Tour de San Luis
19.1.-25.1. Cat. 2.1

On the first hilly stage of the Tour de San Luis all jerseys despite the sprinters jersey should lay on new shoulders. Obviously Eduardo Sepulveda is a man to watch out in his home country, but there are many options for todays stage.

This day two jerseys are to defend. Mountains jersey for Julian and white jersey for Mathieu. Right from the beginning Julian went on the attack again, hoping for a weak group to get some points.

Only Vicente Reynes (IAM) reacted to that, so they achieved a gap of 60 seconds quickly. Then the peloton suddenly said no and put the hammer on everyone, going for the intermediate sprint. They catched Julian, who was really angry about that, and sprinted for points. Guess who won the sprint, Hutarovich.
After that Julian had another go, another time Reynes followed him. The third man to complete the group was Damien Gaudin (AG2R), really strong on flat terrain but no danger in the mountains. The trio reached the big climb of the day with an advantage of 2"30.

On the 3rd category hill the two breakaway companions battled hard for the points, while Julian saved some energy. Gaudin took it. On top of the big climb, where it already flattened out, was the first category climb, and we went in the breakaway for the points up there. But at the point we recognized the KOM was on a nearly flat gradiant, we knew that we failed our breakaway plan. Reynes got the ten points, while Julian could only get third.

Bretagne put on the pressure already on the mountain, but even more on the flat after the decent. With the GC leader and the local man they had two big interests to catch the breakaway, and Guillou, Vachon and Hivert did a fantastic job for them.
On the second sprint the energy of Julian was over, he went back to the peloton, where he guided his teammates a little, before sitting back at the final hills.
Two small bumps were followed by the steep final hill, the Mirador del Potrero. The first attempt on the Mirador by Nordhaug (Sky) got brought back by Durasek (Lampre), who lead the peloton all the hill working for Niemiec. Then Johann saw a small pace decrease, and settled an attack, hoping for no response.

Izagirre (Movistar) covered this attack and Pellizotti (Androni) followed him. Johann, knowing that these guys are much stronger than him, just put his head down and rode for himself. Pellizotti flew away, covered by Izagirre, and Durasek tried to bridge the peloton over to the leading riders. At least Kennaugh (Sky) was the only man to bridge over to the leading duo, but could only overtake Pellizotti, while Izagirre celebrated his victory. Durasek bridged over to Johann with a small group not containing his captain and took P4; Johann finished on a very good 6th place behind Austrian champion Zoidl (Trek)

This brought us P5 in the GC with Johann, Izagirre is already 8 minutes down due to the first stage. Both Laurent and Mathieu were really in trouble on the last climb so no action from them here. Petr had a good day and really helped Mathieu to limit the damage.

Tour de San Luis
19.1.-25.1. Cat. 2.1

Here comes a flat TT. Who could beat the Movistar armada?


We leave you with two impressions, the first from Laurent Didier, wearing the national champions jersey, on the starting ramp.

The second one is from our best man in todays classification, Sebastian Balck.

Our youngstars really struggeled today. Johann did well, finishing worse than most of the other contenders but not loosing too much time and staying in the Top 10 of the GC.
The victory was taken by Movistar, but Malori wasn´t the celebrating man. Andrey Amador finished first in front of Plaza (Lampre) and Sergent (Trek)
Franco Pellizotti (Androni) lost his leading place to Peter Kennaugh (Sky).

Tour de San Luis
19.1.-25.1. Cat. 2.1

Stage 5 brings us the only classified mountain stage. Cerro de Almagro will decide, who can compete for thhe GC and who can´t. From there it´s 20 km to the finish line. Groups well working together could save their days on the plateu by working well together.

The big question for us is whether we can bring Johann in a decent position for the GC. It will be hard enough so Laurent will stay with Johann. We will try to go with Julian again for the big KoM points at Cerro de Almagro.

Right from the beginning we had a lot of attacks coming, and Team Sky surprisingly let a big group fly away.

It contained Quintana, Feng, Kern, Hollenstein, Aramendia, Guillou, Valgren, Domont and Devolder. The best climber in this is of course Dayer Quintana, sitting 2"43 down in the GC. But the group had a hard time. There were loads of attacks since 50 km after the starts, so the riders upfront lost a lot of energy with attacks and counterattacks. They had a maximum of five minutes, but the advantage was down to three as the group reached Cerro de Almagro, surprisingly the original break stayed together.
From the foot of the Cerro Sky launched a bigg attack for their GC leader Kennaugh, putting Sebastian Henao on the attack with Kennaugh on his backwheel. Everyone was in trouble to follow this, soon Johan was completely on his own, having not the best legs and recognizing the danger a little late. In the meantime the group upfront splitted up, so Julian quickly knew that there were no points to get. At the top of the Cerro Kennaugh reached Quintana, but he had Zoidl and Pardilla with him. Johann just missed out a group of four including Plaza, so he had to ride all on his own, as he just distanced Julian on top of the climb.
While the group of four upfront competed for the victory,

Johann had to ride on his own until the finish line, with Durasek, Paulinho, Hollenstein and Domont only sitting in his wheel.
Pardilla for Caja Rural took the win in the goup at the fore in front of Kennaugh and Zoidl, while Johann finished on P15 3 minutes down.
So we have Kennaugh now leading in front of Zoidl and Pardilla, Johann down to P12, four minutes down in the GC and one minute down on the Top10.

We have a hilly stage to come, fnishing with a steep climb to the Mirador del Sol. This is the last stage to mix the GC up, so we will attack the Top10 with Johann. Kennaugh sits comfortable on top of the GC and has the best possible team to defend this place.


