We were up against the Big 3 in the Canadian classics. Thankfully, unlike the Ardennes classics, the races in Canada are more about timing than skill. Betancur's Katusha was was doing most of the work in Quebec and reacted immediately when we tried a team attack 40 km out, so we waited for Betancur's move instead. It came 15 km from the finish line, all our riders followed as well as Kwiatek and Petrovic. Quintana reacted too late and finished 12th, 47 seconds behind our group. Betancur opened the sprint 1.5 km out, our riders waited a little longer and Wurzer was able to beat Betancur to victory, Mayordomo was 3rd, Kwiatek 7th, Petrovic 11th.
Montreal was even more successful. Our riders were at the very front of a group of 16 which included all the favourites when the sprint started and were sure some would overtake us and claim victory - but apparently, our opponents weren't in top form. Instead, Mayordomo won ahead of Wurzer and De Sousa, we took 1st to 7th place, only the Brazilian de Amorin was faster than De Vos, Betancur finished 10th, Quintana 11th, Kwiatek 14th.
Felt good to finally beat Kwiatek, Quintana and Betancur.
World Championships 2021 in San Sebastian
The ITT gold medal goes to Luke Durbridge, who beat Bob Jungels and Runako Rainsford, 8 Up's Boothroyd ends 4th.
The road race was 275 km long, 16 laps on a circuit which featured a tough hill. There were a lot of absentees, including "the big 3" as well as Germany's Koch. I was coaching the US squad and also found a lot of riders uninterested in the WC. Van Ness was our best bet and he rode well, just missing the podium with a 4th place finish. The new World Champion is Simon Yates, who beat Ulissi by 21 seconds, Bardet claims the bronze medal.
Another long season draws to an end. Il Lombardia assembled an illustrious field of riders, the medal winners from the World Champs as well as The Big 3. Once more it all came down to the last hill and descent to the finish line in Lecco. The remaining peloton was shattered into pieces on the climb, only Wurzer, Mayordomo and Nikolaev were able to follow the best, but were left with an empty tank. Three riders made another push on the descent and broke free, Simon Yates, Ulissi and Betancur. The Italian got his revanche for being bested by Yates at the World Champs and wins to the delight of the local crowd.
The road book for the Tour of Beijing showed only two hilly stages which weren't difficult enough for any big time differences, possibly only the bonus seconds would decide the race. Apart from Quintana the cream of the crop was present, World Champ Yates, Il Lombardia winner Ulissi, Betancur, Bardet, Romeu, Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders winner Sustronck and many more.
Favilli, one of the finest sprinters currently, won the mass sprints on stages 1 and 4. Stage 2 went to Ulissi ahead of Yates and Bardet, 57 riders were given the same time. On stage 3, which featured an uphill finish, Betancur beat Ulissi, Yates and Bardet and they were 22 seconds faster than the rest of the top group, including all our men.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. The last stage was officially called flat, but featured a nasty hill not far from the finish line. Skujins joined the early breakaway and was first on all four qualified climbs, which was enough to win him the mountain jersey. But the rest of our team was making it hard up that final hill, De Sousa and De Vos couldn't hold on, only Ulissi, Yates and Betancur did and the group quickly gained 90 seconds on the chasers.
We were doing all the work in the group, relaying at 80, and feared we'd be outsprinted. And so we let Koch (FLA 78) attack alone 6 km from the finish line and saw no reaction from our opponents and we slowed the pace further and further. Koch was 41 seconds behind the race leader Ulissi, maybe he could even win overall.
And he really did, the sprint in the group didn't start until the final kilometer, as Koch already rolled over the line.
In the race results we saw a lot of green, Team 8 Up dominated the top 10 in most World Tour races. But as the PCMCE overview shows, we only won one of the big races, the Vuelta.
