One of the most special races on the calendar being a TTT with only 2 riders.
We had high hopes sending our bets two TT'ers in Paillot and Pökälä to represent us hoping for a podium.
Our dynamic duo set a fast time early on for the other favourites to aim at and one at a time they missed.
With 5 teams to finish we held best time in goal thanks to a great last half of the race!
Several, on paper, strong teams appeared to not having trained for the event at all as the stronger riders set a paceto hard for his companion to follow.
In the end both Novatek and Shimano had impressive rides - much better than anyone had expected so we go away with a 3rd place.
It's what we had for but given the development of the race it's hard to know whether we should be proud and happy to have beaten Karcher or disappointed to lose to Quaade/Sai-Udomsin...
With the cobbles likely to have less of an impact in the finale we hoped Breschel would make it to the end and make good use of his sprinting skills.
First he was caught behind in the split on Kemmelberg, but made it back to the front group.
Sadly Strava was determined to tear things to pieces on the cobbles and once again Matti fell just short of hanging on to the favourites.
Still roughly 30 km of flat non-cobbles road to go though.
With 16 km to go he takes things into his own hands/legs.
He gets a gap to the group he was with and ends up riding solo with only an elite trio ahead.
He never manages to bridge the gap but neither does his chasers.
A great 4th place for Breschel finally showing some of what we hoped for when signing him.
On a route like this we'd need a small miracle to leave with something.
That didn't happen...
Jukka finished in the second big group fighting for 34th place so a bit below expectations, but I guess he can't overperform every time.
Results
1
Aleksandar Flügel
Wiesenhof - Andrtiz
4h55'17
41
Jukka Vastaranta
Valio - DeLaval
+ 1'30
52
Paavo Paajanen
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
57
Branislav Samoilev
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
72
Ingvar Omarsson
Valio - DeLaval
+ 2'27
75
Chris Anker Sørensen
Valio - DeLaval
+ 2'59
102
Ignacio Sarabia
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
137
Jesse Kaislavuo
Valio - DeLaval
+ 8'30
147
Krists Neilands
Valio - DeLaval
+ 9'41
Corsica International
For this short stage race we had very limiteed hopes apart from some stage results, mainly in the TT.
Breschel did well on the flat first stage to mix in for the sprint, though he waas slowed down by a wall of riders across the road.
Still a 7th place under those circumstances prove good form.
Both Paillot and Pökälä carried the good form from Duo Differdange to Corsica as Paillot only was beaten Cornu.
We had hoped that having lost a bit of time in the GC already would allow/inspire Anacona to take an offensive chance.
It didn't. In fact he got dropped as one of the first on the final climb...
An old song with the wonderful Judy Garland about what can happen in a man when he sees a pretty girl milking a cow:
Cowcluding on the month
It's been an eventful month with a few firsts.
First sprint train, first decent cobbles-ride, first stage race with top 10's on all stages.
That sums up to a rather good month - in fact the 7th best of all PCT-teams!
That leaves us at 6th in the rankings and 12th when adjusted for race days spent. It's needless to say that this is much better than we had anticipated.
On Pasture Elsewhere
Olli Kulppi, Evonik – ELKO
Olli had a nice month racing two big cobbled classics finishing as 3rd best Evonik-rider in the Midlands whole both there and in der Ronde helping Van Avermaet finish 2nd behind Bewley.
In Euskadi the team was mainly looking for stage result due to being very poor at TT'ing. Kulppi and Lindau helped Skujins to a stage win and a 10th place in the GC despite the TT'ing.
Olli's Results
Race
Result
Team
PT
East Midlands Cicle Classic
47
2
PT
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
GC
141
10
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 1
186
24
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 2
144
11
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 3
99
WIN
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 4
135
11
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 5
181
130
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 6
163
10
PTM
Ronde van Vlaanderen
97
2
Kulppi and Lindau both in Evonik's TTT at Pais Vasco
Philip Lindau, Evonik – ELKO
Philip started the month in Africa, where his job was to make sure Van Stayen got some sprinting opportunities. 4/4 stages ended in a bunch sprint so that was good.
From there he went to Basque Country riding alongside Kulppi in support of Skujins. As could be expected from the terrain Philip generally finished a bit better than Olli.
