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Spin Cycle: Put your hands up for Guangxi

Plus, cyclists with legal contraband?

Jonny Long
by Jonny Long 11.10.2024 Photography by
Allen Pritchard, Ingar Johansen, Cor Vos More from Jonny +

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.

The majority of the road racing season is over – which isn’t bad to be honest, as it gives us time and space to delve into the weirder corners of the cycling world.

This week, for instance, we’ve got Visma-Lease a Bike riders telling us how they really feel in Chinese, a teeny tiny phone, an uncomfortable delivery to a WorldTour HQ, and a top plan on how to beat Tadej Pogačar in 2025.

Put your hands up for Guangxi 🙌

Yep, it’s that time of year again where a selection of the riders and staff get what is sometimes uncharitably called “The Punishment Tour.” Real name: the Tour of Guangxi.

Now, the Chinese stage race is actually a delight. Friendly people, interesting places, something a little bit different to European road racing. However, if you’re a rider, sports director or soigneur who’s basically been on the road since February (or January!), the last thing you need is a week-long trip to China.

Therefore, with some exceptions of course, teams will usually send riders low down on the food chain or who are leaving the team altogether at the end of the season, as there is no longer any point keeping them sweet.

Visma-Lease a Bike’s 22-year-old Norwegian Johannes Staune-Mittet falls into this camp, having signed a three-year deal with Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale.

His latest training ride was captioned in simplified Chinese: “Oh god, this is happening,” having presumably heard the news he’s Guangxi-bound.

Johannes is well worth a follow on Strava for his ride names, which include: “Oh god I love a warm bath on the bike” and “Hello, I feel bad.”

What’s that legal contraband you’ve got there? ☎️

You’ll remember Brit Matthew Holmes from his 2020 Tour Down Under stage win, beating Richie Porte on Willunga Hill, but since leaving Lotto-Dstny and the WorldTour at the end of 2022, he “got a real job for four days” and then did odd bits and bobs until becoming a privateer (read more on his past couple of years in Cycling Weekly).

This meant he was on the start line for the UCI Gravel World Championships, holding a peculiar and minuscule object.

“My phone is a massive Google Pixel 7 Pro,” he explained to Bike Radar, “and you can’t really start these races without a phone so I went on Amazon and bought the world’s smallest telephone.

“It functions really well,” he continued. “It’s basically made for smuggling into prison and it comes with a built-in voice changer so you can sound like Optimus Prime on the telephone.”

First of all, Matthew Holmes is probably the youngest person alive who is still using the world “telephone.” Secondly, we kind of want one?

Feed Zone 🥖

🍂 The route of Il Lombardia may have to be changed due to landslides along the course, reports Cicloweb.

👴 Bauke Mollema (37) and Domenico Pozzovivo (41) will race their sixteenth Lombardias on Saturday, tying the record for most appearances with Davide Rebellin.

🇩🇰 Kasper Asgreen’s transfer to EF Education-EasyPost has been confirmed, and we’re ready to crown it the 2024/25 Transfer That Feels The Most Right.

🇳🇱 Bizarre things are going on at the Simac Ladies Tour, where Zoe Bäckstedt held the race lead while being the only member of her Canyon-SRAM team still in the race after illness and injury forced the abandon of her teammates. The weirdest ailment is Chloe Dygert breaking her nose running into a door. Our Abby Mickey has more on the story here.

🏆 EF’s Neilson Powless won Thursday’s Gran Piemonte with a 42 km solo attack, finishing seven seconds ahead of the peloton where Corbin Strong (Israel-Premier Tech) beat Alex Aranburu (Movistar) in the sprint for second.

🔀 Having not had a fun year with Movistar, where he’s apparently struggled with the language barrier, Rémi Cavagna is on his way to Groupama-FDJ, reports AS.

Friday Vibes 🥳

Our Friday vibes this week come courtesy of Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Mauric Ballerstedt taking his sausage dog out on a ride with him.

Don’t worry, be happy 😁

Lael Wilcox’s recent Around The World record was impressive enough, but then she released this montage of the photos her wife Rue had taken every day of the attempt.

The fact she had the energy and positivity to smile every single day for 108 days while riding an average of 270 km is remarkable.

Cycling on TV 📺

Saturday October 12th

Il Lombardia
(04:25-11:20 ET/09:25-16:20 BST/19:25-21:20 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, Staylive🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦

Simac Ladies Tour – Stage 5
(10:00-11:40 ET/15:00-16:40 BST/01:00-02:40 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧

Cyclocross

Exact Cross, Beringen – Women
(10:10-11:25 ET/15:10-16:25 BST/01:10-02:25 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, Staylive🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦

Exact Cross, Beringen – Men
(11:25-12:50 ET/16:25-17:50 BST/02:25-03:50 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Max🇺🇸, Staylive🇦🇺, FloBikes🇨🇦

Sunday October 13th

Simac Ladies Tour – Stage 6
(10:00-11:40 ET/15:00-16:40 BST/01:00-02:40 AEDT) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧

Monday October 14th

No live racing …

😱 Delicate sponsorship position of the week 😱

When Visma-Lease a Bike media man Ingar Johansen spotted a leak in the Visma HQ ceiling, he would never have dreamed he’d be faced with the choice of either keeping dry or being a traitor to his WorldTour team when a batch of Soudal sealants was dropped off as a solution.

“Not sure how to handle this …” he tweeted, before a Visma colleague asked him the important question: “Remco inside …?”

“I will listen for breathing …” Johansen assured him. I mean, Remco Evenepoel is aero, but we don’t think even he could squeeze himself inside this little box. Maybe the merger’s back on?

And finally …

As Wednesday’s Tre Valli Varesine was rained off in dismal conditions, La Flamme Rouge correctly pointed out that the weather was only the third person or thing to have bested Tadej Pogačar in a one-day race this season.

For Saturday’s Il Lombardia, where Pogačar will be looking to cap off a remarkable season, the bookies have him at a ridiculous 1/5 (-500 for the Americans), which is frankly slightly insane for a one-day race where anything could happen, while Remco Evenepoel and Tom Pidcock are at a comparatively massive 17/1 (+1700).

Many in the sport will spend the winter trying to come up with ways to beat Pogačar, particularly Visma-Lease a Bike. The good news is their coach Patrick Broe has come up with one solution: “I’ve been going to church a lot more.”

Corrections corner 🍖

I may have received even more emails this week than usually fill our fearless leader Caley Fretz’s inbox after omitting the fact Mathieu van der Poel is the current cyclocross world champion and therefore wasn’t rainbow jersey-less in between the Road and Gravel World Championships. Safe to say, I will never probably forget again.

Similarly, someone else pointed out that mortadella isn’t actually ham, but, according to Wikipedia, “large salume made of finely hashed or ground cured pork.” Love some salume, me.

🧺 Send us yer laundry pics

“Not for guest laundry at a guest house in Kinsale, Ireland,” writes in Allen Pritchard, describing the laundry photo he attached. “Sign doesn’t say ‘please don’t open the doors'”.

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 Allen Pritchard, Joe Lindsey 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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