Escape Collective

Today on the show: Jonas Vingegaard is looking infallible at the nearly halfway point of the Giro, UAE was thwarted in Hungary but the team is still picking up stage wins, and we have to talk about Enric Mas.

Today on the show: The Giro d’Italia has come alive, UAE are winning while singing off different hymn sheets, and do we need to talk about Lidl-Trek?

Today on the show: Crashes in Bulgaria, a changing of the guard at La Vuelta, and if you’re a chugga-chuggum detractor, today may be a tough listen.

Today on the show: The Giro d’Italia is here, things are going wrong in Belgium, and while we likely won’t get a Sunny May in Italy, everything’s coming up Sunny Maid over at Picnic-PostNL.

Join the Spin Cycle fantasy league! 

Today on the show: Paul Seixas is going to the Tour, Paul Seixas is going to the Tour, and Paul Seixas is going to the Tour!

Plus, up the Picnic, Vuelta Feminina kicks off, and the mountain bike world up was muddy. 

Today on the show: Pogi is washed, Dorian’s wearing grey now, and Iain gets in the weeds with zondacrypto.

To listen to Zac's other podcast, check out Race Chasers.  

Ineos Grenadiers is rebranding as ‘Netcompany Ineos Cycling Team’ sooner than expected. After news broke in mid-March that a new title sponsor would be coming on prior to the Tour de France, the team held a press event on Tuesday 28 April, where both the new name and kit were launched, along with details of the new five-year partnership between Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos and the Danish tech firm Netcompany.

Netcompany Ineos will officially make the switch in time for the Giro d’Italia, which starts in Bulgaria on Friday 8 May. 

The new kit sees a complete refresh of the existing 2026 livery, swapping the orange and white for a blue-grey jersey – or greenish grey, depending on your eyeballs – that is appropriately reminiscent of computer software branding, incorporating the TotalEnergies logo in its familiar white box. A notable detail on the back of the jersey is the return of the vertical stripe motif long-associated with Team Sky and the Grenadiers, and one of the only flashes of colour on an otherwise largely monochrome jersey. Finally, it’s goodbye to the black-vs-white/grey-shorts debate as the team reverts back to no-nonsense black.

Canyon-SRAM says it remains in an “ongoing contractual relationship” with Zondacrypto – a naming-rights sponsor that, in practical terms, appears to have ceased operating and has sparked a financial and political scandal in Poland.

Since we first reported on the woes afflicting the Polish cryptocurrency exchange last week, matters have continued to deteriorate. As things currently stand, it seems deeply unlikely that both criminal proceedings and the total collapse of the company will be avoided. 

The implications of this for the top-level women’s cycling team bearing Zondacrypto’s name are, as yet, uncertain. However, heading into the peak of the cycling season, Canyon-SRAM (and its development team) finds itself in a bizarre situation. It is representing a sponsor that is on the brink: its website is down, all its employees have been laid off, its CEO has absconded, there is a trail of damage in the millions of dollars, and a scandal stretching to the highest levels of Polish sports and politics. 

The Zondacrypto sponsorship was announced in late 2024, with terms running from 2025-27. At the time, the crypto market was beginning to cool; numerous high-profile failures in the industry had signalled the potential risks associated with cryptocurrency. Collapses of companies like FTX had caused global economic turmoil; within cycling, the failure of Nexthash to fulfil its contractual terms played a part in the collapse of the men’s WorldTour team, Qhubeka-Nexthash. 

Nonetheless, Canyon-SRAM approached the Zondacrypto partnership with optimism; a team spokesperson told Escape Collective that “prior to entering the partnership, we conducted thorough due diligence, including consultation with external auditors.” 

Separate to the team sponsorship, three Canyon-SRAM riders – Tour de France Femmes winner Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, Australian veteran Tiffany Cromwell, and Polish rider Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka – also came on board as personal brand ambassadors for the company. Requests for comment from the management of Niewiadoma-Phinney and Cromwell were not responded to, and Canyon-SRAM said that “[we are not] in a position to comment on zondacrypto's brand ambassador agreements.” 

There is reputational risk for the individual athletes as well as the team – and potentially legal risk, too. FTX ambassadors including Tom Brady, Larry David and Gisele Bündchen were defendants in class-action lawsuits after plaintiffs argued that they had failed to perform due diligence in their promotion of FTX (a number of the cases have since been dismissed, but not all).  

The Little 500 is the United States’ premier collegiate cycling race and one of Indiana University’s defining traditions. Founded in 1951 by IU Foundation President Howdy Wilcox Jr., the event, now known as “The World’s Greatest College Weekend,” was created to raise scholarship funds for students working their way through school. Wilcox modeled the race after the Indianapolis 500, which his father won in 1919. More than 70 years later, that mission endures, with proceeds supporting student-led philanthropy through the IU Student Foundation. 

The race is simple in concept and chaotic in execution. 33 teams of four race around a quarter-mile cinder track on identical steel single-speed bikes with coaster brakes. Only one rider per team is on the track at a time, with teammates rotating in through high-speed exchanges in designated pit areas. The men’s race covers 200 laps (50 miles), while the women’s race, introduced in 1988, spans 100 laps (25 miles). 

Sorority team Alpha Chi Omega claimed its first Women’s Little 500 title Friday after a lightning-delayed race at the Bill Armstrong Stadium. The outcome was far from certain when the race was halted on the 63rd lap, with RideOn Cycling holding a commanding nine-second lead. When the race restarted, that advantage was erased, allowing a lead group of 11 teams to re-establish for the remaining 37 laps. Alpha Chi Omega surged on the final lap to secure the win, denying two-time defending champion Kappa Alpha Theta a third consecutive title. The Alpha Chi Omega victory also served as redemption for sophomore rider Libby Lewis, who came up short in a sprint finish a year ago. Teter finished second, followed by Kappa Alpha Theta in third. 

