After a great July where Simon Spilak won Tour de France and Jerome Coppel came 2nd in Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha, the month of August was a bit quiet'er. But still good...
In the teams last PTHC race of the season, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier took home 2nd in the GC, also winning the U25 competition, while elsewhere, Bryan Coquard managed 9th in GP Moscow.
From here on, nothing interesting is happening for us, until October, excpet for a couple of cobbled races. Most teams around us have 4-5 races in this time, with us just having the 2. But while we wait, let's have a look at what is to come.
EAST MIDLANDS CICLE CLASSIC
In the 6th consequtive PT season for the East Midlands Cicle Classic, Sam Bewley will look to make it his 5th in a row. For us, this is often a race to forget. Last season we got absolutely nothing, while Tom David's best ever performance in the race was 30th in 2015. We have managed to get into the top 10 once, back in 2012, when loaned-in rider Filippo Pozzato took 6th.
So expectations are as low as they can possibly get.
Tom David Pieter Jacobs Julien Taramarcaz Manuel Stocker Panagiotis Vlatos Georgios Bouglas Stylianos Farantakis Goran Antonijevic
Tom David, really should be a decent bet for a top 15 atleast, but we know that it isn't going to happen.
After this, the next race in line for us, is one of the most interesting races of the season. Obviously not suited well for us, though.
TOUR OF NORTHERN EUROPE
Unlike the East Midlands, we actually have a little firepower here:
The race start out with a difficult, and fairly long cobbled Team Timetrial. We have brought a mixture of decent timetriallists and cobblers to the race, and hopefully the mix will give us a decent outing. Then 3 flat stages, 2 hilly stages, 1 cobbled stage and a relatively long individual timetrial sees the overall winner crowned.
Obviously we don't have a pre race favorite, but Tom David have a good mixture of cobbles and hills in him, and isn't the worst cobbled timetriallist either. Jerome Coppel and Panagiotis Vlatos come with the ambition of winning the individual timetrial, and for Jerome Coppel, hopefully fight for a decent GC aswell, althought the cobbles have been extremely hard for him in the recent tries.
After the biggest month on the calender, things calm down a bit, and neither Coppel or Spilak are in a racing month. Yet, there is a few races to attend:
Deutschland Tour GP Moscow East Midlands Cicle Classic *PTHC Race
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier and the direction of staff took a big decision in the off season towards the 2017 season, deciding that Lecuisinier needed a little bit of added GC succes, before taking the leaders depeche in 2018, and thus riding Tour of California and this time, Deutschland Tour.
Lecuisinier was a pre-race favorite, something entirely new for him going into the race, and it was visable. Lecuisinier struggled, throughout the race to time his attacks to win the race, but nonetheless it was a great learning experience.
Former U25 competitor Tim Wellens took the early lead, while Lecuisinier slowly climbed the rankings, distancing his main U25 rival, Silvio Herklotz in the proces.
It was Clement Koretzky who landed the first big moment, though, when he outsprinted Wilco Kelderman for the win on stage 6.
The hilly stage also saw Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier take a big chunk of time out of Tim Wellens lead, before the final mountain stage effectively putting him in 2nd, a mere 7 seconds behind the belgian, aswell as 42 and 50 seconds ahead of Rigoberto Úran and Silvio Herklotz.
With 20km to go on the final mountainstage, things were beginning to look good, as both Wellens and Herklotz struggled with the increased pace. Unfortunately Lecuisinier didn't play it cool, and used a great amount of effort on the downhill and flat run-in, which made him lose contact to Úran on the final climb.
With 3km to the top, Lecuisinier managed to get back up to Úran, and disaster seemed to have been avoided, but with 2km to go, the colombian sat the foot down, and Lecuisinier cracked.
The race was lost. By a mere 23 second gap...
Despite the letdown, Lecuisinier could raise his arms taking home the U25 jersey, as so often before, but also getting a first ever GC podium, as a consolidation price.
We are fully determined that this experience will be important for Lecuisinier in the upcoming years. And mind you, he is just 24 years old, and will have another year fighting for U25 competitions. A very interesting fight is set against Silvio Herklotz and Merhawi Kudus aswell as possibly Hugh Carthy, Ricard Antonio Carapaz and Jack Haig next season.
