Interesting news and I'm curious to see who will join the team as sponsor and if that will have larger effects on the availability of your riders / your targeted riders.
July was always going to be the month of the year for us, so we expected big things. The Tour de France and Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha was, on paper, big big races for us, and luckily we didn't dissapoint.
The Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha was another good race for us, being a relatively flat race with a prologue and a long timetrial. Jerome Coppel was quickly in the mix after getting 2nd in the prologue, while Bryan Coquard also participated in the flat sprint on stage 2.
On the long timetrial, Jerome Coppel consolidated his 2nd place behind Taylor Phinney and infront of Jacob Fiedler from the PCT side Karcher. Also greek timetrial champion, Panagiotis Vlatos managed to fight his way back after a pauver prologue. He was 12th going into the final, and relatively flat, stage. He, and Bernaudeau (who was also decently placed) dropped in the sidewind however and lost quite a bit of time. So instead of having a great team performance we had to settle for 2nd from Coppel.
Those two races gives quite a lot of points however, and especially thanks to Coppel who had the month of his life.
Points gained: 2.061pts
Next up: August including Deutschland Tour and GP Moscow aswell as HC race Clasica San Sebastian. It is also time for 2016 Olympics aswell as Tour de l'AvenirEdited by SotD on 19-03-2017 08:53
THE CHASE FOR EQUALITY PART 4 - 4/4TH WAY EVALUATION
Evaluation time! Why now? Why not wait a month? Well, in order to have any use of the prognosis statistics and evaluation sheet, I feel it is relevant to make the final evaluation before the season ends. And to make it on a clean month - exactly one to go - I feel is the right thing to do.
At this point there are 5 Festina races left. 4 in the Pro Tour and one HC.
Let's, as usual, start out by getting a firm look into actual points, from last season and well into this one. We need this to see whether or not we are lacking results.
Name
2015 points
2016 points
Difference
Simon Spilak
2144
1587
-557
Jerome Coppel
656
945
289
Georgos Tzortzakis
634
461
-173
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
561
996
435
Clement Koretzky
389
790
401
Tom David
278
299
21
Yuriy Vasyliv
161
199
38
Charalampas Kastrantas
142
181
39
Markus Eibegger
133
100
-33
Panagiotis Vlatos
112
322
210
Piter Campero
107
129
22
Mathieu Bernaudeau
95
73
-22
Bryan Coquard
62
262
200
Olivier Le Gac
0
136
136
Jakub Novak
0
194
194
Andreas Hofer
0
85
85
Nejc Kosic
0
50
50
Grzegorz Stepniak
0
61
61
Maxime Bouet
0
97
97
Pavel Potocki
0
63
63
Marco Haller
0
48
48
Alexis Gougeard
0
54
54
Immidiately we see that several red flags have now turned green. Also a few that we didn't believe were possible before this season. Especially Charalampas Kastrantas made a great jump after taking the KOM jersey in Tour of Ukraine, but also Tom David and Yuriy Vasyliv went from red to green. Tom David could have gotten around 100 points more than he got, and he will end up getting almost the same as last season, despite of him developping quite well. There's also a few reds left, but all are going in the right direction. Markus Eibegger had a great season last year, and is doing his best to salvage the difference. He will not shut the gap entirely, but he is already above pre season expectation nontheless.
Georgos Tzortzakis have been riding well, and closes the gap fairly well also. He will only have the Lisbon Classic left, so it would take a top top result for him to actually get level to last season, but he is likely to end up with ~500 points, which is good enough. Simon Spilak is still struggling to make amends, but he did however cut a big chunk out of the deficit, so that he is now just ~550 points behind, while having still 2 races to go. He will have to win both races to close the gap, but 300 points is OK we feel. The goal must be, however, to get 2000 points.
STATUS
Let's make a status, to see what each pool tells us...
GC RIDERS / PUNCHEURS
2015
2016
Riccardo Ricco
1192
0
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
561
996
Clement Koretzky
389
790
Laurent Pichon
271
0
Martin Hacecký
263
0
Yuriy Vasyliv
161
199
Piter Campero
107
159
Olivier Le Gac
0
136
Jakub Novak
0
194
TOTAL
2944
2474
300 points were scored here since last, hence now lacking short of 500 points. We feel that it is possible to close another 100 points, from Koretzky, but we will end up being 300-400 points short, while last time we expected to be 450-500 points behind.
