Fun for our team, we are the Eddie "The Cannibal" Merckx of teams.
After that bloodbath it was time for a mountain TT. If it's just straight uphill, I'd simulate it, but since it goes up and down before tackling the climb up to the ski resort of Chamrousse, I gave it a try in 3D mode. I couldn't keep Le Gall (MON 85 TT 80) from winning the stage, but my team captured most of the top 10 spots.
The last mountain stage of the Tour was again perfect for attacking with the whole team - only 136 km long with 5 climbs. We attacked, again a sprinter was tasked with pulling the peloton and at the summit of the 2nd climb we already had an advantage of 10 minutes.
Only Beffort attacked on his own at this point and had to ride the whole stage on his own, Le Gall again did nothing, he must be fed up. We could have created a much larger gap but since the GC is already decided, we chose a tempo which was just enough so we wouldn't get caught and finished 2:20 ahead of Beffort. 9th placed Iessnig was allowed to win the stage ahead of 8th placed Baraybar and 7th placed Agurto.
The last week was relaxed, only stage 17 was a fairly complicated hilly stage. Iessnig was in the early break and even though the advantage stretched to nearly 15 minutes, the break was caught on the final hill. We couldn't get into the top 5, there were no time differences in the peloton and Legrand wins his second stage.
Stage 18 was also classified as hilly but was pretty flat apart from a short final hill. The northern classics specialists who'd been in the break took the stage, Kompalla ahead of Legeay.
The last three stages were all flat and consecutively shorter, two were won from breakaways – probably something Cyanide should change, simulated last stages on the Champs Elysees often end with a break winning by 15 minutes.
Olivares wins the Tour de France and is king of the mountains (with 229 to Pienaar's 218 points). Both Grand Tours won by Venezuelans! Olivares made quite the jump from AVG 73 to 81 in the three years he spent with our team. I could have afforded to keep him on, his wage demand was reasonable at 77k and now he's even a superstar. He will be joining Gayko next season, looking to further strengthen their team. They also snatched up our strong puncher van der Lem (AVG 81), an excellent sprinter Tacchino (SPR 85 ACC 85 AVG 80) as well as Azimov (COB 83 FLA 81 STA 80).
The green jersey went to the best sprinter around, Huistra, who won 4 stages. Just one rider who qualifies for the white jersey in the whole peloton, Pennucci was 128th, nearly 5 hours behind Olivares. We won the team ranking 2:18:26 ahead of Gayko. The final GC:
We've completed the contract talks for next season. We've only renewed with Gordillo and Bokalrud. Soderholm, Mathot and Rusnac are three three new NC specialists – apparently Soderholm's AVG increased by 2 points this month! Batty and Naranjo, another Venezuelan, complete our puncher team. Naranjo is already 31 years old, thus he only gets a one year contract, while Batty hasn't reached his potential yet.
For the stage racing team we've found two more Spaniards, which will please the sponsor. Neither are great climbers, but decent at TT. The other four are young climbers, already fairly decent in their core skill – MON 77 to 79 – but with a lot to learn. So next season the quad will definitely be weaker than the current team.
In the WT ranking on the 1st of August there is just one rider in the top 30 who's not from out team, Beffort with 146 points in 28th place. He's currently followed by Agurto (139), Baraybar (137), Okorochkov (126) and Iessnig (124).
Edited by Ripley on 05-06-2020 12:35
While we have been even more dominant this season than I ever expected, it's still uncertain if my 30 riders can claim all the top 30 spots in the final WT rankings. I believe Okorochkov to be the biggest threat and he'll be racing the Clasica San Sebastian against us.
Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian
I have tried to attack on the Jaizkibel before, but it never paid off. However, with the team as strong as it is this season and great success with early attacks this year, I set my 8 great punchers on the dot at 80 at the foot of the Jaizkibel on the second climb.
