia will just be able to keep swapping out their yellow and pink jerseys for alternatives for those races?
Maybe this will unleash a new wave of creativity in the peloton. We’re keeping our fingers crossed. If not, orange and black it is! Halloween every day! All year!
Feed Zone 🥖
🇬🇧 Ultra racer Molly Weaver will attempt to set a new record for the fastest circumnavigation of the British coastline by bicycle next June, in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution charity.
🏔️ The Mortirolo will return to the women’s Giro d’Italia after a nine-year absence, Gazzetta dello Sport reports.
💂♀️ Steve Cummings finally announced his departure from Ineos Grenadiers via a LinkedIn post, which we absolutely love. Easily the best LinkedIn post ever, although the competition isn’t exactly high.
Cycling on TV 📺
Saturday November 9th
No live racing …
Sunday November 10th
Tour de France Singapore Criterium
(02:50-05:35 ET/07:50-10:35 GMT/18:50-21:35 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦
Cyclocross
X20 Trofee Lokeren, Rapencross – Elite Women
(07:40-08:45 ET/12:40-13:45 GMT/23:40-00:45 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦, Staylive🇦🇺
X20 Trofee Lokeren, Rapencross – Elite Men
(08:55-10:15 ET/13:55-15:15 GMT/00:55-02:15 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦, Staylive🇦🇺
Monday November 11th
Cyclocross
Superprestige, Niel – Elite Women
(07:35-08:30 ET/12:35-13:30 GMT/23:35-00:30 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦, Staylive🇦🇺
Superprestige, Niel – Elite Men
(09:05-10:30 ET/14:05-15:30 GMT/01:05-02:30 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦, Staylive🇦🇺
💭 It’s good to have hopes and dreams of the week 💭
After being chucked in jail for getting changed in the car park of a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma when he was just trying to do a spot of gravel racing, former Dutch pro Laurens ten Dam has found the only job that feels like it will be more of a pain in the arse: becoming the coach of the Dutch women’s national team.
No-one knows in-fighting like the Dutch, with the most recent World Championships being a real showcase in how to plot your own downfall, and unsurprisingly, correcting this trait is where Ten Dam has said he’ll put his focus.
“I can’t really judge past failures,” Ten Dam told AD. “But it’s clear that I don’t want any bickering. That starts with honesty. We’re going to make very clear agreements about everyone’s role in a race. You have to agree on that.”
Everyone set a reminder to check back in on how this is going next September. Nevertheless, bon courage, Laurens.
And finally …
Jonas Vingegaard likes to lay low during the off-season, but his wish for a quiet life is no match for the power of Facebook mums equipped with phone cameras traipsing around Denmark’s garden centres, where they managed to cajole Jonas into snapping a photo with one of their children and posting it on the social media site before eventually it trickled its way down to us.
To be honest, if you are a multi-millionaire champion cyclist, restricted in the lifestyle you can lead in pursuit of racing glory, a visit to the garden centre is probably fairly high up the list of desirable activities made available to you.
Maybe he picked up a nice ficus for his Bond villain home in central Jutland. Maybe he ate a modest fry-up and chatted to some old ladies on day release from the care home. Okay, look, I have no cultural grounding of what garden centres outside the UK are like so it’s hard to make jokes here! I tried! Sound off in the comments of what garden centres are like in the country YOU’RE from.
PS: what a lovely, and long, very long, coat.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“Late arriving for an extended weekend in Idanha-a-Nova, one of my favorite regions for either road or gravel cycling here in Portugal, I ‘crashed’ into this in the parking lot of the supermarket where we stopped for provisions,” writes Pedro Ribeiro da Cunha, attaching today’s featured laundry machine. “Some open doors and all! Note that self-service laundries are not that common yet (if not basically nonexistent until a few years ago) in Portugal, and this is as remote a region as you can get here. I Had to take a pic to send you of course …”
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 Pedro Ribeiro da Cunha, Suvi Loponen and Kit Nicholson 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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Spin Cycle
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