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.
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Welcome back to Spin Cycle,
Early August is an unexpectedly fun time for bike racing, at least in this corner of the cycling world. Various concurrently running not-quite-major bike races are throwing out all sorts of nonsense so you need your wits about you to catch it all.
But that doesn’t mean the bigger names in our sport aren’t also chipping in with their own contributions. While Michael Storer is saying everything we want to hear, we could probably do with Chris Froome being slightly less tight-lipped …
Storer spills the beans 🫛
Tadej Pogačar seemingly becoming too full of victories at this Tour de France post-Peyragudes to even consider another morsel of stage win was puzzling. A number of top-three finishes on mountain days begged the question of whether the yellow jersey was too tired for the chase, whether his team had misjudged things, or whether something else entirely was afoot.
Well, thanks to the loose lips of Michael Storer, the mild-mannered Australian climber who wasn’t top of our list for parsing in-race intel, we now have an answer.
“At least one day [the Superbagnères stage], I had some info that Tadej [Pogačar] decided not to win that stage,” Storer told the Hotseat podcast. “I find it a bit weird if you get your team to ride full gas all day and then on the last climb you just decide not to win the stage.”
How odd, why on Earth would Pogačar suddenly decide he didn’t want the stage win after all? Especially as he’s within 14 stage wins of Mark Cavendish’s record at the young age of 26.
“The info I got was apparently the French fans were booing him and then team management decided that it’s best that he doesn’t win that day just to keep the French fans onside,” Storer continued. “So I suspect that they took that into consideration as well in the last week, not to take everything.”
An interesting move from Pogačar and UAE, which might explain the Slovenian getting bored and tired of the race when he was dissuaded from racing properly for much of the third week. Who knows how much truth there is to Storer’s information, but it’s the best explanation we’ve heard so far. It’s just surprising the prospect of getting booed by roadside fans would force such a drastic response from UAE and Pogačar.
Froome for further explanation 🤔
While the Ineos and David Rozman story continues to bubble along as the longtime soigneur of the British team is investigated by doping authorities, we have finally heard from Chris Froome, whom Rozman cared for throughout the four-time Tour winner’s pomp.
Previously, Froome declined to comment when Escape Collective enquired about Rozman, a man so close to him that he decided to name his son Chris. But then veteran reporters Barry Ryan and Alasdair Fotheringham rocked up to the Tour of Poland, where Froome is currently racing, and managed to ask him about the matter.
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