Deutschland Tour was the big gamble of the month, but another two races were to come. First GP Moscow, where Bryan Coquard was back after ending 6th here last season.
The expectations was not quite as high, and a top 10 would easily do, so we were pleased to see Coquard sprinting for 9th, not far behind the future rival Sam Bewley in 5th.
The final race of the month, the East Midlands Cicle Classic have not given us much to cheer about in recent years, and this season was no different. With 8km to the line Tom David and John Degenkolb was dropped from the group, only to finish 19th and 20th, far behind the big points.
This concluded the month, not giving us much points, but enough to almost level out with Moser, in the first of 3 months of being the underdog. September being the big challenge, with Moser riding 3 races and us just 1.
Points gained: 445pts
Next up: September including Tour of Northern Europe[/quote]
Only one race on offer for us, in the month of September.
After the biggest month on the calender, things calm down a bit, and neither Coppel or Spilak are in a racing month. Yet, there is a few races to attend:
Tour of Northern Europe
Last season we were very unlucky as Tom David was in a very good position before the final hilly stage. Positioned in 6th overall he crashed and lost 9 minutes, and thus dropping outside the top 30.
Prior to the season we decided to sign a few riders suitable for the opening cobbled-TTT, and ended up landing 6th, which kept Tom David in a good position. When he kicked away from everyone on stage 3 to take the stage, we began seeing great chances ahead. Being in a great position for 5th in the GC, we were extremely sad to see him yet again crash out of GC contention, on the cobbled stage 4.
Jerome Coppel managed to finish 16th in the individual TT, to shock the world with poor efforts. A huge blow, and a disturbing entry towards his key race of the season Tour of Tasmania.
Panagiotis Vlatos, however, performed well to take 2nd on the stage.
In the end we came away with less than expected, and can wave goodbye to the outside shot of us reclaiming the PT win.
Points gained: 112pts
Next up: October including Copenhagen - Malmo TTT, Tour of Tasmania and Giro di Lombardia
The final chapter of "The chase for equality" is here. Only one month remain after another two have been ridden.
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.
Last time 7.425 points seemed realistic, and 7.200 points was the level that we were almost certainly getting.
As usual we start out by looking at the sprinters category
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Bryan Coquard
263
786
TOTAL 2017 points
786
We have been well ahead of schedule for quite some time, and the dream figure for us was 775, while we originally expected somewhere around 600. Beating both those figures obviously look very nice. Bryan Coquard have no more racing left, but we definately can't be unhappy with these figures.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Simon Spilak
1626
1920
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
896
940
Clement Koretzky
779
381
Yuriy Vasyliv
203
213
Jakub Novak
218
118
TOTAL 2017 points
3.572
Deutschland Tour was rather good pointswise, and swing Lecuisinier above his score of last season, which is very reassuring. Clement Koretzky did well, but still far behind what was to be expected from him. While Lecuisinier is now done, Clement Koretzky is present in 2 of the remaining 3 races and thus should be able to catch the "50 points" we wanted from him last time. Just 18 is needed. So instead we adjust the expectations to hopefully see him score 425 points in total, which is still not good enough.
Yuriy Vasyliv climbed above his last season score, but again was unlucky in Germany to crash out of more points. This season alone crashes have costed him close to 150 points. Much similar is seen from Jakub Novak, who is 100 points behind while having just 1 race left. And a minimum 5 points must be expected.
We expected to end up in 3.750 last time, and having two Spilak races left to come, while also having Koretzky that must be the goal still - atleast. Spilak should be able to score higher than 150 points himself, so instead we want to adjust to 3.800 for the season.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Tom David
317
303
Pieter Jacobs
0
95
Julien Taramarcaz
0
68
TOTAL 2017 points
466
The cobbles is still a really poor season for us. While having upgraded things really look bad. Tom David took a nice stagewin in Tour of Northern Europe but yet again failed to deliver in East Midlands and crashed in Tour of Northern Europe. Pieter Jacobs took a bit from KOM, but otherwise nothing.
