Spin Cycle is Escape Collective’s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on the website (obviously) or click here to have it delivered straight to your inbox.
Hello!
Welcome back to Spin Cycle.
It’s here. The final regular newsletter of 2025. What a year it’s been. But there’ll be time for reminiscing next week.
For now, we have an important Coneos Grenadiers update, Tadej Pogačar is back to talking himself up instead of moping around, and Luke Plapp … well, you’ll have to wait until the end to find out just what Luke Plapp is up to.
Coneos are burning my corneas 😵
“It’s the Ineos Grenadiers prepping for the Tour Down Under,” writes Lucy Shipley, attaching this video of fans having fun at the Ashes cricket series currently going on in Adelaide.
England may have a better chance of winning by putting some of the Ineos Grenadiers in for the fourth test …
And yes, the Traffic Coneos kit has been officially released, with the shorts actually an off-white/light-grey. “It’s actually so bad it could become legendary,” tweeted Mihai Simon. We very much agree with that sentiment.
Someone else online did some Photoshop-magic to see what the kit would look like with black or orange shorts. Answer: instant classics.
But back to the actual news rather than policing aesthetics. This week Ineos Grenadiers also announced their new orange Pinarello and unveiled the Ineos Grenadiers Racing Academy (better late than never to the rider development game, we guess).
The last piece of news we’re waiting on is Oscar Onley signing for the team. Maybe by the time you’re reading this his signing has been announced.
At the Vuelta a España route presentation, Cyclingnews asked the British team’s new Director of Racing, Geraint Thomas, about whether Onley was on the way.
Thomas said: “[That’s] something for people higher up than me,” which is an interesting diversion tactic. Looks like all press enquiries will have to go to Big Jim and Big Dave from now on.
The good news is that if Onley does sign (and with Picnic-PostNL likely to receive a decent whack of compensation for the trouble), British citizens can make an ironclad claim to Onley as a public asset, seeing as the UK Government bailed out Ratcliffe’s last ethylene plant this week to the tune of £120m.
Luckily, despite the likely departure of Onley and the financial uncertainty over at Picnic-PostNL, the vibes remain high, as Frank van den Broek has been asking his teammates what they’ve been putting up their butts recently (including a 6mm Park Tool, the 950ml Elite bottle, and an XLC pump, in case you were wondering).
Do it for the people, Pog 🙏
Tadej Pogačar has nearly won it all. Even at 27 there’s not that much to tick off his bucket list. Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo seem to be his main goals, and sure, the Vuelta a España at some point too.
But what about all three Grand Tours in one season? No one has ever done that before. That is one way to further cement your name in the history books. So, does Pogačar believe that such a feat is possible?
“I think it should be possible, yes,” the Slovenian told Wielerflits at UAE Team Emirates’ recent media day, before providing a caveat.
This post is for paying subscribers only
Subscribe now
Already have an account? Sign in
Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope