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Spin Cycle
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Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle, Escape Collective’s news digest.
The Olympic Games are upon us, huzzah! Gather round, sports fans, for two weeks on the sofa getting really into … the Modern Pentathlon, or Taekwondo! Luckily, there is also cycling, on bikes big and small, tyres skinny and chunky, to accompany the backdrop of humans completing very specific tasks better than most other humans on the planet.
Poga-nah 👎
While there will be many winners and losers at this Olympic Games, the Slovenian Olympic Committee and those responsible for selecting its road racing representatives have laid possibly the stinkiest L this side of the opening ceremony by not selecting road race and time trial national champion Urška Žigart, without who’s UCI points Slovenia wouldn’t have gained their second spot for the road race.
Sure, fairness aside, Žigart is an outside-shot for a medal in the road racing events, but the additional issue is her boyfriend is Tadej Pogačar, who decided this week to rest post-Tour instead of race the Olympics, saying his girlfriend’s omission “didn’t help”. Instead, Pogačar said they will go on holiday.
Judging by Pogačar’s Tour de France form, he would have surely been a shoe-in for a medal at the road race, potentially adding to Slovenia’s 52 overall Olympic medal haul, including only 12 golds.
Maybe Pogačar is just sick of the sight of gold medals, having picked up hundreds of virtual ones over the past month, with Cycling Weekly spotting the fact the Slovenian had set new records on 288 Strava segments during his victorious Tour de France.
To live is to suffer (especially if your bike is 1 kg heavier than everyone else’s)
Here’s something you probably didn’t expect from the peloton’s foremost philosopher Guillaume Martin: biting the hand that feeds by lashing out at Cofidis’ bike manufacturer Look for making their machines too heavy!
Having finished 13th overall at the Tour de France, Le Monde asked Martin to analyse his own performance data from the race.
“Unfortunately, that is not possible, because I do not have a power meter,” Martin responded. “Our bikes weigh 7.7 kilograms, 1 kilo more than the UCI’s permitted weight. I do not want to make my bike even heavier with a bike computer and meter, which also weigh 200 grams.”
These comments were later removed from Le Monde’s article, but had already been picked up by other outlets, with Cofidis also scrambling to put out the message that they are very happy with both Look and Look’s in-house wheel brand Corima.
“The Cofidis team affirms its total confidence in Look and Corima,” the French team said in a statement.
“The bikes used by all the riders were designed jointly with our performance department and the design and research offices of our partners. Some of our riders actively participated in this design by providing their expertise and sharing their feelings, to offer the team high-tech equipment.
“The weight of the bikes is an important subject of attention, but it is not the only performance factor. The bike used by Guillaume Martin is the subject of specific equipment choices so as not to exceed 7.4 kg, a measurement slightly below the average of the bikes of the best riders in the peloton.”
Could Martin’s outspokenness have anything to do with the rumours that he’s apparently off to Groupama-FDJ next season? Or as Martin himself might ponder, if A then B …
Can I bring my bike? 🏝️
Maybe it’s the years of doing little else other than pedaling, maybe it’s staring down the barrel of a potentially limitless number of morning chat show appearances, but Mark Cavendish had big designs on his post-Tour de France family holiday: bringing his bike with him.
“We go for a holiday after this,” his wife Peta told Good Morning Britain. “He was like, ‘You know what I’m actually quite tempted to bring my bike’. I said, ‘If you want!'”
“Ah, that was said in jest, come on,” Cavendish replied.
The TV host then asks Cavendish if he’s going to be sitting around twiddling his thumbs as he edged towards retirement, perhaps emboldened to ask such a question of the Manxman by the fact they were live on television, to which Cavendish says he’ll always be in cycling.
And anyway, he’s got his lucrative post-Tour criteriums to keep him busy for the timebeing, battling very hard to a victory in Acht van Chaam (Netherlands) despite crashing.
Feed Zone 🥖
✍️ Dylan Teuns is leaving Israel-Premier Tech for Cofidis at the end of the season, Wielerflits report.
💰 Biniam Girmay has extended his contract with Intermarché-Wanty until the end of 2028.
🇨🇦 Tadej Pogačar will warm-up for the World Championships Road Race with the two Canadian one-dayers in Québec and Montréal.
🇭🇺 Blanka Vas has extended her contract with SD Worx-Protime until the end of 2027.
