Hi all,

I have the 2008 DB installed, and have chosen thel Silence Lotto team to start my career with .
At this moment i'm riding the tour of qatar . McEwen is my sprinter .

I've protected him during the whole race, gave him his last drinking bottle 9km before the finish, and placed him in the wheel of Florencio (who won the race the day before in the sprint ) .

McEwen seems to follow, but when we reach 1,5km before finish and i press "S", all the other riders pass him .
He looses 25 places in 1km and crosses the finishline in 31st place ...

What the hell am I doing wrong ? He is one of the fastest guys in the pack , but he converts into a junior rider when hitting the SPRINT bottom .
Please some help !! Any one a tutorial or something ?

Thanks

Do you have him at 99% effort when you click S?
If you select the sprint tab at the bottom left, is his yellow bar all gone? Remember if he has poor fitness, the yellow bar can fade just from following someone. When you leave the wheel you just go.
Does his blue bar run out half way into the sprint?
Do you have it on a harder setting than easy?

It's January, so it's only natural that his form is horrible, which is the most likely explanation.

Are you sure he's actually sprinting?

wait till 1 km till the finish before overtaking, if your in 2nd or 3rd position of the train.
if your lower and your rider isn't good. try to follow the leading guy. you might end up in the top 5

btw Rikki how many drink bottles he has wont effect his sprint. you only need to give him a drink if his bar is low enough that it might run out while he is sprinting and stop him

Yes, 99% and agressive .
The yellow bar + blue bar fades away really easy .
Normal setting .




That's what I thought also : but I tried a single choses etappe from tour de france, using freire . ( so no messing with fitness )
He was in 4th position at 1km ( behind the train Weylandt, Steegmans, Boonen ), he ended up 29th !!!




this seems to be my problem . when the sprint starts, he just hasn't enough power .
Can he drink during the sprint ?

agressive mode..
follow main favorites around 1-1,5km.
hit the S
If you sprinter isnt decent form..he dont go has fast you like to see
If S seems to not working..just try to follow some faster sprinter..follow back in. he can pull you in much better final result..has you have deserved..

this seems to be my problem . when the sprint starts, he just hasn't enough power .
Can he drink during the sprint ?[/quote]

i think you may have misunderstood me a little. What i meant was that the only way drinking will effect his sprint ability is if the bar that the drink fills up runs out while he is sprinting so he has to stop to take a drink as it would be quite hard to do both at the same time.

Commentator always says..they are in final 15km. now..this is moment to take drink bottle. then when you finish you drink very soon position battle starts.

It sounds very strange that he can lose 25 positions in 1 km

I will try to take some screenshots of it ...

I've have seen this happen once or twice to me, im following to the final kilometre, and then want to go for it, and hit sprint, and my rider goes backwards, but then usually they jump back fowards a LOAD more and go win, or get a better placing. But its only happened rarely, and im not sure why.
My only insight into it is: if the yellow bar is more than half full when you enter the final 1 km and your rider is literally right up the guy who he's following's ass then hit sprint, on 99, on aggressive. If not, just let him keep following. There's no shame in following riders to a good placing, happens in real life all the time.

Maybe his sprinters were boxed?
If your rider is boxed between two or more other riders, he won't go past them even if he's much faster than they are.

It sounds like he doesn't catch a wheel of any of the other riders. He will then lose his energy very fast, because he's not protected, and that's it for his chances of winning.

Anyway, the screenshots will probably help

It seems to me that McEwen is not on form. When you are sprinting, make sure that you are following the "sprinting bar". If you are running out of it, don't press S, rather just follow someone else's wheel, because you won't be able to overtake them anyways. If when you reach 1 km to go, you still have a lot of the bar left and are right on the wheel of the guy in front of you, then when you press S, your rider will overtake. To win sprints, positioning is crucial. Doesn't matter how great your sprinter is, if he's in 20th position at the start of a sprint, he's not going to win.

The surest way of winning a sprint is to form a train. You need a guy with a high flat rating (75 or so), a leadout sprinter or two (min. 76 rating for the Tour, but 78 is preferrable) and your main man. Hopefully all of them are in top form or close. If your leading sprinter is not in good form, he should probably be the leadout sprinter. Of course the leadout sprinters need to be almost as good (sprint value) as the main sprinter, so for example, using a 68 S to leadout Petacchi is not a good idea, because he'll be too slow and this will allow others to overtake you.

I'm in charge of Liquigas and I used Quinziato, followed by Boasson-Hagen, Gasparotto and Allan Davis in the Tour de France (I acquired B-H and Davis in the offseason). I put all of them on 99% with each one following the other. I then have Quinziato follow (S with the arrow) maybe the third guy at the head of the peleton (with about 10 km to go). If another train forms that's going faster than the head of the peleton, I set Quinziato to the dot and hope that he can keep up the pace (I may do that anyways, depending on the situation). If I have two leadout sprinters like I did in the Tour, I'll sprint with B-H at just under 3 km. When his sprinting bar gets close to 0, I sprint with Gasparotto. Again, when his bar gets close to 0 or if I'm at about 1 km to go, I'll sprint with Davis. If I only have one leadout sprinter, I'll wait for 2 km to go or until someone else initiates the sprint. Using this strategy, you put your sprinters at the front so that others have to come from behind. Because your sprint bar never falls to 0, before you launch the next guy, you're very hard to pass, because the others have to come out of your slipstream to do so. Using this strategy, I won a few stages and the green jersey. Unfortunately on the Champs Elizee, one of the guys lost the wheel and I couldn't get my train together in time and came 5th.

Now, if you don't have the guys to form a leadout, it's a bit more tricky. you have to try to get on the wheel of a top sprinter and be 2nd or 3rd in line. Follow until you're 1 km from the finish and if you have half or more of the sprint bar left, sprint. It'll take some time to get a feel for what to do in different situations, how to react to other trains, how to battle for wheels, etc. Like I said, it's harder than having your own leadout train, but unless you're Milram or T-Mobile/High Road or another team with a whole bunch of great sprinters, you won't have that luxury.

@Lechia - How do you do when you form the train? When I try it it's almost always that the riders is in the wrong order so that I can't follow or that somone else catches my lead out trainbefore I do. You have any tactic so that I can form a train quite quick?