In the 75th Men's Little 500, the Black Key Bulls survived a chaotic finish to secure the team’s third-consecutive title on Saturday. On lap 199 of 200, race leader Chi Alpha collided with Cutters in the first turn after making an exchange. The collision triggered a multi-team crash that upended the race. Shortly after the pileup, officials threw a yellow flag and froze the field, eliminating a final sprint and turning the last lap into a controlled finish that locked in the results at that moment. Black Key Bulls, just behind the lead group, avoided the wreck along with Cinzano to move into first and second, while Bears Cycling rode through — and over — the pileup to secure third.

–James Brosher

Each photographer is individually credited, and their original captions lightly edited.

Mikel Landa will not race the upcoming Giro d'Italia as originally planned as he recovers from an injury sustained earlier this month at the Itzulia Basque Country. The Soudal-Quick-Step rider was hit by the driver of the medical car on stage 2 and later abandoned his home stage race; the driver was disqualified from the event.

Landa said on Monday that he had been "experiencing some discomfort" since the incident but only now have examinations uncovered a small fracture to his pelvis, which will keep him from racing the Giro.

João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) announced on his own social media on Monday that he will miss the upcoming Giro d'Italia after dealing with illness over the past several weeks.

"Sickness in the past months has affected my preparations too much and has meant I just won’t quite be ready in time which is a shame as it’s a race I love so much," he wrote.

"After talking it through with the team we decided it was best to take a rest period and switch focus to new goals later in the season."

Tadej Pogačar’s latest monument win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège was proof of a few things: the Slovenian’s firm grip at the top of the sport, Paul Seixas’ rapid rise to challenge him, and the UCI’s inconsistent application of its own rules.

The latter manifested itself in the post-race jury report, with Pogačar walloped with a 5,000 CHF (~US$6,350 / €5,400) fine for violating UCI Article 1.3.072.6: World Champion Equipment – specifically for the "wrong place of the publicity on the world champion jersey during the award ceremony."

Around five hours later, this was quietly retracted. Neither the UCI nor the race jury has made any public comment on why the fine was specifically imposed in the first place, nor why it was revoked. 

So what can we figure out? Let’s have a look. 

Firstly, we now have further evidence that the UCI takes its rainbow bands extremely seriously. We abstractly knew this to be the case: in 2025, there was a polite but forceful push from the UCI to remove the bike and component manufacturer Ritchey’s right to use the rainbow bands – despite the fact that Ritchey was using them a full couple of decades before the UCI was granted a trademark in early 2010. 

Courtesy of Pogačar yesterday, there’s now a monetary value attached to how severely the UCI views this type of infraction, and 5,000 CHF is at the extreme upper end of the financial penalties that the UCI doles out. For some context: Kiaan Watts punching another rider in the head mid-race elicited a 200 CHF fine. Isaac del Toro’s nipples being out that one time: 200 CHF. Lenny Martinez with one of the most egregious sticky bottles in recent memory: 200 CHF. 

While that may sound like the UCI juries have a one-size-fits-all approach to how they levy their fines, don’t be fooled. Jhonatan Narváez improperly disposing of litter at the 2025 Tour de France (500 CHF) is, in the inconsistently applied logic of the UCI commissaires, a greater offence than Arnaud de Lie having a public toilet break in the same race (200 CHF), or, for that matter, Julien Bernard kissing his wife at the 2024 Tour de France (also 200 CHF). 

So what kind of offense does get you anywhere near Pogačar’s 5,000 CHF fine, if punching someone in the head at 45 km/h does not? Something pretty bad, that’s what!

The Bulgarian Cycling Federation’s vice-president, Danail Petrov Angelov, copped the same penalty for “psychological abuse” related to “incidents of verbal assault and intimidation towards members of the cycling community”, along with a two-year ban. And for in-race incidents, you have to do something pretty egregious – like, say, Ineos Grenadiers’ director Oliver Cookson literally running over a spectator with a team car in the 2025 Tour.

There was some speculation that the presence of a black armband, as worn during the race, might have been the culprit – a mark of mourning for the death of Pogačar’s former teammate, Cristian Camilo Muñoz, after an infection following a recent crash. But, although this armband blocked the left rainbow armbands, the specifics cited in the jury report make it clear that this is not the cause: we must search deeper in the dusty depths of the UCI’s website for a rationale. 

The answer likely lies in the snappily titled ‘UCI Jerseys Visual Guidelines: Manufacturer Specifications & Model Variations (Version 5.3 [April 2025])’, a 117-page document that specifies when the UCI logo can be used and in what specific locations. There are guidelines around proportions, positioning, colour order, applications, and ‘safety distance’ between logos or other design elements. 

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two months since the Spring Classics got underway with Opening Weekend. Here we are though, with Liège-Bastogne-Liège now in the books, and another Classics period behind us.

The women’s peloton will now turn its attention to a block of Spanish racing, starting with the Vuelta Femenina this coming weekend. Before that though, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what we’ve witnessed over the past two months; the moments, performances, and storylines that have defined the women’s Spring Classics for 2026.

Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) made history on Sunday by becoming the first woman to win three editions of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Attacking with nearly 35 km to go, dropping her big rivals with apparent ease, then riding away to win solo by more than a minute, it was a win that typified the spring the European champion has had.

Let’s look at some stats. Of the seven one-day races Vollering did this spring (all of them WorldTour events), the 29-year-old won four: Omloop Nieuwsblad, the Tour of Flanders, Flèche Wallonne, and Liège. In the other three, she finished second (Dwars door Vlaanderen), third (Amstel Gold Race), and fell foul of a mechanical (Strade Bianche). All of that is in addition to the two of three stages she won at the Volta Valenciana, plus the overall. That’s seven wins from 11 races so far this year.

You’d be justified in arguing that this is the best start to a season Vollering’s ever had. Her 2023 campaign was also extraordinary – she won all three Ardennes Classics, plus Strade Bianche and Dwars door Vlaanderen – but with the same number of WorldTour wins so far this year, and an additional three wins overall by the same point in the season, 2026 has been very kind to the Dutchwoman so far.

