For the first time since they've been dubbed The Big 3, Quintana, Kwiatkowski and Betancur all meet each other in a stage race. They are all on form and told reporters they've come to the Tour de Romandie to win. We started with an unusual mountainous prologue, won by Quintana, 3 seconds ahead of Kwiatek, 5 ahead of Betancur. Aru and Dombrowski were also faster than 8 Up's Schuermans.
The only flat stage went to Geschke with a late attack. Stages 3 and 4 were hilly but with flat runs to the finish line, nonetheless the stages went to Betancur and Kwiatek. One stage each so far for the big names.
The queen stage offered a late and fearsome mountain, though not a mountaintop finish. The peloton blew apart as soon as we started the climb. Weaker climbers like the ageing Nibali and Froome lost 7:29 on the day, riders like Chaves, Reichenbach and Rolland lost 4:43. Sprague arrived with Landa and Kennaugh (3:32), Van Ness did slightly better (2:50), Bernar was able to stay with Boswell (1:47), Schuermans was our best rider as 6th, losing 1:18. Kwiatkowski was able to stay with Quintana and Betancur up to the top of the climb and as the best descender among the Big 3 he won the stage by 28 seconds against the two Colombians and Dombrowski.
The Flowerman also won the final stage, a flat ITT of 20 km, beating the specialists Jungels, Dennis and Howson. Quintana did surprisingly well, just 20 seconds behind, sealing a 2nd place overall. Betancur was only 54th on the day and is pushed off the podium by Dombrowski. Kwiatek also wins the points jersey (ahead of Quintana and Betancur, of course), Jimmy Turgis (Giant-Shimano) is the King of the Mountains.
Kwiatek sits comfortably at the top of the WT rankings, Betancur has moved past Vanmarcke into 2nd place. Schuermans is currently 5th, just behind Boswell.
The course of this year's Giro d'Italia has more than its usual share of flat stages, 11 in all, counting the two individual time trials. With 42.1 and 59.6 km they add up to over 100 km alone against the clock which won't be to the liking of the pure climbers. Despite 9 potential stages for mass sprints, only two top sprinters signed up: Yannick Martinez and Rick Zabel (both SPR 83). Martinez is already 33 years old, he has three Giro stages under his belt. Rick Zabel is hoping to leave his father's long shadow, he has yet to win on the World Tour level, the chances couldn't be better to finally change that.
And the first week of the Giro was Rick Zabel's breakthrough. He won the first three stages in a row as well as stage 6, while Martinez went on to win stages 11 and 12. Zabel will take home the red jersey at the end of the Giro.
The first hilly stage was completely flat except for a short uphill finish in Bologna. Oddly enough, none of the specialists like Romeu and Villella seemed interested in winning the stage and our man Van Ness surprisingly wins the first stage for 8 Up this season without resorting to a breakaway.
The punchers became active a day later to Montecatini Terme and the two top riders Quintana and Betancur also flexed their muscles. Villella won 21 seconds ahead of a group of riders which included Romeu, Quintana, Betancur and our men Schuermans, Van Ness and Bernar. Quintana is the obvious favourite to win the Giro, Betancur is also an exceptional climber, but his TTR skill is weak and he'll suffer in the long ITTs. Our goal is a podium spot and we are pretty confident we'll achieve that, of all the climbers only Kelderman is decent on the time trial bike.
Before moving into mountainous terrain the riders had to tackle the first time trial from Grosseto to Orbetello. Howson won the stage ahead of Navardauskas and Barbero, a young Argentinian TT specialist. Van Ness was 4th, just 8 seconds behind Howson, Bernar was 7th, 24 seconds behind. The time gaps for some other top 10 candidates: Quintana (1:37), Pinot (2:05), Dombrowski (2:07), Schuermans (3:07), Kelderman (a disappointing 3:18) and Betancur (4:15).
Van Ness takes the GC lead ahead of his team mate Bernar and Ion Izagirre. Chances are he'll only be wearing it for a day because stage 8 ends in the ski resort Pian de' Valli.