The overview also understates how dominant The Big 3 were, Quintana's Giro/TdF double is prominent, but only Kwiatek's LBL win is noted, while Betancur doesn't even appear. It is a different picture looking at the final WT table: Quintana wins convincingly with 898 points, he is followed by Betancur (721) and Kwiatkowski (615). Sprinter Favilli recorded 22 wins this season, Betancur (18) is 2nd in this table, too, ahead of Quintana (17).
Our riders did very well: In the WT rankings the best were Wurzer (4th, 513), Mohoric (5th, 487), Koch (6th, 472), Schuermans (9th, 453) and Swolfs (10th, 427), in between were Boswell (7th, 465) and World Champ Simon Yates (8th, 460). Team 8 Up really shines in the team rankings, we come out top with 2352 points (2020: 2172). Quickstep remained 2nd with 1803 points (2020: 1933), Astana replaces Orica as 3rd with 1306 points (Orica 2020: 1413).
The teams which were promoted last season have to go down again, Nippo Fantini only managed to collect 42 points, Lampre just 33. FDJ was 16th again, with 61 points. MTN and Trek will return after relegation last season.
This also means we won't see much of Birtz (2nd in the TdF, 3rd in the Vuelta, 14th in the WT) next season because he signed with IAM, who remain in the Pro Continental Tour. Quintana will be racing for Astana next season, they let go off Sagan (Sky), Boswell (Ag2r) and Aru (Tinkoff). NetApp secured their place in the WT for two seasons thanks to Van Garderen, who was responsible for approximately 99% of their WT points, he's now moving to Quickstep. Simon Yates transfers from Movistar to Orica, Sustronck from Quickstep to Lotto.
I'm winding down my story here. The team is already extremely dominant and it's only a question of time before The Big 3 start their decline and we'll become unbeatable in Grand Tours. We should also become stronger and stronger in the one-day races, again, especially once Villella and Yates decline. The cobblestones will probably remain challenging thanks to the hard difficulty level paired with young, strong competition: Sustronck and Senechal, Jaton will only be with us for one more season, with his AVG 81 a contract extension will be too expensive and then he's a great opponent for years to come, too.
However, I admit to the guilty pleasure of having played a few more seasons with this team and I'll summarise each season in the next days.
Season 2022
AVG: 76.60 (2nd)
AVG salary: 21,050 (7th)
We welcome 11 new riders into the fold. Sadly, none of them show much room for improvement. Erminio Milano certainly offers great value for money, his wage is just 8k/month, he has an AVG 74, MON 81, so he's a candidate for the top 10 in a Grand Tour. Our other new Italian, Girolamo Masolini (HIL 79, STA 76, SPR 73), is the most exciting prospect.
The Tour Down Under was a disappointment, an easy variant which didn't allow for any significant time gaps, Michael Matthews won ahead of Yates and our ex-rider Carter, our men took 7th to 11th.
The dominance of The Big 3 continued this season. Quintana won Paris–Nice 43 seconds ahead of Mohoric, 60 seconds ahead of Herklotz, Wurzer won two stages for us. Kwiatek was successful in a mountainless Tirreno-Adriatico ahead of Bardet and Ulissi.
For the first time we won Milano-Sanremo with a team attack, Skujins and Miskic were too slow to accelerate and stayed in the peloton, but the others relayed at a brutal speed and stayed clear by a minute, Jaton won the sprint from the front ahead of Mayordomo and Koch.
In Catalunya we faced Quintana again and lost again, we did take 2nd through to 8th, except for 5th, which went to Pinot. In the Basque Tour we were able to beat Kwiatek (and Yates) thanks to a tough stage with narrow roads. Boswell and Herklotz attacked 30 km out and we managed our energy reserves brilliantly, overtaking them and leaving the other favourites behind by over a minute.
The E3 was a disappointment, Sagan attacked early and rode to victory, we couldn't follow Sustronck and Senechal, none could even beat our ex-rider Juul Jensen in the sprint. Gent-Wevelgem was much better, we had forced a small group with all our riders and Koch and Salthammer were able to attack without reaction form our opponents and went on to win the race. The price we paid was that the rest of the team was swallowed by a large group, Favilli won the mass sprint for 3rd place.
