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.
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Welcome back to Spin Cycle,
Well, it's hard to ask for a better weekend of bike racing than that, really. An instant classic. Can we have Milan-San Remo every week? We don't think we'd get bored of it.
We now live in a brave new world of successful Cipressa attacks. Anything is possible.
The best 15 minutes of bike racing in the season? Make that the best 30 minutes 💥
Saturday was a day of bike racing that will live long in the memory. Of course, the only thing better than one Poggio finish of Milan-San Remo is two, and the first double Poggio day in a few decades absolutely delivered, with Lorena Wiebes and Mathieu van der Poel winning thrilling editions.
The men's race potentially saw a new era of Milan-San Remo take form, with Tadej Pogačar successfully ripping the race apart to form a winning move (for the group he took away at least) on the Cipressa for the first time since 1996. By the way, Pogačar's Strava shows he reached a maximum speed of 50 km/h during that Cipressa attack. What even.
While Van der Poel survived Pogačar's attacks (and Ganna did the pacing of the season to hang on in contention until the very end), the Slovenian's team boss Mauro Gianetti questioned the barrage of motorcycles in front of his rider on the Poggio, which may have thwarted his progress.
"Pogacar had a 3-5 meter advantage on the Poggio at one point, but after a turn, he encountered a motorcycle in front of him," Gianetti told Bicisport afterwards. "Maybe that moment could have had some moral impact, but I think Van der Poel showed he was truly strong."
So strong was Van der Poel that he even managed to pick up a bottle during one of Pogačar's attacks, which maybe provides Gianetti with an answer too.
Regardless, it was a weekend that showed what bike racing is all about.
And while Pogačar was eventually all smiles on the podium, this photo will provide some bulletin board material for him until the next Classicissima.
🤢 New and vile performance booster of the week 🤢
We're all about the weird and not-so-wonderful things riders chuck down their gullets in pursuit of better performance.
Remember Remco Evenepoel's pre-TT meal of a jam (specifically raspberry), honey, and banana sandwich; some slices of chicken fillet; and half a litre of Fanta concoction, all slushing around in his stomach as he pedals really fast?
Well, Mads Pedersen has found the perfect thing for when you're a bigger boy and need to get up and over mountains a bit quicker.
On days when he needs good climbing legs, such as at the recent Paris-Nice where he floated over gradients with more grace than one would expect of a rider his size, Pedersen pours the following into his bidon:
"A cocktail of broccoli, sodium bicarbonate and the energy drink Monster," he said on his Lang Distance podcast, a drink he calls a 'Monner'.
"Every day during Paris-Nice I drank a Monster. That is, during the race. Just a 'Monner' in the can with three hours left. Just like that."
The broccoli comes in concentrated form in the supplement 'Nomio' and is said to help lower the lactate level in the blood.
Regardless, pray for whoever Pedersen shares a hotel room with at bike races.
Feed Zone 🥖
🛞 The Unicycle Everesting record we reported on back in November has been broken. Ben Soja set a time of 14 hours and 30 minutes to beat Mason Allen's previous best time of 21 hours and nine minutes. "I will be back," Allen posted on Instagram in response.
👑 Puck Pieterse has the new Poggio QOM, setting a time of 6 minutes and 44 seconds to smash the previous, eight-year-old record set by Ilaria Sanguineti in 2017. Correction: Demi Vollering has since uploaded her Strava file and climbed the Poggio in 6:42.
🙅♂️ Pauline Férrand-Prevot (Visma-Lease a Bike) was demoted and received a yellow card for deviating from her line in the San Remo sprint and impeding EF Education-Oatly's Noemi Rüegg. She was therefore relegated from fourth to 12th place.
🤯 The 30-year Cipressa record has been broken after Pogačar, Van der Poel and Ganna climbed it in 8:45 on Saturday, beating the 1996 time from Alexandre Gotchenkov and Gabriele Colombo of 9:17.
🍼 Maxim Van Gils (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) was given a yellow card, fined 500 CHF and docked 25 UCI points for 'throwing away a bidon in a dangerous manner'. Puzzlingly, the UCI rules dictate a yellow card can only be given for a second infraction of this offence.
