The first ever race in our MG history and we want to make a big impression. For this reason, we are sending our best climbers, be it in hills or mountains, to Cuba! We are very big fans of Liverpool FC here in the Philips-Continental management team and felt it would only be apt to honour them in our first race. You can think of our tactics here as mirroring the Klopp Gegenpress. As such, the possible outcomes are as clear as black and white; either we will press the life out of our opponents with attacks from every direction possible, or our gamut of leaders will trip each other up trying to defend their positions. I do hope it is the former!

Unlike in San Cristobal, we do not have very high expectations from this race, given the quality of climbers that should on the startlist. Instead, we decided to go for a two-pronged points hunting approach with Kreder targeting five possible bunch sprint finishes. We expect this to be a low-key race for us. Hoping for a couple of excursions into the break from our guys to break the monotone.

The first goal race of the season comes around in the first month itself. Last year's Runner-Up Albert Timmer is a shoe-in to start but he isn't the guy leading our charge. Leadership duty has been handed to Krieger with Bogdanovics responsible for setting it up for the German. We expect our sprint train to deliver the goods here. High winds like last year might play into the hands of our flat specialists, so that eventuality has been accounted for. Anything lower than a podium would be a disappointment. If we miss our Top 5 goal, it will surely be an early disaster.

Bogdanovics was a surprise pick for Latvia in the European B Road Race, on a mountainous course. He was on domestique duty. Although Bogdanovics himself finished outside the time limit, team leader Toms Skuijns won the race in a reduced bunch sprint after surviving the difficult course. This meant that Latvia qualified for the European Road Race.

Bogdanovics got another chance to ride in the main event. Once again, he finished outside the time limit. Only two of his teammates actually finished the race.

The only rider from our team to ride in a TT event was Grabovski, representing his country Ukraine in the European ITT. He finished 56th, 1'39" behind the winner.

Bardet was picked as a domestique in a strong French team for the European Road Race. His job was to get leaders Lecuisiner and Sicard into the best position possible for the win. As it would turn out, the best the French team managed was 12th by Lecuisiner. Bardet finished 84th.

AbhishekLFC wrote:
We are very big fans of Liverpool FC here in the Philips-Continental management team and felt it would only be apt to honour them in our first race. You can think of our tactics here as mirroring the Klopp Gegenpress. As such, the possible outcomes are as clear as black and white; either we will press the life out of our opponents with attacks from every direction possible, or our gamut of leaders will trip each other up trying to defend their positions. I do hope it is the former!

knockout wrote:


Reading back a few posts and just saw this
Kloppo <3

Nice to see Bogdanovics in the Europe A race #makelatviagreat

The first race of in our history!

Having stayed away from trouble for the first 140 km, four of our riders found themselves in the second group on the road, part of a 16 man group chasing six riders out ahead in front. Among those six were favourites Chaves, van der Hugenhaben and Roux.



With less than 15 km to go, Wyss tries to follow an attack from Chaves, but our man is not strong enough to hang on to the Azteca's riders wheel. He falls back to the much reduced second group on the road, still in with a shot.


As the race goes on Wyss loses touch with the attackers, but is still on course to meet our expectations from this race.

He riders to the finish in a 5 man group who sprint for 8th place. Wyss only manages to be fourth in this group and misses out on our target by a single position. We have Battaglin finish in a respectable 19th position, while Leezer manages a top 30.

Anthony Roux won the race for Xero p/b Octagon.

1	Anthony Roux	Xero Racing p/b Octagon	5h08'47
11	Marcel Wyss	Philips - Continental	s.t.
19	Enrico Battaglin	Philips - Continental	+ 5'52
29	Tom Leezer	Philips - Continental	s.t.
37	Romain Bardet	Philips - Continental	s.t.
42	Jaoa Costa	Philips - Continental	s.t.
51	Rob Ruijgh	Philips - Continental	s.t.
74	David Per	Philips - Continental	s.t.
116	Ronan Van Zandbeek	Philips - Continental	s.t.

A decent start to our journey as a professional cycling team. Marcel Wyss lived up to his billing as the leader of our hills campaign. We wish he could've finished one position higher as that would've made our conversation with the sponsors just a little simpler.

We picked Tom Leezer as one to watch in this race and he delivered to the best of his ability. Another pleasant surprise was Battaglin's 19th place giving us a few more points from this race.

A couple of small concerns - first is Bardet's inability to stay with the group of favourites around the 30 km mark. He had a less than remarkable Intercontinental Championship outing and we hope this is still just rustiness. Another concern is Costa's complete absence from the cameras. We were expecting him to causing some concern to the favourites.