It was the final chance for us to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix with Jaton and instead of the usual tactic we sacrificed everybody towards this goal and Jaton delivered twice, dropped Sustronck in Flanders and beat him in a two-up sprint in the Velodrome.
The Ardennes Week was a wash, Kwiatek, Quintana, Simon Yates and Ulissi beat our riders in every race. Simon Yates won Amstel Gold with an attack 30 km out. Going into the final Mur de Huy 7 of the 12 riders in the top group were 8 Up men, but all were beaten by all the other five riders, Kwiatek won. Wurzer's 5th place in LBL was our best result all week, victory went to Quintana. At the start of May the Colombian announces he will retire at the end of the season at just 32 years of age!
The Romandie was very TT heavy, 3 of the 6 stages were individual time trials. It couldn't have been closer between Kwiatek and Quintana, Flowerman won by less than a second overall, Boothroyd was 3rd. Even one of our fearsome team attacks on the penultimate Giro stage couldn't strip the pink jersey off Betancur, though it did push Aru off the podium. Mohoric in the end loses the Giro by just 7 seconds, Van Ness is 3rd.
In the Dauphine we finally managed to beat Quintana convincingly and took 1st through to 7th, thanks to a successful team attack on stage 7. The Tour de Suisse was a different matter, Kwiato won easily ahead of our ex-rider Foure and Dombrowski. The long ITT on the final day broke our neck, the summer stage racing team is lean on TT experts.
Emmea's TdF variant starting in my home city, Berlin, was brilliant but brutal. Peter Sagan won three more TdF stages and yet another green jersey. Quintana has started his decline, Kwiatek was the big favourite, also because of strong support by Pinot and Herklotz. And he was just about unbeatable, came into the final ITT well in the lead and even won that stage against the specialists. Quintana was runner-up, Bernar was just fast enough on the day to push his team mate Schuermans off the podium by 3 meagre seconds.
San Sebastian was our most dominant race yet, we took the first 7 spots, Swolfs won with a late attack, the others formed a sprint train which beat the contenders who started their sprints too soon. Kwiatek won his home tour, a hilly variant, we took 2nd to 5th. Our punchers took the podium of the Eneco Tour, they lost time on the cobbled stage but more than made up for it two days later in a tough hilly stage. Our newcomer Masolini was still improving, he won the Eneco Tour and soon after also the Cyclassics. We made a mistake in the GP Quest, Valgren won ahead of our men.
The Vuelta saw the dominance we soon expect from our team in all GTs. Schuermans won the mountain and points jerseys, but not the red jersey. Bernar took enough time off Schuermans in the final ITT to win by 52 seconds, Olesen was 3rd.
In Quebec it came down to a select group sprint and the rider furthest back in the group won, another newcomer to our team, Darko Miskic. Quintana was 2nd, Masolini 3rd. In Montreal it was also about the timing of the final sprint, Kwiatek started from the front, but too soon and was overtaken by all our riders, victory went to Skujins.
In this season troubles with the WC race started, it would crash in 3D mode after a few seconds. The ITT went to the nearly unknown specialist Fergus Whitehall. In the simulated RR Simon Yates defended his title ahead of Carter and our man Wurzer.
A highlight of the season was a career best, our first victory in Il Lombardia, won by the new kid, Masolini! We have to thank Simon Yates for a sacrificial attack most of our men could follow and left some of the toughest competition, including the Big 3, behind, they finished 2:45 back. We were able to set up a sprint train, Wurzer leading the way, forfeiting his chance to win. Bardet was close to victory, but Masolini squeezed past him, Mayordomo was 3rd.
Beijing was too easy, our only real competitor, Herklotz, was at the front with our men on the mountain stage but for some reason dropped back into the next group and lost over 5 minutes, Schuermans wins.
