In the month of April we were going to participate in the season's first Grand Tour, the Giro d'Italia. But it wasn't the only interesting race:
Paris-Roubaix Giro d'Italia Tour of California GP Liechtenstein Amstel Gold Race *PTHC Race
After a very strong Tour of Flandres, we had hopes of a similarly strong effort in the Paris-Roubaix classic, but unfortunately both Tom David and Pieter Jacobs crashed only to finish in the region of 30th.
The Giro d'Italia was a race with limited expectations. We had Bryan Coquard in the attempt to take an early stagewin, but for the GC young rider Yuriy Vasyliv was our best bet. Despite the race having a weak lineup in terms of GC riders, the sprinters field was packed, and thus we didn't manage to reach our intended targets for Coquard who managed to pick up 2nd at stage 6, but otherwise remained fairly invisible.
The turnaround for us was stage 13 and 14, where first Yuriy Vasyliv (after a couple of bad stages) launched a late attack to claim the stagewin, and just the day after Cameron Bayly succeeded once more, this time from a late attack in the early breakaway.
In the overall GC we managed to stay on par with our pre-race expectations where Yuriy Vasyliv landed 22nd while also Charalampas Kastrantas proved a valuable domestique picking up 41st himself.
Meanwhile in America the Tour of California took place, and while we didn't ask for much during the Giro we came with huge ambitions for the Tour of California. Last season Clement Koretzky took a magnificent stagewin on the hilly stage 5, only to protect his position to finish 8th in the GC. This time we had not only Clement Koretzky in the pack, but also Jerome Coppel and Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier.
We aimed for the early lead from either Jerome Coppel or Panagiotis Vlatos who were both pre-stage favorites for the prologue, but both dissapointed and Coppel only managed 4 with Vlatos even outside the top 25, thus losing us a bunch of needed and expected points. The race was basically dreadful for us with even stage 5 turning out pretty bad for us.
On stage 6, things catapulted into the right direction, however, with Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier picking up his first ever professional win, and climbing as high as 6th in the GC.
The race ended in a timetrial, and as usual we had great ambitions for it, wanting another stagewin. This time Jerome Coppel didn't dissapoint taking home the win in style, with also Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier picking up a good result to take 5th in the GC
Onto the GP Liechtenstein we had Simon Spilak present for the 2nd time of the season, and we wanted to take a stage podium. Unfortunately the race was not ridden in the favour of us, and Spilak lacked the luxury domestique of last season, so we had to settle for 5th, which was OK, but not a good result.
The final race of the month was Amstel Gold Race, and here we yet again had Simon Spilak as our leader. Winning the sprint for 6th was the best we could ask for when seeing the elite group of Sagan, Bakelants, Trofimov, Gastauer and Skujins move away in the finale. Once more, an OK result, but not a good one.
This basically sums up the entire month. Nothing really interesting for us, but not too bad either. The GC results was not spectacular, but 4 stagewins in a month is very unusual for us, so we are happy with that.
Points gained: 947pts
Next up: May including Fleche Wallone, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Vuelta a España, Scandinavia Road Race and Tour of Norway
The season is now well underway, and we want to make another benchmark to see, what we can expect from the season. Last time we looked into our team performances was at the end of february, meaning that these races have been included since:
* Chrono des Herbiers
* SAA Tour d'Afrique
* Strada Appia Antica
* Ronde van Vlaanderen
* Paris-Roubaix
* Giro d'Italia
* Tour of California
* GP Liechtenstein
* Amstel Gold Race
* Fleche Wallone
* Liege-Bastogne-Liege
* Scandinavia Open Road Race Note: La Vuelta a España is currently being ridden, so are not directly calculated into the benchmark, but will be used in the reasoning.
Our aimed target is still 7.756pts which was our last season pointscore when deducting the fewer racedays on a linear scale. To statistically win the rankings we must reach a lower figure, though, 7.233pts. By the end of february we were very close to doing so. So let's break down the numbers.
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
459
TOTAL 2017 points
459
Tour d'Afrique and partly Giro d'Italia was good for Bryan Coquard in terms of getting the points we wanted. At the end of february we expected him to score a total of 500 points through the entire season. Being already very close to this we are adjusting further in the positive direction. Coquard still have Tour of Norway, Lac Megantic Classic, Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha and GP Moscow, and seeing that we wouldn't be surprised to see him score 50-100 points further. We have anticipated on 75, getting a total of 535, which is 75-100 points higher than what we expected from him. With a bit of luck he could do even better, and reach close to 600 points in total.
While Bryan Coquard is doing his best to level out the losses of Georgos Tzortzakis, we are struggleing to cope with the losses of Campero, Le Gac and Gougeard. Primarily due to very bad luck in terms of crashing for Jakub Novak, and a general underperformance from Clement Koretzky.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Simon Spilak
1626
482
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
896
366
Clement Koretzky
779
298
Yuriy Vasyliv
203
166
Jakub Novak
218
22
TOTAL 2017 points
1.334
Simon Spilak have done reasonably well so far, but have only ridden oneday races, making his PPrD unrealistically high, unless he performs well above his usual self at the Tour de France. At the current state he is looking to score 400 points more than last seasons reduced tally, but we know for well that he won't deliver that, so instead we are going to expect him to level out the 1600 points, maybe get 1700 if he does a really strong Tour de France. Besides the TdF he is also yet to ride Tour of Tasmania, which he won last season and the season finale Giro di Lombardia where he didn't perform well. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier is currently also adjusted higher than last season, but is currently riding a subpar (in terms of last season) Vuelta a España. Having just one race left - Deutschland Tour, we cannot expect him to finish higher than 800pts at most, which leaves us with a direct loss of 100 points.
Also Clement Koretzky is currently looking to lose something like 150-200 points in comparison to last season, but having Tour of Norway, Lac Megantic Classic, Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha, Deutschland Tour, Tour of Tasmania and Giro di Lombardia left it is really difficult to call, as just one strong result could make things better, as he is currently holding just 11 PPrD. Yuriy Vasyliv had a strong show at the Giro d'Italia taking 22nd GC and a stagewin, to already make 166 points, and having Dauphine as a leader, Tour de France as a lieutenaint and Deutschland Tour as a lieutenaint he should manage to get his remaining 40 points. Hopefully he can get a bit higher, but we don't expect it. Unlike Vasyliv, Jakub Novak has performed horrible so far, due to crashes, and the Vuelta is exactly the same. Currently he is on his way back from the injury and has eyes set on top 100 meaning an additional 5 points, but having just Tour de Suisse as a leader, Tour de France as a domestique and Copenhagen TTT left we won't see him score higher than a total of 150 points - this including a very strong Tour de France.
Last benchmark saw us score around 4000 points which was the result of last season (including the sold riders), this time we are looking to get 3500 points. So we have had a huge loss on this account - not so much in terms of projected where we hit 4275, but in realistic outcome we trail somewhat.
We managed to get 369 adjusted cobbled points last season, and this season seemed to be better before the season, swapping in Jacobs and Taramarcaz for Kosic.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Tom David
317
152
Pieter Jacobs
0
51
Julien Taramarcaz
0
42
TOTAL 2017 points
245
Despite Tom David performing great at the Tour de Flandres, securing himself a historic 7th, he have underperformed drastically everywhere else, also failing to get a bit of extra points here and there from the hilly races. Even worse have Pieter Jacobs performed, while Taramarcaz performs on par with the expected. So at this point we are trailing by 120 points. We should be able to get those back with East Midlands and Tour of Northern Europe still left for the trio, while also getting some easy points from surviving races (estimated 65 points), but we are only just making amends. The 600 points expected prerace was reduced to 500 points expected by the end of february can now be reduced even further to 400 points expected at the end of the season.
