Having secured all our leaders, we concentrated on bringing in riders to help deliver those leaders to winning positions. We are gladd to announce the capture of the following riders over this weekend.

Adding depth to our sprint and cobbles line-ups is experienced German flat specialist Ralf Matzka. Even with a low flat stat, he should still be able to provide value in the team as an early pace-setter in stages and possibly as a lead-out man in sprints.

OVL	FLA	MON	HIL	TT	STA	RES	REC	COB	SPR	ACC	FTR	DHI	PRL
71.41	69	53	61	57	69	65	69	72	74	77	64	72	57

Our second specialist puncher arrives from Portugal. A former rider of Porto-Prio, Costa is a rider who loves the punchy climbs and is also a ready attacker. On top of this, he can even ride as a decent climbing domestique on lower slopes.

OVL	FLA	MON	HIL	TT	STA	RES	REC	COB	SPR	ACC	FTR	DHI	PRL
73.10	66	71	75	57	68	69	68	54	65	73	75	72	57

Another rider who loves to attack and is equally comfortable going up hills and on the flat. Tom Leezer adds to our home rider tally and is given responsibility of all-round role. We expect him to get into early breaks and also do the pace-setting if required on the flats.

OVL	FLA	MON	HIL	TT	STA	RES	REC	COB	SPR	ACC	FTR	DHI	PRL
71.90	73	59	71	66	74	71	71	70	71	78	74	63	66

We got a call from our friends at Unilever about the availability of some extra funds if we can bring a rider from outside our focus region for development purposes. They would be the ones to fund the entire expenditure.
As a result, we brought in our second and final loanee for the season - Scotson - who comes to us from Kiwi team Garmin - BikeNZ Cycling. With an objective to level up, Scotson will be a part of races where TTs are involved. There is absolutely no pressure on him to get results and he will mostly be in a free role.

OVL	FLA	MON	HIL	TT	STA	RES	REC	COB	SPR	ACC	FTR	DHI	PRL
65.28	66	53	61	69	66	65	59	58	57	64	61	64	69

Martii_Scots01 wrote:
You seem to have made some great additions to your squad this year, both in terms of leaders and domestiques; best of luck and hopefully we'll have a good few battles in the CT as the season progresses.

The final transfer update for the season. We round out our transfer business with the signings of two Stagiares who will ride with the team from the month of August.

Dutch youngster Hofstede is the first of our fresh batch of stagiares. Preferring the short punchy climbs to the longer, harder ones, we believe he can become a useful puncher for the CT and a ready attacker. We are delighted to be able to nurture a home-grown talent for the foreseeable future.

FLA	MON	HIL	TT	STA	RES	REC	COB	SPR	ACC	FTR	DHI	PRL
68	64	68	61	68	67	66	61	60	67	71	70	61
69	73	76	62	71	71	73	61	60	74	79	71	62

Our only recruit from Belgium - which is a surprise because we had targeted quite a number of them in the transfer market - is a cobbles talent. Boasting a strong acceleration and good energy stats, Allegaert is another rider who can make a mark on the CT scene in the future. He will also be useful as a tempo rider in the flats. We hope we can help him fulfill his potential.

FLA	MON	HIL	TT	STA	RES	REC	COB	SPR	ACC	FTR	DHI	PRL
68	56	63	65	67	70	59	67	60	70	67	65	66
75	56	64	65	74	74	63	75	68	72	68	66	66

After the completion of our first stressful and exciting transfer season, the management of Philips - Continental is proud to announce the team line-up for the 2017 season.

We went into the transfer window wanting to cover all bases. We were looking to bring in leaders and helpers who could score on all kinds of terrains. We are happy that we were able to achieve this objective. We are also satisfied with the number of riders we were able to recruit from our focus regions, although the German contingent is a little low on numbers.

Realistically, we do not expect to be fighting for a lot of wins in the hills and mountains. Our climbing team, while quite competitive, is not one of the strongest in the division. Not to undermine their talents, our mountain trio of Bardet, Battaglin and Ruijgh are highly talented. Puncheurs Wyss and Costa come with a lot of experience in the pro-peloton. However, it will take very smart riding from our climbers and puncheurs to get the better of our opposition.

The two terrains we are targeting to a greater extent are cobbles and sprints. Our sprint train, with the likes of Krieger, Kreder and Bogdanovics at the head, should be up there with the best in the division. Drucker's impressive sprinting and acceleration abilities gives him an advantage over the competition in the cobbled races, especially those of longer distance.

Supporting our cobblers and the sprinters is a bevy of flat specialist riders, including our Time Trialists. Grabovski and Van Zandbeek are solid as a TT pair and should be up there fighting for wins in TTs.

We are blessed with a number of all-round riders who should be able to help out wherever necessary. We are especially looking forward to how the trio of Leezer, Timmer and Van Emden get along and get on in the CT. We do believe they'll be very visible all through the season. Rafal Matzka is a good option as a leadout for the sprints and a support for the cobbles. Our loaned-in riders are no write-offs with big things expected from both Per and Scotson in the future. Hofstede and Allegaert should would be a welcome addition when they join the squad in August.

