Booker wrote:
There Booker was in September, revelling in his capture of Penasa on the hyper competitive free agent market, assured by his advisors that he would have the premiere mountain goat in the CT division.

But then...

along came Valls.

In the Individual Rankings, Rafa is back in the lead, and with a 110-point gap to Penasa, almost 200 points to Harrison and around 230 points to Roux, and still 9 RD's left in his season, he's the main favourite

Aquarius97 wrote:
Are you sure you want to play the card of a leader crashing to win it? I mean, you

jandal7 wrote:

Has Costa Rica been claimed yet?

Aquarius97 wrote:


Valls was eighth there

jandal7 wrote:

Ah I meant the other one

Aquarius97 wrote:


Mmmm that's a tricky question to answer... I guess i'll have to veto you on reporting my races

jandal7 wrote:

Guess I'll have to get my soineurs on the roadside some tacks and my riders to unfortunately some conveniently timed crashes...

Aquarius97 wrote:


How unlucky i could be...

And then it's you complaining about one of my riders "trying" to make one of your riders to crash by crashing himself...

We started the month inside of the direct promotion spots and we'll end it in the same position, but that doesn't mean that July was a succesfull month for the team. Well, we achieve our fourth season goal, but apart from that, not much else

We didn't have much expectations coming into this race, seeing how disappointing our puncheur had been almost all season, and despite that, we even failed to meet our expectations...



The only positive things were the breakaway appearences of our loanie Van Niekerk, getting the reward of finishing 5th in KoM, and Cristian Rodriguez, who was part of the succesfull break in the final stage, finishing eighth and getting his first ever point in MG.

The race started decently for Gilbert, who after four stages was sixth in GC, but then after the "long" time-trial, our best placed in GC was Kneisky, who turns out to be the worst puncheur of our whole team! After some not good performances in the important hilly stages, Gilbert finished 15th in GC, while Agostini gave us a little depth, as he finished 29th. I wasn't going to mention the pathetic ride of Cunego, but i'll do it just for show how pathetic is that a rider who should be fighting for a top10 in this race, finishes just inside of top50

1	Anthony Roux	Xero Racing p/b Octagon	20h58'07
2	David Boily	World Cycling Centre	+ 36
3	Johan Esteban Chaves	Azteca-NBCSN	+ 1'21
4	Maxime Monfort	Team Reddit	+ 1'27
5	Reto Hollenstein	Kulczyk - DMTEX	+ 2'02
15	Philippe Gilbert	Repsol - Honda	+ 5'08
29	Stefano Agostini	Repsol - Honda	+ 8'12
47	Damiano Cunego	Repsol - Honda	+ 12'07
54	Morgan Kneisky	Repsol - Honda	+ 13'24
86	Jaime Roson	Repsol - Honda	+ 20'49
88	Aidan Van Niekerk	Repsol - Honda	+ 21'34
92	Cristian Rodríguez	Repsol - Honda	+ 22'49
135	Robert Power	Repsol - Honda	+ 34'27

This race was probably the last time in the season where we could try to get some advantage to the other teams fighting for promotion spots, so Valls had to deliver. Here we had also our last goal of the season, which was to finish in the top5. If Valls could make it, we would almost have secured to accomplish all our goals this season.



The race couldn't start any better, with Valls winning the opening stage, in what was his ninth win of the season, tying with Rein Taaramae as the rider who the most wins in 2017. Also, with Penasa crashing and losing big time, the biggest rival all-season was out of the GC fight.

But a not great day in the TT saw him losing the race lead against Suaza, the man who would eventually win the race. The third stage saw Valls in dificulties for the first time in a mountain stage since Giro del Trentino in February, as he couldn't follow an attack by Suaza and Eastman, and would drop to third in GC ahead of the final mountain stage.