This produced a gap to the peloton, three riders stuck to our wheels - but from Gayko, to my delight, it wasn't Okorochkov, it was Beffort. This was a chance I wasn't going to miss - Okorochkov held back, since his team mate was in our group together with Schmid and Sturm (HIL 82, AVG 80).
It wasn't that far to the finish line, we could relay at high speed. And even better, two or three more attacks shook off the other three riders. So it was the top 8 for my team again, I even had the luxury to allow Accardi, who had the fewest WT points of my punchers, to win the the race, while Oko finished outside the top 10 and didn't gain any points.
Yes, that was a TdF variant I had never played before. Many variants really motivate me to play long careers. So a big thank you at this point to all stage makers and for OlegTinkov for the ASO stage pack!
Tour of Poland
It was a typical course with 5 flat and 2 hilly stages, so I sent 6 of my 8 punchers, Kotsovolos and Gordillo rested. The first four flat stages had four different winners.
The first hilly stage offered a fierce final climb, which would probably have been enough for my team, since the best punchers were absent, there was really only Borrelli (HIL 79 AVG 81) to watch. Instead, we needlessly attacked on the first cat. 1, pulling Borelli and climber Salinas (MON 81 HIL 78) along. While Borelli cracked on the penultimate climb, Salinas just wouldn't give up and finished 4th.
A day later, on a 223 km long stage, we waited until the third cat. 1 to make our move and this time Salinas missed the cut and let his weak team mates pull the peloton. By the top of the climb we had a 2 minute advantage and plenty of energy left, which was sure to be enough. Again, Borelli stayed on our heels, even relayed at times, but cracked on the final ramp. Stage 7 was flat and won by yet another sprinter, so this is the final result.
Stankovic wins the mountain jersey by a single point over Ciucarelli and we won the teams classification by 41:59 over, of course, Gayko.
Edited by Ripley on 05-06-2020 12:37
The course includes a hilly stage ending in Huy, a short hilly ITT and a final stage with cobblestones. I was unsure whether punchers or northern classics riders were better suited, so I went with a mix, three and three.
After two more sprint victories for Huistra (who now pulled even with Iessnig in the WT with 124 points) the Mur de Huy awaited. Any ideas of attacking early went out the window because the speed of the peloton was very high, trying to catch the early breakaway, so everybody was together on the final Mur ascent.
I set everybody at 84 effort and waited until the final 700 meters for the sprint and our three punchers gained about a minute on 20 other riders, including the three team mates, which was fortunate for Senden (HIL 67), who'd actually lost contact.
Next up was the short ITT with some steep climbs. Playing in 3D mode can of course produce some fine results. Kotsovolos won again ahead of Zhak and Gordillo and the three now have a decent time advantage. Their team mates also made it into the top 10, despite being mediocre at best on hills and even worse at TT, just goes to show how effective it is to save energy for climbs.
Which brings us to the final stage of the Eneco Tour with a few tough cobblestoned hills in the finale. When we reached them, I set my riders' effort to 80, making sure the three northern classics riders were in front and wouldn't get caught behind the punchers.
With that and a few more short attacks we had two groups of three riders relaying at 80. And then it was a question of which of our groups would take the overall victory, it was damn close, but the punchers prevailed with Kotsovolos winning the Eneco Tour. As always, we also won the teams classification against Gayko, this time by 23:17.
I have never been a fan of pure sprinters and pure sprint stages in PCM and I probably simulated many Hamburg Cyclassics because I didn't have the right riders. Until one day I figured out I could attack with my team and relay so hard that we wouldn't get caught - so this race started it all.
So that's what I did again, I brought the 5 NC specialists plus Accarci, Guilhem and van der Lam. Belkin's Rubinos (SPR 79 AVG 77) was the only guy to make the jump with us, but another attack distanced him. I let my guys win according to the WT points they have, Accardi thus managed to bag another victory, he already won stage 3 of Paris-Nice, the Italian Championships and San Sebastian.
