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.
While it’s only the start of February and we are still firmly in pre-season territory, the news never stops.
An update on Ineos shorts-gate, Andrea Piccolo is back (remember him?) and it’s unfortunately more bad news. Étoile de Bessèges still hasn’t got the message and Matthew Brennan is grabbing selfies in Doha Airport.
A détente in the Hundred Smears War 🫣
It’s official. Ineos Grenadiers are eschewing their off-white shorts for the European spring races and switching to black shorts.
After the squad rolled out for the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in black shorts, Cycling Weekly’s Adam Becket (from here on out to be known as the press room’s pre-eminent Ineos Grenadiers whisperer) finally got an answer for all of us as to the British team’s shorts policy.
“It’ll change as determined by our performance team,” a team spokesperson told the British publication. “For the European spring we’ll be in black, otherwise we’ll be in grey.”
The fact it will be determined by their performance team indicates there’s an advantage to not wearing white (or “grey”, apparently) shorts when they can become see-through when wet/muddied in inclement conditions. Maybe this latest marginal gain is just that their riders won’t hate them? Or feel embarrassed by having their bits and bobs televised all over the world?
Questions remain, however. Will the off-white shorts return for what is usually a fairly wet Giro d’Italia? We now get to start the next part of this Hundred Smears War, waiting for the Grenadiers’ white shorts to appear once again above the parapet.
Un Piccolo problema 💰
Remember Andrea Piccolo? The Italian who wore the Vuelta’s red jersey for a day in 2023 before he was suspended by EF in 2024 when it came to light that he had been “taking a sleeping aid that was not approved by the team.” Then, in June, he was fired after Italian border officials detained him on suspicion of trafficking human growth hormone.
Piccolo’s next step was to begin a career on OnlyFans, a move helped by the fact his then-girlfriend Valentina Gomez already had a substantial following on the platform.
We pick up the story this week, when news came to light that the 24-year-old Italian had been arrested in Naples and charged with possession of counterfeit bank notes stuffed under the steering wheel of his Porsche.
Did we do a good job with this story?