tsmoha wrote:
Tasmania is set for another thriller. Obviously. Last year's close runner-up for Bobridge was both great and heart-breaking. It's just fair if it goes the other way this time
We won't see Morton vs Lecusinier or Spilak in a GT then. Could be worse
Yeah it will be difficult to win it again with Bobridge participating. It was basically just luck last season
No Morton vs. Lecuisinier is good for both I guess
As always, it looks very well thought out. The Lecuisinier approach is interesting, and most likely a clever one instead of sending him to two GTs, as I expect him to score quite a bit better in TA, California and Deutschland compared to the Giro.
Spilak doing the hills still feels unusual, even after last year, as he's one of the very best stage racers AGR instead of FW might be a clever choice, eventhough it feels like Mur de Huy should suit him better than AGR. Though, FW could very well be a big peloton being together with 4 kilometers left, which makes the sprint and Spilak's position a lottery. Will anyway be interesting to see if he's successful in AGR, as that should on paper be the hilly classic suiting him least, I'd say.
ember wrote:
Then I feel free to comment the planning as well
As always, it looks very well thought out. The Lecuisinier approach is interesting, and most likely a clever one instead of sending him to two GTs, as I expect him to score quite a bit better in TA, California and Deutschland compared to the Giro.
Spilak doing the hills still feels unusual, even after last year, as he's one of the very best stage racers AGR instead of FW might be a clever choice, eventhough it feels like Mur de Huy should suit him better than AGR. Though, FW could very well be a big peloton being together with 4 kilometers left, which makes the sprint and Spilak's position a lottery. Will anyway be interesting to see if he's successful in AGR, as that should on paper be the hilly classic suiting him least, I'd say.
I took a very pragmatic approach when looking at my key riders racedays. I looked at every single team and their possible riders in the PTHC calender, and made a calculated risk putting very strong riders in all of those, as I believe there is a very good shot of some top results.
I would have preferred Giro d'Italia for Lecuisinier, but he wouldn't be able to ride the California then, and he didn't have 8-9 racedays left to ride Dauphine or Switzerland which would have probably been the choice otherwise. 2 Grand Tours for him was never an option with 43 racedays. IMO that would make him score less than last season for sure, while this option atleast gives him a shot at levelling.
Simon Spilak was difficult to plan. He usually doesn't do well enough in the GC races to be a good choice. I guess he would lose to Pluchkin, Schleck and Taaramae, and if I would put him in Tirreno, Switzerland or Dauphine I guess he would face atleast one of those all the time. So instead of getting a sub top result from him I decided that 5-7th in the one day races would be a better output than getting 2nd or 3rd in a GC race.
It is the beginning to a new, and long season. We usually aren't doing particularly well in the early months of the calender, but the riders attending the two races in due was looking promising, and in shape. The two races to ride:
Badaling International Tour of Qatar
We have never performed anything of significance in the Badaling International, and while Simon Spilak rode it in 2015, it was without him in 2016. While the 2016 results weren't good (Koretzky 16th and Campero 28th, we decided to bring a similar lineup, excluding Simon Spilak from the early january calender.
This time around, Clement Koretzky was well positioned throughout the entire race, but wasn't fast enough in the sprint to make a top result. He sprinted to 12th overall, which was a small redemption from last seasons edition, but not by a large margin. Still an improvement, and we don't need much of an improvement to see Koretzky up among the top 5 riders.
Our greek talisman of the season, Charalampas Kastrantas performed well to take 22nd on the race bagging a new best in the one-day races.
In Tour of Qatar we have previously done well. Last season was a bit of a mixed feeling, though as we started out with Georgos Tzortzakis taking a nice 6th place, while also Bryan Coquard was in the peloton, but on stage 2 Tzortzakis went down, and took 5 team mates around him to survive the race, costing the GC positions of those (including Coquard). Having 4 horrible stages with Tzorzakis clearly injured we didn't have too much hope for the race, when Panagiotis all of a sudden took his first ever pro victory and ended in 9th in the GC.
This season there was no Georgos Tzortzakis at Festina, he was at Project: Africa. And from there we could see him taking stage 1 in style, with our own Bryan Coquard in 4th.
Despite Tzortzakis no longer in the Festina jersey we can't help but bringing up this picture in our news feed, a long with a big congratulations!