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
410
Panagiotis Vlatos
339
150
TOTAL 2017 points
560
Despite being halfway through the season, we are noway near halfway in terms of points. And we didn't expect to be. We expected a total of 1500 points before the season reducing that to 1200 points by the end of february. These figures still stands with a projected scoring of ~1100 points and still lacking the three main races for Jerome Coppel: Tour of Norway, Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha and Tour of Tasmania while also participating in Tour of Northern Europe. The reason that we don't adjust the figures up is because of Panagiotis Vlatos, who is currently projected to score 175 points further. And while he can make a good result in Praha, he will struggle to score more than the bare minimum elsewhere. And we can't expect him to finish a lot of the races he have left either, being either mountainous or cobbled.
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
We are already more than 50 points ahead, and with the Vuelta closing there will be some added points to Cameron Bayly and Emerson Santos who both performed well in terms of stageresults.
Before the season started our estimate was 650 points, but by february end we adjusted that to 1000 points, which we hold. If all the present riders manages to survive their final races we are looking to add 220 points, and we know we are getting ~ 70 points from the Vuelta a España. So we are already at 810 points. The remaining 200 points is expected to be reached from Team GC's (as we have some very interesting races left), lucky breakaways and slightly better positions than just ending the race. We estimate that it is realistic to land at the mark of 1000 points.
If those points are added together:
GC RIDERS / PUNCHEURS 3.500
SPRINTERS 550
COBBLERS 400
TTERS 1.200
DOMESTIQUE 1.000
This sums up to 6.650 points which is quite a lot less than we would have liked. By the end of february the figure was 7.200, but we haven't managed to live up to those expectations, so we are reducing the figures by 550 points, leaving us in heavy distress in terms of reclaiming our PT Crown. And with Moser continuing to perform well, also being a bit lucky with the Giro d'Italia startlist, we have come to accept that it is no longer realistic for us to achieve 3 PT wins in a row. Instead we are focussing on getting onto the podium which is our sponsor goal. And in order to do so, we "just" need to stay on track with the points calculated and we will end up 3rd - or might push for 2nd if lucky.
As always - feel free to leave a comment. We like debating these things.
Well. Norway should definitely bring more points than you would have anticipated, so you will come closer to a 7000pts projection
As always, interesting read. Pretty interesting also because your approach to the game is quite different from mine. At least in terms of this statistical stuff. Your approach is obviously the more succesful though
tsmoha wrote:
Well. Norway should definitely bring more points than you would have anticipated, so you will come closer to a 7000pts projection
As always, interesting read. Pretty interesting also because your approach to the game is quite different from mine. At least in terms of this statistical stuff. Your approach is obviously the more succesful though
Yeah, unfortunately it is a PTHC race, so doesn't bring as much as it would have if a PT race. But yeah. We are likely to come away with the race with ~75-100 points more than anticipated. I always anticipated a GC win, otherwise I wouldn't have brought Coppel, but whether it would work or not was always a gamble
I haven't always used this approach, but when I started doing so, things turned and instead of getting 3-5th in the PT all the time, I finally got to win things. I had a couple of "off-seasons" due to rebuilding, but that was always part of the plan. Next season the rebuild start again
The second Grand Tour, the Vuelta a España was on the calender for the month of may. But the ardennes had to be closed before that, and while the Grand Tour took place, also some minor scandinavian races were due:
Fleche Wallone Liege-Bastogne-Liege Vuelta a España Scandinavia Road Race Tour of Norway *PTHC Race
After riding a decent Amstel Gold Race we set for the starting line at the Fleche Wallone with Clement Koretzky as our leader. Last season he took home 11th so expectations was a spot just outside the top 10. Getting 26th was therefor a huge dissapointment.
We had to make amends at the biggest of the three ardennes, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, so we brought both Spilak and Koretzky. Clement Koretzky was once more invisible to cap of a dreadful ardennes campaign, but up front Simon Spilak had found his golden ardennes legs from 2015 yet again, only this time Simone Ponzi had aswell, which capped of the classical 1-2 from the 2015 series. A great result for Spilak after having a subpar season so far.
Once the ardennes closed the Vuelta started, but before that we want to show another dissapointing letdown from our puncheur, Clement Koretzky who had such a strong season in 2016. At the Scandinavia Road Race he was for once touted a good shot at a 5-10th place, but unfortunately it was a no-show which ended in a hard fought 11th place. Not a complete disaster, but beaten by riders such as Mudarra, Gautier and our former rider Pichon definately hurt.
The first week of the Vuelta a España was rather uneventful for us, but we saw signs of what to expect from Emerson Santos as he sprinted continuisly in the top 10 on the flat stages. Other than that all we saw was Lecuisinier first taking the U25 jersey, only to then lose it again. This was also the picture of the 2nd week. Lecuisinier duly struggled and at one point he was as low as 13th in the GC some way short of top 10 aswell as the U25 jersey safely positioned on Frederik Strand Galta. One moment of beauty saw the light for us, however, as Cameron Bayly yet again proved strong in a Grand Tour breakaway to capture 3rd on a stage. Both before and after he was very close to replicating this, but was caught in the sprint.
The final week was much better in terms of the GC fight. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier climbed well, and took a very surprising 3rd at the long timetrial on stage 17. At this point also Jakub Novak was seemingly past the injury he took on at a very early stage, which almost made him miss the time cut on several stages. Here a picture of Lecuisinier showing great TT handling in his newly claimed white jersey:
After the TT Lecuisinier never looked back, and first overtook Monsalve, then Velits and Galta while also finally managing to overtake Abal in the very late of the race. This meant a 7th in the GC while also taking the U25 jersey, which he also won last season.
In the late part of the Vuelta also the small race, Tour of Norway started, and while it is a small race, it was secretly one of our main targets of the season, bringning Coppel, Koretzky, Coquard and Vlatos for the line. Stage 1 started out as we could have expected. Jonas Ahlstrand took the victory, while Coquard struggled to find his position and thus only managed 5th, just behind Eduard Grosu who also latched the U25 jersey temporarily.
Stage 2 was one to remember, though, as Bryan Coquard took home his first ever professional victory! And while it wasn't among the very best of sprinters it was still ahead of riders such as Ahlstrand, Ciolek, Howard, Grosu and former rider Guerao and Keukeleire who all have a long list of stagewins to their name. We welcome Coquard to the very top level of sprinters by marking this win:
With the great stagewin in the bank, Coquard also jumped to take the U25 jersey, aswell as temporarily 2nd in the pointscompetition and 2nd in the GC due to a very slim margin from him and Ahlstrand, both capping a win and a top 5 on the two stages. Stage 3, was a relatively long timetrial, and pre-race we had this marked as out key stage to win the race. Jerome Coppel and Panagiotis Vlatos didn't let us down taking a 1-2 on the stage aswell as in the overall GC
On to the very difficult stage 4, where we had Koretzky as one of the stage favorites. But being in the lead of the GC, we had asked him to stay close to Coppel at all times, to ensure he wouldn't lose the GC. We quickly lost Vlatos on the hills, but that was to be expected. At the end we managed to bring (alongside some other teams) 75 riders to the line, and here we gave Koretzky the chance for himself, and he didn't dissapoint! After a very bad season for him, we are so pleased to see him take a stagewin here, and also make it 3 in a row for us! Coppel didn't lose his GC, but unfortunately Jeremy Roy couldn't make the group, which would have landed him a strong 14th in the GC.