And let’s remember – it’s only April, and Vollering’s biggest targets still lie ahead …

Vollering’s seven wins are a big part of what’s made this year so successful for FDJ United-Suez so far, but that only tells part of the story. What we’ve seen from the French squad thus far has been a showcase of strength, unity, and depth that other teams just haven’t been able to match.

We’ve seen impressive team rides across the board (Sunday’s Liege was no different), but Elise Chabbey and new recruit Franzi Koch have been particularly impressive. Since joining FDJ United-Suez last year, Chabbey has refined her trademark aggression to become one of the sport’s premier super-domestiques; a rider as effective on the front of the bunch as off it.

Koch, meanwhile, was responsible for several of the moments that defined these Spring Classics. Her uphill lead-outs for Vollering at Omloop Nieuwsblad and Flanders were as stunning to watch as they were productive. On both occasions Vollering launched off Koch’s wheel and rode to a solo victory.

And of course, both Koch and Chabbey have stepped up when Vollering hasn’t been able to.

Today on the show: Pogacar and Seixas hang out in Liège, chaos in the finale at Little 500, and Nairo Quintana won a bike race.

In the film that spawned the franchise, Rocky Balboa didn't actually win his epic fight against Apollo Creed. When all was said and done in Rocky I, the heavyweight champion was declared the victor over the plucky underdog – but that underdog had managed to stand up to the champ in a way that no one else had done before.

Going the distance to survive the full 15 rounds was a victory in itself. Rocky had earned a sequel (five of them, actually). He could get that win some day down the road.

When all was said and done at Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday, plucky underdog Paul Seixas had to settle for runner-up honors behind world champion Tadej Pogačar, who delivered on his pre-race favorite status to take a third straight victory as impressive as it was unsurprising. And yet ... Seixas pushed Pogačar in a way that no one else has done since the world champ first established himself as the dominant racer of this era. He survived Pogačar's inevitable attack on the Côte de La Redoute, and held on all the way to the middle of the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons.

It wasn't the victory Seixas came for, but it was a victory in its own way. Liège-Bastogne-Liège was fun to watch this time, and surely we are in for more of that entertainment as these two go head-to-head again in the months and years to come.

"I am impressed and amazed by how good Paul is," Pogačar said after the race. "Chapeau to him. I have nothing but praise for the kid – for his incredible results at the start of this season, and for how mature he is."

That "kid" acknowledged that he was proud to have put in a runner-up ride: "Of course I'm really happy to be second and to make all the work of the team pay off today," Seixas said. "This is a good feeling, first time in Liège and second is pretty good."

The past two years at Liège, Pogačar has left the field behind with devastating attacks on the Côte de La Redoute. Going solo from that point on, he has quickly built up big gaps and then cruised into Liège to celebrate more than a minute ahead of the field. On Sunday, he again went with the tried-and-true approach and put the hammer down on La Redoute 35 km from the finish. The move laid waste to the field, but not to Paul Seixas.

The 19-year-old Frenchman, in his first ever Liège appearance, refused to be dropped on the 9.4% gradient. Despite constant pressure applied by the world's best rider, Seixas hung on.

Not long after winning his fourth Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and a fifth visit to the podium in five appearances so far this season, Tadej Pogačar was slapped with a massive €5,000 fine in the post-race jury report.

"Tadej Pogačar (UAD) gets a fine of 5000 CHF for incorrect placement of publicity on the world champion jersey during the award ceremony," reads the jury report.

There are strict rules as far as kit modifications are concerned, but with no visible temporary changes, and no discernible differences in logo placement compared to his previous podium visits this season, Pogačar's exact infraction – or that of his kit designer – remains unclear. But one thing's for sure, five thousand Swiss francs is at the higher end of the fines handed out by the UCI and race juries.

Two days after taking his first win in four years on stage 2 of the 2.1-ranked Vuelta Asturias, veteran Nairo Quintana sealed overall victory in the final day, fending off an aggressive Adrià Pericas, the 19-year-old hoping to secure a third-consecutive title for UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

First across the line in Oviedo was 25-year-old Mexican Edgar David Cadena who took back-to-back stage wins and the points classification. Quintana was joined on the GC podium by young Spaniard Pericas, and Movistar teammate Diego Pescador. The older Colombian was the oldest rider on the podium by 15 years.

Final GC top 5

1. Nairo Quintana (Movistar)
2. Adrià Pericas (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +0:25
3. Diego Pescador (Movistar) +1:33
4. Txomin Juaristi (Euskaltel-Euskadi) +1:34
5. Samuel Fernández (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) +1:39

For the third time in her career (so far), Demi Vollering crossed the finish line of Liège-Bastogne-Liège victorious. The FDJ United-Suez rider attacked on the Côte de la Redoute with 34.6 km to go and left the rest of the peloton behind. Vollering previously won 'La Doyenne' in 2021 and 2023, both times from a selection of riders who rode to the line together.

Vollering's 2026 victory comes just days after the European champion won La Flèche Wallonne.

Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) crossed the line second from a chasing group of three, with Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) taking third on the day. SD Worx-Protime's Anna van der Breggen finished fourth from that group as Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ) bested Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek) to claim fifth.

[race_result id=9052 stage_id=0 count=10 gc=0 year=2026]

Vollering's third Liège-Bastogne-Liège victory

• For much of the early stages of the race, attacks were neutralized by the pace. Some riders attempted to break free, including Alison Jackson of St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93, Elise Chabbey of FDJ United-Suez, Femke Gerritse of SD Worx-Protime, and Femke de Vries of Visma-Lease a Bike. Gerritse was the only one to get any space, the Dutch rider had over two minutes at one point, but the peloton went into the final 50 km all together.
• With 45 km to go, a dangerous breakaway of seven slipped off the front: Chabbey, Juliette Berthet (FDJ United-Suez), De Vries, Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Oatly), Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek), Maeva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ), and Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto).
• The attackers were caught by the peloton, led by SD Worx-Protime, with 1 km to go before the critical Côte de la Redoute. On the climb, Chabbey led the peloton and splintered the remaining riders.