And now, we wait to start riding...

The team management is pleased to announce that the Team has finalized their goals for the 2017 season and these have been ratified by the MGUCI. We have tried to spread out our goals over a variety of terrains so that we don't over-depend on any rider(s). Here they are...

Our first goal, and highest on the priority list falls on the able shoulders of Jempy Drucker and the cobbles squad. We believe the cobbles terrain is one in which we can be quite competitive and we wanted to take advantage of that.

Our next goal, is another race featuring a lot of flat and cobbled profiles. This one is also our home race for the season (depending on C1 selections). We have made a conscious effort to build an all-round squad and they should come in handy when targeting this goal.

We plan to unleash our sprinters onto the roads of Australia to bring home this goal. Signing the defending Runners-Up in this race is another boost to our chances of achieving this goal.

Our only climbing goal of the season is also our least demanding (on paper!). This is also our only C2 target race. We don't expect to be fighting for the win here, or on any of the other climbing heavy races, but we are hoping our squad depth will mean that this goal can be achieved.

We do not expect to be fighting for automatic promotion in our first season in the CT. We expect to be there or there-about in all kinds of races, but the lack of category leaders in any terrain will probably harm our chances of an immediate promotion. We would love to be proved wrong in the assessment of ourselves but we felt a realistic goal for us this season is a top 10 finish, building a base for a promotion push next year.

jandal7 wrote:
I wish I had promoted last year so like the others you could be my favourite CT team A fantastic squad, well rounded with likeable riders and leaders. Riders to make any of the top teams scared in every terrain, and with that amount of good acc stats you'll always have my approval (y) And with a great nationality focus! You could be up there for the top 5 for sure and certainly top 10 will be achievable. Good luck and can't wait to see you guys in action and come up against you this season.

Our calendar has been confirmed by the MGUCI for the 2017 season. We are delighted that we've been granted access to our first choice races and are hoping to benefit from them. Here is our calendar for 2017.

Start	End	Race	Category
10/1		Clasico San Cristobal	C2
22/1	31/1	Vuelta al Tachira	C2
31/1		Great Ocean Road Race	C2HC
4/2		Barcelona Classic	C2
8/2		Gent - Wevelgem	C1
16/2	20/2	Giro del Trentino	C2HC
21/2		Geraardsbergen-Bosberg	C2HC
25/2		Gisborne GP	C2HC
14/3	18/3	Bayern Rundfahrt	C2HC
25/3		Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kurne	C2
3/4		San Marino Hill Classic	C2
22/4	28/4	Tour de Langkawi	C2
5/5		Windhoek Classic	C2
7/5		Cacak Classic	C2
15/5	18/5	Euskal Bizikleta	C2
19/5	21/5	Tour du Faso	C2HC
22/5	27/5	Olympia's Tour	C1
2/6		Lillestrom GP	C2HC
4/6	8/6	Circulo de Juarez	C2
26/6	30/6	Tour d'Andorra	C2HC
1/7	8/7	Tour de San Luis	C2HC
15/7		Tour of the Battenkill	C2
18/7	22/7	Tour of Bulgaria	C2
3/8	8/8	Benelux Challenge	C2HC
20/8	21/8	Grands Prix Cyclistes	C2HC
1/9		Paris Tours	C2HC
1/9	8/9	Tour of Britain	C2HC
24/9		GP Yekaterinburg	C2
1/10		Colombian Venteaux	C2HC
5/9	9/9	Herald Sun Tour	C2
9/9	12/9	Course de Solidarnosc	C2HC
18/9		Zuri Metzgete	C2HC

*Races in bold are goal races.

Our strategy for this season is quite simple, we chose to ride in all the C2HC and C2 races. We applied to a couple of races in C1 category with the eight race-days that were left over.

The MGUCI has accepted our request to race in the Olympia's Tour, which means we now have a third home race, to add to the Benelux Tour and Bayern Rundfahrt. Our request to ride in Gent - Wevelgem was also accepted.

But before all that, we start off our season a long way away from home in Cuba. The Clasico San Cristobal will be the first ever race featuring Philips - Continental in the peloton. Our first ever stage race will be in Venezuela; the Vuelta al Tachira, as we extend our stay in the Americas for nearly a month.

Our goal races are well spread out over the course of the season. The Great Ocean Road Classic is in January itself. Geraardsbergen-Bosberg, our top priority race for the season, comes a month later while Euskal Bizikleta comes around in May. Rounding off our goals is our home race, the Benelux Challenge, which will take place in early August.

The racing calendar will take us to all five continents. For a new team, this will be a challenge in terms of logistics and support personnel, but we're ready to take on the challenge. We have also mostly avoided clashing races as much as possible, with only two clashes all season. Unluckily, one of our goal races is also a clashing race, but we believe we have a strong enough team to get past that predicament.