It only took one mountain stage for Quintana to slip into pink. The final climb of stage 8 was 15 km long with an average grade of 7.6%. Quintana won the stage by 26 seconds ahead of Betancur and 57 seconds ahead of Pinot. Schuermans and Bernar arrived with Dombrowski and Kelderman, a few seconds behind, while the pink jersey, Van Ness, lost another 30 seconds.
Stage 9 also went to a Colombian, our man Parra. He was the lone survivor of the early breakaway. His compatriots Quintana and Betancur attacked in the finale, Betancur faded and was caught by the next group which included 8 Up's three top 10 candidates. Quintana was 2nd on the day and gained 37 seconds on the group. Pinot had been napping and missed the group, losing an additional minute.
Only a day later Wardle won the third stage for 8 Up, he kept his cool on the final hill and overtook all the riders who'd attacked prematurely. Stages 11 and 12 were flat and won by Martinez in mass sprints. The second flat ITT came on stage 13, nearly 60 km long. Howson was narrowly beaten by 27-year-old Gaizko Estebanez who celebrated his biggest career win so far.
Bernar was slightly faster than Van Ness and 92 seconds faster than Quintana, enough to take the lead in the general classification. Quintana dropped back into 3rd, but he's only 36 seconds behind with plenty of mountains ahead. Kelderman moved into 4th place with a good ITT, but he's over 4 minutes behind Bernar. Dombrowski, Schuermans, Izagirre and Pinot follow with small gaps. Betancur suffered once more and dropped back to 11th, 8:30 back. As good as he is in the mountains I believe the podium is now out of reach for him.
df_Trek wrote:
Great chance to gain a great spot in the podium, with Betancur out of games, he need really strong comeback for it.
The flat long ITTs favour our team. The number of good stage racers has decreased to a record low, only 7 riders have MON 80+ and TTR 75+, 5 of them are in our employ, the other two are Kwiatek and Van Garderen.
The rest of the Giro would become a breakaway festival. Except for the MTT on stage 16 every stage was won from the early breakaway: Bongiorno, Parra, Stetina, Navardauskas, Adrian Elliot, Parra with his third stage and Goss on the final day.
So there were always two races happening, one for the stage, one for the GC. Stage 15 took us up to Planaval, Quintana and Betancur were a minute faster than Schuermans, Kelderman and Pinot, with Van Ness, Dombrowski and Bernar another 40 seconds behind. Quintana returned into pink and would keep it for the rest of the Giro.
He also won the MTT up the Saint Bernard, 10 seconds ahead of Betancur. The time gaps were fairly small, Bernar and Van Ness only lost 23 seconds, Schuermans 44 seconds.
Stetina and Wardle were fighting for stage 17 to Bormio until Quintana caught them in the finale, Stetina still won the stage, but Quintana gained 42 seconds on Betancur and Schuermans, 1:52 on Bernar and over 2 minutes on everybody else.
Just one mountain stage to go, saving the toughest climb for last, a mountaintop finish atop the Zoncolan. Parra won the stage by such a large margin that he'd finish the Giro inside the top 10. What a great race for the Colombian climber, three stages, the blue jersey and even a top 10 GC finish.
Quintana distanced everybody on the Zoncolan and wins the Giro by nearly 6 minutes. Bernar and Van Ness were 11th and 12th on the day, losing time to all the better climbers, but the margins were comfortable and they take the remaining spots on the podium. Schuermans was best of the rest, faster even than Betancur on the day, he moved past Kelderman into 4th.
After some mixed results so far this season, the Giro went brilliantly for 8 Up. No chance of challenging Quintana for victory, but two riders on the podium, two more in the top 10, 5 stages and the blue jersey.
