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.
Racing is back and everything is all good in the world again (well, at least in the cycling world).
Yellow cards are providing a new source of drama, something for which we are always grateful, while riders are publicly disagreeing with team orders, or looking like they’re being held at gunpoint to produce social media content. This is all part of the daily sustenance that keeps the lights on around here. Dig in, get yourself calibrated for the season ahead.
Tactical yellows 🙅♂️
Men’s road racing is up and running once again, with Sam Welsford dominating the opening two sprints of the race … with a little help from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Danny van Poppel blocking off Tobias Lund Andresen (Picnic-PostNL).
Van Poppel was not only fined 500 Swiss Francs, relegated from 8th to 118th on the stage and stripped of the mountains and sprint points he’d accrued that day, but was also handed one of the first post-trial period yellow cards.
We have a reminder of how the yellow card system works below, and with only one sprint stage still to come, Van Poppel could pull the same maneuver on the final flat day in Adelaide and serve his seven-day suspension in time for him to line up for his next scheduled race at the UAE Tour in mid-February.
At almost the first test following last season’s trial phase, riders have found wiggle room around the yellow card system. This isn’t to say it won’t work, or it won’t act as a preventative measure, but here it’s done nothing to prevent a dangerous and illegal move that also could have altered the outcome of a race.
Collector’s item: a rider who doesn’t want to ride the Tour de France 🤔
A small crumb of drama coming unexpectedly out of Lidl-Trek this week, as Mattias Skjelmose publicly disagrees with the team’s decision to send him to the Tour de France this summer.
For many riders it’s a dream to ride the Tour, but Skjelmose is in the privileged position of being so talented he knows it’s inevitable he will go to the Tour again in his career, but would rather build from his 5th place overall at last year’s Vuelta with a Giro d’Italia tilt this May. Where, conveniently, neither Tadej Pogačar or Jonas Vingegaard will be.
“It’s been a bit of a strange conversation because I really wanted to ride the Giro, but the team insisted that I ride the Tour,” Skjelmose told TV2.
“After the Vuelta, I saw that the Giro was the most natural step in terms of developing myself as a general classification rider. I personally don’t think I’m quite ready for the Tour yet and to perform in a general classification context in the Tour,” he explained. “That’s why I thought the Giro would be a better place to take a further step compared to what we have done now.”
For Lidl-Trek, Skjelmose is probably their best GC rider (Tao Geoghegan Hart comeback loading), and they will have pressure from sponsors to be visible in the high mountains, at the very least in the chase group behind Vingegaard and Pogačar. Similarly, Jonathan Milan will also head to the Tour this summer for the first time, as one of the peloton’s fastest sprinters, taking Mads Pedersen’s place.
Feed Zone 🥖
3️⃣6️⃣5️⃣ “There were a lot of teams that are plug and play that were an option,” Tom Pidcock told Eurosport about how he made his choice to move to ProTeam Q36.5. “This team will provide what I enjoy, the basics, small team stuff gets done quickly. Everyone can talk to everyone, they care about everyone the same way, which is really nice.”
😞 Having broken his collarbone at the Dauphiné before fracturing his hip at the Vuelta, Dylan van Baarle has suffered another broken collarbone in a crash during the first stage of the Tour Down Under.
💂♀️ Caleb Ewan has signed for the Ineos Grenadiers. More on this story here.
🇦🇺 Thomas De Gendt has told Het Nieuwsblad that riders are increasingly turning down the Tour Down Under. “The preparation for the classics and even the Giro is being planned out more and more meticulously. A trip to Australia no longer fits into that. Not surprising. You have to bridge a time difference of nine hours or more twice. That in itself is already a strain on your body. With the recovery you quickly reach seven to eight days on which you cannot continue training. Who can afford that anymore?”
🇫🇷 Arkéa-B&B Hotels boss Emmanuel Hubert is currently negotiating with his team’s sponsors to continue backing the team into the future and ensure they remain in the peloton. “At the end of March or beginning of April we will know whether we will continue after 2025, or whether we will stop,” he told L’Équipe.
Cycling on TV 📺
Saturday January 25th
Men’s Tour Down Under, Stage 5 (Friday evening for USA)
(19:30-23:30 ET/00:30-04:30 GMT/11:30-15:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺7plus/7mate
Challenge Mallorca, Trofeo Marratxí – Women
(09:00-10:30 ET/14:00-15:30 GMT/01:00-02:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Cyclocross
UCI Cyclocross World Cup, Maasmechelen – Elite Women
(07:30-09:00 ET/12:30-14:00 GMT/23:30-01:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes, 🌏🇦🇺UCI’s YouTube
UCI Cyclocross World Cup, Maasmechelen – Elite Men
(09:00-10:30 ET/14:00-15:30 GMT/01:00-02:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes, 🌏🇦🇺UCI’s YouTube
Sunday January 26th
Men’s Tour Down Under, Stage 6 (Saturday evening for USA)
(21:50-00:30 ET/02:50-05:30 GMT/13:50-16:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Peacock, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺7plus/7mate
Challenge Mallorca, Trofeo Palma – Women
(07:00-08:30 ET/12:00-13:30 GMT/23:00-00:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Cyclocross
UCI Cyclocross World Cup, Hoogerheide – Elite Women
(07:30-09:00 ET/12:30-14:00 GMT/23:30-01:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes, 🌏🇦🇺UCI’s YouTube
UCI Cyclocross World Cup, Hoogerheide – Elite Men
(09:00-10:30 ET/14:00-15:30 GMT/01:00-02:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸🇨🇦FloBikes, 🌏🇦🇺UCI’s YouTube
Monday January 27th
Challenge Mallorca, Trofeo Binissalem – Women
(09:00-10:30 ET/14:00-15:30 GMT/01:00-02:30 AEDT) 🇬🇧Eurosport/Discovery+, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
🚗 Maybe should have stayed in the team car of the week 🚗
One of the many benefits, we presume, of graduating to a sports director role from being a rider is you are no longer treated like a circus animal made to do tricks for social media whenever the social media manager demands it.
Watch as Anna van der Breggen moodily frowns her way through stacking cups (alongside a smiling Elena Cecchini, who understands the assignment) having gone back to being a rider on a quasi-Demi Vollering-shaped revenge tour and needing to satisfy sponsor demands once again.
At the end she finally cracks a smile, probably realising that life could be worse than sitting in the sun somewhere nice effectively being paid to spend 10 seconds stacking paper cups.
But everything is relative and the grass is always greener; be careful what you wish for!
And finally …
How do you know Lotto’s new bike is fast? Because the press photo is blurry, duh!
Separately, we appreciate the what-it-says-on-the-tin approach to the article headline. “This is our new bike.” Got it!
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“Taken yesterday at Haneda airport’s Villa Fontaine Grand Hotel, Tokyo,” writes in Campbell Fuller, attaching today’s featured laundry photo. “Apologies that the doors are not open – that would have required me to put money into each machine to unlock them!”
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
This week on the podcast … 🎙️
The gang discussed the new feed zone rules and the wild times Mark Cavendish is having at the Tour Down Under.
Until next time …
That’s all folks! Thanks to Campbell Fuller 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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