From then on we saw Bryan Coquard clearly taking his new leaders role on his shoulders. He took another 3 top 10s (including another two 4th places), and managed to perform a decent epilogue to take a huge 3rd in the GC, aswell as the U25 competition. Also Jerome Coppel managed to do well, as he won the final epilogue, to also claim 9th of the GC - The same position as Vlatos did last season with his TT win. Panagiotis Vlatos was 6th on the day and 17th overall. Not quite the result of last season, but definately a decent one.
By that we also took home the team classification.
A more than decent month - especially compared to earlier editions.
Qatar was excellent for you. Coquard performed really well and seeing Coppel climb to 9th in GC is also great for you. Every point that you don't have to gain back from Moser after the spring helps
knockout wrote:
Qatar was excellent for you. Coquard performed really well and seeing Coppel climb to 9th in GC is also great for you. Every point that you don't have to gain back from Moser after the spring helps
Coppel top 10 and Vlatos top 20 was expected when looking at the history. Also this is probably the only PT race for Coppel where Phinney isn't present, otherwise the PPrD was too much of a gamble for him. Bryan Coquard definately better than expected. Much better!
And yes, whatever we can do to limit the deficit to Moser in the first half of the season will be gold in terms of fighting for the win. Sagan performing at top top level can keep them scoring big all season long, though! But I always expected more competition than I ended up getting last season :-)
knockout wrote:
Qatar was excellent for you. Coquard performed really well and seeing Coppel climb to 9th in GC is also great for you. Every point that you don't have to gain back from Moser after the spring helps
Coppel top 10 and Vlatos top 20 was expected when looking at the history. Also this is probably the only PT race for Coppel where Phinney isn't present, otherwise the PPrD was too much of a gamble for him. Bryan Coquard definately better than expected. Much better!
And yes, whatever we can do to limit the deficit to Moser in the first half of the season will be gold in terms of fighting for the win. Sagan performing at top top level can keep them scoring big all season long, though! But I always expected more competition than I ended up getting last season :-)
It was to be expected that the top TTist would get barely into the top ten but with the randomness of tts it wasn't obvious whether it would be coppel or someone else. don't think it could have went much better for him while it could have gone way worse.
While I agree with you, tendencies from the past season indicates that Phinney and Coppel aren't affected much in terms of randomness. I do agree that seeing other TTers, though, that the overall tendency is towards a Big random influence.
We went into the month of february in a surprisingly strong state, but still quite some way behind the leading team, Moser - Sygic. On paper, the month of february should be kind to us, if we were to be able to fight for the overall win. Let's take a look at the races:
In the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad we didn't have much expectations, but we did hope for some showings from Tom David and/or Pieter Jacobs. Both should have an outside shot at top 10, but we never managed to control things, and got away with basically nothing. Pieter Jacobs got 21st while Tom David was way back in 25th. Both losing out on a group of 16 riders in which they should have been able to be in.
In the Tirreno-Adriatico we had Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier as our leader and top 10 was the minimum goal. He was supported by Yuriy Vasyliv and Jakub Novak so we expected a good show in the mountains. Things started out by us having a dire teamtimetrial, but we always knew this was going to be the case.
From there on, we established ourselves well, and even managed to put some pressure on the KOM where Cameron Bayly took a shared 2nd place after a nice ride on stage 4.
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier showed his stability to take 5th overall aswell as the U25 competition. Vasyliv also showed great form to take 21st overall, and 5th in the U25 competition. Something that bodes well for his leadership in the Giro d'Italia later in the season.
But like so often before, Spilak didn't have what was needed from him, and he ended up in a dissapointing 5th in a sprinting group of just 6 riders.
Luckily we also had to ride in France, and here we decided to bring the domestique legion with Bryan Coquard, Clement Koretzky and Jerome Coppel to get strong stage results aswell as a strong GC. Bryan Coquard took 10th on the opening stage, and was never seen again, but in the individual timetrial we had a massive overtake. Panagiotis Vlatos took the early lead, and while he was later overtaken by a few riders, Jerome Coppel smashed it, to take the leaders jersey.
Afterwards the racing became a bit tactical, with only a few riders managing to make the most of it. Jerome Coppel thus being in a favorable 8th in the GC before the final stage with also Clement Koretzky fighting for top 15 we were looking strong. Unfortunately disaster hit, and Jerome Coppel was forced to the ground. In the end losing 8 minutes to put him well and truly behind. Clement Koretzky managed his 15th spot, to salvage a little bit.
Having raced the tripple-header, just one race was left. The Milano San Remo. Having won the race 3 times in the past, and gotten a bunch of top 10s we decided to bring our three best bets for a replica - Jerome Coppel, Clement Koretzky and Bryan Coquard.
