Good preview and Lukasz Owsian is not an custom rider

Shall we count the EPIC Rider mistakes or let him get there himself?

Hehe. Sorry, not an expert on CT custom riders

same for the first three teams, Ochoa, delle Stelle, di Corrado and Garcia I think

Looking at the teams and riders, this should be interesting, hopefully Marczynski can do something in GC, not counting on it though, Boeckmans will be a competitor in this sprints and Pierre will be up there in the TT, should be good to read for my first race (both EPIC riders and Vaconsoleil)

In the db, there stands on the cyclist_photo column if they're a custom rider a not, as there will stand "Custom"

Ciolek tenth again in Qatar. Disappointing given the stage win goal.

Alinejad should have some sprinting chances in Algarve. Since he's the best puncher of them I give him a reasonable chance of a stage win actually

Everyone's an EPIC rider!

If you make it non-caps then it works

Anyway, since I didn't really know and couldn't really be bothered, I decided I'd rather put in the wrong people than not put in the right people. Hopefully I'll start reporting this weekend if rowing and football don't take up too much of my time. Ollfardh, are we clear to start?

Of course

By the way, no need to use the same preview method over and over. If you just sya something about the route and the favourites, that's fine as well.

And let me know if someone is really strugling with a preview, I can try to make one myself if needed

Another race without OPQS xD I should have applied for more wildcards...

Yes, stop stealing my preview style.
Stash, Teuns and De la Cruz are not Epic riders.

Should be a good battle between Kim and Costa, but Kim will win anyway.

Since there is a TT, I wouldn't think Rebellin can get a Top 10 GC, but you'll never know Matysiak can hopefully get some Top 10's aswell

Quick question: Is EPIC season always like this with stage races firing off all over the place?
I mean we have TdU, ToQ, TdSL and now potential VaA all going on at the same time, why not throw in Oman whilst your at it! I mean great races being raced, but seriously hard to build a narrative with riders riding in two or three places at once

Next point: Could we not have an EPIC results thread where simply results are posted rather than lost in a EPIC part one mega thread? Or alternatively results linked back to the OP though just a simple results thread would make more sense.

Final point: I too would advocate short regular reports over irratic irregular long reports.
Algarve - preview (19/02)
TdU - stage 1 (15/02), stage 2 (17/02)
TdSL - stage 1 (17/02) ...
ToQ - stage 1 (16/02) stage 2 (18/02).
I know this is not the mangame but the rule of thumb there is one stage per day at least.

Qatar - Pleased to see a Kawasaki teammate win at Androni, can't believe the team boss realistically expects Ryu to beat the likes of Cavendish and Demare!

Algarve - Should be interesting to see how Arredondo does in Algarve with a couple of nice hilly stages there.

The problem we had last year is the pace (and it seems to be going a bit slow today as well ), so I'd rather have races start early then late. It's not my prefered solution, but we're already about a year behind on real life, so yeah

About the threads, there may be a big announcement coming soon

Yes



+ 1000000 to this, would be very useful when trying to catch up on results when writing a review of a race in the team HQ; it can take ages to wade through various races that you're not participating in and general chatter to find the results even for a short stage race.

EDIT: seen Ollfardh's post, looks promising

Give me my damn startlists then

Ah yes.... sending you a PM about that

To join in: All things considered i'd much rather have multiple races going on at once. Very hard to role-play narrative but i don't want a season taking over a year again, especially as we are a year behind.
Not putting the reporters down but stage races usually go on for quite a long period and we often had big pauses last season between races. Overall i'd value pace over realism.

There's no reason i can see why Ollfardh couldn't hyperlink the calendar in the first posts to the stages, would make things sooooo much easier to keep track of

Looking forward to algarve. Kim vs Costa will be interesting

I just wanted to apologise for being absent the past 10 days or so and beacause of that not being able to comment on any races.
I unfortunately had some personal issues, but it should hopefully be fixed now.

Because of this I also haven't been able to hand in any startlists for the first season part. I mean none of my races have started so far so I was just wondering if it would change anything if I still send them in? If not then my chances to promote are basically gone.

Concerning the races that I have missed:
Gabon: Nothing really important still happened in the last few stages from our point, but anymway I'm happy with Gastauer's stage win.
TDU: Two rather quiet stages so far and Markus doing absolutely nothing in the sprints.
San Luis: Good 5th place from Hutarovich in the first stage and hopefully Betancur can put in a good performance in the next stage and eventually pull off a podium in the GC.