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[PCT] Team Kenya Airways 2015
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| dev4ever |
Posted on 17-11-2015 17:52
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Kwiat has imo been one of the signings of the season and Impey has been quality as expected. Not the most expected promotion candidate but surely one of the most impressive ones considering your focus.
Congratz on the amazing season that led to promotion! 
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| sgdanny |
Posted on 17-11-2015 18:00
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Classics Specialist
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Gratz on the promotion! You now have a great opportunity to make African cycling more than just a PCT nation!
Impey has been the most entertaining to watch though, ought to be one of the most exciting riders to follow. Ben Nasser was spot on in his timing and Kwiatek was well Kwiatek 
Will be exciting to see your full PT team!
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 17-11-2015 18:00
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dev4ever wrote:
Kwiat has imo been one of the signings of the season and Impey has been quality as expected. Not the most expected promotion candidate but surely one of the most impressive ones considering your focus.
Congratz on the amazing season that led to promotion!
Thanks! We indeed had a great transfers this year but even after that I couldn't see promotion happening so soon.
The problem with it happening this year is that we won't have Kudus at full strength yet and many of our leaders are on the older side so we will be looking to ship them out, meaning it will be a real task rebuilding the team to try and survive. Looking forward to it though! |
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 17-11-2015 18:07
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Team Manager
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Congrats! At least you won't have to loan him out now! Will be interesting to see him taking on the PT races, and another chance for Samwel too - although he does seem to have been better as a helper.
I hope to see you sign Bakari, to max out the best African cobbled rider 
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 17-11-2015 20:40
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Grand Tour Specialist
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sgdanny wrote:
Gratz on the promotion! You now have a great opportunity to make African cycling more than just a PCT nation!
Impey has been the most entertaining to watch though, ought to be one of the most exciting riders to follow. Ben Nasser was spot on in his timing and Kwiatek was well Kwiatek
Will be exciting to see your full PT team!
Cheers! Will be great to have the increased funds that promotion brings to grow the African side of the team further, and I hope to keep most of the team African. However we'll definitely have to look abroad in some cases to ensure we remain competitive.
SportingNonsense wrote:
Congrats! At least you won't have to loan him out now! Will be interesting to see him taking on the PT races, and another chance for Samwel too - although he does seem to have been better as a helper.
I hope to see you sign Bakari, to max out the best African cobbled rider
I guess so. We'll also be looking to give Samwel a ride at PT level in his final year before declines, although probably at a supporting role for a bigger leader. We'll have to see what transfers brings.
Seeing as we can no longer skip the cobbled races, we might be in the market for a new cobbled leader, so who knows... |
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| Avin Wargunnson |
Posted on 18-11-2015 06:57
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World Champion
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Big congrats on the top5 in PCT and thus a promotion! Will be cool to meet an african based team in the PT, looking forward to that.
It will be hard first year, but you showed you are a capable
manager. Best of luck during transfers, where we can meet maybe, if you would like to get rid of certain eastern european or as you said,looking out for some cobbled leader. 
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| aidanvn13 |
Posted on 18-11-2015 07:02
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Classics Specialist
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Good luck with keeping the team African as possible. Of course you'll have to bring in some big guns to avoid relegation, but nonetheless I'm sure you'll keep the original spirit of the team.
Big congrats on your promotion. Kwiatkowski was incredible and really pushed your team into the top 5. Will be interesting to see what Kudus would manage at PT level.
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 23-11-2024 04:11
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| Ian Butler |
Posted on 18-11-2015 09:16
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Tour de France Champion
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Wow congrats! hope you'll survive well in the PT |
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 18-11-2015 17:00
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Avin - Thanks, looking forward to finally getting to race with the top riders in the game. It will indeed be hard but I hope we can be competitive at least and get a few wins, and of course achieve the main goal of staying up.
If there's one non-African we keep in transfers, it will be that certain Eastern European, but who knows, maybe our paths will cross at some point. One thing I have learnt is that anything is possible in transfers...
Aidan - I'll definitely try to grow our African core, definitely important to try and keep developing riders as we have done so far while being in the MG. Would be nice to sign a few more Kenyans, but there are not many PT quality ones so we may need to look to our new secondary country South Africa!
