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,
It’s Worlds week! A chance to celebrate cycling through the veneer of racing within the confines of nation states. An opportunity to cheer on your brave British boys and girls (other nationalities are available).
Oh, but what’s that? Chloe Dygert Amazoned herself a sticker machine to Kigali? That’s nice, I bet she’s passing the time between races by customising everyone’s bikes with fun messages. Oh? Right, well, we’ll be right there.
Happy Friday everyone! 🍻
Congrats! We did it! Another week towards oblivion. To treat yourself and quench your thirst before The Bad Stuff, Rick Zabel has arrived from Oktoberfest carrying a zillion beers for you. Enjoy!
Hold on tight, here are all of the bad news stories in one go 😬
We already spent long enough on the podcast this week lamenting the infiltration of politics and not-fun stuff that has seeped into the sport. We could ignore it all, focus solely on levity, but instead let’s speed run the whole shitshow. Like eating all of the vegetables on your plate first as a kid to get them out of the way.
Over at Israel-Premier Tech, we were leaked a memo sent out to riders by the team confirming they were in discussions about removing the association with Israel from 2026 onwards, before both Factor and Premier Tech began applying public pressure, saying they wouldn’t continue with the squad into next year if the Israel association continued.
Then, over in Kigali, Matej Mohorič lamented the fact he knew something wasn’t quite right about racing in Rwanda, and he was angry with himself that he simply didn’t have the bandwidth to contemplate right and wrong.
“I wish I was better informed and I wish I had more time to reflect upon things,” he told Wielerflits. “It’s a very difficult issue. I wish I had more time and energy to think about these things, but unfortunately, I’m so busy going from race to race and from training camp to training camp that I’m also a little angry with myself. The world we live in is too hectic for many people on a personal level, which doesn’t give us the time to reflect on the bigger picture.”
Maybe at some point he could also reflect on riding for a team sponsored by the state of Bahrain, but do we actually want to call Mohorič a hypocrite for being one of the few riders actually sticking their necks out while in Rwanda and calling out the elephant in the room? That’s kind of the problem we have today, it is extremely difficult to escape any level of moral ambiguity.
Enter Chloe Dygert, who during the elite women’s time trial event put a carefully placed label on her fork reading: “I stand for the truth. I stand with Charlie Kirk.” Abby did a great write-up of the saga so we’ll keep our $0.02 brief.
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Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope