Kittel vs the Calzone again

Movistar has brought their power team for the flat and we all have seen what they are capable when they try so let's hope they attempt something !

Nice preview.

Nice preview, I'm banking on a hard race, although bringing Mezgec or Boeckmans as well would have been smart.

The games stopping?

Season part

The teams have arrived in Eijsden for the start of the Volta Limburg Classic. Almost 200 kilometers awaits the riders. The conditions are horrible, as it is raining quite heavily.



Straight from the start 7 riders attacked, but the peloton is not letting them go. The bad weather is already taking its first victims, with several riders crashing. Especially Lotto is hit hard with both Wellens and Vanendert going down.



With 5 riders remaining in the breakaway, the peloton finally slows down. This gives Wellens and Vanendert a chance to get back to the peloton. The riders in the breakaway are Lapthorne (Drapac), Miles (CCC), Grabsch (NetApp), Bulgac (Lotto) and Ludvigsson (Giant). They got a 3 minute lead.



The break has reached their maximum lead of 6'45. In the peloton Movistar, FDJ and Belkin start to increase the pace a little.

With 100 km to go the gap is 5'30.
With 80 km to go the gap is 4'20.
With 60 km to go the gap is 3'10



On one of the final hills of the stage Visconti (Vacansoleil) attacks from the peloton. The breakaway is only 2 minutes ahead.



Bulgac and Lapthorne attack from the breakaway, but the others catch back up to them almost instantly. Visconti is 50 seconds behind them, while the peloton is 45 seconds behind the Vacansoleil rider, with still the same teams chasing.



Visconti has almost reached the 5 riders up front, while the Peloton split in 3 groups. 60 riders remain in the peloton. Van Hummel and Appollonio are the biggest names caught behind.



Visconti is caught by the peloton. The pace is really high now, with several riders struggling to keep up. The breakaway is still ahead, but they only have a lead of 45 seconds.



Paolini (Vacansoleil) attacks. He profits from a decrease of pace in the peloton. Just as he reaches the front group, Miles puts in an acceleration, but he can't get away.



The break only has a 20 second lead left on the peloton, where FDJ has 2 riders in front of Bouhanni. He has Calzone on his wheel. Kittel is behind Calzone, with Van Poppel on his wheel. One kilometer later the break is caught.



Bouhanni feels very confident and goes for the long sprint. It might not be a wise decision though with Calzone and Kittel on his wheel.



Calzone bursts past Bouhanni who is getting tired now. Kittel is still looking strong and it looks like these 2 will fight for the victory.



Kittel is just a class above the rest and leaves Calzone behind. Fighting for 3rd are Modolo and Van Poppel, while Bouhanni is falling back fast.




Easy victory for Marcel Kittel. Nothing more has to be said. Calzone gets a good 2nd, while Van Poppel rounds off the podium in 3rd. Matt Leigh gets a great 6th place for the small Australian team Drapac, beating Bouhanni who finishes 7th.

Rank	Name	Team	Time
1	Marcel Kittel	Belkin Pro Cycling Team	4h40'33
2	Carlo Calzone	Movistar Team	s.t.
3	Danny Van Poppel	Team Giant - Shimano	s.t.
4	Sacha Modolo	Bardiani Valvole - CSF Inox	s.t.
5	Barry Markus	AG2R La Mondiale	s.t.
6	Matt Leigh	Drapac Cycling	s.t.
7	Nacer Bouhanni	FDJ.fr	s.t.
8	Sep Vanmarcke	Belkin Pro Cycling Team	s.t.
9	Juan Antonio Flecha	Movistar Team	s.t.
10	Yannick Martinez	Cofidis, Solutions Crédits	s.t.
11	Lars Boom	Belkin Pro Cycling Team	s.t.
12	Carlos Bonilla	AG2R La Mondiale	s.t.
13	Yohan Offredo	FDJ.fr	s.t.
14	Tom Veelers	Team Giant - Shimano	s.t.
15	Ramon Sinkeldam	CCC Polsat - Polkowice	s.t.
16	Samuel Dumoulin	AG2R La Mondiale	s.t.
17	Robert Hunter	MTN - Qhubeka	s.t.
18	Anthony Geslin	Cofidis, Solutions Crédits	s.t.
19	José Joaquín Rojas	Movistar Team	s.t.
20	Julian Alaphilippe	Cofidis, Solutions Crédits	s.t.