SPRINTERS
2015
2016
Georgos Tzortzakis
634
461
Bryan Coqurd
62
262
TOTAL
696
723
Last time we expected to lose 150 points from this pool. We are, however, already 30 points up, so having scored a massive 180 points more than expected. And there is still time. Georgos Tzortzakis is riding the Lisbon Classic, while Coquard are riding both Lisbon and Tour of Tasmania. So we can expect to score somewhere in the region of 50-100 points more.
COBBLERS
2015
2016
Tom David
278
299
Robert Bush
126
0
Guillaume van Keirsbulck
123
0
Nejc Kosic
0
50
TOTAL
527
349
Well. this was the place where things turned bad. Tom David did manage to score a bit of points in TONE, but because os hos unnoticed crash he lost around 100 points - Which was our top hope for him prior to the race. So instead of losing 130 points like expected, we are losing 180 points. Tom David really needs to do better next season, aswell as Nejc Kosic.
At this point, last time we were 750-800 points behind "schedule". This time we are only 500 points or so behind.
DOMESTIQUES
2015
2016
Charalampas Kastrantas
142
181
Markus Eibegger
133
100
Tsgabu Grmay
55
0
Enrico Gasparotto
54
0
Zhihui Jiang
1
0
Andreas Hofer
0
85
Grzegorz Stepniak
0
61
Maxime Bouet
0
97
Pavel Potocki
0
63
Marco Haller
0
48
Alexis Gougeard
0
54
TOTAL
385
689
We were ahead last time, and estimated that we would end up 250-300 points ahead of lat season. At this point we are already 300 points up, with still some easy points left to score for a few of these riders. So we will now expect to be 350 points up instead.
TT'ERS
2015
2016
Jerome Coppel
656
945
Yoann Paillot
113
0
Panagiotis Vlatos
112
322
Mathieu Bernaudeau
95
73
TOTAL
976
1340
We had a decent timetrial month scoring around 100 points. Last time we saw this pool we esitmated that we would end up 450 points ahead of last season. At this point we are 364 up, so needing less than 100 points. That should be possible with Coppel in Lisbon, Tasmania and C-M TTT. With a good TTT result we could even get to 500-550 points instead.
CONCLUSION AND WRAP UP
Simon Spilak is yet to be calculated, and last time we expected him to be 420 points or similar behind. At this momenth he is 560 behind, so the question is whether or not he can score 140 points from the final two races. We think he can. We also think he can land 250, so things are shaping up nicely.
The estimated total was last time 7200-7350. And we are happy to announce that having already scored 7100 we will be very surprised if we do not land a pointscore of above 7350 - and easily past 7200.
Seeing that we are currently something like 800 points ahead of Becherovka and 1000 points ahead of Vesuvio, Aker and Puma, we have to be looking against a PT win. 5 races left. Will we lose 800 points? It's definately possible. We know that all too well, but which team should be able to do so? Who can do well enough in the remaining races? Mind you, that only 4 are PT races, and one of those is Copenhagen-Malmo TTT. We will have to expect littel points from Becherovka, Aker and Puma in that race, so catching 1000 points on us on two one day races and one 3 day long GC race... We will be bold, and say that it can't be done. Even if Boasson Hagen wins Tasmania and Lombardia while Kristoff wins the Lisbon Classic.
Like always. Feel free to comment, as we like an active HQ.
Edited by SotD on 19-03-2017 12:23
another great wrap-up...from our standpoint it's nice to see Kosic doing well at yours - a shame about Spilak though, but as the lead is more tight this season you might have a good shot at finding a place in the sun
great visualisation as always SotD though I'm still waiting for the one team you wanted to add
Croatia14 wrote:
another great wrap-up...from our standpoint it's nice to see Kosic doing well at yours - a shame about Spilak though, but as the lead is more tight this season you might have a good shot at finding a place in the sun
great visualisation as always SotD though I'm still waiting for the one team you wanted to add
I would hope that Kosic is doing 100 points or more next season, otherwise he isn't worth the wage. But once he becomes 77COB I guess it will change, although he will never be more than a domestique given his other stats. His hill and acceleration stats are not that good, and in the end he will end up looking a lot like Lhotellerie, Hristov and Insausti, and neither of those are really PT material.