💸 Demi Vollering has criticised the fact the women's Milan-San Remo prize money was only 11% of what was on offer for the men's race. "Now none of us start here for the prize money, but when we talk about equal opportunities, we really want to get them," Vollering told Eurosport. "That is also in small things, like the prize money. It does show that we are not there yet. There is still a lot of work to be done."
🤔 The UCI and Warner Bros. Discovery have issued a statement to say the Track Champions League was held for the final time in 2024 and going forward the Track Nations Cup will instead be revitalised from 2026 and rebranded as the Track World Cup, which it had previously been called in 2021 before the rebranding to 'Nations'.
Hot seat: Is Milan-San Remo exciting yet?
We love the concept behind ismilansanremoexcitingyet.com, a website that flickers to answer 'yes' for a few of the half a million minutes contained within each year when the action finally gets going at the first Monument of the season.
We imagine whoever is behind the website just flicks it over manually, and the whole process isn't automated or anything, in which case there was a bit of an oversight on Saturday, when the website failed to flick over to 'yes' when the women's race hit the Poggio three hours before the men followed suit.
Cycling on TV 📺
Tuesday March 25th
Volta Ciclista a Catalunya - Stage 2
(10:15-12:15 ET/14:15-16:15 GMT/01:15-03:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
Wednesday March 26th
Classic Brugge de Panne - Men
(10:00-12:30 ET/14:00-16:30 GMT/01:00-03:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Volta Ciclista a Catalunya - Stage 3
(10:15-12:15 ET/14:15-16:15 GMT/01:15-03:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
Thursday March 27th
Classic Brugge de Panne - Women
(10:00-12:30 ET/14:00-16:30 GMT/01:00-03:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Volta Ciclista a Catalunya - Stage 4
(10:15-12:15 ET/14:15-16:15 GMT/01:15-03:15 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
Friday March 28th
E3 Saxo Classic
(08:00-13:00 ET/13:00-17:00 GMT/00:00-04:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Volta Ciclista a Catalunya - Stage 5
(09:15-11:00 ET/13:15-15:00 GMT/00:15-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺SBS
Marc Madiot is no longer invited to the 2027 Tour de France Grand Départ ... 🇬🇧
You'd never have guessed it, but it turns out Groupama-FDJ boss and one of the Frenchest Frenchman ever Marc Madiot isn't so keen on the Tour de France Grand Départ being hosted outside of France so often!
"Starting from abroad from time to time seems normal and economically essential to me. But for it to become so recurrent seems far too much," he told radio station RMC over the weekend.
"The event is called the Tour de France! I know it's not always easy to get the financial compensation we hope for in each edition. But I think we have to be reasonable and not just look at the financial side. We need to have a Tour de France in France. If we continue like this, we'll soon be doing half of the Tour de France abroad ..."
Thankfully, former pro Jérôme Pineau was on hand to offer some context and balance.
"The real problem is the economic and political will to host the Tour in France. In France, we no longer want to host major events like this because they are very expensive."
Some additional context: sure, once we get to 2027 we'll have had five of the last seven men's Tours starting outside France, but what about the ratio during Madiot's nine Tour appearances between 1982-1992? Well, four of those started abroad.
And what's more is that the mid-eighties saw a return to the old way of doing things with three starts in four years from the Île-de-France region, and surely repetition is a graver crime than going to fun, bordering locations to show off the Tour to the world? He'll change his mind when he sets foot in a Greggs for the first time in 2027 ...
And finally ...
Someone needs to tell Intermarché-Wanty about the concept of manifesting, or recommend them some pseudo-intellectual self-help podcast. Anything to stop this sort of subconscious self-doubt. Come on fellas!
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
"Currently doing some bikepacking in Taiwan - fabulous riding!" writes in John Catalano, attaching today's featured laundromat.
"Yesterday we rode from Hsinchu - home of TSMC - (Taiwan’s trump against Trump) to Nanzhuang where I noticed this laundromat opposite where we were buying some delicious buns for breakfast. Our route today to Taichung (home of Giant) coincided with stage three of the Tour de Taiwan."
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 John Catalano, Ronan McLaughlin and Dane Cash 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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