Vollering's incredible attack on Côte de la Redoute

The outcome was as expected, but though reigning champion Tadej Pogačar tried his customary tactic of launching on the Côte de la Redoute, this year he had company. Like a limpet, 19-year-old Paul Seixas glued himself to the world champion and did not let go, even sharing the load as the pair got ever closer to Liège.

Pogačar finally shook Seixas from his wheel on the final climb of the Roche aux Faucons with 14 km remaining, gaining almost 30 seconds in the upper half of the 1.3-kilometre test. The young Frenchman – champion of the junior edition in 2024 – had a sizeable cushion over the chasers, led by Mattias Skjelmose who'd made his move from the 26-rider group on the same climb.

Also in the large chase group was former champion Remco Evenepoel who'd had an intriguing day out having got himself into the 53-rider breakaway, or first split, early in the race, only to have his coup snuffed out by the UAE-led peloton. Evenepoel had perhaps paid for his earlier efforts when Pogačar accelerated on La Redoute, but the dynamics in the chase later on brought the Belgian back into contention. One minute 42 seconds after the world champion, Evenepoel won the sprint for third ahead of Emil Verstrynge and Egan Bernal.

[race_result id=11 stage_id=0 count=10 gc=0 year=2026]

The last time I spoke to Luke Grenfell-Shaw was six years and a few months after a bewildering and devastating confluence of events. In a matter of weeks, Luke had hurried home to the UK from Siberia under an ominous cloud, he was then diagnosed with stage IV cancer, and in the midst of the chemotherapy that followed swiftly after, his only brother John died running trails in the Lake District.

Luke wasn’t meant to live. He wasn’t meant to survive the summer of 2018. But the hours gave way to days, then weeks, and months. He made it through chemo, through surgery and radiation, and a master’s degree at Oxford University. And all the while he was plotting how best to spend what days he had left. The memory of his brother and a natural curiosity about the world conspired in his imagination, and ‘Bristol2Beijing’ was conceived as a way to honour both.

And again, he wasn’t supposed to make it. But he did – as far as the Covid-19 pandemic would allow him – and by the time we spoke at the end of 2024, Luke was taking his first steps into a deeper future than he’d been able or allowed himself to consider in six years.

15 months after that first conversation, my call found Luke on Gran Canaria where he was in the midst of a very windy training camp with some fellow trail-running athletes. In the interim, he’d celebrated another birthday, gained a sponsorship from running brand Brooks, completed a tour of cinemas and festivals with ‘A Life in Tandem’ – the documentary film that told his story – and finally embarked on the last leg of his ride to Beijing which had been impassable on his original attempt. 

Less than 24 hours before we spoke, Luke’s film had premiered on YouTube, where it has lived ever since for all the world to see.

“It actually felt like an incredibly positive and joyous evening,” Luke told Escape Collective of the previous night’s live premiere and virtual Q&A. “Up until the moment it started I was really worried that there’d be a technical glitch, but then it started and I just relaxed. Obviously, it’s a very personal story, it’s particularly personal to me, but really unexpectedly I was crying when I was watching it, especially the bit about John, because it brought it back so powerfully for me.

“It does seem like a film that for some people is really quite impactful and I think it’s really exciting that it is now out out in the world. But on another side, large parts of the past year were all towards organising the premiere and then the film tour, and trying to get a distributor. That was ultimately unsuccessful, but it’s perhaps for the best that it’s going to be on a more accessible platform. I think the point I came to is that I need to be moving on with other stuff in my life.”

Luke and director Mike during their film tour with 'A Life in Tandem'.

Luke is a young man whose childhood and young adult life was more adventurous than most, from hiking holidays with family to ultra-marathons in the Ural Mountains, so it’s not surprising to hear some of the references that he brought with him into the project with director Mike Rumsey. But he couldn't help that something more sinister loomed over his story.

“I think I wasn’t expecting to be this proud of the film, and that it’s something I can put my name to, aside from the fact it happens to be about me,” Luke said. “But it’s certainly not the film that I imagined I was going to create. I think it’s been one of the struggles that I’ve had, that in some ways the story that I’ve always wanted to tell is something like '14 Peaks’, ‘Free Solo', ‘Dawn Wall'. It’s maybe because I’ve got a different perspective, right? For me, there were life and death moments of the brakes failing on the Kyrgyzstan Pass; or descending in a tunnel in Turkey and a car overtakes us, skids, loses control, goes up the side of the tunnel, does a full loop-the-loop and lands on its roof in front of us, and we narrowly avoided that…

“There were quite a few high octane moments but none of them were captured on camera, or well enough to make the final cut. So I’ve had to make peace with the fact we’ve made a very different film, and it isn’t one that is as easy to sell.”

This last comment may seem surprising given the adversity and jeopardy that is threaded through the story, and the popularity of such themes in documentary films and beyond, but Luke’s perspective is very different. Indeed, in preparing the film for its release on YouTube, he was reluctant to give ‘cancer’ too much attention or focus at all.

“People were telling me, ‘You need to put cancer in there,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t want to put cancer in there, it’s not about cancer’, but everyone was saying it had to be, ‘that’s going to make us want to watch it, that’s interesting.’ So I’ve got this very different perspective where I’ve kind of had enough of talking about this narrative. And whilst I should be clear that at the start of [Bristol2Beijing] I was really happy to and I still choose to talk about it, the emphasis has massively shifted and I’m like, who wants to hear something about cancer?”

It was partly that tension that prompted Luke’s most recent cycling trip. Anyone who’s seen ‘A Life in Tandem’ or read Luke’s story will know that the last leg across China was completed virtually back home in the UK as a result of the lingering pandemic. But as time wore on, Luke was feeling the ever-stronger pull of adventure, and this time, that’s all he was after: pure and simple adventure.

Julian Alaphilippe has been withdrawn from upcoming races including Sunday's Liège-Bastogne-Liège for undisclosed or unclear health reasons having struggled in his favoured Ardennes Classics – he was unable to finish either Amstel Gold or La Flèche Wallonne which he's won three times.

