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.
Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle,
To get the week going, we've got an example of the worst of humanity quickly followed by some heartwarming use of democratic political infrastructure (that one sounds fun, doesn't it).
XDS-Astana are in their troll era, Jim Ratcliffe is getting fed up, and we've got some cycling fashion to either shock or delight, beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.
This is why we can't have nice things 😓
You are Cofidis' Benjamin Thomas, riding uphill on Tirreno-Adriatico's stage six. A fan up the road is giving you some much-needed support. You decide to reward him with a bidon you need to get rid of anyway.
Unfortunately, another person standing next to him, holding his phone in one hand absent-mindedly filming and looking around, spots the bidon in Thomas' hand at the last moment, and tries to snatch it, causing Thomas to swerve and almost fall off his bike.
Thankfully, Thomas was unhurt, left to ride away while shaking his head. Hey, you, that guy at the side of the road. Just to let you know, you suck! Please don't come to a bike race again, at least until you've learned how to behave in public.
Power to the people ✊
While there are undoubtedly many more important things going on in the world currently, it was pleasing to see the demise of Eurosport in the UK and 400% price increase for a TNT Sports subscription debated in the UK's Houses of Parliament recently.
Brought about by the cycling-mad and wonderfully named Ben Obese-Jecty MP for Huntingdon (in Cambridgeshire), the whole transcript of the debate is quite long and covers a lot of familiar ground for those who've followed along with the story. Our favourite moment, however, is when Obese-Jecty decides to provide some details on his own cycling fandom, which involved a recent foray into taking part in a cyclocross race himself:
"My own deeply mediocre recent career in racing cyclocross was born from watching Mathieu van der Poel take on Wout van Aert and latterly Tom Pidcock. If I had not watched obscure Belgian Superprestige races and finally decided to get stuck in myself, I would not have joined British Cycling, bought myself a bike from eBay—n+1, I don’t make the rules—found my local grassroots race series and dragged myself off for an hour of the hardest, most heart-pumping physical activity that I have ever participated in. I mean that literally, because men of my age are not meant to hit 200 beats per minute. Mathieu van der Poel I was not, but it was fun to pretend that I could be. I would never have taken up cyclocross if I had not had access to watching the sport."
At another point he also name checks Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, and even Scheldeprijs(!), which presumably means those races will now live on forever more in the archives of UK Government debates, which is very fun.
Feed Zone 🥖
🇩🇰 Visma-Lease a Bike DS Grischa Niermann has explained to Sporza the decision to keep Vingegaard in Paris-Nice stage 6 following his fall despite experiencing pain and dizziness: "He was at the doctor's car for ten to fifteen minutes and he apparently thought it was completely fine. He himself indicated that he was suffering and wanted to fight for it."
💸 The city of Zurich has had to bail out the organisation behind the 2024 Road World Championships, who were left with debts of €4.6 million following the event, swissinfo reports.
🙅♂️ Romanian mountain biker Vlad Dascalu's appeal against his 17-month suspension for missing three whereabouts tests in a year has been rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
🙏 Lidl-Trek's Mattias Skjelmose was taken to hospital following a collision with road furniture during Paris-Nice's stage seven but has thankfully not broken any bones. He had been looking good for the final podium, holding third overall in the GC at the time of his crash.
😪 Cian Uijtdebroeks is having a tough time of it struggling to find form. “I had to deal with the symptoms of last year again,” an emotional Uijtdebroeks told Sporza at the end of stage 6 of Tirreno-Adriatico. “My heart rate was 150, but I wasn’t making any progress and I had that dull feeling in my legs again. It’s a replay of what happened to me last year. That sucks.”
⏱️ Matthew Richardson has beaten Harrie Lavreysen's 200 metre flying start record, clocking a time of 9.041 seconds in Turkey at the World Cup round in Konya, with the Dutchman's previous fastest time of 9.088 seconds being set at last summer's Paris Olympics, shortly after Richardson himself had moved the benchmark earlier in the same qualifying round.
🤩 Egan Bernal will make his comeback following a broken collarbone suffered in a fall at the Clásica Jaén (Feb 17) at the Volta a Catalunya next week, the Colombian told ESPN Ciclismo, adding the Giro d'Italia is still on his schedule.