Ian - Thanks, I hope so too! |
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 20-11-2015 17:58
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Grand Tour Specialist
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 Japan Cup
Our season was to finish in Japan, where Ben Nasser had one final chance to get a result and end the season on a high at the Japan Cup. With 23km to go the Tunisian jumped away from the with Meyer, but unfortunately they were caught. However Ben Nasser still managed 6th in the final sprint to end our season on a high and ensure a 5th place finish.
Result
| 1 |  Jay McCarthy | Bank of Ireland - Irish Cycling | 4h30'46 | | 2 |  Domenik Klemme | Grupo Nutresa | s.t. | | 3 |  Rui Costa | Prio - Porto | s.t. | | ..... | | 6 |  Hassen Ben Nasser | Team Kenya Airways | s.t. |
Stay tuned for a season review once the final rankings are out, and then information on all of our riders' futures!
Edited by FroomeDog99 on 21-11-2015 22:07
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| Dippofix |
Posted on 20-11-2015 19:45
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Classics Specialist
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It's not that I don't like it, but the amount of people that think McCarthy is Irish is too damn high.
Anyway good end to your season too, ability to pick up results like that even when attacks don't come off is surely key to promotion. Congrats on that by the way, your team will surely be (besides Evonik) the team to follow going up to PT. Hope some nice African talents get added to show for all the good work you and Aidan have been doing.
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 21-11-2015 13:39
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Grand Tour Specialist
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 2015 Season Review
So it's the end of a long and very successful season for the team. There were many highs as we had our most successful season yet, picking up many wins in what turned out to be a battle for promotion, which eventually finished in success as we finished 5th to ensure promotion to the PT! Here are some of our highlights from 2015.
Season Highlights
Day one of our season and we already had our first win, with new signing Impey taking stage 1 of the Tour Down Under to get our season off to the best possible start.
There was another win in our second race as well, with Impey again winning a sprint in the Barcelona Classic to take the race and continue our brilliant start.
Our winning streak continued at our third race, the Tour of Eritrea, with Kwiatkowski winning in his first race for the team and putting us in a commanding rankings position even at such an early stage.
The next race was the Volta a Catalunya, where unfortunately we couldn't win but Kudus managed a stage win on the final day and Kwiatkowski managed 5th to make it a successful race for us.
It was April for our next good result, with Ben Nasser finishing 2nd in the Tour of South Africa, maintaining his good record there after winning in 2014.
The Tour of Japan was also a success for the team with stage 3 seeing Kwiatkowski attacking in the last few kilometres as part of a trio and was the strongest in the sprint, claiming the stage and the GC lead. He eventually finished a close 2nd in the GC.
As July rolled around we had a great time at the Post Danmark Rundt, with Impey grabbing two stages and Brent Bookwalter finishing 2nd in the TT to take 2nd overall.
The promotion battle was tight as we entered August, where Ben Nasser struck a crucial blow for our promotion challenge as he took the overall in the Tour of Britain after a massive attack on stage 5. Impey also took a stage to put us in the driving seat in the promotion battle.
In Ben Nasser's next race he continued his rich vein of form, coming 2nd on the final day of the GP Cyclistes to give us another big points boost.
It was then Impey's turn to get in on the act, winning the GP Plouay to add more momentum to our unexpected promotion challenge and effectively seal our spot in the PT!
2015 Rider Palmares
Rankings
| 1 |  | Aegon - Lavazza | 3698 | | 2 |  | Gazelle | 3619 | | 3 |  | Team Puma - SAP | 3588 | | 4 |  | Team Bpost | 3224 | | 5 |  | Team Kenya Airways | 3213 | | 6 |  | Evonik - ELKO | 2923 | | 7 |  | RBC Pro Cycling | 2876 | | 8 |  | Risa - Ergon | 2754 | | 9 |  | Karcher-Adira | 2595 | | 10 |  | Swedbank-PEAB | 2444 | | 11 |  | Prio - Porto | 2416 | | 12 |  | Bank of Ireland | 2258 | | 13 |  | Team TomTom | 2152 | | 14 |  | Eritel - Sonatrach | 2149 | | 15 |  | AMEX-Navigon | 2094 | | 16 |  | Grupo Nutresa | 1849 | | 17 |  | Buff - Polska | 1840 | | 18 |  | Project: Africa | 1803 | | 19 |  | Bonsucro | 1727 | | 20 |  | Team Vontobel | 1713 | | 21 |  | ONCE-Eroski | 1614 | | 22 |  | Azteca - NBCSN | 1604 | | 23 |  | Mobil - Aeropostal Ciclismo | 1568 | | 24 |  | Siam Cement - Lenovo | 1508 | | 25 |  | Children of Chernobyl Foundation p/b Nemiroff | 1434 | | 26 |  | Euskaltel-Air France | 1410 | | 27 |  | Lululemon/Bulgaria Blackfish | 1403 | | 28 |  | cycleYorkshire s/b ASDA-Savers | 913 | | 29 |  | Eddie Stobart Pro Cycling | 882 | | 30 |  | Sauber Petronas | 753 |
Team Goals
| Race | Goal | Type | Cat | | PCT Team Standings | Top 10 | | | Achieved (5th) | | Strade Bianche | Win |  | HC | Failed (3rd) | | Clasica San Sebastian | Win | | HC | Failed | | Nelspruit Classic | Top 5 | | HC | Failed | | Manx International | Top 5 | | HC | Failed |
Not a great season goals-wise, but who cares as we got the one that matters!