GP Quest
Well, it was bound to happen at some point, though I'm disappointed it happened this way. Just like in Hamburg I managed to get away from the peloton on this easier variant but one rider held on, the sprinter Singh. I tried my best to shake him off and was sure it wouldn't be a problem on the final hill (Singh only has HIL 66), but he never let go and apparently still hadn't touched his red bar because he streaked past all my riders to win by 300 meters. Sure, 2nd to 9th is still a good result, but I'm disgusted.
trekbmc wrote:
Wow, that domination... is top 30 rider standings still on the cards?
Definitely! There are really only two riders left who can stop us from achieving that goal. The most dangerous is the puncher Okorochkov. He is sitting just outside the top 30, only a few points behind, and he won Il Lombardia last year. The other is a sprinter, Huistra. It's been a long time since I've last seen a sprinter collecting so many points, the game always generates lots of good sprinters and it's difficult for any to shine. But Huistra was 9th in Milan - San Remo (first behind my team), won a stage in Tirreno-Adriatico, then four stages and the green jersey in the TdF and recently two stages in the Eneco Tour.
We are facing both riders in the Vuelta. Thankfully, the Vuelta doesn't offer that many sprint stages and breakaways will hopefully steal a few. And we'll have to contain Oko as well as we can, of course, none of my climbers have anywhere near his HIL skill.
The longer a career lasts, the weaker the GC competition in the Vuelta gets. However, this year Pankov (MON 84) is participating after crashing out of the TdF on stage 2. He'll be the only real competition for the GC.
Gayko got the better of us in the opening flat TTT (26.7 km), beating our teams by 13 seconds, IAM was third, 26 seconds behind the leaders.
The second stage was already a mountain stage, but only with the one moderately difficult final climb. The only two riders who held on when we set the effort to 82 were Tido and Ortega (MON 79 TT 82), Pankov was too far back in the peloton and missed the cut. Tido and Ortega managed to stick with us till the end, but couldn't compete for the stage victory, though Tido will now wear the red jersey.
Stage 3 was pretty flat, but featured a steep "double climb" to the finish. We couldn't keep up with the best riders, at least Oko didn't win the stage, his team mate Parada did, ahead of Pankov.
A day later another fairly simple hilly stage waited, the only tough climb was still a fairly long way from the finish. Our team just watched Okorochkov, reacted to his attacks. Grassi profited, Oko couldn't follow his final attack. We stuck to his wheel and three of my riders managed to overtake him in the sprint.
The third fairly simple hilly stage in a row. Again, we did nothing to catch the breakaway and only watched Okorochkov. We had to follow three or four attack but when the sprint started we were all caught by a peloton of 68 riders. Puncher Sasa was happy to hang onto the victory, because Huistra was racing through the field and ended 3rd, 50 meters more and he would have won.
Next up were two flat stages: Huistra picked up a 2nd place on stage 6, but only came 7th a day later. Stage 8 featured a tough mountaintop finish. I sent Agurto into the break but it soon became clear that he couldn't win the stage unless he really pushes himself, he had to leave the rest of the break behind on the cat. 3 climb and race the rest of the stage on his own. It was enough to win by 91 seconds ahead of Pankov, who beat the rest of our team, while our team beat the rest of the field.
Next day we had to tackle another relatively simple hilly stage, but with a short, extremely steep final slope. No chance for us to stop Oko, though he didn't win, Herklotz survived from a breakaway and started celebrating early despite the gradient and nearly got zabel'd. No time differences between the first 108 riders.
On stage 10 I decided to try an early attack with my whole team, even though it wasn't the ideal profile for such a move. The peloton let us go away, though, we built up an advantage of up to 6 minutes and went into the final two climbs with little chance of getting caught. Pankov attacked at the foot of the cat. 1 climb and came fairly close. But nobody else is a threat in the GC anymore, with a gap of at least 10 minutes.