But hopefully it will make the situation better for Tom David, especially if he is also trained to be 79 or 80 COB at some point.
Yeah exams are putting some pressure on the time to get that other team done
August was a month where we didn't quite know what to expect. It could be decent, it could be bad. No matter what, this is what the race schedule looked like:
* Clasica San Sebastian (HC)
* Deutschland Tour
* GP Moscow
Despite having some decent riders in all races neither could be classified as "important races" for us. In San Sebastian we saw Le Gac and Vasyliv, while we attempted to get a stagewin in Germany from either Tzortzakis or Koretzky and Coquard in Moscow looking for an upset result.
The Clasica San Sebastian turned out to be our first point scored in the HC category as Yuriy Vasyliv took a nice 12th, while Olivier Le Gac took 15th not far behind.
But we had to go to Germany to get the best results. Georgos Tzortzakis has had a pretty dire season, where only Tour d'Afrique has been above expectation, but here we immidiately saw him perform taking 2nd on the first stage, then two 4th places, before taking a 5th after a hilly stage. Clement Koretzky was under maximum pressure on stage 4 losing more time than hoped for, but after that he took matters into his own hands taking a 3rd and 7th place on the other hilly stages ending up taking 9th in the GC. But it was the final stage 8 that saw us the happiest. Out of nowhere Georgos Tzortzakis sprinted to take the win, and with that also 2nd in the points competition.
Much to the east we had Bryan Coquard in one of his rare leadership roles in a major event, but seeing several top sprinters in Germany we had every reason to believe that he could shine in the GP Moscow race - And he did. 6th in the end is easily his best ever career result, and beating the pre-race favorite, Sam Bewley promises exciting for the future.
After the month of August we are leading the PT rankings, but things are still open as ever!
Points gained: 482pts
Next up: September including Vuelta a Colombia, Tour of Northern Europe, Tour of Ukraine and GP Liechtenstein.Edited by SotD on 19-03-2017 08:53
Imo a great month for you. You did better than I expected in all three races and scored a lot of points. At the moment, everything goes into the right direction for you
PS: that picture hurts. Couldnt you find another one ?
knockout wrote:
Imo a great month for you. You did better than I expected in all three races and scored a lot of points. At the moment, everything goes into the right direction for you
PS: that picture hurts. Couldnt you find another one ?
Definately a better month than expected. But it isn't over yet. Still some very dangerous teams fairly close.
PS: I could take the picture from stage 1, where he was "cheated" from the win
Developping young riders have been an important aspect of the game, for the team, for the past four seasons, where riders such as Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Clement Koretzky, Bryan Coquard and Piter Campero joined the setup.
In 2013 we aimed for a decent result in the race for the first time ever, and while our talents were still very young, we managed to get a top 10 from Clement Koretzky who was leading the troup including talents such as Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Bryan Coquard, Yoann Paillot, Piter Campero, Alexis Gougeard, Charalampas Kastrantas and loanie Sean De Bie.
But it wasn't until 2014 we had ambitions to strive for a top result. Having a fast developping Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier we were able to lead the race going into the final stage. Having a lead of just 14 seconds to Alex Kirsch were too little, however, and we had to settle for 2nd place in the GC, while also young Yuriy Vasyliv fought well and ended up 12th in the GC. On the team were also Olivier Le Gac, Bryan Coquard, Alexis Gougeard aswell as loaned in riders Victor Campenaerts, Charles Matte, Alexandor Cataford and Mathieu La Lavandier.