Kittel

And we're done!

I will take a 10th place for Cofidis.

Looking forward to Part 2

A Top10 is ok but it should have been better. Moving onto Part 2 please

Strong finish by Calzone. I hope this was the last race in which kittel is superior to him.

Too many second places this season part, that's all that needs to change

Do you have a picture of the break mvhoogdalem?

Good podium for Danny as well

Ugh, horrible race. Glad this season part is over, time for some useful upgrades on my riders!

I do not. Only got a picture of the finish.

Sprint trio? Carlos did some good work in the lead-out and also gained a respectable twelfth!

Why the hell did Lampre even bother turning up at the Volta Limburg Classic

hm....i wonder what the rankings are now...CCC should be leading by far with around 176273818193991 2nd places.

Sky is still in the lead, although their margin has shrunk a lot. A good season start was not followed up, but with 3 GT's to go, they're already 1 spot above where they were last year, and we all know how that ended. Belkin confirms after last season, claimnig second for now. With Ronde and Roubaix coming up, they may even have a shot at the lead before the Giro. Movistar follows, but they need to start thinking about how to close that gap with Sky. They scored 45 points total in the WT classics so far, it's not hard to see where the problem is.

Just short of the podium is Cannondale, Team Sagan did really well, but their leader used quite some racedays already. They need to find a solution for that, but they may have scored enough lready to be safe. BMC can't be happy with their 5th place, they had some ups but even more downs. Omega Pharma took an easy start, but they're 6th, a few point ahead of Orica, which faded a bit after a strong start. Decent results for Astana as well, though Nibali has some work to do.

The we have our first CT team on place 9, well done FDJ! Solid point scoring gives them a good chance for promotion. Garmin has to be disappointed, no points in San Remo or Tour Down Under, and not the best results on the cobbles either. Trek is also having a grey season, but on 12 we already have another CT team with AG2R. Their manager has done some great work, but what will remain after he quit? Europcar follows, they had a decent season, but no big result. Euskaltel is next, ups, but also huge downs, unable to score points in 4 WT races, that's a problem. On 15 we have, very surprising, Katusha. A good season start got no followup, and well, the you enter the danger zone. It's all very close though, 6th place isn't even 400 points away, so they need to look at points rather than positions. Tinkoff is safe, for now, but they can't be too happy about that with their team. They have some GTs left, but still, not good enough.

On place 17 we have a tie, can you believe it after so many races? Caja Rural and Lotto are just outside of the WT positions but will no doubt give quite a fight. Giant is next, as last of the WT teams. NetApp follows, another team that went down a lot after a great season start. Sprinter team Bardiani has some nice results, but I think the manager wishes he had done a few things differently in the transfer season. Cofidis and Vacansoleil follow, decent season for both teams. Androni is next, and we did expect a lot more from them. Colombia follows, a few nice stage wins they had, but also a lot of wasted race days. What ever were they planning to do in Omloop and Nokere?

MTN is on place 27, a lot worse then last year. The cause can be found with their leader, somehow Ciolek can't get into his 2013 flow. CCC improved a lot from last year, claiming a lot of podium finishes. IAM is next, thier focus on WT doesn't seem to pay off yet. New team Drapc does decently enough on 37, with a few nice results, but also a lot of pain. Lampre is last, but finaly deploying Plant seemed to have been a move in the right direction

YAY, We have 1 point

45 points are few but then we only really had MSR where we disappointed. All others are cobbled races and having no rider for the cobbles this can't hardly surprise anybody.

I'm happy with the rankings so far. We have limited the losses and can now attack in the Ardennes and the GTs.

Satisfied with the rankings so far even though the last month have been disappointing. Out of teh WT zero-pointers only Catalunya was disappointing. The other three brought us nothing last year as well...