Kwiatek won the WT rankings with an impressive 1052 points. He won the TdF, the TdS, the Romandie, T-A, his home tour and the Fleche Wallone. Second is Quintana with 779 points. In his final season he won LBL, P-N and Catalunya. Masolini is 3rd, Koch 4th, Mohoric 5th, Boothroyd 6th, Swolfs 7th, Schuermans 8th, Bernar 9th and Van Ness 10th. With Quintana retiring and Kwiatek growing older total domination isn't far away.
Season 2023
AVG rating: 76.78 (1st)
AVG salary: 21,733 (6th)
The highest AVG rating despite spending half of Quickstep's budget. The sponsor has upped his monthly payment considerably to 776k, but our riders' wages only increased from 632k to 652k. There just weren't many good riders available who weren't over 30 years old and thus in danger of declining soon. I had noticed some of my men as young as 28 were already losing points. On the other hand, in the last year the following riders improved:
We now have two riders left in the game with an AVG of 82, Sagan and Kwiatek, both are now 32 years old, and Sagan announces his retirement in February. Of the 13 riders with AVG 81 three are newgens (Jaton, Sustronck and Yupanqui), also three of the 15 riders with AVG 80 (Van Dinteren, Suleimanov and Boothroyd).
Of our new signings I am most pleased with Ciriaco Kronig, MON 81 with potential for more, he could even reach 85. Of the punchers, Schiesswald (HIL 80, STA 80) is the most exciting prospect, with a bit more training he'll be able to replace his compatriot Wurzer, who moved on to Tinkoff.
I should also mention that Jaton, who won both cobblestone monuments for us last season, signed with... Sky Dive Dubai! A team in the Continental Division! No idea how that could happen, where did they get the money to pay him 140k? Only one other rider at that level earns more than 19k, another of our ex-riders, Sprague. We offered him 44k to extend his contract, instead he signed with Jo Piels for 38k.
The Tour Down Under 2023 goes to Ulissi, followed by two of our new signings, Atmodikoro and Lo Nero. Few time gaps in P-N and T-A, Kwiato won in France, we didn't make it onto the podium, Ulissi wins at home ahead of Mohoric and Milano.
The late team attacked worked again in Sanremo, as it did later in the year in the GP Quest, though it failed in the Cyclassics, just this once the peloton caught us again, Van Dinteren wins.
Catalunya only offered two hilly stages, Bardet won them both ahead of Yates, those two top the overall rankings, too, Mohoric ends 3rd. Zdravko Kabashi, a TT specialist, won stage 2 of the Basque Tour from an early breakaway and that was enough for him to win overall. Our new man Puljic and Mohoric complete the podium.
As expected, no wins on the cobblestones this year, despite the fact that Jaton was absent. Sustronck won Ronde and Paris-Roubaix, just as he did in 2020, Senechal beat him in the GP E3, Yupanqui took Gent-Wevelgem. And again, no dice in the Ardennes, either. Wurzer wins Amstel Gold, Yates the Fleche Wallonne, Kwiatkowski claims his third LBL. The Polish superstar was also depressingly dominant in the Romandie, winning 5 of the 6 stages, including a simulated mass sprint.
After losing the Giro by just 7 seconds last year, Mohoric won it this year and his team mates Bernar and Puljic also make it onto the podium. All "fair and square", no team attacks, no dirty tricks. Boswell, Aru and Pinot were all in the mix, but this variant wasn't that hard and included two late ITTs, which pushed our opponents off the podium.
We repeated that feat in the Dauphine, Van Ness won by 15 seconds ahead of Mohoric and Bernar. We tried a team attack in the Tour de Suisse, working hard to drop race leader Boswell. It took so much effort that our riders ran out of energy (green bar), and thus lost all the time they gained.
And finally, our domination also extends to the Tour de France. Kwiatkowski was absent, so Boswell was our only real opponent. He would have won had we not been successful with a team attack on the last mountain stage, it was so devastating that Boswell dropped to 7th. His team mates had protected him so well until then, but suddenly he was alone and lost 9:18 on the day.
