Weird things are happening in the Netherlands. Not for the first time, we admit.
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Welcome back to Spin Cycle,
This week, unsurprisingly, we are Guangxi-pilled. Just fly us halfway across the world while also sheltering and feeding us for the duration, and you’ll have bike race coverage coming out the wazoo (just in case other bike races are listening …).
But let’s start much closer to cycling’s heartlands in the Netherlands, where some bizarre scenes are occurring at the Tour of Holland.
It’s all kicking off at … the Tour of Holland! 🇳🇱
Jan-Willem van Schip has been disqualified from the NIBC Tour of Holland. The GIF below should explain why.
Yes, his set-up is utterly unsightly. But unlawful? Van Schip had the paperwork signed off by the UCI saying his bent seat post and handlebars are legal, but that didn’t stop the sport’s governing body stepping in and overruling the race jury to disqualify the 31-year-old from the race.
“We’ve always had a lot of discussions with UCI commissaires about his handlebars, but never about his seat post,” Van Schip’s Parkhotel Valkenburg team boss Paul Tabak told Wielerflits. “We always carry documentation with us, and we always show it. Based on that, he’s always allowed to continue on his way. You don’t have to explain to Jan-Willem what the UCI rules are and what he has to adhere to. The fact that it looks a little different and that he’s a little different from others just makes it special.”
Apparently the peloton had also been giving Van Schip some lip for his unconventional set-up. That seems unkind, but we would say an elegant solution to all of this would be to ride a regular bike that doesn’t offend the eye. Just our opinion. But true mavericks like Van Schip can’t be contained nor understood in their own eras.
At least one thing we can all agree on is the absolute monstrosity of using BMX start gates for time trials, which they’re also doing at the Tour of Holland. Ghastly!
Making a pig’s ear of it 🐷
25-year-old Spanish rider Mario Aparicio had just finished stage one of the Tour of Mentougou around Beijing in seventh place and all was well. A trio of his Burgos Burpellet BH teammates had just locked off the top three spots of the podium and taken a two-minute lead in the overall classification of the three-day race.
But then he posted his Strava file from the day, including the pig emoji in the caption, which he later said is an ‘in-joke’ about stage winner Carlos García Pierna.
Unfortunately, he immediately followed the pig emoji with the Chinese flag, which caused such offence in China that The Paper, controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), wrote the following in that day’s edition.
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