Eduard Alexander Beltran	Leader		Gabriel Marin	Domestique
	Aberlardo Ablenado	Domestique		Miha Poljanec	Domestique
	Tyron Giogieri	Domestique		Izidor Penko	Domestique
	Abolfazl Gilanipoor	Domestique		Goran Antonijevic	Domestique

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Big race for Beltran as we go into the puncher heavy part of the season. All the best

Do or die time for Beltran and the team!

	Kris Boeckmans	Sprinter		Hugues Mottin	Free Role
	Gabriel Marin	Leadout		Izidor Penko	Domestique
	Miha Poljanec	Domestique		Matic Groselj	Domestique
	Dusan Rajovic	Domestique		Michael Christodoulos	Domestique

After two trips to the Arab peninsula for the Tour of the Middle East, Swisslion came here for the 3rd time and 3rd time was definitely a charm for the team. This season much maligned Hugues Mottin started well in the opening time-trial to place 11th. Then it was on to the sprints. Things didn't go so swimmingly there as Kris Boeckmans was completely disconnected from his teammates and couldn't participate in the sprint. Leadout loanee Gabriel Marin recovered what he could with a 6th place. The Costa Rican delivered Boeckmans well on stage 3 and 3rd place it was.




Stage 4 was the crucial time-trial in terms of GC. Mottin was able to continue his strong form with a 6th place on the day. That vaulted him up to 8th in GC. In addition to that Izidor Penko produced another fine ride that put him in the young rider's jersey. All in all, a great day to secure success in this race.




The main priority for the final stage was to guide Mottin safely to the finish, but it was also another chance for Boeckmans to grab an elusive stage win. The stage proved to be quite chaotic with many splits occuring, but in the end no time gaps were given. Swisslion were well represented with 6 riders in the top 50 of the stage. Boeckmans finished what was a weird race for him with another 3rd place. Mottin lost a spot on countback, but 9th in GC was more than the team expected. A great source of pride was Penko winning the young rider's jersey with 33rd overall. Matic Groselj also added a few points in young riders classification. All in all one of the best races for Swisslion this season.




Race goals:

Top 15 GC	Success	Hugues Mottin	9th
Stage win	Failure	Kris Boeckmans	3rd (Stage 3, Stage 5)

Race score: 9/10


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	Lahcen Saber	Leader		Goran Antonijevic	Domestique
	Yevgeni Nepomnyachsniy	Domestique		Ivan Siric	Domestique
	Matija Mestric	Domestique		Georgios Stavrakakis	Domestique
	Stepan Kurianov	Domestique		Yuriy Natarov	Domestique

Swisslion travelled to Holland for this sprint classic with Lahcen Saber in what was his last sprint of the year. It was a windy day that made it very difficult for all the riders. Even the breakaway wasn't willing to run themselves in the ground and got caught with 20 km to go. Strong wind meant that the riders were all across the road in search of shelter and the elastic snapped in the last 10 km. Saber kept himself safe up front going into the final. Given the lack of helpers in these conditions the leadouts were ineffective. The Morrocan went for his own sprint with less than a kilometer to go. It proved a decent choice as he finished 4th on the day. A good result to close his sprint season.




Race goals:

Top 5

Success

Lahcen Saber

4th

Race score: 7/10


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Some nice results lately, I would even dare to say Saber's fourth in Holland was worth an 8/10

Very nice results indeed, but you always need that carrot to keep improving

Glad that Saber improved in the second half of the season

Seems like the team finally bonded together to avoid relegation. Mottin, Saber, Beltran all chipping in some points

He surely did. Hopefully I use him better next year and he gets back to his Philips form



That's certainly one way to describe it

Even if someone like Mottin suddenly starts pulling his weight, that makes a big difference in a relegation scrap.

	Yevgeni Nepomnyachsniy	Leader		Yuriy Natarov	Domestique
	Hugues Mottin	Free Role		Artur Sowinski	Stagiare
	Ivan Siric	Domestique		Kees Duyvesteyn	Stagiare
	Georgios Stavrakakis	Domestique		Jeremy Bellicaud	Stagiare

Swisslion came to Britain with one of the weakest squads this year. With 3 neo pros and 3 stagiaires to accompany the veterans Hugues Mottin and Yevgeni Nepomnyachsniy, one could say the race was going to be an uphill task. Speaking of hills, that was the foremost objective, to guide Nepomnyachsniy safely through the hilly stages with minimum time loss. Stage 1 in that regard was successful. Stage 2 rated as flat was supposed to be the easiest one, but an unexpected split did occur which led to some riders losing over 2 minutes. Nepomnyachsniy was well placed again. Stage 3 was the time-trial stage, crucial for the team's GC hopes. Nepomnyachsniy slightly underperformed to finish only 20th, which placed him 8th in GC. Mottin, who was targeting this sole stage, had a decent 4th place. Nepomnyachsniy limited his losses on the crucial hilly stage 4 and in fact came into 6th place, by bettering some of the other time-trial specialists. That would be his final placing as the last stage went to the breakaway and he finished safely in the group of favourites. A fantastic result for the Kazakh veteran in his penultimate race of the season.