"Julian Alaphilippe will unfortunately miss both Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Eshborn-Frankfurt due to medical reasons," his team Tudor Pro Cycling announced in an Instagram story 24 hours before Liège, where the two-time world champion has finished runner-up twice. "As a result, he will not be competing in the upcoming events in order to prioritize his health and ensure a full return to racing."

With these two races scrubbed, the Frenchman's next scheduled appearance is the Tour de France where he'd be expected to play a key role in Tudor's second outing at the premier Grand Tour.

It’s now been three years since we launched Escape Collective, and this is also our third annual Transparency Report. For context on this report and what this is built upon, please go back and read our year one and year two Transparency Reports.

Stats vary slightly, but a common one cited is that 20% of businesses fail in the first year and nearly half the remaining do not survive past three years. I don’t consider us in safe territory by any means (I’m forever paranoid that this will all end tomorrow!), but we’re grateful that we are still here and I’m writing this third Transparency Report. We’re also proud of our first three years. 

As time moves on we find that our progress and improvements are incremental rather than game-changing, and these reports are naturally getting less substantive. However, as long as we continue to push forward and we have something interesting to say, we’ll keep publishing these.  

Three years ago doesn’t seem that long, but the world has changed a tonne in that time. AI has gone from being a chatbot with average writing to, for many, an indispensable resource for workflow automation, data insights, coding, and so much more. Until now, we haven’t written about AI in this report, but now we have a lot to say about this down below in a dedicated section, and it’s both terrifying and exciting at the same time. Both keep me awake at night thinking about how quickly it’s changing our world and what the future entails. Spoiler: We see no future for us in using LLMs to produce our editorial work.

In this report, as with the rest, I will take you through the past 12 months of our operations rather than focusing on what’s ahead in the future. At one time, I felt like I could fairly confidently give a rough roadmap of what 2-3 years into our future might look like, but now I am much less certain with the rapid emergence of AI capabilities and where the world will be in a few years. It’s unclear what that will do to the media landscape, though, as always, we find it better to focus on what won’t change rather than what might. 

Keep in mind when reading this that while we have an immense amount of fun and get a lot of satisfaction out of contributing a small part to the cycling community through our work at Escape Collective, this is a business that we run diligently and not much of what we do happens by accident (although, admittedly, we've made our share of mistakes). We have many full-time employees whose families depend on getting a reliable paycheque each fortnight and we take that responsibility extremely seriously. In the media landscape we currently live in, this is a challenging business to make work. But we consider that a very good thing, because it makes it difficult for others to replicate, and it’s all thanks to your support and belief in us. 

Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) continues to bolster his GC credentials ahead of the Giro d'Italia, taking Friday's stage 5 and securing the overall title at the Tour of the Alps. The 22-year-old Italian went clear near the summit of the day's final climb and held on alone to win 30 seconds ahead of Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) and Michael Storer (Tudor).

Bernal and his Ineos teammate Thymen Arensman rounded out the GC podium with Pellizzari, whose overall victory was his first ever in a pro stage race.

When the peloton lines up in February for the Omloop Nieuwsblad, there is a long list of races coming up where riders and teams can claim glory. All the months of training camps throughout the winter, potentially new jerseys or new coaches, new teammates; everything is possible. But once that race ends, the chances come thick and fast. In the blink of an eye, there is only one opportunity left: Liége-Bastogne-Liège, the final Monument of the season (for the women).

Liège-Bastogne-Liège signals the end of the Classics period; all those riders who dream of adding one of these epic events to their palmares will need to wait another year to do so. It's a race that favours the daring, but also the best. For years, this race has been won by the top riders in the world. Last year, Kim Le Court-Pienaar took a stunning victory and went on to win a stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and wear the yellow jersey. In 2021, a new up-and-comer named Demi Vollering changed her career when she outsprinted Annemiek van Vleuten and Elisa Longo Borghini to take victory. Every finish of La Doyenne is memorable, from Grace Brown in 2024 to Lizzie Deignan in 2020, when the race was held in the fall.

Most of the teams will show up with the best they have to offer. FDJ United-Suez is the team to watch, but Visma-Lease a Bike is on the rise, and after their win at the Amstel Gold Race, UAE Team ADQ finally broke their curse of coming up short. But like the race a week prior, can the win this Sunday go to a surprise dark horse? Can Lidl-Trek use their numbers to their advantage to steal the trophy, or can Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney overcome the odds to win her first Classic since La Flèche Wallonne in 2024?

Here is what you need to know about the 2026 women's Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

When: Sunday, April 26 @ 13:35 CEST (expected finish 17:50 CEST/11:50 EDT/+1 2:50 AEDT)

Where: Bastogne to Liège (156 km)

Live coverage: 🇦🇺 SBS @ +1 day 01:40 AEDT, 🇪🇺 HBOMax @ 16:40 CEST, 🇬🇧TNT/Discovery+ @ 15:40 BST, 🇺🇸 Peacock 🇨🇦 FloBikes @ 7:40 PDT

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Demi Vollering, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Puck Pieterse
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Anna van der Breggen, Paula Blasi
⭐️⭐️: Elise Chabbey, Noemi Rüegg, Cédrine Kerbaol
⭐️: Liane Lippert, Maeva Squiban, Sarah Van Dam, Riejanne Markus, Magdeleine Vallieres, Lotte Kopecky, Mischa Bredewold

A full startlist is available here.

Set to retire at the end of the season, Nairo Quintana (Movistar) soloed to his first win in over four years on stage 2 of the Vuelta Asturias, where he now leads the race by 31 seconds. The 36-year-old Colombian, a two-time Grand Tour winner, last took a victory while racing for Arkéa-Samsic in 2022 at the Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var.

Later that season, he was suspended for tramadol use and only came back to the upper echelons of the sport in 2024 when he returned to Movistar, the team where he had first emerged as a star. Earlier this year, Quintana announced that this would be his final season as a pro racer.

On Friday's second stage of the Vuelta Asturias, Quintana attacked alongside Adrià Pericas of UAE Team Emirates-XRG with just under 40 km to go. The duo was caught by a small group of chasers before attacking again, and then Quintana went clear on his own to take the victory.