Jerome Coppel was a beast througout the race really putting in some deep efforts from the sprinters teams - evidently costing the top sprinters such as Ben Swift any real chance of the win. In the end Coppel also burnt down himself, but instead made room for Clement Koretzky who took 10th from the final sprint.
We would have liked to gain a bit more on the top teams than we ended out doing, but we still managed to pick up some nice points and will be among the 10 best scoring teams of the month. Aiming for top 5 we feel a little bit dissapointed, though.
Points gained: 685pts
Next up: March including Chrono des Herbiers, SAA Tour d'Afrique, Strada Appia Antica and Ronde van Vlaanderen
After the month of February all of our riders have been in races, and is thus possible to benchmark. Seeing as some riders have ridden very little, we obviously have to take the results with a pinch of salt, and say that most variables are still in play. Having said that, let's try to break down our riders into categories, and see where we need to look for the salvation points, and where we can expect to level out from last season.
The sprinters category is the first one, and we had a total of 917 adjusted points in 2016, with Georgos Tzortzakis scoring a majority of these.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Bryan Coquard
263
238
TOTAL
238
Bryan Coquard is well on his way to getting a significantly better result than last season, but having only one sprinter will definately make it impossible to level out the result of last season. The projected points of Bryan Coquard is currently 803 points, but this includes the very strong efforts of Tour of Qatar, so we know that it won't be possibe to get these figures. Not having two main sprinters, though gives Bryan Coquard the best possible raceplanning, and because of this we expect him to score around 500 points in total, giving us a start loss of 400 points. Before the season we expected a loss of 450 points, so we are clawing back a bit.
The GC/Puncheurs category is the next in line, and here we scored 4.103 points adjusted. We have lost Campero, Le Gac and Gougeard which will obviously count for something, but not necessarily that much.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Simon Spilak
1626
97
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
896
203
Clement Koretzky
779
150
Yuriy Vasyliv
203
33
Jakub Novak
218
17
TOTAL
500
Most of our points will come from this category so it is important that we get the points needed. And so far it isn't too shabby. Most of the riders have just ridden one race - only Koretzky have ridden more (3). The projected points of Spilak is 1649, Lecuisinier projects towards 1247, Koretzky is at 638 while Vasyliv is at 306 and Novak is at 151. This totals 3.991 which is basically the same as last season. So if we can continue put out these numbers then we are very happy - but the season is very young.
Into the cobbled season we got a total of 369 adjusted points from 2016, and with the addition of Pieter Jacobs and Julien Taramarcaz to the team only losing Nejc Kosic, we definately should be able to level out or better.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Tom David
317
22
Pieter Jacobs
0
16
Julien Taramarcaz
0
22
TOTAL
60
In the pre-season edition we expected 600 points, but after the first cobbled race of the season it's unlikely to happen. The projected points for the first part of the season is 500, which seems likely unless Tom David gets a very strong result in a cobbled race - or the TONE.
We had a huge timetrial year in the 2016 edition scoring a massive 1.913 adjusted points, where especially Jerome Coppel and Panagiotis Vlatos scored the best ever results. Having lost Bernaudeau, Hofer and Bouet will obviously count for quite some loss.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Jerome Coppel
1251
204
Panagiotis Vlatos
339
57
TOTAL
261
Projected we will get a total of 800 points, but these figures are heavily influenced by the crash in the Paris-Nice to Jerome Coppel which lost him an estimated 70 points aswell as Milano San Remo, which on paper should be his worst race. If we change the projected points of him to get 10th GC in Paris-Nice (60 points) we are aiming to get another 200 points leaving us at 1000 in total. It's still quite the point loss, but we hope that we will get a higher amount due to Jerome Coppel scoring well in races like Chrono des Herbiers, Tour of Norway, Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha and Tour of Tasmania. We hope to get 1200 points from this category. It is still quite a lot worse than what we anticipated before the season, where we were looking for 1500 points.
This leaves us with the final group, but also the most improved. The domestiques group from last season scored 454 adjusted points, but the pool have gotten significantly bigger
As the evident result we are quickly getting towards a pretty strong result here. 187 points scored after February is pretty good, and evidently one or two of these riders will hit a lucky breakaway, KOM result or something similar. The projected result is 1.400 points, but we know that this is not realistic. We are aiming for 1.000 points - which is still massively better than expected before the season. Around 350 points better.