Coppel effectively celebrating in the background for Koretzky, but also because we managed to secure the jersey. Stage 5 was a bit of up and down, but with no real trouble for the likes of Coppel. In the end the stage was taken by a breakaway, which in hindsight was sad, as Bryan Coquard charged ahead to win the sprint for 4th. It was enough to win the points jersey though, and definately no complains here!
Jerome Coppel can raise his arms in what will be his first GC win of the season, and since his win at Tour of Tasmania last season.
Having yet missed out on any 1000+ point scoring months (April by just 53 points) we are happy to finally burst one. Except for July it will probably also be our only 1000+ point scoring month.
Points gained: 1241pts
Next up: June including Lac Megantic, Tour de Suisse and Criterium du Dauphine
After a strong month for our team, we head into a very difficult period. The entire month of June will be very very difficult. Three races are in stall for us, and while we might have a chance in the PTHC race of the month, the remaining races are definately not suiting us.
TOUR DE SUISSE
Usually a race that we value very high, but this season we had to put priority elsewhere, hence not likely to score a high amount of points.
Jakub Novak Cameron Bayly James Piccoli Julian Alaphilippe Pieter Jacobs Julien Taramarcaz Georgios Bouglas
This is our, on paper, weakest lineup of the entire season. Jakub Novak have not performed well, and have had quite some issues with staying on his bike, so we expect nothing but being in a few attacks. If Bayly can keep up his momentum from earlier he could be a bet for a good stage result, but honestly we can't expect to get any sort of result from this.
LAC MEGANTIC CLASSIC
Rated flat, but very lumpy the new race on the calender is very difficult to predict, and because of that we have brought two dedicated leaders, for different scenarios.
In case the race is not ridden particularly hard we hope to deliver Bryan Coquard in a strong position. He showed in Norway that he can compete with strong sprinters such as Jonas Ahlstrand, Gerald Ciolek and Óscar Guerao, and we hope to be facing the likes of those at most. To secure a good positioning we have brought strong puncheurs like Kastrantas and Roy aswell as leadout riders Santos and Stocker. In case things get too difficult we are hoping to see Clement Koretzky stay in front of the race and play it cool, much like he did in Tour of Norway stage 4.
CRITERIUM DU DAUPHINÉ
3 Mountainstages, 2 Hilly stages and a long Timetrial would normally suit Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier very well, but as he is attending a race elsewhere, later in the program and just finished Vuelta a España we have not brought him here.
Yuriy Vasyliv comes here as our GC leader, and we hope to see him perform similar to what he did in the Giro d'Italia to take a GC spot in the region of 20-25th. He isn't the best suited rider and generally lacks top level, but we hope to see him aggressive like in the Giro. Other than that, we have brought Panagiotis Vlatos for the early and long timetrial, in the hope for some points.
With stage 5 and 6 ending in a downhill we hope to join the breakaway in fight for KOM and a stagewin, which could be done from Vasyliv og Kastrantas. Basically everyone is having free hands to give it a go, and to pick up whatever points we can get. We fear for the time cut on stage 8, so we need to have scored whatever we can before that stage.
If we can somehow get out of this month with 300 points, then we will be extremely happy.
Wuhuu... Demare then, but if Coquard will be ready for the sprint, I don't think Demare will be better than Ciolek, so that doesn't matter much
I hope it is a stage similar to Tour of Norway stage 5. But I can't really compare it to anything interesting. Georgos Tzortzakis won in Lisbon last season, which I suppose is somewhat the same.
Wuhuu... Demare then, but if Coquard will be ready for the sprint, I don't think Demare will be better than Ciolek, so that doesn't matter much
I hope it is a stage similar to Tour of Norway stage 5. But I can't really compare it to anything interesting. Georgos Tzortzakis won in Lisbon last season, which I suppose is somewhat the same.
The month of June has ever so often been a quiet transition month between the Vuelta a España and the Tour de France. This season nothing to add from that:
The Tour de Suisse had Jakub Novak hoping he could somehow break into the top 20, but seeing the startlist, those hopes were quickly detronized. Instead we were happy to see a limited sprinters field, which saw Julian Alaphilippe taking his first ever Pro Tour podium. On stage 1 he took 3rd and even managed 4th on stage 5 aswell...
The Team TimeTrial was nothing to talk about, but Stage 3, the first mountainstage, was extremely positive. Jakub Novak climbed to 19th in a group consisting of riders like Joseph Dombrowski and Martijn Keizer. Unfortunately Novak kept on his bad streak of crashes, hence crashing out of contention for the GC. In the end he managed to finish 34th, still well below expectations and us failing as a team to deliver the anticipated 100pts. Still, scoring 85pts, made things close.
Instead we arrived at the La Megantic Classic where the parcours were difficult to analyze. There was quite a difficult terrain, but yet not more than most sprinters would be able to survive unless some very aggressiv ridings took place. For us it was a pleasure to see how many sprinters were there, as that would usually take the pip from the attackers, as most teams wouldn't settle without a mass sprint. Having Bryan Coquard there alongside Clement Koretzky, we were ready for whatever the terrain brought.
In the end things came together and Coquard took the wheel of Mark Cavendish and won his 2nd ever win!
Having only recently won his first ever win (In Tour of Norway) we were utmost pleased to see us carrying on the newly developped tradition of winning one flat classic pr. season with Georgos Tzortzakis making a similar upset last season.
In the Criterium du Dauphine expectations were similar to the ones in Switzerland, but here we had nothing for the sprints, where the field was strong, but then had Yuriy Vasyliv for the GC, in a pack where we were expecting something in the region of 15-20th.
The race started well with Tom David almost landing his first ever professional victory, but instead he had to settle for the KOM jersey which he carrying through the long timetrial on stage 2 and the flat stage 3.
Stage 4 saw a breakaway go all the way aswell as the climbers starting to move, so the KOM jersey was lost so instead we put Tom David and Charalampas Kastrantas in the break of stage 5, which on paper were looking good for a breakaway win, aswell as offering several KOM points. Kastrantas worked while David picked up KOM points, and then... On the final climb, Tom David put the hammer down and moving solo away from Smirnovs to finally take his first ever professional victory!
In the overall GC Yuriy Vasyliv dissapointed slightly to slowplay his way into 21st in the GC. Not a disaster, but he should have been more aggressive, which could have easily landed him a top 15.
In a season with so many ups and downs it is a real pleasure to note down that the following riders from our development ranks, have made a big win:
Having also previously landed stagewins for Charalampas Kastrantas aswell as Panagiotis Vlatos, we are effectively in a position where we can conclude that ALL riders that have developped into max riders and are currently under contract at Festina, have won stages/races at Pro Tour level! That is quite a benchmark!
We are now hoping to make the same dream come true for Murilo Affonso, Georgios Bouglas, Emerson Santos, Manuel Stocker, Matteo Fabbro and Aidan van Niekerk who are all on full time contracts at Festina, having yet to progress to full development (The latter two are on a loan out at the moment).