He dedicated the win to fellow Colombian Cristian Camilo Muñoz, who passed away on Friday after developing an infection following a crash at the Tour du Jura.

Bahrain Victorious’ riders and staff had their wages delayed by two weeks in March as a result of the US and Israel's war with Iran, which directly affected a key team sponsor. Iran's military response to the attack included drone and missile strikes not only on US and Israeli interests but also civilian targets across several Persian Gulf nations including Bahrain, an island nation less than 200 miles across the Gulf from Iran that hosts a major US naval base.

Cristian Camilo Muñoz, a member of the Nu Colombia Continental team who rode with UAE Team Emirates from 2019 to 2021, has died after developing an infection following a crash at the Tour du Jura on Saturday.

The crash left him with a knee injury that required stitches, and the 30-year-old Colombian was sent home from the hospital, joining his team in Spain for the Vuelta Asturias.

"Once the team arrived in Oviedo, Spain, Cristian was re-evaluated at a clinic, where the medical staff detected a difficult-to-treat infection that required further specialized care," Nu Colombia said in a press release. "In the last few hours, his clinical condition worsened, and despite all the efforts of the medical team, Cristian passed away on Friday morning."

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.

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.

Thankfully, for Lenny Martinez, it's getting a moustache.

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.

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.

Pleasingly, during Wednesday's Flèche Wallonne, Axel Laurance (of Froome's former Ineos Grenadiers team) was also forced to run after giving his own bike to team leader Kévin Vauquelin, who had suffered a mechanical.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Spring Classics give us one last hurrah on Sunday at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the oldest Monument and one of the marquee opportunities on the calendar for the climbers to take a big one-day victory.

Surprising no one, the big favorite to take that victory this weekend will be the two-time defending champion, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) – but he will have a few other headliners hoping to put on a show in the form of former winner Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and rising star Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM). So much climbing star power has the potential to give us a fitting finale to the Monuments of the spring before the Grand Tour-filled stretch of the season that awaits us.

Here is everything you need to know about the men's race at this year's edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: Tadej Pogačar
⭐⭐⭐⭐: Remco Evenepoel, Paul Seixas
⭐⭐⭐: Tom Pidcock, Mattias Skjelmose, Giulio Ciccone
⭐⭐: Kévin Vauquelin, Romain Gregoire, Benoît Cosnefroy
⭐: Mauro Schmid, Ben Tulett, Tobias Halland Johannessen, Lenny Martinez, Christian Scaroni

Today on the show: Paul Seixas shot a Walloon Arrow into all of our hearts, UAE may be buying Instagram followers, and Lenny Martinez has a moustache now.

A majority of men’s WorldTeams are predicted to become shareholders in a new company that hopes to finally force through transformative reform in professional road cycling.

Led by six verbally committed seed investors, including billionaire Ivan Glasenberg (owner of the Pinarello-Q36.5 ProTeam) and superteams Visma-Lease a Bike and Lidl-Trek, TeamCo – a project that Escape Collective exclusively revealed in January – has been in the works since last autumn, formed out of the ashes of the One Cycling project that was rejected by the International Cycling Union (UCI) last summer. 

According to several sources within TeamCo – all of whom spoke anonymously as they were not authorised to speak on its behalf –  it is expected that between 12 and 15 World and ProTeams will sign shareholder agreement contracts with TeamCo before the end of May, with the seed investors expected to invest €3,571,429 each to give the company a cash sum of €25 million from the outset. Equity was something that One Cycling never had.

Though both TeamCo and One Cycling share the same principle ideas – namely: to improve commercial rights, improve financial sustainability for teams and pit the world’s best riders against each other more frequently – the key difference between the two ventures beyond the initial financing is that this time round it is team owners rather than managers who are leading the talks. 

Escape Collective obtained two TeamCo draft documents, dated as recently as March 2026, that listed seven individuals and/or businesses as seed investors – people providing the required capital to a startup business in exchange for a percentage of the company’s share capital; in this instance, that amounts to a collective total of 5%. No money has yet been invested in TeamCo, and no documents have yet been signed. All of those investors – bar one – are said to still be involved. But the seventh investor whose name appeared in that March draft document – Sylvan Adams – told Escape that he is not a part of the project, although how his name came to be included is an open question.

Specialized and Remco Evenepoel have announced a "lifetime partnership" that will see the double Olympic champion riding bikes made by the American brand for the rest of his career "and beyond."

The deal extends (indefinitely) a relationship that goes back to Evenepoel's early years as a budding star, riding a Specialized bike to junior world road and time trial titles in 2018 and then turning pro with the Specialized-sponsored Deceuninck-Quick-Step team the next year.

“I’ve worked with Specialized since the beginning of my career," Evenepoel said in a statement. "They’ve been there through the wins, the setbacks, and everything in between. We have complete trust in each other, which is why this lifetime agreement feels like a natural step, for my racing career and beyond."

The deal is notable on its own merits. Wout van Aert, Marianne Vos and Mads Pedersen have all signed lifetime contracts with their teams, but not equipment partners (Pedersen's deal effectively keeps him on Trek for his whole career, but the agreement is with the team, which Trek no longer owns).

And while individual rider deals with brands are commonplace, they are usually finite, or tied to the teams they ride on, and sit mostly in the background. Mathieu van der Poel has a 10-year individual agreement with Alpecin-Premier Tech bike sponsor Canyon, but Evenepoel's deal with Specialized appears to be a first in the sport. Never before has a rider signed such a permanent personal contract with a major equipment sponsor. And in an era where pro road racing is increasingly dominated by superstars, that's significant because of what it means for how personal contracts could shape the makeup of the sport going forward.

The mood around the cycling industry at the start of 2026 depends on who you ask. Some brands are cautiously optimistic. Others are quietly cutting headcount. Canyon announced major restructuring in January. Specialized, Trek and QBP all started off the year with staff restructurings. The inventory overhang from the COVID-19 boom is still working its way through the market, visible in widespread discounting, and some say the same mistakes that scattered the industry in Europe and the United States in 2023 and 2024 are now being repeated in China.