Simon Yates was successful in San Sebastian ahead of Koch and Masolini, having attacked 25 km out. "Fun" fact: All my riders were supposed to follow Yates' attack but three riders were held prisoner by the peloton which slowed down to a near-standstill and it took them so long to break free that they arrived 8:02 behind Yates.
Kwiato was back for the Tour of Poland, just two hilly stages and without thinking much about it we sent Miskic into the breakaway on the first of these stages and he'd go on to win by a large margin, 6:03 ahead of Kwiatkowski. Our man Lo Nero was the strongest on the other hilly stage and takes the last podium spot.
In the Eneco Tour our punchers distanced the cobblestone specialists by 3+ minutes on the hilly stage. They lost some time on the cobblestones two days later, but Masolini wins ahead of Koch and Tront.
The Vuelta was pretty boring, as expected. Outside our team the best rider was Elissonde, MON 80. We were fully in control anyway when the AI broke down on a hilly stage 13, which was flat for the last 25 km. We attacked as a team on the final cat. 3 hill, only Yates and Villella followed, the rest fell asleep and lost over 9 minutes on that final flat part. In the team rankings we ended 2:18:40 ahead of Cannondale, with Tinkoff just 46 seconds, Movistar an additional 18 seconds behind.
The podiums of Tour and Vuelta are identical, Hillary Van Ness does the double thanks to his TT skills, followed by the pure climbers Schuermans and Olesen.
Bardet is the first rider to win in Quebec twice. His attack formed the winning group and unlike last year in Il Lombardia he was able to outsmart our men in the sprint. Bardet was nearly able to win in Montreal as well but was beaten by De Vos. Slightly frustrating for 8 Up, E1 consisted of our 8 riders plus Bardet and De Vos. We were in a train behind Bardet (SPR 65) and none of our men were able to overtake him, while the weakest rider in the group, De Vos, merrily sprints past everybody and wins by 100 metres.
The World Championships took place in Doha on a flat course. The TT title went to Damien Lech, he beat Durbridge and Sammmy Bailey. Demare wins the road race title in a mass sprint ahead of Italy's Belardinelli and Spain's Pinto. As you know, there are too many good sprinters in the game, these two will have quiet careers otherwise, never win at World Tour level, though Pinto will go on to win three stages in the Tour of Austria.
Mohoric wins Il Lombardia in the mountainous variant, a solo victory 1:20 ahead of Adam Yates and Miskic. The top 7 for us in Beijing, Atmodikoro wins ahead of Miskic and Masolini.
Peter Sagan retires with 140 wins to his name, 30 TdF stages, 7 green jerseys. For the first time one of our riders wins the WT rankings, Masolini with 869 points, ahead of Mohoric and Simon Yates. The best rider around, Kwiatek, won P-N, LBL and the Romandie, but didn't turn up for any Grand Tour this year, he is only 7th in the WT rankings. 8 Up finished with 3199 points, Orica in 2nd place collected just 929. For the first time, one of our riders wins the Velo d'Or award: Matej Mohoric. Though our first rider considered to be a superstar is Van Ness, Mohoric is still just a star.
Long time no see. When will you continue your story?
I'm finishing up this one and your already ask for another one? Truth be told: I played this career last year (made it to season 2027 in September) and have recently started a new career and tried to make things even harder for me. My initial idea was: Never pay a rider more than the minimum wage. But I felt that lacked progression, there has to be some to keep me interested. So I settled on: First season nobody earns more than 2.5k, second second 3k, third season 3.5k, and so on, after 16 seasons riders can earn 10k. And no U23 riders. That should really put an end to this crushing domination. I'm keeping notes on my progress and maybe I'll present it as a story one day. Small hint: The first three seasons were extremely successful.
But first, let me write a couple more posts in this thread.
Yeah, life happened so I had to leave PCM alone for a while. But now that the cycling season is underway, I've finally found some time to get back into PCM.