Before the month started we expected 100 points pr. race, which we unfortunately didn't manage to reach in Tour de Suisse. But taking all three races and dividing the points out, we did. Scoring 404 points is 104 points better than we hoped and aimed for - Unfortunately even this "overperformance" was not enough to level out the points scored by Moser, who landed even 165 points more, especially due to some very fluke-ish and great GC results from the like of Matej Vysna, Jaroslav Kulhavy and Ondrej Cink. We congratulate them on yet another great month!
Points gained: 404pts
Next up: July including Tour de France and Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha
Having just overcome the most difficult month of the season with quite a bit of succes we head into the month where we expect our best points harvest of the entire season. July.
July offers our most important race of the season, the Tour de France, but also another top priority race for us, Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha. Last season we came out of the Tour de France feeling a little bit dissapointed by the GC result, where Simon Spilak took 3rd in the GC. But having a great race in general leading to stagewins, yellow jerseys and strong efforts from Jerome Coppel, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier and Simon Spilak we still came away from the race as a huge point scorer.
This season we are not quite that strong, but are still among the top favorite. In Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha, Jerome Coppel took 2nd in the GC aswell as two times 2nd in the timetrials. Panagiotis Vlatos was also set for 12th in the GC, but unfortunately lost time due to a split in the final flat stage.
Let's take a look.
TOUR DE FRANCE
7 Mountainstages with just 3 ending on the top, 6 Hilly stages, 1 Hilly TT, 1 Long flat TT and 6 Flat stages, should usually suit our man in charge
Every man for Spilak. Last season we had a similar setup, but Jerome Coppel and Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier in the mix aswell. Because of two things. The Team Time Trial as well as individual succes. Both got that, but we believe it hurt the chances of Simon Spilak. So this time, there are no riders that can be threatening his chances, and no top riders to put all faith upon when chasing attacks in the mountains, and this will hopefully be the key that will make Spilak more aggressive in his ridings - That is very much needed.
We expect strong sprinters here, so the flat stages is not up to us to control, and we also expect Wiesenhof to take the win, while also eBuddy having a good shot at a top result. Besides that we expect a lot of challenging hilly stages with some of the best puncheurs in the game attempting to block the system for the GC riders. We hope for Spilak to join the fun - maybe with Gesink, to put maximum pressure on Taaramäe.
Because of the setup we have decided to bring anything below 2nd in the GC will be seen as a massive dissapointment. We also want atleast 2 stagewins, and several top results. We expect to be able to get top 5 results from basically all hilly stages, mountain stages and timetrials - so 15 stages should suit us well. We know it won't happen, but that is the goal. We want to be aggressive.
Much like last season we expect Jerome Coppel to be fighting for the win. Again, our biggest rivals should be Taylor Phinney and Jacob Fiedler. The latter should have a slight disadvantage on the opening prologue, but it will be a matter of who manages to perform best on the day. Jerome Coppel is the man to but our hopes in. He should be a clear top 3 favorite for the race, which is also our goal. Usually a win goal would be the thing here, but Taylor Phinney is beating Coppel more often than not, and with Fiedler also being very close we can't expect to win.
Panagiotis Vlatos can hopefully survive the final stage better this season, but it is tough, and because of that we have also brought Clement Koretzky. Another race where he isn't really in the mix for anything, but we hope he will be able to pull another Tour of Norway win if things get's to difficult. We expect him to be the strongest puncheur in the race.
Bryan Coquard is looking for a good Prologue result, and with some luck he can challenge for the stagewin on stage 2 aswell as the U25 jersey. Having just one more race after this, we want Coquard to give it his all.
Also we have brought Taramarcaz here in the hope that he can somehow stay relatively close to the other rivals of the timetrials to give us a decent Team ranking. Last season we came 2nd, but this time we don't have the quality of Bernaudeau or Bouet as 3rd tier here.
So what to expect? We expect atleast 2nd in the TdF and 3rd at Praha, giving us a total of atleast 1800 points. If we can get close to 2000 points we might be able to make a final kick to not handing over the title to Moser - But we have to give it everything, stay aggressive and not be hit by misfortune.
I think it will be difficult to achieve 2nd in Le Tour. Obviously rooting for him, but Taaramae should be superiour. And so far I doubt Spilak is stronger than Phinney, but we'll see - wouldn't be too disappointed with 3rd if I were you. At least Gesink and other minor competitors should be beatable.
On the other side Coppel should be the main favourite for Praha imo. So there could be some nice results!
Well. There is no reason to beat around the bush. Simon Spilak won the Tour de France yesterday, and it is a massive milestone for the team, who never before managed to win a Grand Tour.
Let's take a moment to get sentimental here. After taking over the Discovery Channel Team in 2008, the team slowly shaped into a team with a huge Grand Tour Focus. The first ever Grand Tour we attended was the 2009 Giro d'Italia. Gianpaolo Caruso was our main rider, and was touted a GC position in the area of 20-25th. Unfortunately crashes and bad form made him underperform, as our team leadership changed to Mauricio Ortega, who ended up claiming 34th in our debut Giro. Later that year, Stijn Devolder took a very surprising GC win in the Tour de France, while our team captain, Jaroslav Popovych managed 11th, aswell as seeing Wladimir Gustov claiming 17th. Swiss rider Olivier Zaugg attended quite a lot of breakaways to make it an interesting entrance. At the end of the season, Samuel Sanchez took home 15th in the Vuelta a España.
After the season we evaluated on the results, and came to the conclusion that Grand Tours were the one thing we really wanted to be succesful at! Shortly after, we signed Alberto Contador, Mauricio Ardila and Carlos Castaño aswell as a fading Iban Mayo to ensure that we had the needed firepower to actually go for top 10 or even better.
Giro d'Italia 2010 saw us securing our first ever Grand Tour top 10 as an untrained Alberto Contador finished 10th, with Mauricio Ardila also landing 14th just shy of Vincenzo Nibali. Getting 4th in the Team GC it was evident, that Festina was now a team capable of riding Grand Tours.
Not long after, Carlos Castaño took his first ever Grand Tour top 10, when he clocked in 9th in the Vuelta a España. Iban Mayo in 17th also made his appearance, and did a great job aiding Castaño.
In the Tour de France, that year, Alberto Contador continued to take us one step closer, to make 8th in the GC. 2 spots better than our former leader, Jaroslav Popovych. Also worth noting is, that Simon Spilak claimed his first ever GT podium that season, getting 3rd behind Markus Fothen (soon to be Festina-rider) and Stijn Devolder. The GC winner took home the honor by a pathetic 2 second deficit! At this point we were still looking for our first GT stagewin also, with Thor Hushovd numerous times in top 3 being the closest.
During the off season we put in a lot of effort to ensure that Alberto Contador would no longer be a low-end top 10GC rider aswell as making Carlos Castaño stronger. Mauricio Ardila was now a luxury domestique with a few chances for himself, much like Iban Mayo had been the year before. Immidiately it paid off, as Carlos Castaño took home a huge 5th in the GC of the 2011 Giro d'Italia, beating former TdF winner, Stijn Devolder. Only 7 seconds behind Domenico Pozzovivo in 4th... Mauricio Ardila played his cards perfectly aswell to claim 13th, while also Jurgen van Goolen did well. This resulted in us taking 2nd in the Team GC 2 minutes behind Damiano Cunego's La Gazzetta dello Sport. Stage 7 being another monumental stage for us with Diego Ulissi taking home our first ever Grand Tour stagewin, aswell as Carlos Castaño making 3rd.
With stage 12 came another stagewin, again from Diego Ulissi.