With freshness down to good after the previous day's effort it was time for an ITT in Tarazona over 38.1 km. It includes one long but not very steep hill. I was a little conservative with the effort, could have been more than 70 uphill, my riders all finished with energy to spare. My best TTer Prazenica (TT 81) just beat Ortega (TT 82), followed by Pereira, Locatelli and Bokalrud. Pankov was 1:24 behind, gaining a little time back on Pienaar (1:40), Iessnig (2:04) and Baraybar (2:06).
Two flat stages followed, two escapees settled stage 12 between them, Huistra was 4th. A day later the break of eleven riders survived, so no WT points for Huistra. He has two more opportunities to gain points in this Vuelta, as does Okorochkov. But they'll have to wait, we now face three stages with a mountaintop finish.
On stage 14 I sent Iessnig into the break, hoping he could gain a lot of time, enough to even win the Vuelta, having the fewest WT points of the whole team. But the break consisted of 14 riders and Trek rode hard to catch the escapees and only gave up halfway up the first cat. 1 climb.
The break was only 2 minutes ahead so I let the whole team attack, reach the break, leaving everybody behind with another attack near the peak. Halfway up the next climb our advantage over the peloton was 5:30 and a short while later poor Pankov had to try and gain back time all on his own, but he ended 4:17 behind our team.
I let Bokalrud claim victory, he doesn't need the WT points as badly as other riders, but he was the last man in the squad without a single victory. It's a secondary goal of mine, I want every rider to taste victory. For Nijpels it was the overall victory in the Dauphine, for Zattini Milan-San Remo, Miles won stage 5 of of the Romandie, Trishin E3GP, Morante won stage 7 of Tirreno, Pereira the overall in Switzerland, Locatelli won the French Champs. Morillas is leading the internal and overall rankings with 15 victories, Huistra is at 14 so far.
A day later, a similar result. As expected, at 230 km with four hard climbs, the green energy bar became a concern. After separating from the field we went slowly between the first and second peak, by which time the peloton had nearly caught up again, we then pushed a bit too hard up the next climb, extended the lead to over 10 minutes but we had to reduce the effort to 48, so when Pankov attacked at the foot of the third climb he got within one minute of our team.
Being able to relay downhill at 80 we got away from him again, Baraybar cracked on the final ascent, but still came ahead of Pankov. Iessnig was allowed to win another stage, he surpassed Beffort's 148 WT points, now Baraybar is our worst placed rider. The team now holds the whole of the top 30, Iessnig being the last one to overtake Beffort.
The third consecutive mountain stage was only 147 km long and I wanted to send either Baraybar or Iessnig into the break. Only Baraybar was near the front of the peloton when the attacks started and got into the 5-man-group. At first it appeared like the break would win by a large margin, but then Trek started chasing hard and the escapees had less then 3 minutes going into the cat. 2 climb.
Baraybar upped the tempo to increase the lead a bit, the others pulled him along on the downhill section, but the margin was just 2 minutes. Baraybar did well enough on the final climb to win the stage, the rest stuck with Pankov.
On the stage after the final rest day, the break was caught but Huistra only came 4th. Tacchino (SPR 85 ACC 85) won his second stage ahead of the winner of the Giro's points jersey, Caleb Ewan (SPR 84 ACC 84) and Tour de Fjord's winner Jim Watson (SPR 85 ACC 81).
A day later a tough hilly stage waited. I gave Iessnig another chance in the breakaway on this stage, though it's not exactly his terrain (HIL 74) and Parada (HIL 82), who won stage 3, was the clear favorite from the group.
It soon became apparent that the group would make it to the finish line by a large margin and thus Iessnig take the red jersey, but he had to work hard, there was no cooperation from the other riders at about the half-way stage.