I'll make this short. The Dauphine was a carbon copy of the Giro: Nairo Quintana followed by Team 8 Up followed by the rest. The Colombian superstar took stages 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8, dropping everybody else every time. Bernar surprised by winning the opening prologue, his first win of the season. Elia Favilli was the only other stage winner, victorious in both mass sprints. Quintana wins overall, points and mountain jersey – Parra fought hard for the latter, ended only equal on points, which wasn't enough. The white jersey once more went to Gael Foure, his 7th U25 jersey in one-week WT races.
The Tour de Suisse 2021 opened with a prologue, ended with a short ITT and in between offered three flat and four mountainous stages. Our newcomer Brad Andrews, not a great rider but with PRL 79, was only beaten by Jungels in the prologue.
Coquard dominated the mass sprints, winning all three and taking home the black jersey. Stage 3 finished with a long climb. Kwiatkowski attacked, Mohoric pulled a group of riders including Pinot, Boswell, Elissonde and Herklotz. Not only was Mohoric able to drop the others, he also caught up to Kwiatek and then won the stage by 8 seconds. Birtz and Boothroyd managed to join the next group, 1:05 behind.
Stage 6 finished with a descent, Boswell and Mohoric attacked on the last summit, Boswell took the stage, the duo was 48 seconds ahead of a larger group which Birtz missed, losing 30 more seconds. A day later we had to climb over three HC mountains. The early breakaway included too many strong riders and 8 Up had to shut down the group, reducing the peloton to just 30-ish riders in the process. At this point Warbosse attacked, was only joined by Jokin Figueira, but the Spaniard was no match for the American on the final climb.
On the final mountain stage to Splugenpass Andrews joined the breakaway, but was beaten by Primoz Koren. In the group of favourites Kwiatek attacked with Boswell, they gained 34 seconds on Pinot, Dombrowski and race leader Mohoric, Birtz and Boothroyd were in the next group.
Kwiatek was only 24 seconds behind Mohoric ahead of the short ITT. Jungels won again, Birtz came 2nd, Kwiatek was 4th, while Mohoric lost a minute and his chance to with the Tour de Suisse.
Our sponsor is willing to increase the wage budget to 660k/month next season. Which is highly appreciated because 18 contracts are expiring at the end of the season. Few of our riders have much unused potential, Elizondo can still improve his climbing a little, Sprague his TT skill, Van Ness both. In the end, we offered all our top stage racers new contracts except for Birtz. Having been on the TdF podium twice and winning the Vuelta last year makes his wage demand of 100k seem too high for his skills. Sadly, there are no really attractive options on the transfer market, the rider we are most eager to sign is Girolamo Masolini, a 24-year-old puncher with AVG 76.
National Championships
We were extremely successful in the national road championships. With varying tactics the following riders have claimed their national jerseys: Pericas (Spain), Schuermans (Belgium), Koch (Germany), Olesen (Denmark), Van Ness (USA) and Parra (Colombia). Only De Sousa and Jaton were unable to win. The Swiss course was too tough to stop Gross. In Portugal, De Sousa kept attacking and attracting a small group including top favourite Rui Costa, but nobody was prepared to share the work and the two escapees managed to stay ahead even though their lead had been reduced to 2 minutes with 25 km to go.
Tour de France preview
The TdF was once more shaping up to be a battle between defending champion Kwiatkowski and Giro winner Quintana, aiming for a GT double. Over 175 km against the clock favour Kwiatek, though this includes a TTT of 67 km and a hilly 50 km ITT on stage 20. On the other hand the mountain stages are brutal, with mountaintop finishes in La Mongie (11 km @ 7.6%), Plateau de Beille (16 km @ 7.8%), Mont Ventoux (21 km @ 7.4%), Les Deux Alpes (15 km @ 6.2%) and La Plagne (21 km @ 6.4%). The PCMCE race preview names Boswell “best of the rest” ahead of Mohoric and Van Garderen. Boothroyd and Birtz as well as Pinot and Aru are considered outsiders.