In the final stage Valls tried to attack Suaza for the GC win, but the Colombian was impressive and even finished ahead of Valls. At least with Eastman not having a good day, Valls was able to jump into the second place in GC. Serrano would finish also in the top15, giving us some nice points

With the points that Valls got from this race, the Spaniard has become the first rider in 3 years to reach 600 points in a season in CT

1	Jaime Suaza	Eddie Stobart	14h08'40
2	Rafael Valls	Repsol - Honda	+ 33
3	Ryan Eastman	Azteca-NBCSN	+ 2'16
4	Denys Karnulin	The Balkan Cycling Project	+ 2'19
5	George Bennett	Xero Racing p/b Octagon	+ 2'25
15	Rafael Serrano	Repsol - Honda	+ 5'27
37	Hideto Nakane	Repsol - Honda	+ 11'41
65	Jaime Roson	Repsol - Honda	+ 26'29
69	Ignacio Jesus Prado	Repsol - Honda	+ 30'08
71	Alejandro Valverde	Repsol - Honda	+ 31'09
74	Robert Power	Repsol - Honda	+ 34'45
77	Aidan Van Niekerk	Repsol - Honda	+ 38'55

jandal7 wrote:
Balls outmatched by a hair - but still showing how unbelievably good he is! Must be distracting seeing Cunego disappointing - really weird to be honest seeing his stats.

It's over! Alejandro Valverde has announced today that this will be his final season as a professional rider, ending a 16-year pro career, which started in 2002 with Kelme - Costa Blanca. Already in his second year as a pro rider, he finished in the podium of Vuelta a España and took a Silver medal in the Worlds. After several great results in 2004 and 2005, including another Silver medal in the Worlds, in 2006 he won his first Liege - Bastogne - Liege, while also finishing again in Vuelta's podium.


The MG-era came in 2007, and Alejandro signed for Cofidis (later known as France Televisions), where he would stay for 3 seasons. His biggest achievement in 2007 was to win LBL for the second consecutive year, but the rest of the year wasn't really good. That would change in 2008, arguably the best year of his career. He started the season winning his first Paris-Nice, and also taking his second Fleche Wallonne. But he didn't stop there, and won "La Doyenne" for the third year in-a-row. After finishing in Tour de France's podium for the first time in his career, he won Clasica de San Sebastian, a race that he would won two more times later in his career, although both in PCT level. Only one thing could make his season to be better, and that was to earn the right to wear the Rainbow jersey. In Varese's course, he couldn't be stopped in his way to his first Road World Championship


After a very disappointing season in 2009, where he only took one win, the Spanish Championship, he stepped down a level to ride with the newly-formed Santander team in PCT in 2010. That year he took several wins in HC/C1 races, but he became the first rider in the MG-era to win the World Championship twice, and also the first to do it from a PCT team


In 2011 he was back in the Pro Tour with Cafe de Colombia, a year where he had his best season climbing-wise, as early in the season he won Volta a Cataluña before starting Vuelta a España not being the biggest favourite for the win. He only took the lead in the third week thanks to a crash of the then leader Beñat Intxausti, but after taking 4 stage wins during the stage, he arrived to Madrid safe and won the first and only Grand Tour of his career. With that, he would become the only rider in the MG-era to win a World Championship, a Grand Tour and a Monument classic, and 6 years later no one has been able to do the same.


In 2012 he was back again in PCT tour, and while he took some wins that year, he wasn't the dominant rider he was years before. Changing teams year after year didn't help him to have a brighter decline, and as today, his last ever win would come in 2014 Vuelta al Pais Vasco, where he won the opening stage in a reduced bunch sprint. In the MG-era he has won 32 races, the Spanish rider with most wins in the MG-era


This year he became the first ever rider to sign a contract with Repsol - Honda, when he agreed to a one-year deal for the minimum salary, with the idea of helping the young riders to develop and to add his experience to other riders in the races he would ride this season. Alejandro still has a busy second part of the season, with 20 RD's from August to Zuri - Metzgete, the final race of the season, which will be also the final race in Alejandro's career.

jandal7 wrote:
Farewell to one of the greats. Wonder if he can surprise with a result one last time in Zuri, GPC or Britain. Wouldn't put it past Balaverde He's had a great career, nice to have him finish it up guiding Spain's future cyclists at the best new Spanish team

We are already in that part of the season were we were going to struggle to score big points, and if we can get anything from this month, is that we don't have a chance to finish in the Top5 in the rankings and that we'll struggle to finish in the Top10

We actually had big hopes coming to this race, as months ago we saw this race as a key race in our season. Phillipe Gilbert would single-lead the team in this race, and he was one of the main favourite for the GC win, given his combination of hilly and cobbled stats, which made him perfect for the route.