🙏 Brit Tom Gloag (22) returned to racing this week at the Czech Tour after 362 days away with injury, having been hit by a car last August and breaking his kneecap.
🇦🇺 Caleb Ewan won the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon on Tuesday, only the second victory of his season after returning to Jayco-AlUla.
🩻 Primož Roglič suffered a vertebral fracture in his Tour de France crash, Dane Cash reports, making a potential Vuelta a España participation look increasingly unlikely.
💸 Jordi Meeus has extended his contract with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
🙏 Matteo Moschetti (Q36.5) was flown to hospital after being hit by a truck during training, suffering multiple fractures. Moschetti remained conscious throughout the ordeal.
🤯 Only 40 hundredths of a second separated Sabgal-Anicolor teammates Rafael Reis and Julius Johansen in the Volta a Portugal’s 5.5 km prologue.
😮 Wout van Aert has been spotted using a front disc during his preparations for the Olympic time trial event.
🇺🇸 American Luke Lamperti (Soudal-Quick Step) won the opening stage of the Czech Tour, while Matteo Trentin (Tudor) returned to winning ways on stage 4 at the Tour de Wallonie.
🤒 Lotte Kopecky has told VTM News she had COVID-19 after the recent Giro d’Italia, but doesn’t expect it to impact her Olympic Games too much.
🇳🇿 22-year-old New Zealander Finn Fisher-Black will leave UAE Team Emirates at the end of the year after signing a three-year deal with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Wielerflits report.
Cycling on TV 📺
Saturday July 27th
Olympics
Paris 2024 Olympic Games – Women’s Time Trial
(08:30-10:00 ET/13:30-15:00 BST/22:30-00:00 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
Paris 2024 Olympic Games – Men’s Time Trial
(10:30-12:00 ET/15:30-17:00 BST/00:30-02:00 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
Road
Czech Tour – Stage 3
(08:15-09:45 ET/13:15-14:45 BST/22:15-23:45 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦
Sunday July 28th
Olympics
Paris 2024 Olympic Games – Women’s Cross-Country Mountain Bike
(07:45-10:30 ET/12:45-15:30 BST/21:45-00:30 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
Road
Czech Tour – Stage 4
(07:00-08:30 ET/12:00-13:30 BST/21:00-22:30 AEST) Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, FloBikes🇨🇦
Monday July 29th
Olympics
Paris 2024 Olympic Games – Men’s Cross-Country Mountain Bike
(07:50-10:30 ET/12:50-15:30 BST/21:50-00:30 AEST) BBC/Eurosport/Discovery+🇬🇧, Peacock🇺🇸, CBC/TSN/Sportsnet🇨🇦, Channel 9🇦🇺
💂♀️ Tom Pidcock being Tom Pidcock of the week 💂♀️
At this point we just thoroughly respect Sir Tom of Pidcock’s dedication to speaking his mind. This time, it’s bad news for anyone who was looking forward to the Olympic mountain bike events …
“It’s bland and I think they could have done a better job of making a more mountain bike course,” Pidcock said at his pre-Olympic press conference.
“When you just put gravel over a nice hillside, it’s not really mountain bike.”
His Team GB teammate, Evie Richards, was a bit more diplomatic: “I think they’ve done the best they’ve done, being how close it is to Paris. I suppose it’s not the easiest thing to do to just pop up a mountain bike course anywhere.”
And finally …
When I close my eyes at night Mikel Landa is there, silently begging me to buy some Soudal.
In case you missed it …
First, a video dug out from last year and doing the rounds once again recently. You will not be able to guess how (and how long) it takes Sean Kelly to mispronounce Rui Oliveira’s name.
Thibaut Pinot living his best life as a Tour de France spectator in Nice last weekend.
For those who enjoyed the Olympic mugshots last week, Remco Evenepoel has also recorded an official pronounciation of his name for the Games, which he himself can’t help but laugh at in the recording.
🧺 Send us yer laundry pics
“This is the Easywash Self Service Laundry in Lavrio, Greece,” writes Fabio Svaizer from Sweden, attaching today’s featured laundromat. “As you can see, an utterly fancy place.”
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 Fabio Svaizer for contributions to today’s edition and a big thank you to all of you who have signed up already as Escape Collective founding 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
Enter your email address to get our unique spin on news from the world of cycling delivered directly to your inbox!
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