The goal of scoring 500 points looked really good at one point, and had Tom David not crashed we would have even managed 600! But then disaster struck. Being 34 points behind at the moment says we won't reach the 600, but it will be close. Tom David have one race left, while Taramarcaz have two. 10-15 points must be possible, so we say 480 points is the new goal.
Name
2016 reduced
2017 points
Jerome Coppel
1251
884
Panagiotis Vlatos
339
314
TOTAL 2017 points
1.198
Last time we adjusted the points from 1.200 to 1.400 points. Unfortunately seeing Jerome Coppel in TONE was a complete waste of racedays. Scoring just 5 points in 8 races was basically the disaster that shouldn't happen. Missing out on a good individual TT was bad, but also missing out on 10-15 points from the GC was really poor. Luckily Panagiotis Vlatos scored a bit, and could potentially score a little bit more in the TTT, and with some luck in the TT of Tasmania. We hope he'll deliver another 25 points to level out his score from last season - but we aren't idiots, so 10-15 is the realistic figure. Jerome Coppel have Tour of Tasmania still to come, and while he could win the race, it would be ludicriss to expect so. Instead we expect 5th and 2nd in the TT, giving him 155. Combined with Vlatos the new goal must be 1.370 points.
If those points are added together:
GC RIDERS / PUNCHEURS 3.800
SPRINTERS 786
COBBLERS 480
TTERS 1.370
DOMESTIQUE 950
This should add up to 7.386, which is 39 points less than last time. Not a huge thing, but 140 points added from Tom David in TONE would have seen us challenge to end above 7.500 points! To do that we need a lucky TTT, winning the Tour of Tasmania (aswell as another rider in top 5) and getting a very strong result in Lombardia.
It is not impossible, but definately not likely either.
We are still looking safe for an overall result above 7.233pts, while 7.756pts are no longer realistic.
On a normal season we would have won the rankings, but this time we are - unfortunately in competition with a certain team, Moser, who is currently on 7.100 points, while having an additional 2 races more than us.
We are fully acceptant that Moser have outplayed us this time around. Several strong results throughout the season. From expected aswell as unexpected riders. Peter Sagan taking a huge jump to become a world class rider, Peter Velits to pick the weakest GT in quite some years, Matej Vysna picking up good points and Daniel Vesely sprinting to some unexpected wins! And of course there is Sam Bewley!
That said, we acknowledge the fact that those points come while, riders have also underperformed. Jan Hirt and Petr Vakoc have not performed according to their stats or due to crashes, while also Peter Sagan have hit the deck a number of times. So we can't point our fingers at Moser being lucky, and us being unlucky.
Should we have managed to beat them it would have been because of us planning slightly better (Lecuisiner in Giro, Coppell not in TONE) or simply us being the more lucky team. We didn't get those things and thus the rightful winner of the Pro Tour crown belong to another manager.
We will keep on putting up a fight, and won't give our final congratulations to Moser and Roman, just yet - but we are ready with flowers and a bottle of the finest wine once the season is done.
Statistics, over and out!
As always - feel free to leave a comment. We like debating these things.
In the end we came away with less than expected, and can wave goodbye to the outside shot of us reclaiming the PT win.
I'm sure Roman doesn't agree that your chances are entirely gone
I'm sure he doesn't - But leading by 150 points and having 2 additional races, while we must be almost similar in points in TTT and Lombardia (The latter might even be better for Moser), should se me score 500+ points in Lombardia to stand an outside chance.
We are extremely proud to announce that we have - as a team - yet again managed to complete every single goal set for the team prior to the season.
Several goals was placed late in the season, in fact our first goal was at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, having just crossed the halfway point of the season. We had a relatively moderate ambition, considering that Simon Spilak went 2nd in 2015. In 2016 our results in the race weren't all that strong, and thus we decided to opt for a more balanced option of a top 10. Simon Spilak managed to replicate his result of 2015 to get 2nd - infact again behind Simone Ponzi.
The second goal of the season was top 10 in the Vuelta a España, where Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier was present. We believed before the race that it would be an easy task, but the lineup was much more difficult than the Giro d'Italia, and thus became more difficult. In the end top 10 was not all that difficult at all, but reaching higher than the end result would have been an overperformance. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier landed 7th in the overall GC, after finishing 4th last year.
