“It’s like Manchester United”: Sir Bradley Wiggins takes shot at Ineos celebrating Paris-Nice stage win “as if they were a French team”; “You are spitting up a lot of blood”: Aussie rider reveals gruesome details of surgery + more on the live blog

Like any good Instagramming tourist, Mark Cavendish recapped his recent trip to Paris this afternoon with a series of snaps featuring breakfast pastries, coffees, desserts, a PSG match, the Arc de Triomphe, and his recent go at the city’s half marathon (we’re not sure if he hid in Tommy Voeckler’s slipstream for the entire race before sprinting by at the end)…

 

 

 

 

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Come on Cav, at least make one trip to Paris properly relaxing now you’re retired. 

After the widely-reported story, in which Adrian and Joanne Fenton, returning from France after their holiday, were fined £1,500 after a migrant was found inside their bike rack, another similar news story has emerged.

The BBC reports that Lisa Russell and her partner Geoff Evans have now been the subject of an even larger £3,000 fine after Border Force found two migrants hiding inside the bike rack, stowed in their campervan.

The couple from Kent, once again in events mirroring the Fentons’ case, were returning from a short break in France last October and had taken the ferry from Calais. However, they were stopped by Border Force officers, who discovered a man a teenager hiding in the bike rack, believed to have hidden themselves before they arrived at Calais port.

> Cyclists returning from French road trip fined £1,500 after migrant found inside bike rack on the back of their motorhome

Ms Russell said: “We came out of a shopping centre and saw a lady was guarding her van and our van. She told us someone had tried to steal our bikes.”

After leaving the shopping centre, she said that they felt “uneasy” and decided to go to the docks because it would be “safer”.

"After Border Force officers inspected our van at the port, they said we could go. Just as we pulled away, they told us to stop as we had two stowaways on our bike rack over the bike cover", Ms Russell said, adding that they remained at Calais for three hours while authorities dealt with the incident.

The couple have now received a fine from the Home Office four months later, with a spokesperson saying that they “understand that recipients of penalties may disagree with the circumstances of the fine”.

The spokesperson added that they are “fully committed” in stopping people from illegally entering the country and “cracking down on people smugglers”.

They said: “The Clandestine Entrant Civil Penalty Scheme is there to ensure drivers take every reasonable step to deter irregular migration. The option to appeal and trigger a review is made clear in supporting documents.”

> Home Office cancels cyclists' £1,500 fine over migrant found inside bike rack

Ms Russell, however, remarked: “Who’s got a spare £3,000 these days and for something we didn’t do? We feel like the victims and it’s really unfair.”

It was reported yesterday that the previous couple had their fines cancelled by the Home Office, via an email through the Border Force, with the Fentons “left ecstatic” with the news.

We often get so caught up in the specifics of cycling that it’s easy to forget that riders, just like us, can also suffer from non-cycling medical issues. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s Jai Hindley, has just reminded us of that with some gory details of what it means as pro cyclist when you are faced with medical scares like these.

The 2022 Giro d’Italia winner and Tour de France stage winner faced a low-key 2024 season, with not much going his way in races, and the 28-year-old Australian has now revealed that part of it could be attributed to his battle with illness.

“It basically started after Tirreno [2024], I just had this run of illness. It was not normal at all,” he told Velo. “You put in the work, put in the time, sacrifice everything and then you still go like shit, basically. It was pretty frustrating.”

The issue remained a mystery until an ENT specialist diagnosed Hindley with a deviated nasal septum. “We came to the idea that potentially can be the reason why I’m getting so sick. My nose is quite narrow and it’s just easy for bacteria to get stuck in there,” he said.

Jai Hindley in the maglia rosa after the 2022 Giro d'Italia, stage 20 (picture credit LaPresse)

He had shared a picture of his post-surgery on Instagram in October, captioning the photo as a 'moustache implant', jokingly referencing it to Movember. Now, Hindley has gone deeper into the details: “They make a cut inside your nose, take out the cartilage. And from what I understand, they hammer it flat on a table or something, and then they put it back in.

“I think it’s a bit more scientific than that, but I think that’s the general way of working. It’s pretty rough. For two weeks your nose is really out of action and feeling really grim. You are spitting up a lot of blood all the time, and just feeling really blocked. The nose is really swollen too — if you look at the team photos, my nose is pretty big…”

And if you’d look at his results, the effects are clear. Hindley secured a commendable fifth spot in the general classification at this year’s Tirreno-Adriatico. He added: “Basically our team doctor was pretty convinced that if I got this surgery, then it would help a lot. You have got to do everything you can.

“In theory it should help the breathing a lot, and also should reduce the amount of sickness during the season. If it can help even a little bit, then it’s worth doing, in my opinion.”

In light of Arne Slot’s hopes of achieving multiple silverware in his first year in charge of Liverpool fading away in the span of a week, some light relief (sorry any Liverpool fans reading the live blog)…

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At least they’re still at the top of the Premier League table (your live blogger isn’t too keen about that)