Escape Collective Escape Collective

With Classics season in the rearview mirror, Kit Nicholson, Dane Cash, and Ronan Mc Laughlin join Caley Fretz on this week's Placeholders to ponder whether anything can or should be done to make it harder for riders to attack from so far out.

Gracie and Abby are joined this week by Rebecca Charlton to break down La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and lament the end of the Spring season. But don’t despair! La Vuelta España Femenina kicks off on Sunday and Escape Collective is running a fantasy competition just for you! One more reason to text your cycling group chat, subscribe to the Wheel Talk Newsletter and keep an eye on your inbox to sign up.

Cosmo Catalano and Dane Cash discuss La Flèche Wallonne, where the weather made for a more interesting men's race than we often get while the women's race ended with a long-awaited win, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where one rider's dominance made for a less intriguing finish than we might have hoped on the men's side while the women kept it suspenseful to the very end.

In this episode, Jack takes some time to reflect on a difficult few weeks. Pro cycling has ups and downs, and the entry to spring was a down. How does one get through such a period? 

Death, taxes, and wild tech at Paris-Roubaix used to be the three certainties in life, but if the 2024 edition of the Queen of the cobbles taught us anything, it's that the days of wild Roubaix-specific bikes and tech are a thing of the past.
In this Performance Process episode of two halves, Ronan is first joined by the crew at Specialized to talk through how the World Tour pros optimise for Paris-Roubaix in 2024 and how that compares to just a few years ago. In the second half, Ronan welcomes Swiss Side's JP Ballard onto the show once again to wrap all the cobbled classics campaign and tackle some of the more general tech questions the 2024 campaign threw up.

In this jam-packed episode, James and Dave discuss a handful of new gravel and road bikes that caught their attention during the week. Trek enters the rear Radar game to compete with Garmin, yet James’ early impressions of the CarBack raises more questions than answers.
DT Swiss has just released a new mountain bike rear hub with a wholly new ratchet system, you can read about the new 240 DEG hub at escapecollective.com, and a bonus episode of Geek Warning with DT Swiss is also available, too. Meanwhile the coverage of new products from EVT, Fox, RockShox, and more continues at the end of the episode.
On our mind and over the heads of the geek's families is the topic of gravel suspension. The geeks discuss who it’s for (and who it’s not), and why it’s proving to be more than a gimmick.
Plus there’s a PSA, which is likely a repeat on something previously discussed, but that only makes it more important.
Time stamps:
3:00 - Kona’s new gravel bike for mountain bikers6:30 - FiftyOne’s new Sika road bike11:55 - Parlee’s new and unexpectedly-European-made Ouray road bike15:40 - Trek enters the rear radar game with its CarBack23:15 - DT Swiss’ 240 Ratchet DEG hub26:30 - Chatting all things gravel suspension (including Cane Creek’s Inverted answer to the space)43:25 - PSA: Your dropper needs love47:50 - Classified adds Enve to its partners list49:25 - New RockShox things50:40 - Fox overhauls its Transfer dropper53:00 - EVT enters the portable repair stand game55:10 - OnGaurd’s new RockSolid angle-grinder-resistant lock