The first to give us any sort of hope was Chris Anker.
He rode a good race in Denmark, but matched up against Guldhammer in the end there was nothing he could do.
In Finland we couldn't fail as Henttala hadn't been signed up by his manager.
Lehtinen, Paajaanen and Manninen went in the early break and on the cobbles Manninen proved the strongest of the three. Is this his first step to finding a new and improved version of himself?
As expected Pökälä dominated the ITT
The UAE championships actually turned into one of the better races as it only featured two riders and none of them managed to break away. Until the very end that is.
To our great joy Essa was the strongest on the day regaining his title and quite likely his contract.
In Sweden we had Linus in the deciding berak, but unfortunately he didn't quite have the legs in the end. A 2nd place is nice of course, but in a NC only the win really counts.
In the TT we had high hopes for Renäng, but he managed to find a new low in his TT'ing this year.
The Turkish championships were weird as neither Hasta or Sayar felt like chasing when Orken attacked to take the RR win. The good part was that Hasta saved enough energy to win the TT securing us another jersey.
Cioban gave it some good tries in the Moldovian championships, but Pluchkin wouldn't allow it sp he was banned from the deciding move and was chanceless in defending his TT-title.
Mexico however went better even though we missed out in the RR as we took a 1-2 in the TT with Colex the fastest again.
That brings us to our final NC of the season: Belarus.
As defending TT-champion and a mountanous RR-route we had high hopes for Samoilev after his great season.
He finished 2nd in the RR which was brilliant as the guy finishing ahead was Ethiopian so Branislav took the Belarussian title.
And he even saved enough energy to defend his TT-title as well making him double champion. Really puts a fat line under the season he had.
Detailed NC-jerseys will be published early next season, but previews can be found on the previous page.