In the Vuelta a España, pundits were expecting Alberto Contador to fight for the podium. Arriving with the new super-domestique Angel Madrazo aswell as well rounded riders like Tim Dees, Steve Morabito and Stefan Denifl, things were looking good, but it wasn't to be! On stage 4, a huge split caused Alberto Contador to lose valuable time, and if that wasn't enough he took a huge tumble on stage 5 effectively losing the race.
Luckily Alberto Contador quickly gained momentum, as a relatively strong rider, and by stage 10 he seemed basically unhurt - though having lost 8 minutes due to the crash. Stage 12 saw Contador back among the top 5 riders, and thus clawing back some time, still being 22nd, 9 minutes behind the leader.
Luckily things changed for the better, during the Tour de France. Alberto Contador was leader again and this time taking 8th in the GC aswell as the KOM jersey. Simon Spilak won his first Tour de France.
Expectations were as high as ever, and anything but a Grand Tour podium was unthinkable seeing this setup. Markus Fothen was set for 3rd-5th in the Giro d'Italia aswell as the Tour de France, while Alberto Contador would be looking to take on his old prodigy, Angel Madrazo in the Vuelta.
The Giro d'Italia started out great. We came 3rd in the opening TTT delivering Fothen as the best of the race favorites, 10 seconds ahead of Riccardo Ricco (soon to be Festina-rider), and more than 30 seconds to everyone else - closest Domenico Pozzovivo.
A moment of no-attention saw Markus Fothen lose 55 seconds on stage 3, where Ricco and Schleck overtook him in the GC by 40-50 seconds. Still a good situation aswell with Mathieau Bernaudeau taking 2nd in the GC.
Stage 4 was a disaster, however, as we had 4 riders hitting the deck - among them, Mathieau Bernaudeau. Stage 5 saw Fothen lose more time, on a hilly stage, but the real horror hit at stage 6, where Markus Fothen went down with Amador and Machado. The two latter could continue the race. and made it back home, but Markus Fothen had to abandon the race.
Riccardo Ricco won the race ahead of Emanuele Sella, and everything looked as though Markus Fothen should have easily been fighting for 3-5th.
Prior to the Tour de France, Markus Fothen took home 2nd in the difficult Tour de Suisse, behind Pluchkin, but ahead of Tenorio, Popovych and Intxausti, so epectations were high.
Not for long though. Going into stage 6, being 10th and in a good position, Markus Fothen crashed - Again. Losing 3 minutes and down to 19th in the GC. Markus Fothen immidiately showed that he was among the top favorites, taking home 5th on stage 7, climbing to 14th, but on stage 9 he was down again. Injured he was also losing 17 minutes on stage 10, aswell as 9 minutes on stage 11 putting an end to all GC hopes. On stage 15 he started to look uninjured again, and on the TT on stage 16 he took 5th and on stage 18 he took the stage. Getting something back, but definately not worthwile his racedays crashing out of contention twice in the early phase of the Grand Tour. In the end Fothen managed 18th.
Because of the poor results of 2012, the team took a huge gamble in the off season, signing riders like Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Clement Koretzky, Yoann Paillot, Laurent Pichon, Panagiotis Vlatos, Piter Campero, Charalampas Kastrantas, Alexis Gougeard and Bryan Coquard.
Taking such a gamble, also saw us ditching a Grand Tour GC attempt for the first time ever, seeing Tour de France getting no real GC leaders.
But in the Giro d'Italia we came with top 3 ambitions. Markus Fothen was back and with him he had Tim Dees, Chris Anker Sørensen and Ioannis Tamouridis. This time, no crashed, and Markus Fothen took home 5th. Not quite what we had hoped for, but seeing riders like Phinney, Madrazo, Spilak and Nibali ahead made the end result just fine.
In the Vuelta a España there was no Angel Madrazo, and just like that, the fight was well and truly open! Unfortunately, Alberto Contador was slightly below-par, in comparisson to the season before, and thus ending up 3rd. Again, Santander had control of the race, this time making Justo Tenorio the winner, ahead of Vincenzo Nibali - A bare milisecond ahead of Alberto Contador, in same time! The seconds GT podium was home, though.
As mentioned, the Tour de France was not being prioritized with a GC leader, in order to make sure the team would not relegate after the heavy talentdepartment, had taken quite a chunk out of the wage budget. But that didn't mean we didn't bring anything. Instead, Óscar Guerao came to take 4 stagewins.
Santander continued to control the Grand Tours, winning it from Angel Madrazo, while Justo Tenorio took 5th. Chris Anker Sørensen lead the way for us in 45th making this the worst ever Grand Tour, in terms of GC.
Unavoidably, Riccardo Ricco was attending the Giro d'Italia, and had great support by Gianpaolo Caruso. But as if it wasn't enough with the Fothen crashes, Riccardo Ricco hit the deck on stage 2 already, losing a minute, but seeming uninjured. On stage 3, he showed that by climbing inside the top 10 on the bumpy stage.
On stage 6 we were on it again (always stage 6, right?). Ricco went down, but got back up, seeming stronger than ever, taking 2nd on the stage behind Damiano Cunego, climbing to 5th in the GC. Ricco had climbed to 4th in the GC by the start of stage 11, and rode well and easily while teammated David Boily claimed the stagewin from the early break also climbing to 14th in the GC.
By stage 18, Ricco was in 5th in the GC, but just 1'30" behind Trofimov, would make 4th very realistic. But much like previous editions, our luck in Grand Tour were not to be taken for granted. Ricco went down, and abandoned the race - from 5th in the GC! David Boily was with him for some time, also losing a significant amount of time.
Instead of getting 4th and 20th, which was realitic, we had to settle for 26th by domestique Gianpaolo Caruso in the end. A horrible start to the season.
Especially because of the race coming up, The Vuelta a España. We had decided to go all in, on the sprints not bringing any GC riders. At the end of the race Vadim Ratiy took 21st, with Caruso being 29th. Our team leader, Óscar Guerao didn't win any stages, and had to abandon the race, making it two horrible Grand Tours in a row.
At the Tour de France we finally had a rider capable of getting on the podium, Simon Spilak. And he did just that. Taking 3rd in the end after Andy Schleck and Aleksandr Pluchking, claiming a stage win in the proces, we could add GT podium no# 3 to our tally. Two from the Vuelta a España and one from the Tour de France. Still 5th at the Giro d'Italia being our best result.
Not much had changed towards the 2015 season. Our team was strong, our talents were getting better, Simon Spilak was trained and Riccardo Ricco was also still there. Now having also gotten Jerome Coppel we decided to go for the overall PT crown, rather than Grand Tour succes. This meant that the young, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier would lead out the team in the Tour de France, aswell as the Vuelta a España, with Riccardo Ricco giving it one last go at the Giro d'Italia. Simon Spilak not riding any Grand Tours at all...
The Giro d'Italia went extremely well. Georgos Tzortzakis claimed two stagewins, and another two stage podiums within the first 8 stages, also temporarily claiming the points jersey from stage 6 to 19, and while this was going on, Riccardo Ricco took over the Maglia Rosa on stage 9 and defended it with his life. After the TT on stage 19 Ricco was still leading the race, but now just by 9 seconds to Angel Madrazo and 27 to Andy Schleck. Having seen the team struggle to keep Ricco in a good position in the mountains, it therefore came as no surprise to see him lose the race lead on stage 20. What did come as a surprise, though, was the fact that Ricco who had been the most consistent rider in the peloton would go on to lose almost 7 minutes on the decisive stage ending up behind riders like Ignatenko, Brambilla, Scarponi, Kratochvila, Kolesnikov and Brändle, and thus ending the race outside the podium in 4th overall...