Rider Performance
| Rank | Name | Points | Points per K | | 8 |  Michał Kwiatkowski | 951 | 3.17 | | 14 | Hassen Ben Nasser | 765 | 2.19 | | 17 |  Daryl Impey | 666 | 2.775 | | 82 |  Brent Bookwalter | 222 | 1.48 | | 162 |  Merhawi Kudus | 100 | 0.26 | | 170 | Maciej Bodnar | 92 | 1.84 | | 177 |  Mwangi Samwel | 89 | 0.45 | | 182 |  Marco Marcato | 86 | 1.72 | | 197 | Bassirou Konte | 78 | 1.56 | | 208 |  Stéphane Rossetto | 70 | 1.4 | | 301 |  Clovis Kamzong | 31 | 0.62 | | 365 |  Pirmin Lang | 17 | 0.31 | | 378 | Simon Kimeli | 16 | 0.32 | | 396 |  Lotto Petrus | 13 | 0.26 | | 416 |  Tarik Chaoufi | 10 | 0.2 | | 465 |  Bonaventure Uwizeyimana | 5 | 0.1 | | 526 | Hillary Kiprotich | 2 | 0.04 | | - | Hussein Manfred | 0 | 0 | | - |  Redouane Chaabane | 0 | 0 | | - | Daniel Njoroge | 0 | 0 | | - |  Jorgen Matt | 0 | 0 |
Our best rider this season was unsurprisingly Kwiatkowski who also gave us the best value for money this season with more than 3 points for every K paid to him.
Apart from our other two high scorers in the top 20 in Ben Nasser and Impey honourable mentions must go to Bodnar, Marcato and Konte for all scoring well on the 50,000 minimum wage.
Our highest paid rider, Kudus, didn't do too well compared to his high wage demands in renewals. However, we are sure our investment will pay off in future seasons.
Summary
2015 was our best season ever, with 2 stage race wins and 2 classics won by the team over the course of the year thanks to our three big leaders. We achieved well above expectations, and although we still had bad races (such as our 4 failed goals) they were much less frequent than in previous seasons and overall we kept up a very high PPRD all season.
With it all culminating in promotion, we can be very happy with our work as we move onto the team's toughest challenge yet; staying in the PT! |
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 21-11-2015 22:12
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4573
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Dippofix wrote:
It's not that I don't like it, but the amount of people that think McCarthy is Irish is too damn high.
Anyway good end to your season too, ability to pick up results like that even when attacks don't come off is surely key to promotion. Congrats on that by the way, your team will surely be (besides Evonik) the team to follow going up to PT. Hope some nice African talents get added to show for all the good work you and Aidan have been doing.
Yeah, I think I've done that more than once as well... fixed anyway.
Thanks, very happy with the way this year went. Even when things didn't completely go to plan we still managed to squeeze some points out of races. Would be nice to see some more African talents, especially more Kenyans, but I'm already very happy to have Kudus and some other guys like Uwi and Manfred so we're not too worried. |
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 21-11-2015 22:33
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4573
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Rider Availability 2015
So it's the time of the year to start planning for transfers again, and with the team making the step up to the PT major restructuring within the team is being planned in order to give us the best possible chance of survival.
This means two of our big three leaders of last season may leave the team, with Daryl Impey and Hassen Ben Nasser both riders we don't see a future for here due to the increased standard of competition in the PT. We're sure they'll be plenty of interest in these guys in transfers, especially in PCT looking for promotion.