Race goals:

Top 10 GC

Success

Yevgeni Nepomnyachsniy

6th

Race score: 8/10


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Great result for Nepomnyachsniy! The only stage he lost time is the stage where he gained some places in the GC, so I guess you could forgive him for losing a bit of time there Definitely an okay time trial by Mottin as well, hope he can overperform a little in Deutschland!

True He survived the hills very well, which more than made up for his slight underperformance in the TT

Would be pretty awesome if Mottin can deliver another good result. Looks like he's finally becoming worth the money spent

	Kris Boeckmans	Sprinter		Matic Groselj	Domestique
	Gabriel Marin	Leadout		Stepan Kurianov	Domestique
	Izidor Penko	Domestique		Ivan Siric	Domestique
	Dusan Rajovic	Domestique		Hugues Mottin	Free Role

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	Lahcen Saber	Free Role		Matija Mestric	Domestique
	Gabriel Marin	Domestique		Matic Groselj	Domestique
	Miha Poljanec	Domestique		Goran Antonijevic	Domestique
	Dusan Rajovic	Domestique		Ivan Siric	Domestique

	Eduard Alexander Beltran	Leader		Michael Christodoulos	Domestique
	Tyron Giogieri	Domestique		Ivan Siric	Domestique
	Matija Mestric	Domestique		Georgius Stavrakakis	Domestique
	Stepan Kurianov	Domestique		Yuriy Natarov	Domestique

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	Eduard Alexander Beltran	Leader		Gabriel Marin	Domestique
	Aberlardo Ablenado	Domestique		Miha Poljanec	Domestique
	Tyron Giogieri	Domestique		Izidor Penko	Domestique
	Abolfazl Gilanipoor	Domestique		Goran Antonijevic	Domestique

A crucial race for Swisslion in their quest of retaining their PCT status. It's also the team's home race and with 4 local riders in the squad, the motivation was there to make this race a success. Stage 1 followed an eerily similar pattern to last year's edition. The breakaway won it by a big margin again, which wasn't the way Swisslion wanted to start the race. Stage 3 proved to be the more selective stage as the favourites duked it out on the final climb. Swisslion leader Beltran had a decent finish to place 4th on the day. Stage 4 finished in a bunch sprint from where the Colombian was 10th. Stage 5 was another stage marked as important. This time Beltran tried forcing the issue by attacking from farther out. Unfortunately his attempt was neutralised and he ended up losing time to the other favourites.




Stage 6 was one where you would not be surprised if it went to the breakaway, but in fact the break was caught fairly early. That left time for GC attacks. Beltran smartly followed the wheels to finish 7th on stage and gained back the time he lost on the previous stage. Stage 7 was as flat as you can get in this race. Swisslion did not bring a sprinter to the race, so Miha Poljanec was given the freedom to go in the breakaway. It quickly became clear the peloton were happy to give this stage to the breakaway. That was music to the ears of Poljanec. He wisely didn't do too much work in chasing the late attacks and proved to be the strongest in the final sprint. A fantastic first win for the still young Slovenian, who's been on the team since it's establishment in 2018.




The final stage is arguably the toughest of the lot. So it wasn't good timing for Beltran to have a bad day. The Colombian lost almost a minute, but luckily for him some of his main competitors were in the same boat or worse. As a result that was enough for him to finish 5th in GC. Which is exactly what the goal was before the race. So in a race of ups and downs Swisslion finished their home race on a big high note.


Race goals:

Top 5 GC	Success	Eduard Alexander Beltran	5th
Stage win	Success	Miha Poljanec	1st (Stage 7)

Race score: 8/10


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	Kris Boeckmans	Sprinter		Matic Groselj	Domestique
	Gabriel Marin	Leadout		Stepan Kurianov	Domestique
	Izidor Penko	Domestique		Ivan Siric	Domestique
	Dusan Rajovic	Domestique		Hugues Mottin	Free Role

Race goals:

Top 20 GC	Success	Hugues Mottin	19th
2x Stage Top 3	Failure	Kris Boeckmans	6th (Stage 2)

Race score: 4/10


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	Eduard Alexander Beltran	Leader		Matic Groselj	Domestique
	Tyron Giogieri	Domestique		Stepan Kurianov	Domestique
	Dusan Rajovic	Domestique		Georgius Stavrakakis	Domestique
	Matija Mestric	Domestique		Yuriy Natarov	Domestique

