diff --git a/crates/polars-io/src/pl_async.rs b/crates/polars-io/src/pl_async.rs
index 9068fdd393e9..0eff6da99130 100644
--- a/crates/polars-io/src/pl_async.rs
+++ b/crates/polars-io/src/pl_async.rs
@@ -331,34 +331,6 @@ impl RuntimeManager {
     {
         self.rt.spawn_blocking(f)
     }
-
-    /// Run a task on the rayon threadpool. To avoid deadlocks, if the current thread is already a
-    /// rayon thread, the task is executed on the current thread after tokio's `block_in_place` is
-    /// used to spawn another thread to poll futures.
-    pub async fn spawn_rayon<F, O>(&self, func: F) -> O
-    where
-        F: FnOnce() -> O + Send + Sync + 'static,
-        O: Send + Sync + 'static,
-    {
-        if POOL.current_thread_index().is_some() {
-            // We are a rayon thread, so we can't use POOL.spawn as it would mean we spawn a task and block until
-            // another rayon thread executes it - we would deadlock if all rayon threads did this.
-            // Safety: The tokio runtime flavor is multi-threaded.
-            tokio::task::block_in_place(func)
-        } else {
-            let (tx, rx) = tokio::sync::oneshot::channel();
-
-            let func = move || {
-                let out = func();
-                // Don't unwrap send attempt - async task could be cancelled.
-                let _ = tx.send(out);
-            };
-
-            POOL.spawn(func);
-
-            rx.await.unwrap()
-        }
-    }
 }
 
 static RUNTIME: LazyLock<RuntimeManager> = LazyLock::new(RuntimeManager::new);
diff --git a/crates/polars-io/src/utils/mod.rs b/crates/polars-io/src/utils/mod.rs
index 3b211ef460cf..909c5682c742 100644
--- a/crates/polars-io/src/utils/mod.rs
+++ b/crates/polars-io/src/utils/mod.rs
@@ -15,3 +15,22 @@ pub const URL_ENCODE_CHAR_SET: &percent_encoding::AsciiSet = &percent_encoding::
     .add(b':')
     .add(b' ')
     .add(b'%');
+
+/// Spawns a blocking task to a background thread.
+///
+/// This uses `pl_async::get_runtime().spawn_blocking` if the `async` feature enabled. It uses
+/// `std::thread::spawn` otherwise.
+pub fn spawn_blocking<F, R>(func: F)
+where
+    F: FnOnce() -> R + Send + 'static,
+    R: Send + 'static,
+{
+    #[cfg(feature = "async")]
+    {
+        crate::pl_async::get_runtime().spawn_blocking(func);
+    }
+    #[cfg(not(feature = "async"))]
+    {
+        std::thread::spawn(func);
+    }
+}
diff --git a/crates/polars-lazy/src/frame/exitable.rs b/crates/polars-lazy/src/frame/exitable.rs
index f6fb3b7584bb..1c0a9e18af14 100644
--- a/crates/polars-lazy/src/frame/exitable.rs
+++ b/crates/polars-lazy/src/frame/exitable.rs
@@ -14,20 +14,10 @@ impl LazyFrame {
         let token = state.cancel_token();
 
         if physical_plan.is_cache_prefiller() {
-            #[cfg(feature = "async")]
-            {
-                polars_io::pl_async::get_runtime().spawn_blocking(move || {
-                    let result = physical_plan.execute(&mut state);
-                    tx.send(result).unwrap();
-                });
-            }
-            #[cfg(not(feature = "async"))]
-            {
-                std::thread::spawn(move || {
-                    let result = physical_plan.execute(&mut state);
-                    tx.send(result).unwrap();
-                });
-            }
+            polars_io::utils::spawn_blocking(move || {
+                let result = physical_plan.execute(&mut state);
+                tx.send(result).unwrap();
+            });
         } else {
             POOL.spawn_fifo(move || {
                 let result = physical_plan.execute(&mut state);
diff --git a/crates/polars-python/src/dataframe/mod.rs b/crates/polars-python/src/dataframe/mod.rs
index e30a63c3058f..adedfd3991e4 100644
--- a/crates/polars-python/src/dataframe/mod.rs
+++ b/crates/polars-python/src/dataframe/mod.rs
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ use polars::prelude::DataFrame;
 use pyo3::pyclass;
 
 #[pyclass(frozen)]
-#[repr(transparent)]
+#[repr(C)]
 pub struct PyDataFrame {
     pub df: RwLock<DataFrame>,
 }
diff --git a/crates/polars-python/src/lazyframe/general.rs b/crates/polars-python/src/lazyframe/general.rs
index 771baa258981..84fd4d4eeeaf 100644
--- a/crates/polars-python/src/lazyframe/general.rs
+++ b/crates/polars-python/src/lazyframe/general.rs
@@ -679,7 +679,7 @@ impl PyLazyFrame {
         py.enter_polars_ok(|| {
             let ldf = self.ldf.read().clone();
 
-            polars_core::POOL.spawn(move || {
+            polars_io::utils::spawn_blocking(move || {
                 let result = ldf
                     .collect_with_engine(engine.0)
                     .map(PyDataFrame::new)
diff --git a/py-polars/tests/unit/io/test_lazy_parquet.py b/py-polars/tests/unit/io/test_lazy_parquet.py
index e3445d4e9168..dc0b66baa18d 100644
--- a/py-polars/tests/unit/io/test_lazy_parquet.py
+++ b/py-polars/tests/unit/io/test_lazy_parquet.py
@@ -958,6 +958,7 @@ def test_scan_parquet_in_mem_to_streaming_dispatch_deadlock_22641() -> None:
 os.environ["POLARS_MAX_THREADS"] = "1"
 os.environ["POLARS_VERBOSE"] = "1"
 
+import asyncio
 import io
 import sys
 from threading import Thread
@@ -981,6 +982,7 @@ def test_scan_parquet_in_mem_to_streaming_dispatch_deadlock_22641() -> None:
     pl.DataFrame(),
     pl.DataFrame(),
     pl.DataFrame(),
+    pl.DataFrame(),
 ]
 
 
@@ -1008,6 +1010,13 @@ def run():
 
     results[4] = q.collect(background=True).fetch_blocking()
 
+    print("QUERY-FENCE", file=sys.stderr)
+
+    async def collect_async():
+        return await q.collect_async()
+
+    results[5] = asyncio.run(collect_async())
+
 
 t = Thread(target=run, daemon=True)
 t.start()
@@ -1019,6 +1028,7 @@ def run():
     True,
     True,
     True,
+    True,
 ]
 
 print("OK", end="", file=sys.stderr)