Spin Cycle: Try to contain your excitement

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.

Sometimes this newsletter writes itself. This can be because there's a big, obvious news story that is so Spin Cycle it hurts (in a good way). Or, like today, because readers send in little trinkets they've spotted that are just perfect for these unconventional pages.

So, thank you to those who understand the assignment so well I may soon be superfluous to the operation, and to cycling for continuing to be weird and wonderful.

Try to contain your excitement 🚢

How, you may have been wondering, will the Decathlon-CMA CGM team successfully activate their secondary, acronymed shipping container sponsor?

After all, it's just a bunch of containers and ships, right?

By having the professional riders pedal hard enough to lift containers off the floor, of course!

There's a lot to unpack from the video. The fact that Olav Kooij, despite being unable to race so far this season, has been roped into heading down to the Marseille port to take part, as well as how the scene transitions from day to night, implying the fellas were out there for hours trying to power the containers off the ground.

The winning team (Team Reefer, a reefer being a refrigerated shipping container, so yes, we are in fact learning something here) also won miniature CMA-CGM shipping containers, something we desperately need to get our hands on.

This video has been out for three weeks yet only amassed 1,600 views so come on people, run that number up so the chummas can keep chugging!

(Net)company policy 🤫

"Ineos to harness AI with new team name and podium ambition" ran the breathless BBC Sport headline, before an editor likely spotted it and toned it down to the British team's "hope for AI inspiration". That hope comes from the Grenadier branding being left in the rearview mirror and Danish IT supplier Netcompany announced as the new primary title sponsor.

At a London launch attended in the end by some press (Jeremy Whittle wrote about his day out for us) who in the end had to ask in order to be invited, thorny questions reared their heads once again, much to Ineos' presumed annoyance.

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