To make matters worse, Georgos Tzortzakis, aswell as 3 others had to abandon before the final stage, where Tzortzakis had a great chance of claiming his 3rd stage win, and get 2nd in the points competition.
In the Vuelta a España, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier took home 13th in his first ever appearance, getting 2nd in the U25 competition just behind Tim Wellens. Later also taking 13th in the Tour de France aswell as 2nd in the U25 competition - this time, however, behind Joseph Dombrowski, but 13 seconds ahead of Lachlan Morton who would go on to beat him in the Tour de l'Avenir...
The 2016 season was upon us, and having just won the Pro Tour in the final race of the season, we went all-in on the Tour de France, equipping a fully trained Simon Spilak with a fully developped Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Yuriy Vasyliv, Jakub Novak aswell as boosting the TTT setup with Jerome Coppel, Panagiotis Vlatos, Mathieau Bernaudeau and Maxime Bouet. Everything on one board for Spilak.
Before that, though the Giro d'Italia. Having just sold Riccardo Ricco it was up to domestique riders Jakub Novak and Piter Campero to do the dancing. And they ended up doing that pretty well taking 22nd (Campero) and 27th (Novak).
In the Vuelta a España, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier was back to fight for a top 10 after ending up 13th the season before. During the race, Lecuisinier showed remarkable progress ending up 4th in the GC, also winning the U25 competition in style. Beating riders like Nibali, Velits, Guldhammer, Uran and Tenorio made most pundits bow in awe of the talented upcoming rider, who would then go on the ride the Tour de France as a domestique.
The Tour de France was the race of the season for us, and everything started out great as Jerome Coppel took the stagewin on stage 1. He went on to hold the jersey until the end of stage 5, where Phinney outsprinted him to take it. Coppel was still 2nd, though and despite winning the Team TimeTrial on stage 7, he was unable to take back the jersey, by a margin of just 2 seconds. At this point, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier had jumped to 3rd, while Spilak was also in top 10.
Stage 8 looked relatively easy, but Coppel being unatentive in the final 5km, saw him lose 1'40 and thus the 2nd in GC. Instead Lecuisinier would take that. Stage 9 was perfect for Simon Spilak, and he managed to take 3rd - but unfortunately not gapping Taylor Phinney, while he did manage to gap Lecuisinier. At this point Spilak was 3rd in the GC, with Lecuisinier 7th.
Stage 11 was the turning point though, and while Spilak wasn't the strongest on the stage, he was strong enough to take the lead. It was lost again on stage 13, though, where Spilak showed that he wasn't strong enough to beat riders like Schleck, Taaramäe and Dombrowski, despite having the luxury team mates around him until the very end.
On stage 18, Spilak finally found his form and went on to take the stagewin. Unfortunately he wasn't strong enough to gap the 3 riders infront, so was still looking to find 2 minutes on Taaramäe or Dombrowski to make the podium. Meanwhile Lecuisinier had climbed to 9th in the GC, closing the gap to Wellens in 8th drastically. He reduced the gap further on stage 19, where Spilak, unfortunately, couldn't find any more time, thus entering the final timetrial in 4th.
But whereas he had struggled to find his climbing legs, he was strong in the final timetrial, to take 2nd behind Phinney, gaining 20 seconds on Taaramäe, but more importantly, almost 3 minutes on Dombrowski, taking his position in the GC. Lecuisinier also scattered the time of Wellens to take 7th in the GC, demonstrating his future position well inside the GC top 10s.
This season, we demonstrated a lack of interest in the Giro GC, but still managed to take two stagewins aswell as 22nd in the GC.
The Vuelta a España was the big test for Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier on his own. Some of the biggest names were present, and while he would have likely made the podium in the Giro d'Italia, we were confident seeing him take 7th in the GC behind riders like Schleck, Dombrowski, Pluchkin, Madrazo, Machado and Kritskiy. Next season we hope he will be able to fight for top 5 once more.
AND THEN.
No more nostalgic! The Tour de France 2017 started out very dissapointing. The first week offered a hilly timetrial aswell as 3 hilly stages, on paper very suitable for Spilak. So when we made up the table after the first week we were hugely dissapointed by the fact that Simon Spilak was 5th, almost a minute behind Taaramäe and Phinney while having not gotten close to any stage wins.
Harsh words were thrown around in the team bus prior to stage 8, and it helped. Taylor Phinney and Simon Spilak got free from the rest, to take 1-2 on the stage aswell as the GC. Very unfortunate for the race, however, was that last seasons runner-up, Rein Taaramäe saw a tumble, losing a staggering 5'45", setting him back a lot.
Stage 9 saw Spilak again close to Phinney, ending 3rd with Taaramäe fighting his small injuries to reduce the loss to 2'20", effectively losing the race, but still in the fight for 3rd.
Taaramäe clawed back a bit here and there, but not enought to really stand out as the pre-race favorite he surely was. On stage 12 Spilak finally managed to find a small chunk of time, taking the leaders jersey, but by less than a second.
Winning stage 13 and taking bonus seconds aswell as 33 seconds made things much better looking, though and suddently the lead was up to 54 seconds, while also Yuriy Vasyliv climbed very well to be 17th while Novak was 23rd.
The long timetrial came closer and closer, and remembering last season, Spilak needed atleast 1'30" to Phinney, while 2-2'30" might being more reassuring, looking at previous timetrials. This meant, that Spilak had to stay active. Allowing a breakaway to stay out there on the difficult descent-stage 14 was part of the plan to dismember Phinney, as he wouldn't be allowed to take bonus seconds in a dessimated sprint.
Stage 16 was the stage, where we needed to put time on Phinney. A difficult punchy stage ending uphill. But despite being strong, Spilak was boxed in while trying to get a view of the main group, and thus reacting very late to Phinneys attack. With less than 500 meters to go, Spilak caught Phinney, but the american showed great finesse in the sprint to take, not only the stagewin but also, 9 seconds + bonifications. And just like that, the advantage had played right into the hands of Phinney reducing the gap to just 37 seconds. During the stage Jakub Novak struggled from a crash, losing him 5 spots in the GC, aswell as us losing the Team GC.
Stage 17 was another, Phinney-stage, so another breakaway was allowed to move clear to avoid any sprint-duel with the american, but suddently a move from the american made the peloton go into chock. Spilak had to start chasing himself, but received a hand from Gesink's Brambilla, partly to ensure that Grmay out front, wasn't suddenly playing into the top positions. Phinney had a 2 minute gap, looking to have achieved the decisive move to win him the race, but within the first couple of km of the final climb, Phinney had clearly gone above his capabilities, exploding to make the Spilak group re-connect.
Spilak and Gesink put a massive tempo to see what Phinney's reaction would be, and sure enough. He cracked, after his efforts. In the end only Taaramäe could keep the wheel of Spilak, and another 1 minute gap had formed, now making it 1'30" - The bare minimum of a realistic Tour de France win for Simon Spilak.
But while the result was great for Spilak, bad news arrived from Vasyliv, who had to abandon the race from a record-19th GC from him, thus ending all dreams of him making the top 20, and our team winning the Team GC.
On stage 18, Rein Taaramäe showed that he was the strongest, while Spilak managed to beat Phinney in the final uphill sprint, but the american looking rock solid, to keep the wheel of Spilak, thus keeping the distance durable in the final timetrial.
