Caley Fretz

Colorado

Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Escape Collective

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Articles

UAE's Giro grip begins to slip

1 week ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

Grand Tours are always a gamble. Back in the faraway times of a week ago, UAE Team Emirates-XRG offered up a shrug and a slogan: The road will decide who leads this race. Between the precocious Isaac Del Toro and the ever-poised Juan Ayuso, the team had two podium threats, maybe even two potential winners. Why not let the legs sort it out? For two weeks, they made the Giro look easy. Del Toro rode like a seasoned champion. Juan Ayuso hovered confidently nearby.
RogliÄ may pull out of the Giro

1 week ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

Welcome to Daily News, your roundup of news items from across the world of cycling. We keep this post updated throughout the week so that you can stay informed on all things bike racing, tech, industry, culture, advocacy, and more. Here is what is making the headlines this week, and here's last week's edition ...
Mads Pedersen untouchable uphill in Giro stage 13

2 weeks ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) proved once again why he's the form rider of this Giro, muscling his way to a hard-fought sprint victory in Vicenza on stage 13. It was his fourth win of the race, and arguably the most difficult, coming at the end of a selective, attritional stage that saw multiple GC flashpoints and a chaotic final chase. Pedersen surged from behind in the uphill finale, narrowly holding off Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) in a drag race to the line.
How do we want the Tour de France to end?

2 weeks ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

It's difficult to overstate how much the final stage of the Tour de France has meant to road cycling's collective mythology. It has served as both exclamation mark and champagne toast, a day where sprint legends launched, where yellow jerseys cruised toward destiny, and where, for once, the tension of a three-week battle gives way to ceremony. That will change in 2025. ASO is trading tradition for spectacle. How do we feel about that? And how hard will the course actually be? How hard is it?
Ayuso ascends as RogliÄ returns

2 weeks ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

On a rain-slicked course into Pisa, the Giro d'Italia's general classification began to take shape. Stage 10 delivered time gaps, tension, and, perhaps most significantly, a clearer picture of who's really leading UAE Team Emirates-XRG. The time trial itself belonged to Lidl-Trek's Daan Hoole, who surprised himself and thanked the weather gods to take a well-earned stage victory.
UAE's leadership puzzle and some RogliÄ revenge

2 weeks ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

Isaac del Toro in pink. Juan Ayuso making paper airplanes in the press conference. Primož Roglič bruised and behind. And a rest day filled with polite quotes and quiet tension. The second week of the Giro d'Italia begins Tuesday with a flat time trial into Pisa and a leaderboard that looks, on paper, like a dream for UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Del Toro leads, Ayuso is second, 1:13 down. Brandon McNulty and Adam Yates are eighth and ninth.
Isaac Del Toro enters the ring

2 weeks ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

This was supposed to be a breakaway. Not the kind you chase down on a flat stage, but the kind where Juan Ayuso finally stepped into the light. No Tadej Pogačar overshadowing his every move. No questions about hierarchy. The Giro d'Italia was meant to be Ayuso's chance to lead. And ideally, to win. Instead, on the rutted white gravel of Tuscany, it was Isaac Del Toro, Ayuso's UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate, who lit up the road and pulled on the maglia rosa. The two teammates are now separated by 1'13".
Maxxis Aspen vs. Vittoria Peyote review, battle of the nearly-slicks

3 weeks ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

Alex Roszko and Caley FretzThis cross-country tire review started with a story about gravel tires. A few months ago, Ronan Mc Laughlin wrote a piece with Escape Collective member John Karrasch that dove into rolling resistance numbers from a number of wide gravel tires - wide enough that what we were really talking about were mountain bike tires.
Puck Pieterse's evolution of instinct

1 month ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

There's a naiveté to Puck Pieterse and the way she races a road bike. The 22-year-old is still fresh in this particular discipline, still learning, but unquestionably powerful. She trusts her instincts more than any race radio, she has said before, and estimates risk in real time with a calculator that isn't perfectly tuned just yet.
Bikes are going to get more expensive

1 month ago | escapecollective.com | Caley Fretz

The ink was barely dry on President Trump's sweeping new tariff announcement before some of the biggest names in the American bike industry began adjusting course. This week, just over two weeks after the White House unveiled its "Liberation Day" tariff order, which slapped new import taxes on everything from European e-bikes to Vietnamese tires, Trek and Specialized became the first major bike brands to publicly signal how they'll respond. The bottom line?