Iessnig was always pulling a group with 60 effort, while riders attacked and were caught again. But all those attacks tired the competition, including Parada. Iessnig would have been happy just taking the leader's jersey, but when he set his effort at 82 up the final steep hill he caught all the riders ahead of him and won the stage ahead of Beatty (HIL 73) and Sariev (HIL 75), Parada was only 4th.
And just because we could my other riders attacked from the peloton up the penultimate climb and distanced Pankov and everybody else yet again.
A day later I tried the same with Baraybar, who became part of a breakaway of 10 riders. This time the peloton wasn't ready to just give up on the stage and had reduced the advantage to under 4 minutes by the time the break got to the foot of the second categorised climb.
Baraybar pushed hard uphill at this point and the advantage grew again, half his breakaway companions couldn't keep up. The reduced group worked together well and Baraybar waited for the final hill to attack and easily claim the stage.
Further back I missed the attack by Pankov and Ortega and couldn't stop our main rival to gain back a minute on us, but with 11 minutes between Pienaar and Pankov, it really doesn't matter much.
Which left us with a final mountain stage finishing on the mighty Angliru. This will sound very familiar, as soon as we hit the bottom of the first categorised climb, we attacked and got a bit of separation from the peloton, and at 64 effort the gap increased, which invited us to continue, relay at 76 till the next climb, then to keep most of the yellow bar uphill on the dot at 72, then relay at 72, create a 4 minute advantage which will be enough, because Pankov will use up all his energy to close the gap.
72 effort got us pretty much to the end, I could afford to slow down, though Iessnig couldn't quite hold on, and I felt Locatelli deserves another victory, he only won the French Champs this season. With only a short, flat stage on the last day this is the final general classification. The last stage was decided between 5 breakaway riders, Huistra won the sprint from the peloton, but no more WT points for him.
I managed to award the top three places to to the three riders who finish 9th to 7th at the Tour, the overall winner is Iessnig. Already 32 years old, he started his decline this season (but so far kept MON 79). He outgrew the U23 in 2017, but it took him four years to sign his first professional contract.
He won the Giro della Valle d'Aosta in 2023, his only victory until he signed with my team last year. He immediately went on to win two stages at the Giro, the climber's jersey and a 5th place in the GC. He also won a stage in Tirreno-Adriatico and the Basque Tour. And this year stage 9 of the TdF and a top 10 GC finish - and now three stages at the Vuelta and the overall win. From unknown to star in just two years. He'll leave us at the end of the season and join Team Bretagne, formerly Vini Fantini, who must surely be happy to have secured his signature.
The mountain classification, just as it did at the Tour de France, goes to Olivares (91 points ahead of Pienaar's 72). Olivares also takes the points classification (165 points) ahead of Iessnig (156). We won the team ranking against Movistar by an impressive 3:18:07.
Iessnig jumped 12 places in the WT ranking, he's now 21st with 350 points. At the bottom in 29th and 30th place are Pienaar and Agurto with 278 points each. It's now looking very good for the top 30 sweep. Even if Okorochkov (145) wins Il Lombardia again, the 100 points wouldn't be enough to dislodge my riders.
Edited by Ripley on 05-06-2020 12:49
This raced proved once more how much is possible with 8 strong punchers. A break of 10 riders formed and nobody felt like organising a chase. The gap kept on growing, it wasn't quite worrying yet, 11 minutes with 130 km to go. But I thought, what the hell, let's just attack here.
And we relayed the rest of the race at 76 effort, easily caught the escapees, the peloton never got close, Schoonbart (HIL 80 AVG 80) was chasing alone for a while but couldn't keep up when Cia (HIL 78 AVG 75) passed him, at least he still held onto 10th place, the late attacks came too late. It was a chance for WT points for Beffort, but he ended in 12th place. For Kotsovolos it was his second victory in Quebec, equaling Quintanas two wins.
