After 5 departures and 2 arrivals the team looked rather empty with only 14 riders in the team. The arrival of four loan riders is seen as an important strengthening to the team.

The expected loan return of Emils Liepins gives the team a third option for a leadout which will especially be important for race clashes when Mark Dzamastagic or Janis Dakteris is riding elsewhere.

The other three incoming riders are three cobblers who will be very important for Greg Van Avermaets classic campaign. Especially after the team lost Gediminas Bagdonas, Andsz Flaksis and Gianni Meersman after their former loanees Olli Kulppi, Arnaud Grand, Nur Amirul Marzuki and Isaac Bolivar departed earlier already.

Evonik paid a combined loan fee of 585,000 to get these four riders into the team.

Greg Van Avermaet remains part of the Evonik team and will look to challenge Sam Bewley. The team around him looks totally different this year though as the loans of Marzuki, Kulppi, Grand and Bolivar expired and Flaksis, Bagdonas and Meersman were sold after our budget restructuring. The depth of support that was excellent last season is gone but with the loans of Christoph Taubel, Sven Nooytens and Marc Potts we have acquired arguably better lieutenants. Yannick Stoltz steps up to be a full-time member of our cobbles team.

Result: Weaker depth, better lieutenant. About equal quality in total.

	Andris Vosekalns	66	78	75	62	69	73	72	51	67	71	81	68	62
	Michel Koch	66	77	73	68	69	74	74	51	67	76	57	61	70
	Miguel Angel Lopez	67	73	73	68	71	70	70	50	64	72	73	68	69

Mountains were never part of the team focus and since our ambitions to sign estonian star stage racer Rein Taaramae didnt succeed we remain with a CT worthy mountain team.

Vosekalns did another step forward and might be the strongest climber in Latvian history while we predict a great future for our youngest member of our climbing core: Miguel Angel Lopez.

Result: Slightly improved. Yes, really.

Our team for the Ardennes looks very strong. Toms Skujins is surrounded by the best Baltic puncheurs as our self developed core with Smirnovs, Siskevicius and Bekmanis and is looking to improve after a mediocre 2016 season.

The depth in the hills is one of the biggest strength of Evonik - ELKO as riders like Michael Van Stayen or Greg Van Avermaet can be a dangerous option in hilly races as well.

Result: Improved.

Status quo remains: Van Stayen is our sprinting leader and Dzamastagic and Dakteris will form his leadout. Liepins returns on loan to replace Bogdanovics as our backup leadout.

Result: No changes.

Last season we had a couple of allrounders who were valuable team fillers due to allround abilities depite not being a fixed member of any terrain group. This season we do not have those wildcard members. Instead we gave four local riders the chance to taste WT air. These four young cyclist will get the opportunity to ride the U23 circuit and will lead our Malmo TTT team.

Result: Weaker.

I am happy about the team. We lost a lot of depth and decided to go with the minimum allowed riders (14 full-time riders + 4 loan ins + 4 stagiares) which will hurt our team a lot and will cost points. I'm not happy about this decision but . On the other side, we could add a supertalent to our team while being able to keep all of our stars. The development of some of our former talents should help as well.

I believe we should be a top ten team again that could fight for a top five with a close to perfect season.

A lot has been talked about our unpopular season planning with only 14+4L+4S riders so i would like to back it up with a few numbers to show you how much impact the decision had. I've seen comments suggesting that I'd have to send empty squads to most races i participate in. That is a big exaggeration. Only a small number of races will be ridden with reduced man power. In fact these are the only races where we will have empty spots:

Some more rider for the triple header would have been nice but many other teams will struggle with smaller squads as well due to not going to spend RDs for all riders here.

One more rider in both SAA/SAA clashing races (was the naming intended?) would have been great to support our leaders and costs us 5 very easy finishing points in Italy but i think the sent squads will be strong enough without the extra riders. And sending a rider just for the sake of sending a complete 8-man time isnt something i like to when i feel that every rider not starting can perform better elsewhere.

Sending a full squad to Liechtenstein would have been nice but i have no chance to believe for a big chunk of points here anyway and even the finishing points would be hard to get for most of my riders so i happily throw that away. In fact the Giro - Cali - Liechtenstein clash might have been the cruelest clash for my team due to not having many suited riders to any of the races. Still, we have some hopes that we will score decently in at least one of the races. That was never going to be Liechtenstein though.

