Anyone experienced similar over the past couple of years?
"Made the mistake of ordering bike components from the EU," Stan wrote on Twitter. "This government needs to be placed in the stocks and pelted with s*** with what they've done to EU trade," his conclusion...
He ordered from a German-based bicycle components website and was left with the not so charming cocktail of Customs Duty, Import VAT AND a Clearance Fee...
"People may be thinking 'don't order from the EU' but there are two points A) this used to be easy," he added. "B) these rules apply to ANYTHING you transport across the border. Technically you [could] be charged duty for putting your bikes on your car and travelling to France and back if customs decided you couldn't prove you already owned the bike."
> Cycling club arrives in Spain for charity ride... hit with £7,000 bike customs charge
yeah it's a nightmare because you can't just trust the price that you're paying upfront - this stuff used to be handled behind the scenes.
I'm gonna complain to https://t.co/mV4hxDMlfO because the "clearance fee" is purely parcel force and that should imo have been included
— Stan (@geckobike) May 19, 2023
Given the adverse weather conditions, especially on the Italian side, the Commission decided to meet the athletes' requests by applying the Extreme Weather Protocol.
Stage 13 will be shortened with the new km 0 being set at Le Chable, at the bottom of the Croix de Couer. The… pic.twitter.com/6VwMOw8enS
— Giro d'Italia (@giroditalia) May 19, 2023
The whispers were building, but now it seems pretty certain the Giro stage later today, the first major mountain day (Gran Sasso's headwind fest has been erased from my memory), will be shortened to less than 80km and have a climb removed due to the weather... it's another grim day to be riding a bicycle in Italy... especially over 1,800m...
🇮🇹 #Giro
Lake trip….? 🛶 pic.twitter.com/HY7bC7Ucer
— BORA – hansgrohe (@BORAhansgrohe) May 19, 2023
So what's the new plan?
The stage WILL go ahead today, but will be shortened, with a new race start. The riders will be bussed to the new start after the neutral roll out. All the details on the Breakaway in 5.
— Orla Chennaoui (@SportsOrla) May 19, 2023
Giro stage lopped. They'll set off front he foot of the Croix de Coeur - around 75 to run. They'll top the neutral rollout, then hop on buses.
There was a lot of rider discontent apparently overnight, so this has been coming. And the weather is shocking again at the start.
— Ned Boulting 🏳️⚧️ (@nedboulting) May 19, 2023
It's all about perspective, if the original stage was the current route the cycling world would be screaming its head off about 'could this be the most exciting Grand Tour stage ever?' à la Tour de France 2018 stage 17. Bjarne Riis' stage nine win at the '96 Tour on a snow-shortened 46km stage wasn't bad either... I'm reliably informed by Ryan... a bit before my time...
That's what a hacker would say.
— Mihai Simion (@faustocoppi60) May 18, 2023
Suspicious. Very Suspicious...
If you were having an aimless scroll of social media last night, like me, you might have found your Twitter timeline full of Elon Musk retweets and cryptocurrency adverts. And while in these days of the blue bird app my first assumption was that it's just another glitch under a certain Tesla-owning billionaire's rule, my attention was then caught by the username — @JumboVismaRoad...
Just hours after the team had updated fans on Sepp Kuss' breakaway day on stage 12 of the Giro, Primož Roglič taking it easy ahead of the first major mountain day today, the 'team' was now sharing adverts for stuff like this...
And retweeting stuff like this...
Team press officer Thijs Roelen took to his personal account, appealing: "Please, dear cycling fans, report to Twitter that our account has been hacked so you can get the cycling content you want. And also, don't buy crypto."
The reports have seemingly done the trick, even if the posts are still on the timeline, the account back belonging to... 'Dutch World Tour cycling team'. There's a happy ending... (immense stress for team staff during the Giro aside).