{"id":628899,"date":"2026-04-25T00:11:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628899\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T00:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:11:17","slug":"time-is-a-flat-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628899\/","title":{"rendered":"Time is a flat circle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jonny<\/p>\n

Spin Cycle is Escape Collective\u2019s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on the website<\/a> (obviously) or click here<\/a> to have it delivered straight to your inbox.\n<\/p>\n

Hello!\n<\/p>\n

Welcome back to Spin Cycle.<\/p>\n

For the most part, everyone does what is needed to get by. For Chris Froome, that’s another impression of the time he ran up Mont Ventoux. For Ineos Grenadiers, it’s a highly guarded press conference. For UAE Team Emirates, it’s potentially spending a little bit of money on same fake social media followers.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, for Lenny Martinez, it’s getting a moustache.<\/p>\n

\"\"Time is a flat circle \u23f3<\/p>\n

When this video of Chris Froome first came across our timeline, we immediately assumed it was AI. The colours are slightly off, the movements of Froome too jarringly out of kilter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But no! This is actual Chris Froome aping the time he ran up Mont Ventoux during the Tour de France, with Alejandro Valverde for company this time around. The pair were over in Central America for the Gran Fondo Panama and presumably created this viral moment as part of the sack of money offered to them that got them on the plane in the first place.<\/p>\n

Pleasingly, during Wednesday’s Fl\u00e8che Wallonne, Axel Laurance (of Froome’s former Ineos Grenadiers team) was also forced to run after giving his own bike to team leader K\u00e9vin Vauquelin, who had suffered a mechanical.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We somehow doubt, unfortunately, that this turns into a streets-won’t-forget type moment that Laurance can dine out on when he hits the VIP Gran Fondo invitee list in 12 years’ time.<\/p>\n

\"\"Out here (probably) buying Instagram followers in the year of our Lord 2026 \ud83e\udd26\u200d\u2642\ufe0f<\/p>\n

There was a time when social media followers meant something. You could get free stuff from brands, launch a career as an influencer, or simply wave a big number around to impress people.<\/p>\n

But the jig is up. People have cottoned on to spotting over-inflated follower numbers in comparison to likes and comments, and really to get any money or free stuff from companies these days you need to prove you have a dedicated audience.<\/p>\n

So why, pray tell, is UAE Team Emirates seemingly buying fake followers for their Instagram account (as spotted by Slovakian website biker<\/a>) making their weekly follower-growth graph for the past year look like a Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a stage.<\/p>\n

\"\"A screenshot from socialblade.com, which tracks public social media stats.<\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

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\n News & Racing<\/a>
\n Spin Cycle<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spin Cycle is Escape Collective\u2019s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-628899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}