the Inner Ring blog

No news on a title sponsor yet but the TotalEnergies team announces a deal to ride Pardus bikes next year. It's a Chinese brand which has supplied the national team and part of Taishan Sports (泰山体育) which has been making OEM frames for several famous brands and now wants to compete against them

Trivia: Safety Jogger, the new title sponsor for the Soudal-Quick Step team that makes workwear shoes, has a sports and cycling connection as it belongs to the same company as Patrick, the brand of sports shoes that has sponsored Poulidor, Hinault as well as footballers in the 80s and 90s

Review of P2R helmet which retails for $/€/£55 and compares well with models costing 4-6x more nminus1bikes.substack.com/p/p2r-sports... Interesting angle is the brand belongs to a Chinese firm Shanghai Quizho (上海启卓) which has been an OEM manufacturer for others but is now going to compete with them

//INRNG: Tour de France 2027 route, a look at all the 21 stages + stats, trivia inrng.com/2026/10/tour...

Tour de France 2027 map, two solo time trials and three major summit finishes (Grand Colombier, Les Saisies, Col de Portet). Final Stage in Paris includes three times up the Rue Lepic-Montmartre climb. 53,450m of vertical gain, in line with average for decade

Tour de France Femmes route with the Puy-de-Dôme as the conclusion

More solo time trial kilometres in next year's Tour, most since 2012

Tour de France routes out today. As ever we can find the stage starts and finishes, ie at Velowire, but soon we'll see what's in between, themes etc. L'Equipe prints details of Stage 17 from Montpellier to Mende via Mont Aigoual, a scenic route with 4,300m of V+ www.lequipe.fr/Cyclisme-sur... (🇫🇷, €)

Marca reports Paula Blasi has signed a deal with Movistar and it's not for broadband... but €600k a year for three years and crucially the UCI has now approved the deal to break her contract with UAE and pay modest compensation of €85k to her old team www.marca.com/ciclismo/mun... (🇪🇸)

Ex-Arkéa team manager Emmanuel Hubert is now running a bakery and cafe called Alta Pausa in Lecci, Corsica. Not totally done with cycling as he rents out road bikes from there too, via Le Parisien (🇫🇷, €) www.leparisien.fr/sports/cycli...

//INRNG: UCI Team rankings (a look at who gets grand tour invites the wildcard contenders + promotion/relegation) inrng.com/2026/10/uci-...

Decathlon-CMA CGM confirms the signing of Laurens De Plus from Ineos, Ben O'Connor from Jayco and Pavel Sivakov from UAE

Soudal-Safety Jogger as the Soudal-Quick Step team will be called next year announce new kit sponsors with Merida as their bike supplier to replace Specialized

Jayco sign Mikkel Honoré from EF to complete their roster for 2027, team say he is their final signing.

Paris 2024 track cycling silver medallist Daria Pikulik gets a backdated 18 month ban for three whereabouts failures within a 12-month period, runs from 9 December 2024 until 8 June 2026 and loses the results during this period (screengrab)

EF Education-Easypost announce the signing of Tao Geoghegan Hart

Jayco team announces four neo-pro signings Ben Wiggins 🇬🇧, Wil Holmes 🇦🇺, Jed Smithson 🇬🇧 and Adam Raffety 🇮🇪

Pogačar says he wants to go back to the Vuelta and try and win it, other goals are the Tour and Worlds (held in August next year)

Top-10 in the Veneto Classic

Brandon McNulty (UAE) wins the Veneto Classic

It was worth putting on the white shorts today

McNulty going solo in the Veneto Classic

Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) wins the Chrono des Nations. Always the likely outcome but 🎩 to him for going there and winning it. The event, formerly known as the Chrono des Herbiers, evokes the late-season GP des Nations time trial race won by Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault etc

Brandon McNulty interview in L'Equipe (🗞️), says his biggest goal would be to win a stage of the Tour de France, having won a stage of the Giro and Vuelta already and he'll be happy to pull on the front of the peloton in his rainbow jersey with Pogačar on his wheel

Greg LeMond out-sprints Bernard Hinault in the Critérium des champions d’hier ("Criterium of yesterday's champions"), via Le Télégramme www.letelegramme.fr/sports/cycli... (🇫🇷)

Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) made easy work of Ben Healy in the finish of the Japan Cup. Healy tried moves on the final climb and descent but could not get away. Simmons says he's looking forward to plenty of skiing and hockey over the off-season. Top-10 (alt-text for Roman script)

Jarno Widar beats Pidcock (again), the 20 year old wins the Tour of Guangxi overall

@eriohm.bsky.social can't reply below your message but it was an incident with Visma's Menno Huising

"We'll be at the 2027 Tour de France" says Jean-René Bernaudeau to Ouest-France. But the Total Energies team late registering with the UCI, has lodged bank guarantee but racing to sign title sponsor. If all in place the team could sign more riders www.ouest-france.fr/sport/cyclis... (🇫🇷)

Jesper Stiansen (Tudor) wins the Utsunomiya Japan Cup criterium, the evening race downtown before tomorrow's main event. The Norwegian is on the development team and turns pro with them for 2027, he got bronze in the U23 Worlds road race

Second stage win of the week for Fretin. Magnier stays in the overall lead but final stage tomorrow is the traditional summit finish

It's official now, Richard Carapaz leaves EF for NSN, signs a three year deal

UCI cancels the Urban Cycling World Championships (ie BMX freestyle) due to take place in Saudi Arabia in November because of "recent developments in the region". There's the Saudi Tour stage race in February to think about but any decision on that can wait but situation today likely to deter teams

//INRNG: Thursday shorts inrng.com/2026/10/thur...

One report, widely relayed today, says the Montmartre circuit could be dropped for the 2027 Tour de France finish in Paris but RMC radio report it will feature once again rmcsport.bfmtv.com/cyclisme/tou... (🇫🇷)

Ganna's exit to free up cash to help Netcompany-Ineos bid for Seixas... but Total Energies may not continue sponsoring team (both could be linked, ie Total would surely love to have Seixas). And makes the point that rider agent Giuseppe Acquadro is almost their HR director