The race started not too bad, with Beyer scoring his first point in the season in the opening prologue, despite another disappoiting performance from Kneisky. Rodriguez and Kneisky. would try their lucks in the breakaways of S3 and S5, but apart from that, our riders were not seen anywhere in the race coverage

So Phillipe Gilbert would go onto finishing in a very anonymously 18th place in GC. The Belgian was affected by a crash earlier in S5, but remembering he was the only decent cobbler between the puncheur that was still in GC contention before the hilly cobbled stage, it's a very disappointing result

1	Robbie Squire	Azteca-NBCSN	22h59'52
2	Alexander Rybakov	Goldcorp - Nordstrom Rack	+ 16
3	Michel Kreder	Philips - Continental	+ 17
4	Kai Reus	In-n-Out p/b Carrefour	+ 20
5	Maxime Monfort	Team Reddit	s.t.
18	Philippe Gilbert	Repsol - Honda	+ 2'45
38	Aidan Van Niekerk	Repsol - Honda	+ 6'23
47	Stefano Agostini	Repsol - Honda	+ 10'35
71	Marco Marcato	Repsol - Honda	+ 17'17
75	Morgan Kneisky	Repsol - Honda	+ 18'26
132	Cristian Rodríguez	Repsol - Honda	+ 33'02
139	Riccardo Stacchiotti	Repsol - Honda	+ 36'19
155	Maximilian Beyer	Repsol - Honda	+ 49'06

This race was never going to be a big race for us, as our puncheur doesn't have shining acceleration, a key stat for this race, even more than the actual hill stat.

In the first stage we managed to finish with 3 riders in the 34-rider group who fought for the win; Cunego, Gilbert and Agostini, although any of them could get a top15 place

The only time we can be seen during the race coverage, and only because there are three riders together and are "easy" to identify as Repsol riders

And the second and final stage didn't go any better, as our riders were totally invisible during the stage, and we could feel lucky for having the same 3 riders finishing in the first group. But their not good stage results made that with over 20 riders finishing tied for 6th place in GC, our best rider was Cunego, and the Italian was only 20th. Agostini and Gilbert would also finish in the Top25, and despite finishing third in the Teams classification, and having some minor scores with Fernando and Prado in the U25 standings, our total points tally from this race is only slightly over 20 points.

1	Arthur Vichot	Kulczyk - DMTEX	10h08'34
2	Anthony Roux	Xero Racing p/b Octagon	+ 8
3	Julien Simon	Team Reddit	+ 16
4	Robin van der Hugenhaben	In-n-Out p/b Carrefour	s.t.
5	David Boily	World Cycling Centre	+ 20
20	Damiano Cunego	Repsol - Honda	s.t.
21	Stefano Agostini	Repsol - Honda	s.t.
25	Philippe Gilbert	Repsol - Honda	s.t.
44	Nidush Nirantha Fernando	Repsol - Honda	+ 2'18
65	Ignacio Jesus Prado	Repsol - Honda	+ 6'16
75	Aidan Van Niekerk	Repsol - Honda	s.t.
89	Robert Power	Repsol - Honda	+ 10'13
153	Alejandro Valverde	Repsol - Honda	+ 22'59

After this bad month, we are no longer in direct promotion spots, as we have dropped behind Xero and Azteca, and the current gap to Xero in 5th is almost 150 points. Now we are really at our backs, as Reddit, Yorkshire and Goldcorp are all within 60 points of us, and could also overtake us in September