Caley Fretz, former Editor-in-Chief of CyclingTips and founder of Escape Collective

At some point during college, Caley Fretz realized that his aspirations of becoming a professional cyclist weren’t in the cards. By the time graduation rolled around, he was sipping limoncello on the coast of Italy while covering the Giro as a journalist. He never looked back. He went on to work as Senior Editor at VeloNews before becoming Editor-in-Chief at CyclingTips. While there, he shaped the outlet into a distinctive, often humorous, writer-driven voice in the cycling space. Late last year, he and many other members of the CyclingTips team were laid off by Outside, Inc., and he struck out on his own to create Escape Collective, a journalist-led, membership-driven antidote to mainstream cycling media.

In this conversation, Caley tells Payson about the gap in the market that Escape Collective is trying to fill and the state of cycling media that got him here. They talk about the investigative piece that Escape Collective published about the implosion of the Zaaf Cycling Team earlier this year and how he’s envisioning much more than road cycling for the future of the outlet. They also talk about the long shadow of Lance Armstrong, Caley’s unfiltered thoughts on Outside's takeover of cycling media, and Tom Boonen’s legs.