Winner of the Tour de France prologue and first wearer of the yellow jersey was Lars Boom, just like last year. He'd also win a second stage in this edition from a breakaway. The first 11 stages are all flat and most of the world class sprinters have turned up. Some experts (=PCMCE) predicted the mass sprints would be decided between Coquard and Favilli, instead, they were dominated by Mr. Green Jersey himself, Peter Sagan. Incredibly, he went on to win 6 of the 7 stages decided by mass sprints, only Degenkolb was able to beat him once. In all three flat stages “stolen” by the early breakaway Sagan won the mass sprints from the peloton, too. What a performance and yet another points jersey for the "Tourminator".
Team 8 Up wins the TTT on stage 5, 22 seconds ahead of FDJ. Our prologue specialist Brad Andrews takes the race lead and the yellow jersey and will wear it for 5 days. Kwiatek loses 3:21 with his Orica team, so he's already 2 minutes behind Quintana. However, we would not see a battle between these two giants: Kwiatkowski crashes on stage 7 and injures himself badly with a fractured hip.
Andrews loses the leader's jersey on stage 10, the flat ITT between Lanester and Lorient, to his team mate Birtz. Durbridge wins the time trial, 5 seconds ahead of Birtz, 16 seconds ahead of Phinney and Jungels. Quintana continues his run of good ITTs, I've never seen him underperform, despite his TTR 71 he only loses 68 seconds on these 50 km against the clock. To put this in perspective against some of our riders: Pericas (TTR 76) is only 20 seconds faster than Quintana, Andrews (74) a whole minute slower, Warbosse (70) 2 minutes, Mohoric (69) 3 minutes. I fear he'll be unstoppable once more.
Starting with stage 12 it was finally time for the climbers to shine. Only the last of 6 mountain stages doesn't end with a mountaintop finish. Warbosse, Andrews and Pericas were allowed to take it easy on the first stage, finishing dead last, while our other 6 men joined the fight for the stage uphill to La Mongie. Unsurprisingly, Quintana won just ahead of Pinot, Dombrowski was 3rd, Mohoric 4th, both lost 28 seconds. 8 Up's other men lost between 0:41 and 1:43. We still hold all the podium spots after this day, but Quintana is already 4th, just 1:20 behind.
Stage 13 featured 2 cat. 2 climbs, 2 cat.1 climbs and then the tough finish up to the Plateau de Beille. The good news for Team 8 Up was the stage win by Warbosse (MON 78), who won from the breakaway and even managed to beat Dan Martin (MON 79). The bad news was: I lost the keyboard control just as the attacks on the final climb started. Quintana would have been unstoppable anyway, he managed to catch most of the escapees and crossed the finish line in 4th place, taking time off all his rivals, Pinot (43 seconds), Van Garderen (1:09), Mohoric (1:14), Olesen (1:36), Boswell and Boothroyd (1:57), Birtz (2:05) and Aru (4:17). He's slipped into yellow and will probably keep it until Paris.
Anybody prepared to bet that Quintana didn't win atop the Bald Mountain? You'd be a fool. Of course he won the stage. We had sent Andrews into the escape group, it was a long and flat stage until the final climb and he seemed the best fit (FLA 69, MON 75). The escapees kept attacking each other, which suited Andrews just fine, he dropped everybody including Dan Martin but Quintana still went on to beat him by one and a half minutes. He pulled Pinot and Kennaugh along, disappointingly Mohoric and the rest of the team lost a fair bit of time to those three, but kept everybody else including Van Garderen at bay.
Another mountain stage, even harder than Mont Ventoux, with several smaller climbs followed by a long uphill finish to Les Deux Alpes. Team 8 Up's newcomer Pericas, riding in his Spanish national jersey, was the stage winner ahead of Damuseau and Kleina. Quintana again took time off everybody else and Pinot once more was better than the rest, moving up to 2nd place in the GC. Boothroyd and Birtz follow, Mohoric is snapping at their heels, Kennaugh passed Olesen, but the time differences in the top 10 remain small – except for Quintana's lead, which has extended to 5:36.