In 2015 Lecuisinier were back for a third time, this time being one of the major candidates for the overall win, but this time also proved to be difficult. While Lecuisinier might proved the strongest, his arch nemesis Lachlan Morton proved the smartest and ended up winning the race by only 31 seconds. Loaned in rider Silvio Herklotz climbed to 5th while also Yuriy Vasyliv showed progress, this time taking 7th in the GC. Also in the team this season was Olivier Le Gac, Zhihui Jiang, Alexis Gougeard and fellow Puma loanie Jascha Sütterlin. This was also the season in which we got our first ever Tour de l'Avenir stagewin, from Yuriy Vasyliv on stage 8.
This season we yet again see Yuriy Vasyliv in the team, although this time as a podium contender and our teams most prestigious rider. While only having one eligeble rider in the team we decided to team up with Isostar bringing along Pavel Potocki, who is also riding for us this season aswell as Rok Korosec, Aksel Nommela, Gasper Katrasnik, Luka Pibernik and Martin Laas.
The race started out well enough with Vasyliv being the strongest of the GC candidates in the opening prologue, but it was Aksel Nommela who had the first strong result, when he took 2nd place in the bunch sprint on stage 2, where also Rok Korosec were involved. The lumpy stage 3 also saw these two in the stage top 10, 6th and 8th respectively, but it was on stage 4 the race really opened. Stage winner Matej Mohoric took the lead, while Yuriy Vasyliv was 5th losing 5 seconds to Silvio Herklotz. The stage also saw pre-race favorite Merhawi Kudus lose a significant amount of time due to a crash.
Luckily he was back in the saddle to win the mountainous stage 5, infront of Yuriy Vasyliv, who sprinted ahead of Silvio Herklotz. The 5 seconds lost on stage 4 meant that Vasyliv had to accept being 2nd in the GC though. Stage 6 was a transportation stage, but neither Nommela or Korosec were able to be up there in the end.
Instead we were back talking business on stage 7 in a difficult hilly stage which saw Stefan Küng take the stagewin, while Herklotz enhanched his lead by sprinting to 2nd gaining a few bonus seconds on Vasyliv ending last in the frontgroup of 10 riders. Up until now, we had a fair shot at the overall win, though, especially looking and the upcoming timetrial, but on stage 8 disaster struck.
Yuriy Vasyliv had a puncture on the descent to Col de Portet d'Aspet, and having the strongest climbers ahead of him, he wasn't able to regain contact, hence clocking in a loss of 3 minutes and 28 seconds to Silvio Herklotz and 3 minutes and 9 seconds to Merhawi Kudus. Also Pavel Potocki lost his 5th place in the GC to Stefan Küng.
So despite of Vasyliv putting up a great final timetrial, gaining 32 seconds on Merhawi Kudus and a staggering 1'24" on Silvio Herklotz, the game was over. Those figures would have won him the race had he stayed with Kudus on the dreadful stage 8. Also Potocki would have saved his 5th place.
On the final stage Merhawi Kudus proved to be slightly stronger than the rest, and while a breakaway took the stage he claimed 7 seconds on Vasyliv, while Vasyliv claimed 23 seconds on Herklotz, making the time loss even more catastrophic.
In the end, however, we could look back on our 3 rider in 3 seasons to achieve the Tour de l'Avenir podium and our 8th top 10 result in 4 seasons, thanks to Koretzky, Lecuisinier x3, Vasyliv x2, Potocki and Herklotz. As things look now, we currently have no eligeble riders for the Tour de l'Avenir of 2017, but the team are likely to take on the depeche to keep breeding top riders in the future aswell!
Edited by SotD on 19-03-2017 08:54
In a january 2017 press conference, head sponsor Gen-I announced their disbandment from cycling sponsorship after a dissapointing Tour de France performance from the Slovenian cycling star Simon Spilak. Ever since it has been quiet around the former Pro Tour winning team, which was also in a dire situation upon the contract renewals, prior to this season.
Now it looks as though the setup may have managed to conclude a more viable solution, setting pen to paper on a one year contract with French sponsor Dexia – Also with an option of further two seasons for the sponsorship. Festina have yet again signed a new contract, showing their huge interest in the team, which they are now looking to sponsor for the 7th consecutive season.