If you're interested in anyone, feel free to let us know to help us with our planning. If it's a less important rider, it may influence whether they are released or not.
| Unavailable | | Michal Kwiatkowski | | Merhawi Kudus |  Tsgabu Grmay | | Estifanos Kebede | | Mwangi Samwel | | Mujtaba Hussein | | Simon Kimeli | | Hussein Manfred | | Hillary Kiprotich | | Bonaventure Uwizeyimana |  Bassirou Konte | | Clovis Kamzong |
We're looking to keep our young African core together, along with Kwiatkowski who will spend his off-season at a training camp in an attempt to ready him for the increased competition of the PT. Guys like Konte and Kamzong are borderline though and could be sold/released if more good Africans are added.
| Available | | Hassen Ben Nasser | | Daryl Impey | | Brent Bookwalter | | Maciej Bodnar | | Marco Marcato | | Pirmin Lang | | Tarik Chaoufi |
Probably what people are most interested in. Impey and Ben Nasser will obviously be sought after, but guys like Bookwalter and Bodnar also scored well this year and have the potential to win races and stages at PCT level. Guys like Marcato, Lang and Chaoufi may be released if there's no interest, so if you want them set aside please let us know.
| Released | | Daniel Njoroge | | Redouane Chaabane | | Lotto Petrus | | Stéphane Rossetto |
Some loyal servants will leave us, with Njoroge having ridden for the team from the beginning in the CT and Petrus and Chaabane being around for a couple of seasons. A shame they have to leave but unfortunately they aren't good enough for PT level. We hope some CT teams will be able to sign and harness their talents. |
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| sgdanny |
Posted on 21-11-2015 22:40
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Classics Specialist
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I can kinda understand Ben Nasser, but Impey too ? 
Definitely not something I expected to see those two leaving
Nothing I can do about Kwiat, joined too late I guess Seriously though good to see you intend to train him, though it will be hard for him for him to challenge in the PT even with training, good luck
I'm a big question mark about Bodnar, but we'll definitely talk about him in the Transfer Period
Good luck and will just say that this is a big gamble, but if you get some strong leaders, then you'll never know
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 21-11-2015 22:50
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Grand Tour Specialist
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sgdanny wrote:
I can kinda understand Ben Nasser, but Impey too ?
Definitely not something I expected to see those two leaving
Nothing I can do about Kwiat, joined too late I guess Seriously though good to see you intend to train him, though it will be hard for him for him to challenge in the PT even with training, good luck
I'm a big question mark about Bodnar, but we'll definitely talk about him in the Transfer Period
Good luck and will just say that this is a big gamble, but if you get some strong leaders, then you'll never know
Ben Nasser to leave was always the plan, and I really don't have a preference on where he goes. I just don't think he's cut out for the PT and would prefer a trained Kwiatek to lead us on the hills after he produced so well this year.
Impey is a tough one. Would obviously do well in the PT on a very low wage, but I think he could be better used in the PCT for his final year before declines where he can be a race winner. This very well may not happen, but I had a small thought he could go to South Africa... we'll see.
Good to see you may be interested in Bodnar, he's been a great asset to us on minimum wage. I'm sure he'll find a new home.
Edited by FroomeDog99 on 22-11-2015 00:00
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| FroomeDog99 |
Posted on 22-12-2015 19:00
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Grand Tour Specialist
Posts: 4573
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National Championships
The final racing of the season has taken place around the world, with our riders travelling to ride in their respective National Championships.
This year we have a very diverse team, and that has resulted in 10 different titles being won by our riders over the past few days, mainly in races around the continent of Africa. No doubt the highlight of these wins was the RR-TT double in our home country of Kenya, where Simon Kimeli and Mujtaba Hussein both took home titles.
The full list of this year's winners:
| Algeria | Redouane Chaabane | RR | | Cameroon | Clovis Kamzong | TT | | Ethiopia | Estifanos Kebede | RR | | Ethiopia | Tsgabu Grmay | TT | | Ivory Coast | Bassirou Konte | RR | | Kenya | Simon Kimeli | RR | | Kenya | Mujtaba Hussein | TT | | Namibia | Lotto Petrus | TT | | Poland | Maciej Bodnar | TT | | USA | Brent Bookwalter | TT |
We've been lucky enough to already receive the national champion jerseys from our jersey designer bwiggins for the riders who'll be returning for us next year.
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Michal Kwiatkowski