Stage 17 was simple enough: Only three climbs, but all of them of the highest category. Dombrowski and Porte attacked, both 25 minutes behind in the GC, still the peloton rode hard to catch them again. At the first summit Porte dropped back into the peloton, Warbosse attacked and joined Dombrowski, with vague hopes of winning the polkadot jersey.
Quintana felt powerful enough to pull the whole reduced peloton up the final climb to La Plagne by himself – and paid for it by not winning the stage, he was overtaken at the last second by Pinot. Dombrowski bravely held onto 3rd place, Kennaugh beat Mohoric again.
We have a last mountain stage ahead, just 141 km short, with 4 climbs and a downhill finish. The plan was to send Warbosse into the early break so he might still have a chance to win the climber's jersey, though Quintana had a fairly comfortable lead. Those hopes were dashed when the better climbers Barguil and Rolland attacked and rode at top speed to stay ahead of the peloton, which was chasing hard.
And so a plan B developed – as we neared the top of the first climb many riders were exhausted and the speed in the peloton dropped. We attacked at the summit with 8 riders, leaving only Andrews behind, and caught up to Rolland and Barguil. The teams of Quintana and Pinot had to react, dug deep into their energy reserves and kept the gap around a minute for a while, but then exhaustion took over and our group built up a lead of up to 8 minutes.
Quintana had to attack, the yellow jersey was at risk. Pinot and Kennaugh tried to follow him but were unsuccessful. Mohoric dropped his team mates on the final climb and soloed to victory. At the end of the day Quintana "only" lost 3:58 to Mohoric and about 2 minutes to our other riders. But Pinot, Kennaugh and Talansky lost considerably more, Pinot fell off the podium and drops down to 5th, behind three of our riders.
The race leader won his third stage a day later. It was a hilly stage with a pretty flat finale, 97 riders recorded the same time. Quintana was in 20th position when the final sprint started and won ahead of Van Avermaet and Turgis, the pure sprinters were too far back in the peloton to challenge for victory.
The final GC shakeup came with the hilly ITT on stage 20. Van Garderen beat Dennis, Quintana once more excelled as 3rd, comfortably beating all our riders. Mohoric was 44th, 3:28 behind and fell off the podium by 7 seconds. Sagan then won his sixth stage on the Champs-Élysées to conclude the Tour.
Quintana has done it, the Giro/TdF double, also winning the Dauphine in between as well as Paris-Nice earlier this year. Kwiatek, his biggest rival, the only man to beat him this season (in the Romandie Tour) crashed out of the TdF, that could have been a great battle. Though considering just how well Quintana did in the time trials I doubt he could have been beaten. He also wins the mountain jersey, Sagan as always the green jersey, Boothroyd the white jersey.
On the 26th of July we completed our 2022 squad by re-signing Mohoric and Van Ness. We will be spending 630k/month on salaries next season. The 11 riders leaving us have all found new teams. The biggest loss will undoubtably be Birtz, last year's Vuelta winner and three times TdF podium finisher, he will move down a division to IAM who don't look likely to be promoted. Most of the money was spent on extending the contracts of our best riders. None of the new signings are older than 27, hopefully with room to improve.
We'll have to wait and see, those were the most interesting riders we could find. Currently the old guard is still dominating, they are all over 30 years old by now so sooner or later they will retire and the newgens take over.
In San Sebastian, frustration turned into the winning move. We had anticipated that the biggest obstacle would not be one of the best punchers like Simon Yates, Ulissi and Villella, but Quintana, even though this is clearly not his favourite terrain.
So we were ready when Quintana attacted 30 km out, used the follow attack command... but it somehow didn't work, the team sped up only briefly and then stopped again and the Colombian was ahead alone. In frustration we just told all our riders to attack, only pullling Yates and Irgalin along, and only stopped after most of the red and yellow bars were gone.
We actually managed to catch Quintana that way and suddenly things looked much brighter. Koch had most energy left and attacked again, nobody followed immediately. Then Quintana took off once more and our other riders were unable to follow him. Wurzer and Swolfs were the first to recover and set off after Quintana, the rest settled into a sprint train and were caught off-guard when Yates and Irgalin attacked with 4 km to go.