The Dexia brand's motivation should be the increasing success of French cycling, heavily based in the Festina setup. Riders such as Clement Koretzky and Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier have showed remarkable progress during the season, while also team leader Jerome Coppel have had one of his best seasons ever. The team is still showing progress, and the team currently holds a French legion of 8 riders, including Olivier Le Gac, Alexis Gougeard, Mathieu Bernaudeau, Maxime Bouet and sprinting talent Bryan Coquard on top of already mentioned riders.
Dexia released an announcement which underlined the importance of talent development, and a French core:
We believe that it is important to be prescient in a sport like this, where everyone seems to copy one another and improving on marginal gains. One way is to build a strong core of riders that are willing to fight for one another, another is to have a strong insight in the work with and around talents. And for that specific area of competence we have a very progressive manager who have showed remarkable strength in finding and developing talents. Riders like Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier would not have moved well inside the Grand Tour top 10 if it wasn’t for a fair amount of work behind the scenes. And we see similar prospect for Clement Koretzky, Bryan Coquard and to a slightly lesser degree for riders like Yuriy Vasyliv, Piter Campero, Panagiotis Vlatos and several others.
They seem to be willing to put in that extra effort for their manager and their team, and we want to support this and be a part of this. By putting our sponsor fees into the project we hope that the sporting directeur can have a slightly more relaxed approach knowing that there’s financial backing for his efforts
Presenting:
Team Festina - Dexia
*Credits to the_hoyle
We wish to thank the_hoyle for creating yet another beautyful design for us, and we are looking forward to riding in it in the upcoming 2017 season.
As always, feel free to comment and debate as it gives a nice touch to the HQ.
Edited by SotD on 19-03-2017 08:54
Always loved the Festina watermark on your jerseys - I'm glad it stays on your new jersey. The jersey itself looks rather simple but still very stylish. I like it.
Good to see that you intend to stick to your young talents and I'm curious how they look with some training and who will have to leave to get the training fees
knockout wrote:
Always loved the Festina watermark on your jerseys - I'm glad it stays on your new jersey. The jersey itself looks rather simple but still very stylish. I like it.
Good to see that you intend to stick to your young talents and I'm curious how they look with some training and who will have to leave to get the training fees
In fact it's the first time ever (I think), where I had that watermark. I usually have a clockwork as a watermark. I might have had the watermark in the 2013 or 2014 season though
Yeah. Normally a lot more is happening on my shirts, but I really liked the_hoyle's first take, and only asked to get a little bit of the old Festina Gold back on the shirt, after we lost the Slovenia green touch. I hope it will be easy to destinguish this shirt in the peloton.
Indeed, I can't give up on my talents just yet. But I definately want to rebuild, so we might see a few big sales. Not only in order to train certain riders, but also to bring in new talents. Next season only Nejc Kosic is improving, and I don't like that one bit
Croatia14 wrote:
exactly tht thoughts of knockout, what a quality shirt from a quality shirtmaker! and the set-up looks as good as it always looked
Indeed cool to see Festina remaining for this long-term project with the talents playing a big role for you.
Full blue looks more simple than in past years but I really like it.
Yeah, I kinda liked the moving up through the ranks part, where I had a few years in the shadow, but then saw talents like Tom David, Georgos Tzortzakis, Clement Koretzky and so on punch through. Also just talents like Vasyliv and Campero are seriously nice to have. They aren't anything but top 25 GC riders, but to see them move up, and to dream about training them (although that isn't likely to happen), is a good thing for me. Especially in periods where nothing really happens.
knockout wrote:
Always loved the Festina watermark on your jerseys - I'm glad it stays on your new jersey. The jersey itself looks rather simple but still very stylish. I like it.
Good to see that you intend to stick to your young talents and I'm curious how they look with some training and who will have to leave to get the training fees
In fact it's the first time ever (I think), where I had that watermark. I usually have a clockwork as a watermark. I might have had the watermark in the 2013 or 2014 season though
I generally meant having a big sized watermark on the front bottom (no matter if clockwork or the actual logo) but you also had this watermark on your 2014 jersey.