Every stage begins the same for us. The team tries to keep Johann in the first third but out of the wind, while our German fighter tries his luck for the polka dot jersey. It was hard to motivate him after a hard day yesterday with a brave effort but again no points.
He managed to join a breakaway group, in which Movistar another time placed one of their strong climbers, this time Andrey Amador. Brandle, Grmay, Houle and Roulston completed the group.

Everyone of the group tried to compete in the mountain sprint, a second category climb. Amador took it, Julian placed himself third and took some points.

The breakaway looked surprisingly good with 80 km to go and an advantage of 8 minutes; the peloton didn´t really chase hard. So we tried something with Sebastian Balck attacking with Tschopp at his backwheel. The plan was to get Tschopp on Balcks backwheel all the way and with an advantage to the last climb. This plan failed, Androni immediately increased the pace when the duo attacked.
No one took care of the first intermediate sprint, so Julian took two points. The last one was really fought out, and Kern took another point. The peloton only controlled the advantage, they arrived at the Mirador four minutes down on the leading group. While Amador paced the breakaway into the climb, Johann made his second move. On the wheel of Mathieu he went early to distance some careless rider upfront him in the GC.

Luckily Sky didn´t chase after this but put Kennaugh directly behind Tschopp. Nine riders followed the attack, Trek increased the pace in the peloton for Zoidl. Soon Kennaugh took over the chase and distanced all the riders earier or later, Tschopp couldn´t hold on to his pace for long.
On the finishing line Amador took an easy victory, Brandle finished second 42 seconds down. With 1"33 Kern bet Grmay in the sprint for P3, what gave us the first Top3 stage result. Kennaugh secured his lead by being the best non-breakaway rider, Tschopp finished the stage 4"19 down on Place 15, crossing the finishing line together with Felline.

From the pack only Zoidl and Nordhaug could overtake him. Mathieu finished one place down on Johann.
We made it, Johann took over P8 and jumped in the Top10 of the GC. Also Julian took over the mountains jersey equal to Amador with 16 points. The unexpected points at the Mirador del Sol lead to that.

Today is clearly a sprinters day. All signs are on another battle between Hutarovich and Appollonnio.

We have a Top 10 place to secure and a Mountains jersey to defend. So we try to bring Julian in the breakaway again and sit back in the peloton with all the others for a sprint.
You know our German fighter, he shows his jersey right from the beginning in the center of San Luis.

No reaction of any rider is exactly what he hoped for, he reached the KOM point 7km after the beginning with 4!!minutes advantage.
So the jersey was save, what an effort by Julian. We thought about sitting back now and waiting for the peloton, but decided to keep a slow but steady pace.

We took both sprints, while CCC try to set all up for Paterski. Caja Rural and Androni joined the pacemaking, so the gap came down quickly (2"26) at the last sprint with 78 to go. Kern got caught with 27 km to go, and the teams started to set everything up for their sprinters,

mostly Androni and Bretagne for the main men. Caused by the fast pace for many kms at the end we had a really messy sprint. Appolonio went early, Hutarovich lost his teammate and our riders chose bad wheels or couldn´t hold on to them. Finally Hutarovich managed to overtake Appollonio just before the finishing line; Ventoso finished third.

Van der Poel finished on a nice P6 for us, while Tschopp came in save on P8.

We had a fantastic start to the season. Two jerseys from Julian are more than we could have expected, he attacked every race and worked harder than any other rider in this Tour. Also Johann had a very good time finishing in the Top10 while Laurent had trouble.
Some of our riders will pack their bags to sunny Mallorca, where our next race will be. Hopefully we can continue our good season start there.
Andy Schleck from San Luis, Argentina

Some of you might be interested in the stats I created for the riders who were not in the database...

Our Mallorca squad looks like this:



We have two flat stages, then a mountain stage. The last stage is tough and hilly in the first part, but the second is pan-flat.

High pace and a big battle for the breakaway group were characteristic for the first 20 km. Loads of attacks went, MTN didn´t want to let a big group go. We didn´t participate in this, the chances of a breakaway victory were very low and there were no mountain points to achieve. Finally two very strong riders found each other,

Guillaume van Keirsbulck and Matteo Tosatto. The duo of classic specialists are clearly preperating for the cobbled classics, so they put on a hard pace, controlled by MTN-Qhubeka in the peloton. All in all the two were not even allowed to get an advantage of three minutes.
As the couple reached the second intermediate sprint, we had the first chance for some points. But no one was able to cover the perfectly prepared sprint of Theo Bos.

Further on Lotto-NL and Movistar decided to get involved in the chase. They reached both breakaway riders with around ten to go, so the leadout could start. We tried to set up a train for van der Poel, but with five to go he lost our train and struggled to reach it again. In the meantime LottoNL-Jumbo set up the best train, on the other side MTN and Tinkoff-Saxo got involved. Markus left it a little early for the dutch team, on the other side the sprinters trio was strong enough to outpace him. Vakoc had something left and tried to go for himself, as Mathieu reached him out of power. But he could only compete for place 5, while Daniele Bennati went for glory.

Just on the line Bennati couldn´t hold on, Bos came in with higher speed. At least Theo Bos could celebrate his victory and a great result for the ambicious african team.

Bennati and Guardini took the minor podium places, while Vakoc just missed out the top 5.

We will have the yellow numbers tomorrow, but the team classification will be decided on the third stage. Shame we missed out the top 5 so tight, but the harder the stages the better for us. Tomorrow we will get a new chance on a stage which is a little more bumpy.