Even Quintana's energy reserves aren't limitless, he was unable to catch an exhausted Koch again. Swolfs and Wurzer were 3rd and 4th, Yates and Irgalin 5th and 6th, De Vos, De Sousa, Skujins and Mayordomo complete the top 10.
With 4 flat and 3 increasingly difficult hilly stages the Tour of Poland was tailor-made for our 6 punchers, though it would be tough to beat Betancur. Herrada won the opening stage from a reduced peloton of 41 riders. A day later Valverde, with a late attack, won what I assume must be the last WT stage of his career at the age of 41! He announced his retirement at the end of the season. On the 3rd stage Ag2r's Favilli beat his team mate Coquard in the mass sprint. Worryingly, Betancur was 5th, ahead of fast men like Hita, Bennett and Viviani.
Stage 4 also went to Ag2r, this time Landa wins from a late attack, gaining 51 seconds on the peloton, he slips into the leader's jersey and will be difficult to dislodge. The second hilly stage ended in Zakopane. We made the race hard with a team attack 25 km out, only 4 riders were able to follow, Betancur, Moser, Rui Costa and Landa. Betancur won the stage.
The last hilly stage was a disappointment for the team. We believed the only way to beat Betancur was to attack from a long way out. The team worked well and we had an advantage of 5 minutes with 40 km to go. But then Betancur attacked and riding all alone he didn't just manage to catch us, he somehow found the energy to pull our group along for a while and then took off to win the stage, 31 to 47 seconds ahead of our specialists. Igor Boev, the current Russian champion, won the final stage from a breakaway, his first victory in the World Tour.
While the Tour de Pologne was perfect for our team, this year's Eneco Tour was less than ideal, only appealing to sprinters and time trial specialists. Dumoulin won the prologue and then it was time for Peter Sagan to shine. He won stages 2 and 3 in mass sprints. We made the only hilly stage as hard as we could, producing a top group of 22 riders, but it included Dumoulin and other TT specialists fighting for the top 10. Wurzer was able to win the stage, he overtook Sagan who had started his sprint too early.
Phinney beat Dennis and Dumoulin in the 15 km ITT, a day later Sagan was beaten by Degenkolb, but the Hulk was victorious again on the final stage. Sagan thus wins 3 stages as well as overall, ahead of Matthews and Phinney. They were followed by Dennis, Dumoulin, Boom and Kabashi, all TT specialists. For us, Wurzer was 8th, Jaton 10th.
We got our usual revenge in Hamburg, a clean sweep of the top 8 places, Swolfs beating Koch and Mayordomo. We managed the same feat in the GP Quest, with Swolfs again beating his team mates. We tried to attack 40 km out, but none other than Quintana spearheaded the chase, so we had to give up on that idea. But we timed the final climb and the attack at the top perfectly to cross the finish line before the sprinters caught up.
Kwiatkowski did not recover in time for the Vuelta. So the only serious threat for our strong team was Ian Boswell, who is a better climber than any of our men. 8 Up won the opening TTT by just 3 seconds ahead of Orica, 4 seconds ahead of Sky and Quickstep. Boswell and his Astana team were only 14th, 71 seconds behind.
Six of the next 11 stages were hilly and all ended with an uphill finish: The first of these stages was won by Simon Yates, next up was Olesen, then the honour went to Ulissi, before Mohoric also claimed a stage. The last two hilly stages went to the early breakaway, Senechal winning on day 9, Kiserlovski takes stage 12.
The competition among the sprinters was strong and during the first two weeks we saw a new winner in every mass sprint: First Coquard, then Sagan, followed by Favilli and then Demare. But the three mass sprints in the final week all went to Ag2r's Elia Favilli, who also takes home the malliot verde.