Funny you should ask Very soon actually. I've been lurking around this forum for a while now actually, trying to learn and get ideas from you great story writers and ironing out the final details of how I want to set up a new career. I think I have it all pretty much figured out now; the team is set up and I've started writing but I'm still improving it daily and I'm kind of anxious about posting it because I'm not sure anyone else but me is gonna like it.. Then again, I'll mainly post because I enjoy it so I'll get something out soon. Thanks for asking!
Ripley wrote:
I'm finishing up this one and your already ask for another one? Truth be told: I played this career last year (made it to season 2027 in September) and have recently started a new career and tried to make things even harder for me. My initial idea was: Never pay a rider more than the minimum wage. But I felt that lacked progression, there has to be some to keep me interested. So I settled on: First season nobody earns more than 2.5k, second second 3k, third season 3.5k, and so on, after 16 seasons riders can earn 10k. And no U23 riders. That should really put an end to this crushing domination. I'm keeping notes on my progress and maybe I'll present it as a story one day. Small hint: The first three seasons were extremely successful.
But first, let me write a couple more posts in this thread.
I'm not surprised your first three seasons were successful I found a way to make things more difficult, even though I'm currently playing on Normal in my new career. I'll post my setup or house rules if you like soon. Would love your input. Really appreciated all the help and feedback in the Life in Obscurity thread. A lot of my house rules are built around our discussions there
How tantalising! Sounds like you spend a long time planning. While I'm proud of having downloaded a new DB for the new career, actually selecting my (this time: custom) team took about 2 minutes. Let's hear about the setup, maybe start a new/different thread, last time we talked too much game mechanics in your story thread (my fault, I should have let you struggle ).
Ripley wrote:
How tantalising! Sounds like you spend a long time planning. While I'm proud of having downloaded a new DB for the new career, actually selecting my (this time: custom) team took about 2 minutes. Let's hear about the setup, maybe start a new/different thread, last time we talked too much game mechanics in your story thread (my fault, I should have let you struggle ).
Hahaha, I struggled enough!
A new thread is a great idea so that it doesn't interfere too much with stories. Could instead just have a link in the story to the setup & house rules thread. I'll see if I can get one started. I'm keen on hearing about your custom team setup as well, but I don't want to hijack your story
This story is pretty much finished. I am working on writing a kind of summary, talk about a(nother) team that made from the Continental level to the World Tour and conversely, teams which used to play a big part at the top level and have dropped into obscurity. Here's a teaser: Garmin finished the 2027 season 55th in the CQ team rankings.
I had also looked through my screenshots, present a few pretty ones. I'll use this opportunity to plug samu12's Vuelta variant. Here's the link to samu12's thread:
In this career in 2025 the game finally selected his masterpiece as the variant to play. Now, it's stupendously hard and thus not the most realistic variant, but it's really beautiful and here are a few of the screenshots I took:
Here's a first attempt at a final summary: We made it to the end of the 2027 season - what are the last achievements we missed so far?
Highest wage: In my previous career (see thread World Domination) I paid a rider more than 60k in wages for the first time. But with 8 Up I actually paid a rider 145k – Mohoric. The contract talk was in 2023, I had this huge wage budget and no strong riders to sign, so why not. Later, Masolini also became my 2nd highest earner ever with 93k.
Ardennes: Until 2024, we had failed to win any of the races in the Ardennes Week, that changed that year. Newcomer Alfredo Lo Nero won Amstel Gold, three days later Ivo Zikmund conquered the Fleche Wallone. But I'm ashamed to say we never won LBL.
WT individual rankings: At the end of the 2023 season 7 of our riders were in the top 10, together with Yates, Boswell and Kwiatek. At the end of the 2027 season the top 10 is completely in our hands. However, we would never be able to claim the whole top 30 (again, see thread World Domination), the harder difficulty level paired with not (cheating and) checking the potential of riders won't allow it. Three opponents squeezed into the top 25 in 2027, the three best punchers not riding for our team (13th, 16th and 22nd). Our weakest riders – always guys for the northern classics campaign – finished well outside the top 30, the worst this year was Owen Mullan as 64th with 50 points.