A month in the name of mountains for us, is normally something to look forward to. But not only mountains were on offer, also flats, hills, timetrials and cobbles:
* Vuelta a Colombia
* Tour of Ukraine (HC)
* Tour of Northern Europe
* GP Liechtenstein
Our leader, Simon Spilak was present at the Vuelta a Colombia, but it was our greek sprinter, Georgos Tzortzakis who started the race with a good result, by taking 3rd in the opening sprint. The race hit the mountains on stage 2, and here we saw Simon Spilak from his best side, winning the stage ahead of Angel Madrazo.
The efforts were taking it's toll, however, and Spilak lost a staggering 2'05" on stage 3, being dethroned with quite a punch. Georgos Tzortzakis unfortunately dropped on the stage, so stage (flat) was not for us. Stage 5 saw Spilak regain a bit of control with himself, but clearly showed that he was under pressure. 5th on the stage, but atleast in the front group. On the final stage 6, Simon Spilak was back to his usual self, and the strongest of the favorites. Unfortunately he wasn't able to take back the time lost on stage 3, and hence had to settle for 2nd in the GC after Angel Madrazo.
Elsewhere, in the HC race of Ukraine Charalampas Kastrantas fought well throughout the race to take the KOM jersey, and scoring well for his team. Neither Olivier Le Gac or Yuriy Vasyliv had what was needed to score a decent result, although both did well on a few occassions.
In the most unpredictable race of the season, Tour of Northern Europe, things started out well by Coppel, Tzortzakis, Vlatos and David all doing well and what was hoped for. Jerome Coppel won the individual timetrial ahead of team mate, Panagiotis Vlatos, while Tom David did well on both the cobbled stage and the timetrial. But then, out of nowhere, we saw Tom David be brought down and the GC was lost.
Luckily we had the GP Liechtenstein to salvage the lost, and Simon Spilak did what we hoped from him, to take 2nd behind Superman, Andy Schleck. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier was also present, but having an underwhelming race to get 16th.
Overall a good month, which could have been even better - Especially the lost points of TONE were hard on us, but nontheless we opened up a significant gap in the lead, ahead of Becherovka, Vesuvio, Puma and Aker, and we hope that we are able to stay there.
Points gained: 840pts
Next up: October including Copenhagen-Malmö TTT, Giro dell'Emilia, Lisbon Classic, Tour of Tasmania and Giro di Lombardia.
Some years back, the Festina setup decided that they would invest time and money into the greek cycling market, and that decision seems to have paid off.
In 2013, greek cycling was hardly anything but a side note on page 50 in the book of cycling. Four riders had nonetheless gotten the chance to ride for the prominent Festina setup that also decided to bring in a bunch of french talents to scope for champions.
The 2013 season went on with Georgos Tzortzakis, Ioannis Tamouridis, Panagiotis Vlatos and Charalampas Kastrantas all being hardly recognizable in the peloton.
Ioannis Tamouridis was the most profilic greek rider at the time, and he showed that by ending in 239th spot on the individual ranking, without getting any noteworthy results during the season. 149 points was the score. Much later came Panagiotis Vlatos, the timetrial promise, in a 419th spot scoring 65 points. Both Charalampas Kastrantas and Georgos Tzortzakis was away on loan, gaining experience at a lower level og competition.
At the end of the 2013 season, Ioannis Tamouridis left the team, while Georgos Tzortzakis came back to ride at the Pro Tour. And he quickly showed promise getting a 3rd place in a stage of the Tour of California. Throughout the season he was often in the top 10 when riding his own chances, where as he was ever so often leadout for Óscar Guerao. The big result (relatively speaking) came in the B World Championships, where Tzortzakis was 3rd. Also at the GP Moscow he landed 7th, which was easily the biggest greek cycling result at the time. He came in a record 170th spot at the end of the season, landing (also a record) 201 points. Charalampas Kastrantas scored 10 points in a wildcard race for his loan team, Gazelle, while Panagiotis Vlatos struggled, getting a 523th spot scoring just 39 points, which was even less than the previous season.
But then, the 2015 season happened, and everyone started to see the reasoning behind Festina's choice of talentpool. Georgos Tzortzakis made his big breakthrough winning two stages of the Giro d'Italia, taking also two 2nd places and a long run in the points jersey.