Philip's Results
Race
Result
Team
PT
SAA Tour d'Afrique
GC
68
7
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 1
110
12
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 2
43
2
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 3
62
9
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 4
60
8
PT
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
GC
92
10
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 1
144
24
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 2
125
11
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 3
34
WIN
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 4
94
11
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 5
173
130
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
St. 6
104
10
Sakari Lehtinen, Vesuvio - Accumalux
Sakari had a terribel month of everything he likes the last: Cobbles and sprint stages.
The good thing to take from it is that he didn't lose any actual time in Africa coming home with the peloton every day. For a pure climber that has to count for something...
As for the cobbles he still won't make our cobbles-team when he returns next year.
Sakari's Results
Race
Result
Team
PT
SAA Tour d'Afrique
GC
136
66
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 1
149
45
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 2
130
73
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 3
145
69
SAA Tour d'Afrique
St. 4
159
55
Ronde van Vlaanderen
154
24
E3 Prijs
138
8
Bull of the Month
While Breschel, Paillot, Vinther and more deserves a pad on the back one rider stood out with an amazing result in Ireland.
Ivano Lo Cicero
Cow of the Month
Cowming Up
April is another busy month for us starting out in Vancouver where Anacona will likely leed us to another no-show.
Breschel will be leading us to de Panne, hopefully carrying on his good form in what is expected to be a tough race.
Lo Cicero will have three days in competition - all of them flatt classics where we will be aiming for top results.
Also we will be going to Tour de Romandie chasing stages with special thought to the TT's for Paillot. Also it's another race for Anacona to prove he needs to return to CT-racing where he did so well last year.
De Panne can be a pretty nice pointswise for Breschel. Definitely another solid scowring month behind you though. Competition at Ringerike was too much though for Vastaranta, he's more a stage racer than a classics guy imo.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
With Matti's recent good performance we had our hopes up for this race.
Unfortualtely he was struck by a puncture just as things started to happen.
He had great support from the team, but it was too late and the big favourites were far away when Matti rejoined the peloton.
For stage 2 Eisel joined the break as any GC hope was far gone already.
He fought hard and despite the break being caught by Zepuntke he didn't give up and ultimately grabbed a stage 3rd while Brechel finished with the favourites.
The 3rd stage saw us field the same strategy: Putting someone in the break. This time around it was Roope Nurmi.
The break just managed to survive to the finish line, where Nurmi did great to take a 2nd place on the stage.
For the finishing TT we had the highest hopes for Samuel Pökälä.
Branislav showed his champions jersey by setting fastest time among the early starters, but in the nd we just didn't have the speed fpr a top result today.
Given the unfortunate puncture the GC went as well as could have been hoped for with both Breschel and Eisel in half-decent positions.
Interesting Breschel gained 2 seconds on Baugnies - he still would've lost time but could have done very well
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
jandal7 wrote:
Interesting Breschel gained 2 seconds on Baugnies - he still would've lost time but could have done very well
Could have been an amazing race for him
Cowtastrophy
Tour of Vancouver
With Anacona's previous performances this season in mind we didn't have hopees for much more than breakaways in this race.
Winner surprised us a bit by finishing 9th on the opening mountain time trial. Perhaps that meant he have decided to finally start his season?
The following two flat stages included no action from us whatsoever.
The same could be said about stage 4, though Winner rode on to take a respectable 14th on the stage leaving him at 12th in the GC.
Just as we were starting to get a little bit optimistic Anacona crashed and hurt himself so bad that he was forced to leave the race.
Noone figured they would use the bad situation to show themselves so the final RR stage wasn't any better than the previous ones.
The final stage was a team time trial. Considering we had none of our top TT'ers nor naything to ride for in the GC I'll count it as a success that we didn't finish last.
While Breschel had won this race in the past we sent Lo Cicero here as leader expecting the hills to only have minor impact.
We underestimatd the finale and along with that the team hit a collective off-day making this a race to forget.
Credit goes to Kaislavuo for being the only one performing on a decent level staying with our leader until the end.
Back in Europe we had our eyes set on some good stage results with Paillot set to perform in the TT's and Anacona to lose any slight GC chances on those same stages.
Paillot started as one of the favourites, but disappointed with a 9th place on the prologue.
We did nothing at all on the flat stages.
Anacona did ok on the hilly stage making a bit of promise going into what was supposed to be his best day.
However he found a new low proving that he was still overestimated by us and his team mates who stay at his side helping in stead of chasing breakaway-glory.