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Congrats for Lithuania! Great to see Beltran finally coming back to form. Hope he has a great October too. He's gonna meet Kelderman twice

Pos	Last		Team	Total	RD	PpRD	Proj
1	2		Repsol - Netflix	3985	158	25,22	4414
2	1		Farfetch Pro Cycling	3920	149	26,31	4604
3	3		Mapei	3684	157	23,46	4106
4	14		Desigual	3303	163	20,26	3546
5	17		Kraftwerk Man Machine	3094	159	19,46	3406
6	5		Bakkafrost	3084	165	18,69	3271
7	6		Xero Racing	3058	153	19,99	3498
8	4		MOL	2970	151	19,67	3442
9	7		Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff	2936	161	18,24	3192
10	8		Duolingo	2797	159	17,59	3078
11	9		Polar	2775	159	17,45	3054
12	15		Valio - Viking Genetics	2749	165	16,66	2916
13	10		Minions	2554	159	16,06	2811
14	13		Berg Cycles	2536	151	16,79	2938
15	12		Podium Ambition	2445	164	14,91	2609
16	16		Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam	2372	155	15,3	2678
17	11		DK - SVA Zalgiris	2367	159	14,89	2606
18	20		Fablok - Chocolate Jacques	2132	153	13,93	2438
19	19		Swisslion Cycling Team	1922	161	11,94	2090
20	21		GCN Racing	1875	153	12,25	2144
21	18		Andorra Cycling Project	1788	155	11,54	2020
22	23		Azteca - NBCSN	1716	159	10,79	1888
23	25		Aramco DP	1703	157	10,85	1899
24	22		Nordstrom - CA Technologies	1660	162	10,25	1794
25	24		Adastra N Hell Energy Cycling	1505	161	9,35	1636
26	26		Campari Asahi Procycling	1032	149	6,93	1213

Ranking update #5 is here and it is a good update for Swisslion. While the ranking spot is the same 19th, the team scored almost 400 points in this period. That is a big number in our context of fighting against relegation and it puts us firmly on safe ground. So how did we do it?

It started in the month of August which was supposed to be one of the leanest months on our calendar. Lahcen Saber achieved his best result in a cobbled race to score some modest points in Macskako Kerekparverseny. The important race of the month was the new Arab Tour. With Kris Boeckmans in the sprints and Hugues Mottin against the clock, scoring was a must at the HC stage race. Both riders delivered with the Belgian scoring a couple of podiums and the Frenchman finishing a very strong 9th in GC. Their success was added to by our very own Izidor Penko winning the young rider's jersey. We capped off our successful month with Saber finishing 4th at the sprint classic Ronde van Het Ijsselmeer.

The rest of the update covers the first half of September and 3 stage races. First the Tour of Britain. We've never before had a rider capable of doing well in a hilly, time-trial filled race. Yevgeni Nepomnyachsniy though was up to the task. The veteran Kazakh rode a smart race and limited his losses on the hilly stages. The time-trial was always his trump card and he managed to finish a very good 6th overall. After that came our most important race of the season. Our home tour, Balkans International. It was a stick or twist race for our main leader Eddy Beltran, but he managed to somehow pull through and finish 5th in GC. Which satisfies the MGUCI race goal we choose at the start of the season. Of course the happiness was shared among the whole team, as it's the only goal we managed to accomplish so far. I also have to mention the stage win of Miha Poljanec from the breakaway. Here is another rider that is going to reach his full potential for us and we were ecstatic to see him pull off his first professional win. The last race of the update is the Tour of Deutschland. Kris Boeckmans couldn't compete with some of the better sprinters there. Hugues Mottin and the youngsters added a few posts from the time-trial performance.

So a hugely positive period for the team. The pressure on the last few races are now off, as we can start thinking about another season in the PCT division.

	Kris Boeckmans		Swisslion Cycling Team	481
	Eduard Alexander Beltran		Swisslion Cycling Team	470
	Lahcen Saber		Swisslion Cycling Team	308
	Yevgeni Nepomnyachsniy		Swisslion Cycling Team	210
	Hugues Mottin		Swisslion Cycling Team	119
	Abolfazl Gilanipoor		Swisslion Cycling Team	110
	Tyron Giogieri		Swisslion Cycling Team	54
	Miha Poljanec		Swisslion Cycling Team	44
	Stepan Kurianov		Swisslion Cycling Team	38
	Aberlardo Ablenado		Swisslion Cycling Team	37
	Izidor Penko		Swisslion Cycling Team	33
	Matic Groselj		Swisslion Cycling Team	7
	Georgios Stavrakakis		Swisslion Cycling Team	6
	Gabriel Marin		Swisslion Cycling Team	4
	Michael Christodoulos		Swisslion Cycling Team	1

Bostjan Mervar,
team representative and general manager of Swisslion Cycling Team