If those points are added together:
GC RIDERS / PUNCHEURS 4.000
SPRINTERS 500
COBBLERS 500
TTERS 1.200
DOMESTIQUE 1.000
This sums up to 7.200 points which is slightly less than what we were expecting before the season, but still very close to the figures we have to fight to have a realistic shot at the win. The question is whether we can expect Moser to continue to put down the figures they have done so far. If that is the case, then we will probably need another 350-500 points to be able to compete.
Seeing this one can clearly see why you have dominating MG in the last couple of years. The way you play with the numbers to get the best team possible to make you win the PT is amazing.
And being also a "numbers lover" it's really interesting to read this
Personally, i struggle to change pre-season expectations after a single or very few races as you did on some terrains. While it might be reasonable in some cases - especially when someone got very close to the target (Coquard) - it looks weird in other cases.
For the cobbles you saw a single race and adjusted the point expectation by ca. 20% which is too much adjustment imo. The race by race variance outside the top 5 is too high for that. I'd give those the benefit of doubt that it's just statistical noise.
Similar for the TT category. Projected values don't mean anything if the calendar is so unsymmetrical for your riders (Herbiers, TTT, Tasmania, Praha all still to come while only semi-fits took place. Especially because you have good measurements of what to expect from last season for Coppel (same stats, similar calendar, sinilar opponents), those are a much better starting point for expected points than taking the three rather unfitting races. if you say you lost about 70 points due to a crash in PN then you should not reduce the expectations by anything more than 100 points - especially as the TTs so far give no reason to it.
is it possible that you're selling yourself a bit short to get a bit of an underdog role vs Moser?
Spoiler
I just noticed that my team might be one of the most important ones in the title battle due to the potential to steal points from Moser in the classics
In terms of cobbles we might have adjusted too much in terms of percentages, but we have to take into consideration that this was (by far) the easiest cobble race we will ride all season, and we werent even close to the expected result. So the projected result is basically what David and Jacobs picked up from surviving PT races.
In the TT I think I just overestimated the riders because of their performances of last season. A rider like Coppel will ride two PTHC races for example while Vlatos did very very well last year and scored 1/3 of his points in Qatar. He didn't replicate that this season and also underperformed at Paris-Nice. If he isn't doing 5-7th in Chrono then he will perform 100-150 points less than last season.
EDIT: hehe I don't think I will succeed in begging for an underdog rolle seeing atleast half the predictions having me as the winner, while having won two in a row and even putting myself up as the favorite in my first "Chase for equality" series :-)
Feel free to beat Bewley a couple of times in the cobbles though. After March I could be 800 points behind.
Realizing that pre-season expectations were too high is a better reason than downgrading based on current projection
Just looked into the expected points in my PT prediction for your team because I was curious how our evaluations of riders differ and you might find it interesting to see a second set of opinions on the riders :
I also had Coquard on 500 points predicted just as you have now. Maybe a slight reduction necessarily but I'm not sure how much weaker startlists due to reduction of RDs (with good planning) equal out having less races)
For the GC / puncheur group I had them on a combined 4188 points. I had Spilak on 1900 points in my prediction so 93 over last season which is rather similar to what he is on yours if your reduction is correct (which could well be for him). I have Lecuisinier and Vasilyev 100 lower, Novak and Koretzky 100 higher. so as a group rather similar. (I don't think you can apply the RD reduction similar through all the riders. Only the top top riders go down a lot while even riders on the level of Lecuisinier might not go down too much. With fewer race days the stars cannot be everywhere and that opens up spaces for the levels below. E.g. all the 85 Mo guys can only ride one GT which should weaken the GT startlists quite a bit and up the chance for guys like Lecuisinier to finish GTs a few spots higher (maybe even close to the fight for the top spot if they hit the weakest GT start list ^^). So i would not expect much of a reduction for them.