Spilak would need a good stage 19 to win the race, but luckily it wasn't just any stage left. The l'Alpe d'Huez, which have caused so many great results and eras were still to be raced. Simon Spilak made use of his domestiques early on, and Jakub Novak showed that he was no longer injured to keep things tense for the final mountain.
Taaramäe wanted the stage, and with 13km to go he made his assault-attempt. Spilak sitting back focussing on the GC win, allowing Phinney to make a move. A short gap appeared and Spilak joined the move effortlessly. Phinney tried tiring out Spilak with his diesel engine, but this time Spilak was attentive, and only focussed on staying with Phinney, looking to spot any sort of weakness in the tempo of the american. With 9km to go, Taaramäe had increased his lead to 1 minute, but Spilak still taking advantage of the diesel from Phinney to keep the gap reachable, not paying too much attention to the estonian, who would need a staggering 4 minute to enter the combat for the win.
With 4 km to go, Amador made it back to the Spilak/Phinney group, and while Phinney was starting to look back over his shoulders, Spilak launched with everything he got. Phinney was late to react, gesticulating to Nibali that he should move, but the diesel engine is clearly chopping away on it's final note, and with Taaramäe in sight here 3km from the line, Spilak does one final push.
He's free!
Spilak charging towards Taaramäe catching him with 1,5km to go. The commentators are already crowning Spilak as the winner, but he doesn't care. He set's a high tempo, not paying too much attention to the stagewin, but then. 250 meters to go. Taaramäe has cracked, and Spilak is moving towards the line alone.
The stagewin is secure, and the clock is ticking away! 30 seconds.
Here he comes... Amador is leading him to the line, and looks to aid him towards having a small chance. But Phinney has cracked again, and opens up a gap behind Amador. This might cost him the win!
Amador is in with 41 seconds, but the american has clocked 56 also losing out on the bonifications for 3rd. This should settle things. 2'50". The slovenian is expected a loss in the region of 1'30-2'00", not almost 3 minutes.
The final stage, and Jakub Novak puts up a great benchmark for Simon Spilak. 1'01'47" is the time. It is expected that Spilak can go faster, but not a whole lot. Phinneys rider, Cataford has set a similar time for Phinney to benchmark, but I doubt he will be looking at anything but his own Watt-meter, trying to beat it by 1-2% beyond normal.
Taaramäe is flying. He is 10 seconds ahead of Phinney at the first benchmark. And here... Oh! Spilak is already 45 seconds behind Phinney.
At the 2nd split, the distances are even bigger. Taaramäe 19" ahead of Phinney. Has the american gone too deep or is he saving himself for the final kick? Spilak losing 1'31" already. This is more than he lost at the end last season! And Phinney behind Taaramäe opens all sort of questions. If he beats Taaramäes time on the finish line, then Spilak is in trouble!
Here comes the american. Nope. He slotted in behind Taaramäe, and this means that if Spilak is just riding his watts, he shouldn't be in trouble. And he does. Here he comes, looking like a machine, focused on doing his thing. The clock stops at 2'19", but that is to Taaramäe. So he still have quite some distance to Phinney.
And it is official. 46 seconds ahead of Phinney. So not even a huge sprint win in Paris can give Phinney the win. It can give him the green, though. Good thing, he didn't end up expecting to lose 1'30" or less here though, as that would have costed him the win!
No crashes is needed on stage 21, and nothing is happening, luckily. This will be a sprint finish, and Spilak have won the race. But what is this? Really!? Phinney and Spilak are both setting up a sprint it seems. For the points jersey surely.
Yep, Demare and van Stayen are far ahead. They can't contest the win. Phinney is by far the fastest of the two, but Spilak is being lead-out by Alaphilippe it seems. What a bizarre moment. Spilak have ordered Alaphilippe to take the wheel of Phinney and keeping Spilak there. There are just 2 points between them.
Is Spilak doing a Merckx here?
Haha, he sure is. Look at this. Alaphilippe is moving away to leave the space to spilak. He finishes the race just one spot away from Phinney allowing Spilak to claim the green jersey aswell... This is something new for sure. I can't remember when we have seen this last. Not since Merckx I suspect! This will surely be a subject in the press... Riding so calculated throughout the race, once he got to 2nd on the race. It haven't been boring, though.
Good on him! Two jerseys, Two stagewins. The first ever Grand Tour win for Festina, who have now a 2nd and two 3rd places, as well as a couple of other top 5's and some very unfortunate crashes out of top 5 positions to their tally. This must be a huge day.
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha went exactly like we wanted to GC wise, but except for that, it was a dissapointing race.
Jerome Coppel came as 3 star favorite for the prologue on stage 1, and the longe individual timetrial on stage 3. He came away with 5th and 3rd.
Likewise Panagiotis Vlatos was expected to finish in the range of 5-8th, which he fortunately did (barely) on the long timetrial, taking 8th, while he dissapointed in the prologue finishing far down the rankings.
The two flat stages was between the top sprinters, but having Bryan Coquard here, we were hopeful of more than we got. One time 17th and another 7th. We can't expect him to beat 83/84SPR riders, but 7th is the very minimum we want to see.
The month obviously turned out nicely for us, landing a stunning amount of points, the record for the season, but still not quite the month we had last season, where we scored 2.061 points.
Points gained: 1.985pts
Next up: August including Deutschland Tour, GP Moscow and East Midlands Cicle Classic
So here we are. Having closed our best month of the calender, and it is time to make a final benchmark for our team. Some riders are now well ahead of schedule, while others are definately still struggling to make amends.
Our aimed target is still 7.756pts which was our last season pointscore when deducting the fewer racedays on a linear scale. To statistically win the rankings we must reach a lower figure, though, 7.233pts. By the end of february we were very close to doing so, while the last "Chase for equality" saw us land in the region of 6.500 points, which would see us lucky to get 2nd.
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
731
TOTAL 2017 points
731
Last time we evaluated, we were quite happy with the figures here, with Coquard stepping up to almost level out the points scored from Tzortzakis. He has built on that, and is now having a massive 731 overall points. We expected Coquard to land on 600 if things went good, so you can imagine the reaction to these numbers!
Coquard, however have just one race left on his to-do list. The GP Moscow. Seeing that this is a sprint-fest where all the top riders are showing up, scoring above 50 points is unrealistic. So we aim for 44 points for Coquard to end out with 775. Scoring 44 points would mean 10-11th. In february we expected to land on 500 points, so we are almost 250 points ahead.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Simon Spilak
1626
1920
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
896
713
Clement Koretzky
779
342
Yuriy Vasyliv
203
197
Jakub Novak
218
118
TOTAL 2017 points
3.290
Last time we expected Simon Spilak to end his season in the region of 1600-1700 points. Then came a GT win, at the Tour de France which propelled him into 1920 points, thus giving a huge leeway down to the expected. Having still 2 races left, that suits him on paper, he could score around 300 points further, landing on 2200points.
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier is still doing OK, but lacking 183 points in comparison to last season. He only have the PTHC classic, Deutschland Tour left, which should suit him OK, but with no timetrials, he will be limited against the more explosive climbers. We still expect him to finish inside the top 5 and should thus score 120 or so points. If he does it will be close enough, losing 50 odd points.
Clement Koretzky, on the other hand, is so far riding a dreadful season, so far even not half the points of last season. He still have 3 races, but just 1 that suits him well, and that is being a domestique. We expect another 50 points in total, leaving him 300 points short.