Grand Prix de Montreal
This time I attacked at the half-way mark and persevered yet again. I let the riders fight it out for victory, set everybody to attack 5 km out and see who has the best legs. Gordillo won in the rainbow jersey. Further back, Beffort attacked together with Astana's Dionisiev (HIL 80 AVG 77), but was dropped by the latter, who enjoys a good late form, he was just outside the top 10 two days ago, now 9th. It seemed certain Beffort would complete the top 10, but he was caught by the peloton inside the last kilometer and ended 13th. So he couldn't gain any WT points in Canada.
Cheers, Ian, though I feel the praise is undeserved, those races were really too easy. Yes, the results of other races looked similar, but they weren't a certainty until the last kilometers. But in Canada I didn't need to worry for a single second.
Getting close to the finish line now. Next up are the WC races in Colombia, can't dominate those like the World Tour, though we have excellent riders for the mountainous ITT and the tough Road Race.
I'll again be in control of the Spanish team – but me being me, it means I only care about the riders from my team, everybody else is set on automatic in the ITT and will be used in supporting roles in the road race.
Individual Time Trial
Only one of my riders is competing here, the great Morillas (MON 81 TT 78). And it's a perfect course for him, a long flat stretch, a small hill, followed by one big final climb. Morillas' team mate Locatelli, competing for France, sat in the leader's box for a long time. Morillas was one of the last riders to start, only followed by his German team mate Lorenzen (MON 82 TT 79) and the top favorite on paper, Le Gall (MON 85 TT 80).
Morillas started slowly in comparison to the competition, saving his energy for the two climbs. First Lorenzen overtook him, then Le Gall, all before even reaching the hill. In fact, at both intermediate time checks Morillas was dead last. But he was able to tackle the final climb with an effort of 82, even 84 inside the last five kilometers.
Prazenica (MON 80 TT 81) beat Locatelli's time by one second, then Dementiev (MON 81 TT 79) was another 18 seconds faster. Morillas flew past Le Gall and Lorenzen and even caught Muzzi and Nijpels to finish in 1:24:24, beating Le Gall by 3:54. Lorenzen took the bronze medal, Prazenica was 5th, Locatelli 6th and Nijpels 8th, making this the best result of my team ever at the WC ITT.
Road Race
I had high hopes of also winning the road race, with either defending champion Gordillo or Morillas, but this was the strongest opposition I faced all season. Other teams wouldn't give my guys an inch, especially Italy had a team full of good punchers, including our men Accardi and Ciucarelli.
So it all came down to the final lap, seven strong riders formed a loose first group, the others couldn't create a gap with attacks, we couldn't with a steady pace. Morillas tried a last attack over the final peak but Okorochkov was right on his heels, so it was down to a sprint with Morillas in a bad position.
Oko overtook him easily and looked like he would bag the title, but van der Lem had more left in the tank and squeezed past him right on the finish line. Defending champion Gordillo completed the podium. Our team mate Zhak came 4th, Ciucarelli was 5th, followed by Grassi and Morillas.
The Race of the falling Leaves is the most difficult race on the virtual WT calendar. Riders can get caught up on the narrow and steep uphill roads, escape is basically impossible, the teams react promptly, if you don't make it hard, the speed towards the end is insanely high. It's the one race I'm certain it comes down to a sprint against the best riders.
Which is exactly what happened. The team did try a few attacks, hoping to isolate others, but as we hit the final hill, we were in a group of 14 riders with the "usual suspects", Okorochkov, of course, Grassi, Legrand, Schmid, Schoonbaert and Borrelli.
Despite all my success in this game I don't understand how to sprint, how to stick on the heels of opponents using the follow command, in my experience the other guy will start to sprint and open up a gap of 100 meters before my guy reacts... Just like last week at the World Champs Okorochkov seemed like the certain winner, Gordillo was closing the gap but was running out of energy fast and it seemed to me like it wasn't enough. Just this one time I even took a screenshot.
But to my surprise the jury decided to award the victory to Gordillo. This also makes him the new leader of the WT rankings.