Wage Budgets: Our wage budget increased steadily and will reach 938k for the 2028 squad. Still less than Astana is paying, who moved back to the top of the expenditure table. Sky had dropped to mid-table, but has the 4th most expensive squad again, behind Tinkoff, while Quickstep and Orica had to scale down.
Probably the biggest surprise (well, except for Amore&Vita, now 8 Up) was Team Gourmetfein, they started out with us at the Continental level and moved all the way up to the World Tour and even established themselves at the top level for a while. They were unfortunate to be relegated in 2026, they'll be back next year together with IAM. They are 14th in the wage budget table – ahead of Movistar, Cannondale, Belkin, Lampre, NetApp, FDJ, Trek, Europcar, Garmin... and the team which suffered the most, started out with the 4th highest budget: BMC! They've long since been relegated to the Continental Division and have a wage budget of 80k.
I have been browsing through my screenshots and it's a shame to let them go to waste. So here are some more I hope you'll enjoy:
One rider deserves a special mention for his great achievements – and as an example for the problem with long careers: Ciriaco Kronig.
We hired him in 2023 and 2 years later he reached MON 85. At a time when only two other riders had MON 83 and everybody else less. Kronig didn't have to make a real effort to win mountaintop finishes. Here is his "scoresheet" for samu12's Vuelta variant:
In 2025 and 2026 he won 27 stages in Tour and Vuelta, altogether 35. "Thankfully" his decline started when he turned 30.
On the 1st of January 2028 nobody has more than MON 82. And I dread that another Kronig will appear and dominate like he did. And even if that doesn't happen... the budget, which still keeps on growing, poses less and less of a problem. For example, for the new season we hired Dmitri Safarov, he earns just 27.5k, but with his MON 81, TTR 76, he's one of the best stage racers around.
Here are the 8 best riders by AVG rating:
Of the sprinters, Bob van Dinteren was the most productive, he won 16 TdF stages and 3 green jerseys. While Alfons ten Hacken has only won a single TdF stage and not much else, no other GT stages, 4 stages in the Eneco Tour, he was 2nd in Sanremo once... the sprinting competition is damn tough. The same can be said for Derio Brusco, though at 29 he still has a few good seasons ahead of him. So far he's won Gent-Wevelgem once and one TdF stage. Yupanqui, whom I presented as a young rider, also turned into a great classics sprinter, but even his palmares could be longer, 3 TdF stages, 3 Vuelta stages, one Gent-Wevelgem... but at least plenty of podium finishes.
Pure fighters can't win much, as Filekovic demonstrates. He hasn't got a single entry in the win column, not at any level. 8th and 9th in the Ronde van Vlaanderen are his most noteworthy results. The three top punchers always faced our men, so the pickings were slim. Trampusch has won the Fleche Wallone once, but he's just 27. Ringot also has only one important win to his name, but it's LBL, which none of our riders ever managed. While Harlock was able to win the Eneco Tour 2026 and Amstel Gold 2025.
So, if somebody could fiddle with the young rider xml I'd recommend generating more top climbers and stage racers. We had a phase in which Quintana and Kwiatkowski went unchallenged and between them won everything. Once they retired the level dropped off, MON 82 became the new MON 85 (except for Kronig) and our team could pretty much hire all the best climbers. In 2028 we have 5 of the 6 riders with MON 82, earning between 12k and 68k, easily affordable with our budget, even with half the budget.
I'll leave you with a few more screenshots and the last save:
Yes I agree, excellent writing and even better analysis of the game. Been fun to follow your (expected) dominance. Hope to see another story pop up soon
Great work Ripley and a fun story to read through (even though I was a bit late to the party). Thanks for sharing those beautiful screenshots. Makes me want to invest in a much better computer!
Looking forward to your next story, "Conquering Liège - Bastogne - Liège"
Well, I can understand that if there's not much challenge left in it. 