One of the people saying this is Alessandro Basso, the CEO of Stardue, the parent company of Basso Bikes and Lee Cougan mountain bikes. Despite the gloomy industry backdrop, the 35-year-old CEO, is, by contrast, in a good and optimistic mood.

As the head of the Italian brand his father founded nearly 50 years ago, he runs a company of around 70 people with two international headquarters, no external investors, and, as he explains, the freedom to make decisions for the long term rather than the next quarter. 

We caught up with him at the recent Velofollies show to talk about the state of the industry, why he thinks 2026 will be a good year for Basso despite everything, and what he actually thinks caused the mess the industry seems to be in.

This interview has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Aerodynamics might be the name of the game in performance road, but the persistent presence of lightweight gear suggests that for some riders, climbing is still the metric they care about most. Zipp addressed that group directly with the reborn 202 NSW wheelset, the lightest it's ever made.

Last seen in 2018, the 202 has been updated as a modern, wider (but not too wide) hookless rim with a claimed weight of 1,090 grams per pair. Even as some other brands have opted for carbon spokes, Zipp goes under 1,100 grams while sticking with steel: Alpina's Hyperlite bladed, 20 of the little suckers in a 2x lacing pattern to be specific. Hubs are Zipp's ZR1 SL with ceramic bearings and a freehub with 66 points of engagement and in versions for Shimano HG or SRAM XDR cassettes and with Centerlock rotor compatibility only.

Rim depth is 35 mm – enough for a skosh of aero without adding extra weight. Internal width is 23 mm, making the rim optimized for 28-32 mm tires. There is a system weight limit, of 115 kg/235 lb total. Zipp says any TSS-compatible tire will work with the wheels.

Here's where we insert our obligatory note about tubeless straight side (TSS), aka hookless, rims for road use: Maximum pressure for any tubeless tire on a hookless rim is 72.5 psi. While Zipp, like most wheel brands, tests its rims to blowoff pressures that exceed this limit, pay very close attention to pressures in your system. Make sure you have an accurate gauge, check pressure before every ride, and inspect wheels and tires regularly for damage, especially if you've pinch-flatted.

Price? Retail is US$1,900 / €1,700 / £1,520 front and US$2,300 / €2,100 / £1,875 rear. They're available immediately, like all good product releases.

If your algorithm is anything like mine, at some point in the past month you’ve probably come across the same video clip: a curly-haired troubadour in Oakley sunglasses and a polka dot t-shirt, plaintively fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar.

A delicate wandering melody follows, with lyrics addressed directly at the next Great French Hope:

In the weeks since, the Seixas hype train has only picked up speed. The 19 year old French rider won Flèche Wallone yesterday, finished second to Tadej Pogačar at Strade Bianche, cruised to the overall victory (and three stage wins) at Itzulia Basque Country, and anticipation is building for him to line up at the Tour de France. Meanwhile, there is speculation that he might be scooped up by the extravagantly wealthy UAE Team Emirates squad – a signing that would nullify what seems like it could turn into a tantalising rivalry. 

Maybe it’s that background context, or maybe it’s the lilting melody of that song by the mononymic artist, Killow; either way, I’ve often had ‘Paul Seixas, please don’t sign for UAE’ looping around in my head.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by killow (@eurosportandcry)

Two days ago, Killow released the song, expanded out from one jokey verse to a full production, on streaming platforms. But that’s just the latest offering from the artist: on Spotify, there are 10 songs to his name, all funny, all themed around cycling, stretching as far back as 2022’s wonderfully-unhinged ‘Mieke Kroeger Anthem’ (122,000 listens at time of publication). Other songs include the downbeat ‘Eurosport and Cry’, the breakup ditty ‘Tenerife’, and upbeat odes to lazy summer afternoons watching the Tour de France. 

With Killow’s latest song reaching his biggest audience yet, it felt like it was worth spending some time chatting to him about this song, his creative process, and why Paul Seixas should absolutely not sign for UAE.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.  

Iain Treloar: First up: the world knows you as Killow, or by your Instagram handle 'Eurosport and Cry'. What is your name and where are you from?

Killow: My name is Killian, and I'm from Germany originally, but after graduating, I moved to Stockholm for an internship, and we sort of got stuck here. So this is where I work and live now. 

IT: Whereabouts in Germany are you from?

K: This will be not that insightful for an international audience, I guess, but it's a city called Trier with villages around it, and it's the oldest city in Germany – very interesting. It's sort of on the border with Luxembourg. So the closest main city, or something you would know, is probably Luxembourg or the French border.

IT: Is this an area that has a particular cycling culture? What's your relationship with cycling?

K: I don't think so, necessarily. I remember from when I was smaller, I always watched the Tour de France with my dad on television. My family [are] very big France fans, and I learned French in school, because we were in the area near the border. And so we went there on vacation, almost every year. And I remember we watched the Tour live two or three times while I was a child or a teenager, and I always found it very hard to find people my age to talk to about it – I was really hyped about cycling, but then no one else at school really got it; they were all into football. It was only later on, when I started making the music and stuff, that I found people on the internet that were my age, and that were also equally crazy about watching cycling and watching all the little races on the calendar, instead of just the Tour.

I am also a pretty passionate supporter of Decathlon (AG2R) since I started following cycling more closely, 15-ish years ago. I picked them because the jersey was cool, obviously, and I like underdogs. I guess it also helped that they didn’t change their name every other season back then.

Covering this year's Sea Otter Classic was my last assignment as a full-time staffer at Escape Collective. I have accepted a marketing position at Silca and will be starting there this week. One of the cycling industry's bright spots, Silca is a healthy and growing business with a variety of opportunities to tell stories around its athletes, products, and partnerships, which will be my primary role. As a longtime fan of where Josh Poertner has taken the brand in his time as CEO, I'm stoked for the challenge ahead.

