Just a quick update to say farewell and good luck to Christian Meier joining Movistar - US Postal for 50,000 Mr national champion as I thought of him as due to I think his 8 national championships in Road and TT will still get the chance to shine in the PT, at the US team and will always be remembered for his championship wins. Next Dmitri Grabovski went home to Metinvest - Dacia for 450,000 a one season rider for the team it was his consistency in TT and his action as part of our TTT squad that I admired. And finally Benat Intxausti will go back to the PCT as part of Indosat - ANZ for 1,700,000 after not quite fulfilling his ability last year for the team we could not refuse this sort of money for him and so we part ways

Jan.10	Badaling International	13th Patrick Naud
Jan.23-28	Tour of Qatar	27th Alexandor Cataford
Feb.5	Omloop Het Nieuwsblad	14th Jan Polanc
Feb.6	Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne	30th Jan Polanc
Feb.12-18	Tirreno-Adriatico	9th David Boily
Feb.14-21	Paris-Nice	39th Jarlinson Pantano
Feb.16	Classique du Grand-Duché	17th Laurent Pichon

A pretty slow start to our first season in the ProTour, We started in balding international and it was not too bad a start for the team with a real team effort to place the team at front to start the sprint and Patrick Naud taking an impressive 13th. Qatar was next but for us it was quite with n real action Alexandor Cataford 28th overall was the only real note for the race. Into the first taste of cobbles action in Belgium and in both the semi-classics Jan Polanc produced fine displays to be our best rider on the day with Eric Young also taking a top 20 in Nieuwsblad a great effort by the loanee showing his undoubted potential. The triple header came next and it was a case of the good the bad and the ugly both Guillaume Boivon and David Boily managed top 10's in the stage race with Boily even coming out in the top 10 overall in a great week for the team Grand Duche was not as succesful with team leader Laurent Pichon 19th but a surprising ride from Dan Mclay who finished 25th showed great promise Paris Nice it's best not to talk about at the moment.

38	David Boily	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	114
89	Patrick Naud	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	50
93	Jan Polanc	SLO			RBC Pro Cycling	48
110	Roman Kreuziger	CZE			RBC Pro Cycling	41
129	Eric Young	USA			RBC Pro Cycling	34
132	Hugo Houle	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	33
138	Dan McLay	GBR			RBC Pro Cycling	31
151	Kristian Haugaard Jensen	DEN			RBC Pro Cycling	29
152	Laurent Pichon	FRA			RBC Pro Cycling	29
161	Alexandor Cataford	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	27
241	Christian Bertilsson	SWD			RBC Pro Cycling	20
242	Johann van Zyl	RSA			RBC Pro Cycling	20
318	Charles Matte	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	15
319	Guillaume Boivin	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	15
334	Thomas Bonnin	FRA			RBC Pro Cycling	15
344	Jarlinson Pantano Gómez	COL			RBC Pro Cycling	15
392	Ryan Anderson	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	10
418	Florian Morizot	FRA			RBC Pro Cycling	10
465	Antoine Duchesne	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	5
466	Luke Keough	USA			RBC Pro Cycling	5
467	Zachary Hughes	CAN			RBC Pro Cycling	5
496	Kenny Elissonde	FRA			RBC Pro Cycling	5
497	Nathan Brown	USA			RBC Pro Cycling	5
526	Taylor Phinney	USA			RBC Pro Cycling	0

Overall wise a bad week in Paris Nice has probably seen us drop a little more then we would like with a 144 points gap to safety already a large chunk the positives are of course the lack of Taylor Phinney racing so far and the real team spirit we seem to show in races with a few time already the team getting 4-5 top 20 in one race we think we have had a bright start and when Phinney races we could climb the table rapidly.

Pretty standard bits of improvement with the team now looking a lot more well rounded especially with helpers in the GC my personal project to turn Johan Van Zyl into the complete helper on all terrain is now finished so very interested to see how he does.

Alexander Cataford and Nathan Brown are two others I look forward to seeing helping Phinney next year in the TTT and i'm hoping that in combination with Bonnin this might see Phinney protected a bit more during his races as we did seem to struggle a bit with helper depth in races last year mostly leaning on Morizot the now left Jensen and Pantano

So guys didn't quite upgrade 3 in all but all were known at the start of the year due to the need to put stronger riders in races though most/all are above 80XP if my calculations are correct and thus easy to max this year.

Eden95 wrote:
That consistency is ridiculous.