I had the cobbles on 541 points so pretty much in order with yours as well. No major reduction due to RDs needed because the number of cobbled RDs should still be very similar. (Note: I have David in a similar region as last season while the other two are around 100 points in my prediction)
For the TTs I had Coppel on 1100 points and Vlatos on 235 points so I agree that your pre-season expectation was too optimistic and thus, the reduction was fully okay
(Probably slight reduction necessary)
And for the other riders you imo adjust too much upwards (hadn't noticed that before ^^). Again, not sure if there is a reason to up them this much (~+50%) this early. I had them on 847 points in my prediction. (No idea how much to reduce them)
knockout wrote:
Realizing that pre-season expectations were too high is a better reason than downgrading based on current projection
Agree. Which is why I tend to use both - I don't use the projection as a static tool, but as a guideline to see if my own thoughts are backed up.
knockout wrote:Just looked into the expected points in my PT prediction for your team because I was curious how our evaluations of riders differ and you might find it interesting to see a second set of opinions on the riders :
I also had Coquard on 500 points predicted just as you have now. Maybe a slight reduction necessarily but I'm not sure how much weaker startlists due to reduction of RDs (with good planning) equal out having less races)
Exactly. Especially in this season with several unknown variables, such as fewer racedays and the PTHC calender added makes it a bit more difficult. Out of curiosity - how do you calculate your points? Seems like more variables have been put into the metrics. Mine are very basic and is combined with my knowledge and experience in/on the game. I do some more geeky calculations during the off season to pick the best types of subtop leaders and domestiques, to get the highest possible amount of points.
knockout wrote:For the GC / puncheur group I had them on a combined 4188 points. I had Spilak on 1900 points in my prediction so 93 over last season which is rather similar to what he is on yours if your reduction is correct (which could well be for him). I have Lecuisinier and Vasilyev 100 lower, Novak and Koretzky 100 higher. so as a group rather similar. (I don't think you can apply the RD reduction similar through all the riders. Only the top top riders go down a lot while even riders on the level of Lecuisinier might not go down too much. With fewer race days the stars cannot be everywhere and that opens up spaces for the levels below. E.g. all the 85 Mo guys can only ride one GT which should weaken the GT startlists quite a bit and up the chance for guys like Lecuisinier to finish GTs a few spots higher (maybe even close to the fight for the top spot if they hit the weakest GT start list ^^). So i would not expect much of a reduction for them.
I agree... I think Spilak will be reduced more than what I have done, while a rider like Koretzky won't be affected nearly as much. Riders like Vasyliv and Novak shouldn't be "hit" as they will have more races as leaders which should (atleast on paper) give them atleast the similar amount of points, and whenever they are helpers there is a good chance that they will get some added Team points.
For Lecuisinier I think he will go down quite a bit. Not because he have less racedays (as you say he might hit some less competition), but simply because he had a great season last year with 4th and 7th in two Grand Tours. That will be almost impossible to replicate, even without 2GT's pr. top level GT rider.
knockout wrote:I had the cobbles on 541 points so pretty much in order with yours as well. No major reduction due to RDs needed because the number of cobbled RDs should still be very similar. (Note: I have David in a similar region as last season while the other two are around 100 points in my prediction)
For me the cobbles is the most difficult, because there is a lot of waste racedays, where both David and Jacobs will be used as simple domestiques. David stands a good shot at a couple of top 50 results and may score 25-50 points more than Jacobs in terms of domestiques roles. I agree that he should score about the same as last year in the cobbles, but I fear he might go a bit worse.
knockout wrote:For the TTs I had Coppel on 1100 points and Vlatos on 235 points so I agree that your pre-season expectation was too optimistic and thus, the reduction was fully okay
(Probably slight reduction necessary)
And for the other riders you imo adjust too much upwards (hadn't noticed that before ^^). Again, not sure if there is a reason to up them this much (~+50%) this early. I had them on 847 points in my prediction. (No idea how much to reduce them)
After the Chrono Coppel is projected to 913, while 10th at P-N would have kept him at 1063pts (around yours). Vlatos at 235 seems reasonably as he is already at 140 and he is expected to score 35-45 points from completing races where he doesn't stand much chance of scoring points. And then he have the potential to score points in California, Norway, Dauphine, Praha, TONE and Tasmania. He even have a shot at a reasonable GC in Praha. So yeah. 100-150 points more from him should be doable.
The domestiques will not be reduced by much - if at all. None of them are riding their full RD's anyway, and I have tried to put them into races where I expect them to finish the races - where in previous editions I lost some during a few GC races. I think that should be less this season, so no reduction is needed, although I have made it anyway to do it linear in the first season.
SotD wrote:
Out of curiosity - how do you calculate your points? Seems like more variables have been put into the metrics. Mine are very basic and is combined with my knowledge and experience in/on the game.
also very basic. based on experience / personal judgement of the riders.
i Made a formula for each division which is simple: OVR -> Exp. Points (no other metric used). This is just to get a feel how many points the average rider with a certain OVR got last season - if i were more confident in my judgement/experience i could have skipped this step. Then I made myself a table which looked like this:
Stats
Age
Training eligible
Exp. Points for each division by formula
Points last season (for each division)
Training eligible and Age are there to catch recent declines/stat gains.