The decision to leave Escape was not easy for me. I feel like I've grown so much as a writer, photographer, and cyclist during my relatively short time with the site. And I attribute that personal and professional development to the incredibly talented team of colleagues I've been so fortunate to work with.

When I first started in my role as tech editor early last year, I didn't quite know what to expect. While I'd had plenty of experience writing in the cycling and outdoor sectors, and a graduate degree in a box somewhere, I didn't know if I'd be able to live up to the reader/member standards and expectations set by the existing news and tech teams. And, more generally, I wasn't sure whether the subscription-based business model would work in the long term.

Now, as I step back from that position, I am completely convinced that the model does indeed work and is essential to supporting the level of analysis, deep dives, and whimsy that define our work. Thanks to the commitment of members, the Escape team can operate on a completely different level than most other media. It's what sets the publication apart now, and it's what will allow it to sustain into the future.

I depart with nothing but positive vibes about my time at Escape and will continue to do what I can to support it. You'll continue to see my byline as a photographer and occasional tech writer, as long as they'll have me. Especially when it's time to write about the emergence of 36" wheel bikes.

Mountain biking has lived through one wheel revolution, and now we are on the verge of another, but switching to bigger hoops is anything but straightforward.   

The sport has seen standards change time and again: thru-axles, Boost spacing and UDH dropouts, to name a few. But now a new wheel size is looming on the horizon: 32". Just as the 29" wheel was to the 26" wheel, the new wheel size adds three inches to the rim diameter, but beyond that surface-level familiarity, the comparison between them quickly falls apart.

The idea has already appeared in the wild at races multiple times. BMC’s prototype cross-country bike was rolled out at the Andorran round of the XC World Cup last year, KTM debuted a 32" hardtail at Lenzerheide, and most recently, Stroll claimed a stage win at the Cape Epic with its 32” prototype. And this isn’t something reserved for the pros. As the explosion of products – a complete tyre line from Maxxis, new forks from Fox and others, and a plethora of frames – at the recent Sea Otter Classic shows, momentum is rapidly building.

The jump from 26 to 29 inches unified standards across road and mountain bikes, reshaped geometry, and ultimately altered the off-road riding experience. Moving from 29 to 32 inches, however, is far from a guaranteed continuation of that arc. The reality is that 32" is a departure from long-standing norms, demanding a structural rethink of the wheel system, whole-bike geometry, and even how to transport the new generation of big-wheeled bikes. All of this comes with an added cost, too. As Manuel Berschandy, a product line manager at Mavic, put it, “It’s not just taking the recipe of what we know today for 29 and making the same for 32. We need to rethink everything.” 

Sure, the wheel gets bigger, but this calls into question just about every other element of the wheel, frame, and associated components design. From hub width to rim profile, spoke patterns, and even bearing placement, all have to be reconsidered.    

To understand the fundamental challenges of developing a larger wheel, we spoke with Todd Tanner, director of wheel development at Hayes Bicycle Group, the company behind Reynolds and Sun Ringle. Additionally, we spoke with Tommy Marin, director of communications and marketing at Duke, the brand that developed the 32" wheel used on BMC’s prototype XC bike, as well as Berschandy and Vincent Collombet from Mavic, who supplied the 32" wheels used on KTM’s hardtail.

The first engineering problem standing in the path of 32" wheels, particularly in mountain biking, is lateral stiffness. Before considering rollover, contact patch, or any other performance benefits, the stiffness of the wheel under side loads could limit how far the trend can go, for now at least. 

“One of the big challenges is lateral stiffness in the complete wheel system,” Tanner explained. Sticking within the constraints set out by 29" wheels – such as hub spacing and flange diameters – while increasing spoke length results in a reduction in stiffness. Tanner reports that Hayes is seeing “anywhere from a 12–16% decrease in lateral stiffness” in 32" prototype wheels compared to comparable 29" models. 

On the heels of a disappointing 2025 season and a slow start to 2026, things got even worse for Marc Hirschi on Wednesday. The 27-year-old Swiss puncheur suffered a fractured left clavicle in a crash at La Flèche Wallonne.

In the same race that saw him take a breakthrough win back in 2020, Hirschi went down with a little less than 30 km to go and then abandoned. His Tudor Pro Cycling team said that he will now undergo surgery.

Reigning under-23 world road champion Lorenzo Finn, on a temporary call-up from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's development team to ride with the WorldTour squad at the Tour of the Alps this week, broke his wrist in a crash on Wednesday

The 19-year-old Italian went down in a huge pileup that impacted dozens of riders and even led to a brief neutralization in the early goings of the stage 3. He did not continue, and Red Bull later announced that he had suffered a wrist fracture.

Today on the show: Evenepoel won a sprint, Jorgenson won a trip to Herentals, and we have some sponsor-correct podium beers to analyse.

Today on the show: Emmanuel Macron may be about to save cycling, a criminal used a bike race as a getaway car in Poland, and the Volta ao Portugal could be all the way back.

What a Paris-Roubaix Sunday that was! Whilst lurking outside the Roubaix showers, Caley, Kit and Jonny give their thoughts on a cracking day of racing and share what they saw out on the cobbles and in the velodrome.

Today on the show: Paris-Roubaix is in two days! We're on the ground in France and bring you the latest from recon days. 

Can Paul Seixas win Flanders? Is Roubaix too scary when it's wet? These and many other questions answered in this bonus Mailbag episode of Spin Cycle. 

Today on the show: It's Flanders everyone, buckle up. 

Today on the show: Remco at De Ronde, we’re at De Ronde, De Ronde is here!

Today on the show: We have a Van der Poel vs van Aert co-attack nostalgia session, Visma’s team cars had a big weekend, and Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe may have a working trident.

Today on the show: Van der Poel goes threepeats at E3, Vingegaard crushes Catalunya, and Chris Froome is a party rocker in the house tonight.

Today on the show: Remco almost got stuck on a volcano, Quintana is retiring, Miguel Angel Lopez is back, and there was a little race called Milan San Remo over the weekend that was quite good.