Another Scandinavia starter would have been nice but I'm not sure if it would make much of a difference as the 7-man team we send should be a very strong one already and finishers outside the top 50 dont get any points anyway.

I dont mind throwing away two spots in the TTT event one second. When your strongest TTist is a stagiare it doesnt matter if you are attending at all because all other teams, the wildcard teams, hell even the control team would beat my strongest lineup anyway. I liked the idea of fielding all four stagiares in one race though so i sent them plus two of my unmaxed riders to this event.

A PT team races 176 race days throughout the year. When using the maximum number of riders for every race you need 1398 RDs in your team (176*8-5*2 for Chrono Herbiers). When deciding to go with 18 full-time riders (loan ins included) it makes it impossible to send three full team squads to the PT triple header. There are two possibilities to treat the triple header in that case: Not attending on race (Grand-Duche is the better option for most teams due to missing less RDs) or sending 3 6-man squads. When sending 3 6-man squads that reduces the number of RDs to 1360 RD.

Race Days possibly for a PT team: 1398
Race Days possible with 3x6 riders for the triple header: 1360
Combined Race Days possible for our 18 full-time rider: 1327
Combined Race Days possible including our stagiares: 1387

So our squad is still large enough to cover pretty much all races in a rather full strength when all of them use nearly the whole RDs. And they do:

Krists Neilands is arguably the weakest rider in our 18-man squad and he is the only rider that isnt using all his race days. But he comes close to it by missing just a single race day. The stagiares use a small amount of race days as well to fill races up but the difference in quality shouldnt impact us too much negatively as they are split up a bit to not weaken a single race line-up too much while also mostly racing races where they could get finishing points: 2x GP Moscow, 4x TTT, 1x Lisbon, 2x Tasmania, 1x Lombardia. Of course we could have used more RDs of our stagiares in the second half of the secon to move RDs of our better riders into the first half of the season but we thought that this wouldnt benefit our point gains due to riders missing out in races that suit them.

tl;dr: Not sending full squads will hurt us but not much more than having to give loan ins like Grand or Bolivar last season RDs throughout the season.
It didnt impact our ability to send full teams by much but of course we have some riders racing in not well fitting races at times (e.g. Neilands in GTs). However that is an issue that every manager will have to bear who develops unmaxed low level riders - especially cobblers.

The start of the season is an important moment as it can give a team momentum for the rest of the season and we are determined to start the season well. We're sending a strong line-up to China to start the season with a bang. Skujins is as last season the leader in the hills while Siskevicius, Smirnovs, Vosekalns and Bekmanis want to prove that they improved over the off-season. It will also be the first opportunity to see new signings Miguel Angel Lopez and Kaspars Sergis and our loanee Marc Potts in action.

2016:

Van Garderen - Skujins - Gastauer

Toms Skujins missed the deciding move by Bakelandts, Ponzi, Hagen and Ginanni and had to chase together with Van Garderen and his former team mate Ben Gastauer.

7

Toms Skujins

Evonik - ELKO

+ 49

Qatar is one of the most important races for the sprinters and Michael Van Stayen will lead us as our lead sprinter. Mark Dzamastagic will be his most important domestique as always throughout the season. In fact, Dzamastagic will accompany Van Stayen for 44 of Van Stayen's 46 race days. Young latvian talent Emils Liepins will complete the leadout train in the unexpected case that we will build a train as Janis Dakteris will save race days for races where his need will be more likely needed. One rider to watch will be Yannick Stoltz. He will target the epilog which can help him towards a good GC result but he is also a real echelon specialist.

2016:

Michael Van Stayen showed some strong but inconsistent sprint results highlighted by a second place on the fourth stage. In the end that was enough to finish inside the top ten of the GC.

8

Michael Van Stayen

Evonik - ELKO

s.t.