Paillot improves on his prologue result, but 5th is still far below what we had expected from him.
The fact that Winner finishes 31st in th GC only 3 minutes ahead of Paillot really says a lot...
After much consideration we decided to send Brescheel and Vastaranta to lead here hoping that the repeated small hill will have some effect in the end.
Essa Khalifa showed the right kind of spirit from the start giving his UAE-NC a good showing in Brazil.
To no great surprise they didn't last all the way.
While there were several attacks in the finale we had our eyes set on a sprint finish with Matti having th best legs today.
We placed Breschel in the midlle of the front going in to the finale to let him make use of other trains as we can't give him his own here.
He lost a few positions in the fight but ultimately got a spot at the back of the Karcher-train.
Unfortualtely they were the worst of the trains today.
In the end he fought his way back to a very solid 6th place.
Results
1
Maxime Vantomme
Netia - Norske Skog
3h49'05
6
Matti Breschel
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
129
Jukka Vastaranta
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
131
Matti Manninen
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
137
Emils Liepins
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
150
Joonas Henttala
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
151
Roope Nurmi
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
156
Paavo Paajanen
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
166
Essa Khalifa
Valio - DeLaval
+ 2'54
Dutch Food Valley Classic
A flat classic. That means Lo Cicero for us.
There was a few attacks towards the line but things were kept under control for the sprint.
Tiainen made the final pull before the sprint really kicked off
We started a bit back.
Luckily Vinther is a beast and powers his way to the very front with Ivano in his wheel, even though the Italian had trouble following at first.
With a lead-out like that there is no way Lo Cicero wouldn't milk the Food Valley for a win.
The month started with bad luck as KBC was ruined for Breschel with a puncture despite him being in great form - possibly even great enough to have been able to challenge for the win had it not been for the puncture.
At least Eisel and Nurmi made the most of the situation grabbing a tage podium each on the following days.
Anacona showed both in Vancouver and Romandie that he simply haven't got what it takes to be lead climber in a PCT team, though he did show a bit of promise before crashing in Vancouver.
Philadelphia was another catastrophy as Lo Cicero & Co was nowhere to bee seen in the finish.
Good thing the final day of the month compensated for the bad luck early on.
On Pasture Elsewhere
Olli Kulppi, Evonik – ELKO
The highlight of last season for Olli was Paris-Roubaix. This year he was back but in a less free role/further down the hierachy than last year.
However he did help the team get another 2nd place
In Tour of California he tried putting in some work for Van Avermaet, but non of the Evonik-guys really made it work over there.
Finally he finished off the month with in the Food Valley. It was nice to have him around and him and Aaltio had a good chat towards the finish line. He seems to be enjoying his stint with Evonik, but also looking forward to riding for a Finnish team next season.
Olli's Results
Race
Result
Team
PTM
Paris - Roubaix
70
2
PT
Tour of California
GC
153
34
Tour of California
St. 1
117
14
Tour of California
St. 2
162
17
Tour of California
St. 3
149
45
Tour of California
St. 4
160
8
Tour of California
St. 5
154
29
Tour of California
St. 6
112
16
Tour of California
St. 7
143
36
Tour of California
St. 8
126
15
HC
Dutch Food Valley Classic
82
43
Sakari Lehtinen, Vesuvio - Accumalux
Sakari was supposed to help Vanmarcke in Paris-Roubaix, but guess what happens when you send a young pure climber to a flat cobbles-hell: He has to abandon.
In California he was riding in support of Marc Goos, who thanks to some great consistency managed to finish 5th in the GC along with some good stage results.
Sakari's Results
Race
Result
Team
PTM
Paris - Roubaix
DNF
6
PT
Tour of California
GC
89
5
Tour of California
St. 1
153
5
Tour of California
St. 2
88
21
Tour of California
St. 3
167
5
Tour of California
St. 4
107
24
Tour of California
St. 5
106
12
Tour of California
St. 6
41
5
Tour of California
St. 7
83
16
Tour of California
St. 8
76
36
Philip Lindau, Evonik – ELKO
Evonik and Lindau were off to a great start of the Giro winning the first stage and while Evonik doesn't exactly excell at TTT's it was good to se Philip doing his bit as part of the team carrying Van Stayen to the line.
Philip did a great job protecting Van Stayen early on the flat and on the climbs even finishing as best Evonik-rider on stage 8 beffore he got caught up in the crashes on stage 12 ultimately having to abandon.