Georgos Tzortzakis winning stage 6 in the Giro d'Italia, wearing the points jersey
He also got 3rd on a Tour of Qatar stage seeing all the biggest sprinters present. A few top 10 points competitions was also added to the list, while getting 5th in the Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha one day race was another milestone in greek cycling. Panagiotis Vlatos had a decent Tour of Qatar getting 6th in the U25 competition, while also Charalampas Kastrantas had a reasonable season. Georgos Tzortzakis made the top 100 for the first time ever in greek cycling, when he landed 46th scoring a massive 634 points, tribbling the previous record score. Charalampas Kastrantas ended up in 207th place scoring a very respectable 142 points, while also Vlatos secured a much better result ending up in 261th place scoring 112 points. This took Greece to the cycling top 50 at the end of the season. 37th place scoring a total of 1101 points, where 888 points came from the Festina trio.
Many experts said that this would be the high point in greek cycling history, and they were partly right. Georgos Tzortzakis didn't have a greak Giro d'Italia, and getting older and less endurant soon, we may never see another Giro d'Italia stagewin again. But the proficies stop there.
Georgos Tzortzakis winning the Lisbon Classic
The 2016 season has been nothing short of spectacular in terms of greek cycling development. Georgos Tzortzakis made the biggest milestone possible, when he won the Lisbon Classic, the first ever one day race win in greek cycling history. But besides winning the race he also took podium places in stages of the Deutschland Tour, Tour of Northern Europe, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour of Colombia, while getting 3rd in the GC of Tour d'Afrique. Also claiming 2nd and 3rd respectively in the points competitions of Deutschland Tour and Tour of Northern Europe, while winning a stage of the Deutschland Tour to add to his win total. But it wasn't only Georgos Tzortzakis who kept up/improved on his total. Panagiotis Vlatos had a fabelous season to take an early stagewin in Tour of Qatar to finish the race in 9th. Later on he also made a great 7th in the one day race of Chrono des Herbiers, while taking a late 2nd place in the TT of Tour of Northern Europe.
Panagiotis Vlatos winning the Timetrial in Tour of Qatar
Charalampas Kastrantas was in his final season as being a U25 rider, and he proved to be a decent rider of that level when taking 8th in the U25 competition in Deutschland Tour. But it was his stagewin in the Criterium du Dauphine Libere that took everyone by storm. He later went on to win the KOM jersey in the HC race, Tour of Ukraine.
Charalampas Kastrantas winning stage 5 of the Criterium du Dauphine Libere
So the 2016 season was the season where Greek cycling had their first ever one day race win, but also a season counting no less than 3 stagewins, from 3 different riders. Never have greek cycling seen that much versatility and strength in numbers. What is most interesting is, that all three riders have managed to improve on their points total aswell.
Currently we have Georgos Tzortzakis scoring 684 points, Panagiotis Vlatos scoring 357 points while Charalampas Kastrantas scoring 181 points, probably scoring another 5 in the Giro di Lombardia. This would put them into these positions, if last seasons points haul was anything to go by:
39 Georgos Tzortzakis 684 points (+52 on his record)
91 Panagiotis Vlatos 357 points (+245 on his record)
156 Charalampas Kastrantas 186 points (+44 on his record)
This will take greek cycling to 1.227 points. If we add last seasons 4th-10th best riders this will give 1.440 points. Last season this would land Greece in 31st, just 17 points outside the top 30.
We had a brief talk with the greek national team coach...
It's absolutely stunning to see how we have progressed in the past couple of years. We went from absolutely nothing to marking ourselves here and there. When we saw the results of the 2014 season we never expected to be where we are now, after to fantastic seasons.
We have to be realistic and say that 2016 is probably a year that is not going to be repeated. Georgos Tzortzakis is going into his last season on full strength, and we can obviously still hope for wins from him, but younger sprinters are starting to push themselves ahead of him, and we have to be content with him scoring something like 450-500 points next season, and not winning any one day races. But we have dreams for the future that is for sure! We definately want to attempt to win a GC in the future, and while Vlatos and Kastrantas might not be strong enough you can never know. Both are still young and can develop well if enough ressources are spent on them. But we also see talented riders from other teams popping up here and there. They might not be equally talented, but they aren't far behind, and if they take wise career choises we could see a greek GC win or perhaps an ardenne top 10. Those are our dreams for now.