The january selections offered no surprise as it could have been easily guessed who rides where for Evonik but the triple header offered quite a few possibilities to use our leaders and we are curious to hear your opinion about how well we planned our riders for the triple header. Here are the Evonik Februar line-ups:

We won't be kidding anyone - Greg Van Avermaet is of course the clear leader for Omloop in the first showdown on the cobbles in 2017. His usual support team of Nooytens, Taubel, Dakteris, Potts and Neilands is of course with him and as so often this season Yannick Stoltz is part of the team as well. The team is completed by Indulis Bekmanis who while not being used to riding on the cobbles knows how to ride the up and down part in the middle of the race.

2016:

As the most mountainous race we of course sent our three mountain goats Vosekalns, Koch and Sergis here. But the probably biggest surprise is that Evaldas Siskevicius will lead our team here. With many hill specialists elsewhere we believe that Siskevicius will be one of the favourites on the two hilly stages and hope that he can get a stage win for us.

2016:


Last season, the race route looked very difficult as a hilly route was designed to offer chances for the best puncheurs. Skujins was our leader for the race and he delivered us our first PT stage win on stage six. He finished 6th in GC and Siskevicius added an 11th place in GC.

6

Toms Skujins

Evonik - ELKO

+ 2'15

Paris-Nice offers a nice mix of flat and hilly stages where we could of send all of our stars. Van Stayen would have found a few stages perfectly fitting a sprinter with strengths over the hills as well and Van Avermaet propably as well. Siskevicius would have been another good option due to strength over harder hilly stages

However, we decided to entirely focus on Skujins for this race and sent Andris Smirnovs as his lieutenant. Indulis Bekmanis and MA Lopez are also capable domestiques for the hills and Liepins and Neilands are at least a bit capable of riding hills.

2016:

This classic is a long hilly classic that ended in sprints of large groups last season and Michael Van Stayen and Greg Van Avermaet could be good for a surprise result if a similar scenario unfolds again.
Truth be told, the other four riders are racing here because we didnt want them to spend more than two race days in the triple header.

2016:
With GVA and Skujins elsewhere we relied on Michael Van Stayen to lead us here but he couldnt counter the attacks of the favourites and finishes as 26th.

26

Michael Van Stayen

Evonik - ELKO

+1'46

2015:

In 2015, we made our PT debut as we got a wildcard for this classic. Our line-up included lots of interesting names with LLS, Siskevicius, Geschke, Mohoric, Smirnovs, Dakteris, Dzamastagic and Bekmanis. LLS delivered a big performance as he could follow all attacks and finished 8th after being outsprinted by the world class of Ponzi, Van Garderen and Bakelandts.

8

Luis Leon Sanchez Gil

Evonik - ELKO

s.t.

Unlike last season when we also sent Skujins here we will go all in on Van Stayen this year. We brought massive support with lots of classic specialists with brute power, endurance and acceleration for all sorts of scenarios to support him. With Van Avermaet, Dzamastagic and Dakteris he has multiple options for a leadout in a slow race, Siskevicius and Smirnovs could chase down attacks on the Poggio or follow attacks themselves and Dzamastagic, Dakteris, Nooytens and Stoltz could be an incredible force if the chance for echelons appears.

2016:


We sent everything we had to this race and everyone including Greg Van Avermaet and Toms Skujins was working for Michael Van Stayen. Van Stayen finished on the podium but as in most classic where we had expectations Sam Bewley finished the race first.

3

Michael Van Stayen

Evonik - ELKO

s.t.

cio93 wrote:
I entirely approve.

Badaling International has been a good season opener for us. We worked hard at the front of the race for Skujins to control the break and make the race hard for our rivals. Skujins fall over Aegon's Bovenhuis but this didnt stop us from chasing the (in the meantime) escaped front trio of Sagan, Bakelandts and Trofimov once he came back. In the end, it was enough for a 6th place which is pretty good after the earlier crash.

6	Toms Skujins	Evonik - ELKO	+20
16	Kaspars Sergis	Evonik - ELKO	+55
39	Andris Smirnovs	Evonik - ELKO	+55

Qatar was a major disappointment for us. Van Stayen could not sprint with the best due to bad positioning on all sprint stages while our GC rider and epilog specialist Stoltz was dropped on the flat roads.

GC	43	Van Stayen
St. 1	12	Van Stayen
St. 2	8	Van Stayen
St. 3	4	Van Stayen
St. 4	9	Van Stayen
St. 5	11	Van Stayen
St. 6	43	Stoltz