Up till that point the Evonik-leader hadn't finished outside top 3 on a sprint stage, but at the same time as Lindau abandoned things stopped working out for the team.
In Amstel he only had some early work in him and were far behind when Skujins grabbed a 4th place.
Philip's Results
Race
Result
Team
GT
Giro d'Italia
GC
DNF
80
Giro d'Italia
St. 1
53
1
Giro d'Italia
St. 2
109
3
Giro d'Italia
St. 3
107
18
Giro d'Italia
St. 4
101
79
Giro d'Italia
St. 5
117
1-2
Giro d'Italia
St. 6
62
3
Giro d'Italia
St. 7
103
84
Giro d'Italia
St. 8
90
92
Giro d'Italia
St. 9
105
2
Giro d'Italia
St. 10
62
1
Giro d'Italia
St. 11
132
69
Giro d'Italia
St. 12
DNF
77
PT
Amstel Gold Race
132
4
Bull of the Month
While the obvious winner would probably be Lo Cicero he was also behind the biggest disappointment of the month in Philadelphia.
In stead it goes to a rider who, struck by bad luck, soldiered on and fought his way back into things proving his class ultimately by a strong classic to end the month.
Matti Breschel
Cow of the Month
Cowming Up
May will kick off with 5 days in Dunkerque where Breschel and Vastaranta will b going for glory for us.
For geographical reasons we had to set Scandinavian Open as a goal. Breschel, Vastaranta and Anacona will share the burden of failing our first goal of the season.
Lo Cicero will be leading us in Berlin and Olympia Tour. The latter alongside Paillot, who could possibly make something of his TT-skills there.
The first stage was set to be the GC decider and with cobbles on the menu our hopes lied on Breschel.
As the favourite teams failed reeling in the break the finale turned much more docile than expected.
In the end the hilly terrain gave an edge to Jukka instead.
The following 4 stages were all flat and uneventful in terms of our leaders.
Jesse Kaislavuo did get a day out in th break alongside among other our former rider Sergio Cioban on stage 4 though, which was nice.
With the lack of gaps on stage 1 the GC was a lottery and getting 10th and 11th is not a bad result.
Results
Best Rider
Place
Time
Stage 1
Jukka Vastaranta
7th
+ 47
Stage 2
Jukka Vastaranta
19th
s.t.
Stage 3
Jukka Vastaranta
17th
s.t.
Stage 4
Matti Manninen
30th
s.t.
Stage 5
Matti Breschel
22nd
s.t.
General Classification
1
Lionel Biondo
SanCor
-
10
Jukka Vastaranta
Valio - DeLaval
0:01:06
11
Matti Breschel
Valio - DeLaval
0:01:06
52
Jesse Kaislavuo
Valio - DeLaval
0:07:47
76
Krists Neilands
Valio - DeLaval
0:12:14
90
Bernhard Eisel
Valio - DeLaval
0:15:31
103
Emils Liepins
Valio - DeLaval
0:17:53
116
Matti Manninen
Valio - DeLaval
0:19:26
159
Risto Aaltio
Valio - DeLaval
0:31:04
Home Grazings
Scandinavia Open Road Race
We had extremely low expectations going in to our home classic.
On the good side Vastaranta was part of the finale, but as expected he didn't have the skill-set needed to really make a difference.
Results
1
Mohamed Shawal Anuar Aziz
Indosat - ANZ
4h40'32
26
Jukka Vastaranta
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
34
Chris Anker Sørensen
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
41
Winner Anacona
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
76
Ingvar Omarsson
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
85
Branislav Samoilev
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
101
Ignacio Sarabia
Valio - DeLaval
s.t.
120
Paavo Paajanen
Valio - DeLaval
+ 3'07
137
Matti Breschel
Valio - DeLaval
+ 6'01
Ohne Sahne
Berlin Pro Race
We had sent our A-team to this flat classic in Germany.
Unfortunately Breschel was hit by a crash, which hurt him a bit for the rest of the race.
That didn't stop us from chasing a sprint, though it did hurt our final preparation a bit.
Lo Cicero started the sprint a bit back without any help.
He came through in the middle an ultimately bagged a solid 5th place.
East Midlands Cicle Classic
Vuelta al Pais Vasco
SAA Tour d'Afrique
Ivano Lo Cicero 
DDDDDDDDD
Matti Breschel 