🇯🇵 Albert Kottke has sent in this Spin Cycle/Tour Daily podcast-adjacent timeline cleanser of Japanese mascots squeezing through tight spaces, if that's your sort of thing. Find all the photos here.
Media eating out of the bin like a raccoon of the week 🦝
A fun social media post from XDS-Astana. With Davide Ballerini visiting his teammates for the final stage of Paris-Nice, the team decided to farm some well-earned clicks by saying the Italian would be replacing Cees Bol for the final stage thanks to "a great initiative" from ASO that now allowed rider substitutions mid-race.
Obviously, this is not allowed and is a joke, but that didn't stop the faithful scribblers over at Wielerflits swallowing the troll whole without chewing and breathlessly committing it to text on their website, saying they'd reached out to all parties for comment but hadn't yet heard back.
As serial offenders of making mistakes, and having fallen for fake news on a number of prior occasions, we have sympathy for our Dutch friends, and respect them updating the article explaining they'd been had and not deleting it from the face of the internet.
"The above message from XDS Astana was fake news," they wrote. "The Kazakh team was joking, it turned out later."
Cycling on TV 📺
Tuesday March 18th
No live racing ...
Wednesday March 19th
Nokere Koerse - Women
(07:15-09:00 ET/11:15-13:00 GMT/22:15-00:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Milano-Torino
(08:15-11:00 ET/13:15-15:00 GMT/00:15-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
Nokere Koerse - Men
(10:00-13:00 ET/14:00-17:00 GMT/01:00-04:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Thursday March 20th
Grand Prix de Denain
(08:30-11:00 ET/13:30-15:00 GMT/00:30-02:00 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes
Friday March 21st
Bredene Koksijde Classic
(08:30-12:45 ET/13:30-16:45 GMT/00:30-03:45 AEDT) 🇬🇧TNT Sports, 🇺🇸Max, 🇨🇦FloBikes, 🇦🇺Staylive
💂♀️ Jim Ratcliffe bad news round-up of the week 💂♀️
If you're getting tired of the (we think) deserved Jim Ratcliffe pile-on/simple reporting of the facts about how everything is not going all that well for our favourite pollution billionaire, then apologies, but the lack of complaints means presumably everyone is up for it, and as always punching upwards is a key trait of any functioning social democracy.
Firstly, 7,000 units of the 2024 Ineos Grenadier car have had to be recalled as the doors kept flying open while people were driving them, which seeing as they are Built On Purpose® is quite worrying and makes us think maybe the people who made the Ineos Grenadier have never heard of a car before and how they are supposed to work.
Next up, in light of the doom and gloom surrounding Manchester United and looking to garner some good PR following the announcement of a £2bn circus tent for a new stadium, Jim Ratcliffe set about doing some media rounds, which included a podcast interview with noted non-journalist and former United footballer/current broadcaster and businessman (that's according to his website which is written in the third-person) Gary Neville.
When Neville suggests money-making ideas such as selling tickets to fans for a dinner hosted by players to raise extra funds instead of some of the cruel cuts to ordinary staff members, Ratcliffe has a simple response: "Nobody suggested that". Oh, to be an Ineos/Manchester United suit.
Ratcliffe also told the Times if the abuse he's currently getting graduates to the level the club's co-owners the Glazers receive to the point where they can't attend matches anymore, then he would walk away from the club.
So, more doom and gloom, but at least the cycling team has started winning again, with a stage at Paris-Nice for Magnus Sheffield and a podium for Thymen Arensman, as well as a TT win and second overall for Filippo Ganna at Tirreno-Adriatico.
And finally ...
For better or worse, we wear our cycling tech luddism proudly but this Cars skinsuit we'll make an exception for.
And if that didn't float your boat, this is unlikely to either. A collaboration between Castelli, Supreme and Spongebob Squarepants! Coming as part of Supreme's spring/summer 2025 collection, the price is not yet known, but likely high enough that purchasing it puts you on a list where you are no longer to be trusted with disposable income.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
"A newish laundromat in Camperdown, Sydney NSW called 'The Tumble Club'," writes in Mark Allen, attaching today's featured laundromat. "Been watching and waiting for this to be completed hoping it would provide a nice pic."
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 Albert Kottke, Kit Nicholson and Mark Allen 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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