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Welcome back to Spin Cycle! Escape Collective’s news digest.
Maybe we’ve been influenced too heavily by the video footage contained in the first story below, but today’s newsletter has taken on a distinct ‘guys being dudes’ vibe.
To be clear, anyone can be ‘a guy’ or ‘a dude’, and anyone can take part in the slightly ignoble yet broad pasttime of ‘guys being dudes’. We’re talking play fighting at an age where you are deemed responsible enough to vote and drive a car. We’re talking being awestruck by heavy-duty machinery in action. We’re talking puerile innuendo.
Maybe it’s a blip, we’re getting far too old for this nonsense. But once in a while it’s okay to re-live the glory days right? Around this time of year it’s easy to reminisce of days gone by, simpler times where, just like Sepp Kuss, you would proudly wile away many an evening building beer towers.
Sepp-tember’s not over just yet!
Dropping into our inbox this week was the Instagram story of mountain biker Payson McElveen, featuring some archive video footage of Sepp Kuss during what can only be discerned as the glory days of his college education.
What follows is a familiar scene to all boneheaded males during their higher education years. Why read book when can play fight with friend on floor after 13 beers?
It’s a good question and one that so far is without an adequate answer.
But wait, that’s not Sepp on the floor rolling around. He’s sitting on the sofa behind. What’s he doing?
While his friends practice their best WWE moves in a real bro-down throwdown, Kuss, with his gentle manner, is staying well out of the action and passing the time with some arts and crafts, stacking the empty beer cans him and the fellas have crushed into a beery pyramid, a beeramid.
After the last one is placed, Kuss gestures towards his creation, unaware that anyone is watching but clearly very pleased with himself following a job well done.
Poetically, this video can also be interpreted as: Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard fight over team leadership while Sepp Kuss minds his own business and comes away with the true prize.
We can add this latest discovery to the ever-growing folder of evidence that Sepp Kuss is, as his college pals no doubt would say, one of the most chillest dudes ever.
In fact, the only evidence we’ve found of an unsettled Sepp is this photo of a young Kuss from our Joe Lindsey’s Bicycling feature from a couple of years ago. We can only assume that his disdainful expression is due to being dressed in Lederhosen, although we imagine these days if they came in a bigger size and with a ticket to Munich’s Oktoberfest, he’d look considerably happier!
Alternatively, he may wish to lean into his Germanic heritage a bit more if only to put some extra distance between himself and his congressional representative Lauren Boebert, who will have hoped a Vuelta win for her state of Colorado may have distracted from what has been quite a crazy past couple of weeks for her (to put it lightly, and even by Boebert standards).
Amster-dam that’s a lot of canal bikes
Usually, the images of bike-friendly Dutch capital Amsterdam is of beautiful and tall men and women cavorting around idyllic European neighbourhoods on upright bicycles just having wonderful lives. It makes you (if you, like me, don’t live somewhere beautiful and continental European) ponder the possible life you could have. Where bikes are part of everyday culture and everyone is seemingly happy all the time.
It’s good to know, thanks to the below video of a multitude of bikes being dredged out of an Amsterdam canal, that maybe everything isn’t what it seems. Maybe their lives are just as flawed as ours. The grass is always greener (particularly in Amsterdam) .
On the other hand, while it is a terrible, polluting waste that all those bikes have been carelessly chucked into a canal, I am also glad that a video exists of them being fished out by a magnetic crane? It’s mesmerising, could watch it for hours.
Whoever does PR for Castelli is going straight to Cast-hell-i
Maybe this slang is too British/Scottish and niche for it to have been picked up by whoever is doing the marketing over at Castelli, and although we’re not that technically intelligent here at Spin Cycle, we do know with 100% certainty that we do not want to be wearing a jacksey to keep us warm (Google it).
Feed Zone ?
? Alexander Edmondson and Tim Naberman have renewed their contracts with dsm-Firmenich.
?? Italian sprinter Niccolò Bonifazio will swap Intermatché-Circus-Wanty for Team Corratec next season.
?? Remco Evenepoel and his wife Oumi Rayane have launched a campaign to help Morocco in the aftermath of the recent earthquake. It’s raised over €34,000 at the time of writing and you can find their donation page here.
? Yves Lampaert has confirmed Tim Declerq will be leaving Soudal Quick-Step at the end of the season, with Het Laatste Nieuws reporting he’s heading over to Lidl-Trek (who isn’t). “I’m going to miss Tim tremendously,” Lampert said. We’re not crying, you are.
? Intermarché-Circus-Wanty have been reprimanded by the UCI for paying wages late over the past few months. CEO Jean-François Bourlart has told Het Laatste Nieuws there aren’t any big problems and it was simply due to the late arrival of sponsorship money. Maybe he could sell one of his first names to make the numbers add up.
? Both Jonas Vingegaard and Sepp Kuss are finished with racing for 2023 (as reported by TV2 Sport and Wielerflits, respectively).
? Il Lombardia is already looking tasty, with Primož Roglič telling RTV SLO he will be there competing against both Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel.