Jakub Novak and Yuriy Vasyliv have both been extremly unlucky this season crashing several times. Lately Vasyliv crashed out of the Tour de France costing him ~80 points. Still he is just 6 points off his score of last season, which he can well find in the final race, Deutschland Tour. For that he will need to finish 35th or better.
Jakub Novak is only riding Copenhagen-Malmo TTT, and with some luck we are to finish in 15th spot, which gives him 5 points. So he will end up scoring 100 points less than last season.
If we use our projected points in terms of remaining racedays we will end up with 3.933 points, which is 67 points lower than our original benchmark. Last time we expected 3.500 points, and this time we realistically will be able to score 3.750, which levels out with Bryan Coquard to stay on track.
In the cobbles not much have changed, but something has.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Tom David
317
228
Pieter Jacobs
0
66
Julien Taramarcaz
0
53
TOTAL 2017 points
347
Since last time all riders have secured a little bit from completing races, but we made a big jump of 70 points when Tom David took a great stagewin. Still the original goal of scoring 600 points here is far far away. 500 was expected by the end of february while we downgraded that further to 400 last time. With Tom David having 10 free points aswell as East Midlands and TONE, with Jacobs following him aswell as having 5 free points, and Taramarcaz likely scoring 25 from his racedays, we should easily go past the 400 point mark. 60 is scored simply by completing the remaining races.
Then we obviously expect Tom David to end somewhere in the region of 10-15th in the TONE aswell as he and Jacobs both in the area of 15-25 in East Midlands, and we can add 75-125 points on top.
The goal must be, to level back up to 500, which was also the goal in february. Still 100 points less than original, so we are no longer on par with the expected.
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
879
Panagiotis Vlatos
339
284
TOTAL 2017 points
1.163
Before the season, expectations was 1500 points. By february those numbers were down to 1200, while we kept that for last. Seeing the numbers here we don't fear the 1200 points boundary any more. Panagiotis Vlatos have 4 races left, and he should score a little bit in TONE aswell as Tasmania. So we expect him to score a total of 40 points. That is the 1200 mark.
Then Jerome Coppel is likely one of the pre-race favorites in Tasmania, and he is also riding in TONE, where he should be the favorite for the timetrial. So it is realistic to hope for 2 stagewins aswell as a top 10 in Tasmania. This gives 200 points, so we can re-adjust to 1400 points, leaving us 200 points behind, before the final group of riders.
The 200 points behind are taken back here, already. The pre-season expectations was 650 points. By february end we adjusted that to 1000 points, and that seems realistic
Charalampas Kastrantas always manages to find a way of scoring in the region of 160-200 points, and this season will be no different. 169 points is expected from him, after a good Tour de France. Also Julian Alaphilippe and Emerson Santos have now scored decent results, not to mention Cameron Bayly who had a fantastic season - which unfortunately is now done. If all riders are to finish their remaining races, we can expect 132 points, which takes us to exactly 999 points. I call that close enough!
If those points are added together:
GC RIDERS / PUNCHEURS 3.750
SPRINTERS 775
COBBLERS 500
TTERS 1.400
DOMESTIQUE 1.000
This makes up for 7.425 points, and just 331 points worse than last season, adjusted. This is an amazing turnaround for us, and the goal of scoring above 7.200 points seems well within range. In fact for that to happen we "just" have to find 800 points according to our calculations.
Will this win os the rankings? No. Moser is not performing at a statistical winning number - much like we weren't last season, and thus the 7.200 are not a realistic benchmark to win the rankings. In order to do so, we expect that we are going to find a total of 8.000 points, which is almost at the level of last season - UNADJUSTED!!!
If we manage to keep our head in the track, and securing above 7.200 points, and closer than that to our adjusted 7.756 points from 2016 we can do nothing more, and we happily accept to finish 2nd. And at this point, we are looking very good for that!
As always - feel free to leave a comment. We like debating these things.[/quote]
Wow just read your TDF review and loved it, it's funny how different perspectives can be gained from the same reports.
For me Phinney lost the tour on Stage 17 the one were he attacked with 40km to go and got caught on the downhill, but at the same time Spilak won the tour on Alpe D'Huez when he cracked Phinney which for me made it a fantastic race to watch were both riders were exceptional.
With regards you latest rankings update I can't quite beileve how in effective your cobbled riders have been at picking up points so far especially Tom David who has a great stat line that just hasn't translated to results it seems.
Elsewhere nice to see the Canadian Piccoli pick up a 100 for you from a personal standpoint.
Few questions - What's the one race you see yourself picking a big points haul for the rest of the season.
Who's the rider you feel would benefit most from training in your squad(preferable an obscure one)
jt1109 wrote:
Wow just read your TDF review and loved it, it's funny how different perspectives can be gained from the same reports.
For me Phinney lost the tour on Stage 17 the one were he attacked with 40km to go and got caught on the downhill, but at the same time Spilak won the tour on Alpe D'Huez when he cracked Phinney which for me made it a fantastic race to watch were both riders were exceptional.
With regards you latest rankings update I can't quite beileve how in effective your cobbled riders have been at picking up points so far especially Tom David who has a great stat line that just hasn't translated to results it seems.
Elsewhere nice to see the Canadian Piccoli pick up a 100 for you from a personal standpoint.
Few questions - What's the one race you see yourself picking a big points haul for the rest of the season.
Who's the rider you feel would benefit most from training in your squad(preferable an obscure one)
Thanks a lot. Yeah, I deliberately put in some effort in making it a controlled managers point of view, due to roleplay reasons
Yeah I have been very dissapointed with my cobbled setup, and it is likely that I will give up on it entirely after this season, unless I can somehow snatch a top 5 cobbler for a small fee, or get some duo-challenger type - which was originally the idea with David. To make him 80+HI and COB. Never really happened because of other options though.
I see myself picking up points in Deutschland, which is currently beeing ridden, but besides that we have just 1 good race left. Tour of Tasmania. We have a win goal there after winning it last season, but I suspect Phinney will be there to mess with those plans. We have both Spilak and Coppel there though, so two riders in top 5 is the minimum for us. The remaining races will be bad for us, though.
I don't really have a lot of obscure riders in my team to train. I have a list of top 10 riders:
Simon Spilak
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
Clement Koretzky
Bryan Coquard
Jerome Coppel
Tom David (Although not proving so)
I already put some money in training Novak to 77MO. That was a waste of money.
I have really wanted to put money into making Kastrantas 77HI (Originally the plan was to make him 77MO/77HI, but it is too expensive. But I think he would be the rider benefitting the most.
I also believe that putting money into Vasyliv would be a very good payback. He is very consistent in his riding, even with his poor ACC. Only crashes, splits and punctures keeps him from always performing top 25. So Getting him to 79MO I feel like I would constantly be seeing him in top 15, while also being likely to get a few top 10s. I would love to make him my secondary GC leader with 81MO, but I feel like it is too much of a gamble due to his ACC stat.
Paris-Roubaix
Giro d'Italia
Tour of California
GP Liechtenstein
Amstel Gold Race
Fleche Wallone
Vuelta a España
Scandinavia Road Race
Tour of Norway
Jakub Novak
Cameron Bayly
James Piccoli
Julien Taramarcaz
Georgios Bouglas
Emerson Santos
Yuriy Vasyliv
Tom David
Nawuti Liphongyu
Simon Spilak