The only ITT of this year's Vuelta came on stage 11 from Cambados to Pontevedra, with a single long climb in the middle of the stage. Durbridge beat Birtz by less than a second but apart from that 8 Up was extremely successful, with 6 riders in the top 10 and Mohoric not far behind as 12th. Boswell was only 37th, losing 2:50. Boothroyd takes the red jersey from Ulissi, who had been wearing it for 5 days.
All five mountain stages offer a mountaintop finish, four of them in a row on stages 14 to 17, while the queen stage up to Bola del Mundo awaits on the penultimate day.
Time for the mountains and the fight between 8 Up and Boswell. The American sits in 11th position, 3:35 behind leader Boothroyd and has to try distancing our riders on every mountain stage. Stage 14 ends with the mountain pass to the Puerto de Ancares, 16.5 km @ 6.7%. A breakaway with strong climbers including our ex-rider Hansen and Boswell's team mate Kiserlovski formed and our whole team worked at medium effort to keep it contained.
Boswell attacked early on the final ascent and went on to win the stage and gain 1:18 on our better climbers, with Elizondo, Christie and Warbosse losing more time, but all of them were faster than anybody else, including Bardet and Elissonde. That's how dominant we've become due to the severe lack of climbers in the world.
Stage 15 to Lagos de Covadonga (16.6 km @ 6.4%) went to the early breakaway and our man Andrews celebrated his first professional victory at the age of 27. He easily distanced Cannondale's Tamboretti and our ex-rider and puncher Gross. The first man from the peloton arrived 22:13 later and this time it was Mohoric just ahead of Boswell. All our other riders lost more time to the American who was moving up in the GC.
A day later, another win from the early breakaway, another win for 8 Up, this time Pericas was successful, only Herrada was nearly able to keep up on another brutal finishing climb, the Cuitu Negru, 18.8km @ 7.2%. Boswell did more damage to our team, he was 3rd on the day, a minute faster than Mohoric, with Boothroyd, Birtz and Olesen losing another minute and Warbosse really suffered, ending 5 minutes behind Boswell. The American moved up to 3rd in the GC and is only 51 seconds behind Mohoric with two more mountain stages to go.
It was time to turn things around and surprise Boswell with an attack. We did nothing to contain the breakaway on stage 17 which again included Andrews, but this time he was narrowly beaten by Edet and Caruso. Since the peloton arrived over 23 minutes behind Edet surged to 8th in the GC after the stage.
The stage was relatively easy, flat until the final third, then two small hills and the final road to Fuente Dé, 15.4 km at just 4.3%. We saw that Boswell was badly positioned on the first, cat. 3 climb and attacked with our team. A dozen riders chased, but Boswell wasn't among them yet, he had to work hard to reach that group. After he managed that he attacked again and tried to catch our riders and failed, the gap grew again and was 2:04 at the finish line and Boswell lost his podium position.
We still had the queen stage in hand, this was the stage for an early team attack, taking us over 4 summits before the climb to Bola del Mundo (13.4 km @ 7.9%). After two flat stages won by Favilli freshness was excellent again and we didn't have to hold back with just 96 km into Madrid on the final day.
First, Pericas formed the early escape group, he won top points on all 4 climbs to secure the KoM jersey. Then the rest of the team bar Andrews attacked as well and never looked back. The man in red, Mohoric, did most of the work.
Bardet and Porte eventually attacked, Boswell waited a little longer, caught and distanced those two, but couldn't close the gap to our men. In the end Elizondo took the stage, Christie and Warbosse lost contact and a few seconds in the end while Boswell lost 6:39 on the day and dropped back to 7th in the GC, only staying ahead of Warbosse.
Of course he won the stage. We had sent Andrews into the escape group, it was a long and flat stage until the final climb and he seemed the best fit (FLA 69, MON 75). The escapees kept attacking each other, which suited Andrews just fine, he dropped everybody including Dan Martin but Quintana still went on to beat him by one and a half minutes. He pulled Pinot and Kennaugh along, disappointingly Mohoric and the rest of the team lost a fair bit of time to those three, but kept everybody else including Van Garderen at bay. 