☝️ Wilco Kelderman rode basically the whole Vuelta a España with a broken finger following his crash on stage 4, Wieleflits found out.
? Cofidis’ Wesley Kreder, who suffered a cardiac arrest three weeks ago, is back riding outdoors again.
? Lucinda Brand’s collarbone injury from her crash at the Simac Ladies Tour means she will miss the start of the cyclocross season.
?? Caleb Ewan was supposed to start the Omloop van het Houtland but didn’t due to a wrist injury.
?? Another promising Brit, 19-year-old Lukas Nerurkar, has signed for EF Education-EasyPost.
? Thibaut Pinot, in his last-ever stage race, and David Gaudu both had to abandon the opening stage of the Tour de Luxembourg due to illness.
? Flanders Classics (the company that organises the Tour of Flanders, amongst other races) will take over the organisation of the Amstel Gold Race.
?? A nice piece here from GCN on AJ August, a 17-year-old American talent who’s been linked with Ineos Grenadiers.
? A bit of drama over in Italy. The three-day Adriatica Ionica Race will not take place after being cancelled 24 hours before the scheduled start. Most of the teams had already arrived before the plug was pulled because of various issues. There were problems with the traffic technical guidance and the UCI jury didn’t turn up, apparently due to some political beef between the sport’s governing body and the Italian federation, according to Tuttobiciweb.
Cycling on TV ?
Saturday September 23rd
UEC European Road Championships – Elite Women’s Road Race
GCN+ (07:45-11:15 ET/12:45-16:15 BST/21:45-01:15 AEST)
Le Tour de Langkawi – Stage 1
GCN+ (02:15-03:45 ET/07:15-08:45 BST/16:15-17:45 AEST)
Skoda Tour de Luxembourg – Stage 4
GCN+ (10:15-12:00 ET/15:15-17:00 BST/00:15-02:00 AEST)
Cyclocross
USCX Rochester, UCI C1 – Elite Women Day 1
GCN+ (14:30-15:42 ET/19:30-20:42 BST/04:30-05:42 AEST)
USCX Rochester, UCI C1 – Elite Men Day 1
GCN+ (15:42-17:00 ET/20:42-22:00 BST/05:42-07:00 AEST)
Sunday September 24th
UEC European Road Championships – Elite Men’s Road Race
GCN+ (06:15-11:15 ET/11:15-16:15 BST/20:15-01:15 AEST)
Le Tour de Langkawi – Stage 2
GCN+ (01:15-02:45 ET/06:15-07:45 BST/15:15-16:45 AEST)
Skoda Tour de Luxembourg – Stage 5
GCN+ (07:00-09:15 ET/12:00-14:15 BST/21:00-23:15 AEST)
Cyclocross
USCX Rochester, UCI C1 – Elite Women Day 2
GCN+ (14:30-15:42 ET/19:30-20:42 BST/04:30-05:42 AEST)
USCX Rochester, UCI C1 – Elite Men Day 2
GCN+ (15:42-17:00 ET/20:42-22:00 BST/05:42-07:00 AEST)
Monday September 25th
Le Tour de Langkawi – Stage 3
GCN+ (01:30-03:00 ET/06:30-08:00 BST/15:30-17:00 AEST)
? Probably best to know the age of your new signing of the week ?
Big shoutout to FDJ-Suez, who presumably thought that because they’ve only signed one third of promising Dutchwoman Lauren Molengraaf, they only had to get her name and the fact she was signing with them correct while getting her age wrong.
If it was only FDJ-Suez she was signing with (she will also race cyclocross with Intermarché-Circus-Wanty and mountain bike with Lapierre-Mavic Unity), then no-one would probably have even noticed, but when you have other press releases to compare against, it’s pretty easy to spot the errors.
And finally …
While the whole Jumbo-Visma Vuelta meltdown may have been blown out of proportion despite also being very real, the one angle we are not prepared to give up on is the ‘Richard Plugge hates beers’ narrative. Sure, we can’t imagine the disgust he holds for alcohol captured during an interview he gave at the Tour can actually be how he truly feels, right? Either way, it hasn’t stopped us and other little shits on the internet from making a big deal every time a Jumbo-Visma rider sinks a bottle of fizz on a podium or even goes near an off-licence.
But then this screenshot popped up from the Vuelta stage 21 coverage and WOULD YOU JUST LOOK at the complete contempt the team boss has on his face while Roglič proudly displays his can for the camera.
Primes (for helpful members) ?
A big thank you to Albert Kottke, Phil Long and Caleb Hayter for passing on stories that featured in today’s edition. We’re always on the look out for the weird and the wonderful so please feel free to get in touch. The fun news is it’s now easier than ever, as you can not only email [email protected] but also [email protected] if you have a natural disposition for typos or generally disagree with how my name is spelled. How novel.
? Send us yer laundry pics ?
“Here’s a nice shiny launderette in Bangkok to perpetuate the Spin Cycle,” writes Olivier Roux, who contributed today’s laundromat photo. Thanks!
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 …
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