In the future we would like to see more from our climbing department. We have seen Kastrantas win a KOM jersey, and he could do so in the future aswell, but riders like Nikolaos Ioannidis or Ioannis Spanopoulos have enough of a talent to be potential top 25 GC riders, and then with some luck they could go even further. Charalampas Kastrantas is the most obvious choice for an ardenne top 10, but it would require quite some effort - Something that we are uncertain about. Ioannidis could potentially be a pretty strong puncheur aswell depending on which team he will join and how they will progress with him.
We definately lack a strong cobbler in order to fill out the palette, but who knows what might come up. Farantakis could be a respectable cobbler, but not a winning type. But he can be other things aswell!
The season is coming to a halt, and despite of having an entire month left to ride, we are fairly confident, that winning the rankings is almost secure. But let's have a look at what october has in store:
* Copenhagen - Malmo TTT
* Giro dell'Emilia (HC)
* Lisbon Classic
* Tour of Tasmania
* Giro di Lombardia
The Copenhagen - Malmo TTT was a priority race before the season started, and looking at the starting list we were cautiously optimistic about a top result. But we were also aware of the lump some 15-20km into the race, which would prefer other teams with a slightly stronger setup for hills.
Throughout the race we seemed strong, and a podium spot was never in danger. In the end it turned out to be very close with Tinkoff taking the win 6 seconds ahead of us, with us holding Jayco'z behind in a matter of less than a second.
After a great start to the month we headed to our final HC race of the season, Giro dell'Emilia where our goals was to get what we could. No real ambition. In the end Yuriy Vasyliv and Olivier Le Gac both proved reasonably strong, to get 14th and 23rd from the race.
Heading back to the Pro Tour we took on Lisbon Classic. Having a combination of our sprinters and some tough powerhouses we aimed for a top 10. The race turned out to be pretty eventless, so in the end it all came down to a sprint. Having lost Bryan Coquard on the bumpy roads it was all in the hands of Georgos Tzortzakis, and in the uncontrollable finale he saw a gap, and he took it to win the first ever one day race from a greek rider!
By now the overall ranking was secure, but we headed into Tasmania with huge ambitions. The short 3 day stage race included a fairly easy flat stage - for Coquard, then a relatively difficult hilly stage - for either Spilak, Koretzky or Coppel and then a final timetrial - for Coppel and Spilak. So we wanted a top 3.
The first stage should have been one for the sprinters, but the disorganazation proved to be in favour of the bald, so we had to settle for secondary positions. Bryan Coquard was 5th in the bunch sprint, but unfortunately another 6 riders came in before him. Clement Koretzky was unlucky to be caught in a split effectively losing all chances to grab a decent GC.
Thankfully for us, he because a vital part of controlling the difficult stage 2, which meant that both Spilak, Coppel and himself ended up in the main group situated 15 seconds behind stagewinner Jack Bobridge.
The final TT turned out to favour or Pre-Race favorite, Jerome Coppel who took the stage win - but more importantly, he gained 26seconds - and a bit - to take the overall win. It was the second time in three PT races that we beat Jayco'z in a matter of miliseconds.
In the end Simon Spilak also had a great run in, to take 3rd on the stage and in general. Without the split on stage 1, Clement Koretzky would have also ended up in the region of 20th. Instead we took home the team classification aswell as a split points jersey.
Through a great month things would end in Lombardia. With us having both Simon Spilak and Clement Koretzky there (both in form) we had ambitions of easily achieving our season goal of a top 10. The race, however turned out to be the most uninteresting event of the entire season, with no attack sticking - thanks to a superior Piter Campero. Simon Spilak, Clement Koretzky and Piter Campero were all positioned well in the final, but neither having the legs to finish it off, thus concluding the season efforts with a uninspired 16th place - Although from Piter Campero. Probably a new career highlight!
That said, the season is over. And what a season. Let's take a look at how we ended the month.
Good luck and keep up with challenging for the PT crown 