I then adjusted the expected points based on last season's performance and based on my own opinions whether last season was more of a fluke season or if it reflects the real rider value.
Should match the top riders quite reasonable (unless they crash out of a GT or so) but the domestique are difficult to guess without knowing their season planning. E.g. Liepins would have scored way less points for you than for me because you wouldn't have given him 111 RDs.
The domestiques are always a coin toss really. I Think (but can't remember) I estimated an average of 4 domestiques getting 5 (20total) points from each race except for TT and TTT. Afterwards I came to the conclusion that it was too little because of lucky breaks.
We aren't quite there yet, but there will be no more beating around the bush. We are going all in on the upcoming Tour of California. The PTHC race is going on during the Giro d'Italia, and despite having a few strong names heading for Italy, it is no match as to what we are going to present in the american stage race.
Last season, Clement Koretzky took home 6th in the GC, but this season we want to push for glory in several aspects of the race. For the prologue we have Jerome Coppel and Panagiotis Vlatos, and while the latter will probably struggle early on in the race, Jerome Coppel could do well if stage 3 isn't ridden too hard.
We do expect for him to lose the lead on either stage 3 or 5, though and hence having Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier for the decisive stage 6, which should be good for him. Atleast on paper.
Clement Koretzky is here yet again, but this time more as a luxury domestique. If he can achieve something himself, it will be very pleasant, but last season it took a bit of a fluke result to see him up high in the standings. So instead he, Alaphilippe and Taramarcaz will try to help Jerome Coppel to stay inside the top 25 before the final TT, while James Piccoli is sent to help Lecuisinier.
As a free-roamer we have brought Georgios Bouglas aswell, mostly to gather experience.
Heading into the month of march we were down by a mere 250 points deficit to our main rivals of Moser. Expectations to the month was low with just 4 races to ride, whereas two of which were cobbled:
Chrono des Herbiers Tour d'Afrique Strada Appia Antica Ronde van Vlaanderen *PTHC Race
The only race in which we had great expectations was the Chrono des Herbiers, where we sent both Jerome Coppel and Panagiotis Vlatos with outside winning possibilitites. Jerome Coppel rode well, and despite failing to continue his streak of winning every possible timetrial, he took home a respectable 2nd, losing with less than a second to phenomena Taylor Phinney.
Earlier on the race, Panagiotis Vlatos took the virtual lead of the race, but was later surpassed by 5 riders, to achieve a 6th place after last years 7th place.
After a strong result we went to South Africa, in the PTHC. Last season Georgos Tzortzakis took home a surprising 3rd overall sprinting well on all stages, but seeing the peloton in the 2017 edition we didn't have the same expectations for Bryan Coquard.
Things started out well with Bryan Coquard taking 2nd on the first stage. From there on he went worse, getting 9th, 4th and then eventually 16th. Despite getting a couple of less than good results, the overall picture was good, and Bryan Coquard took 7th aswell as winning the U25 competition.
In the Strada Appia Antica we rarely puts out a good effort, so it was important for us to show that either Tom David or Pieter Jacobs could maximize their efforts and take home a top 15. Both were on a bad day, and was positioned poorly, though, making 31st and 43rd. Horrible results, and to make things worse Moser and Bewley destroyed the cobbled races yet again.
After a poor Strada, we would finish off the month with the monument of Ronde van Vlaanderen. Tom David were surprisingly in a very different and aggressive mode for the race, quickly getting into a prime position right after the 3 stars: Bewley, van Avermaet and Summerhill.
Unfortunately he was catched by another 3 riders in the final, only to lose the sprint for 4th, eventually getting 7th on the day. Despite of the top result just out in the horizon, 7th was much better than anticipated and would help us to stay less than 700 points behind Moser after a month where they had one race more than us, and including 3 cobbled races. We are very happy with that outcome.
Every month so far, have been very consistent in the region of 500-700 points. If we can continue this in April we are very happy with the early season. Especially as May, July and October should hopefully be very good months for us.
Points gained: 611pts
Next up: April including Paris-Roubaix, Giro d'Italia, Tour of California, GP Liechtenstein and Amstel Gold Race
Badaling International
Tour of Qatar
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad*
Tirreno-Adriatico
Paris-Nice
Classique du Grand-Duché
Tour d'Afrique