In the final GT of the year, Simon Spilak was back in a final (In the Festina-colors) attempt to win the biggest race of the world, Tour de France! The goal was, much like last season, a bit more balanced in getting 3rd or better would be satisfying. Looking at the startlist everything else than 2nd would be a failure though. Luckily Spilak showed great strength and was always in contention for 2nd atleast. The pre-race favorite Rein Täaramae crashed and had another 1 stage part-injury, which costed him the overall GC. This gave Spilak a chance to make the win - and he grabbed it! Goal achieved!
The final in-race goal of the season was the Tour of Tasmania. The second to last race of the year, just before the Giro di Lombardia. Last season Jerome Coppel won, while Simon Spilak took 3rd. Both were back to try and achieve the race goal - the most difficult of the season. We wanted to win in Tasmania yet again, and we did so! Jerome Coppel took a dominant win on the final timetrial, but to make it even better Simon Spilak took 2nd, to make it an astonishing end to the season. Just one more race to go!
The final goal of the season is a team standings goal. Having won the final 2 PT standings, top 3 was the bare minimum we could accept. At this point there is a huge gap to 4th, that cannot be closed mathematically. And thus we can look back already on a very satisfying season!
Tour of Tasmania - Win | Winner Jerome Coppel - ACHIEVED
Tour de France - Top 3 | Winner Simon Spilak - ACHIEVED
Team standings - Top 3 | Atleast 2nd - ACHIEVED
Vuelta a España - Top 10 | 7th Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier - ACHIEVED
Liege-Bastogne-Liege - Top 10 | 2nd Simon Spilak - ACHIEVED
knockout wrote:
And that's why you never declare the season over too early
Congrats for the huge race and achieving all season goals! The title fight is still alive but now it's your race to lose again
Moaning and playing underdog have always worked better, than rolling along believing in a good result
Indeed it is ours to lose - if I calculated things proper, but we definately won't rest before it's over. I still fancy Sagan to win in Lombardia, and that requires a good Spilak result to overcome.
We, here at Festina-Dexia, are proud to announce, that we have won our 3rd consecutive Pro Tour title, finally entering the history books with a record of our own!
Winning the Pro Tour in 2015, 2016 and 2017 puts us alone in the all time winners list, also (obviously) adding a new record of most consecutive wins after having tied the record with Wikipedia after the 2016 win. We are extremely proud to finally be up where we aimed to be once the Festina brand entered the world of Man-Game pro cycling.
Back then this was an unrealistic target, but after surviving the difficult 2013 season things began to look decent. Our team depth had been secured with riders like Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Bryan Coquard, Clement Koretzky, Tom David and Panagiotis Vlatos (who was signed the year before) and when signing Simon Spilak in 2014 things started to look good. A season of developping the talents was needed in the 2014 season, and we initially believed the 2015 season would also be a development period.
In the end we barely scraped through to beat Vesuvio in the final race of the season, Giro di Lombardia, which concluded a season of good planning - and a great amount of good luck. Having learnt a lot from the 2015 season, we were ready to fight for the 2016 crown, depite losing a key member of our squad - Riccardo Ricco. The input from the 2015 season made for a stronger tactical element, though, and the season was planned for the sole reason of winning the Pro Tour. One race had a huge focus, the Tour de France, but all other races were planned to maximize points. It was also at that point our micromanagement started, following up on all available statistics and our meassuring tool "The chase for equality started". The tool was meant to be an internal benchmark for our riders to see if they could match the results of the past season - or if they had improved.
Quickly the tool became an external tool, for others to look at our development, and to see how we cracked numbers to maximize our potential. It was also a performance tool for the riders to look at throughout the season.
When the 2017 season started, a massive turnaround had been made, and we were introduced to the PTHC, and the bands involved in planning a season. We made use of the codes in our tools, to predict certain outcomes and risks when planning our season. We came to the conclusion, that the points to be gained in the PTHC bands would exceed the risk of putting high level riders to the race, getting no return. So we started putting up a simple formula of possible opponents for each race, evaluating the percentages of certain riders attending, also putting into content that certain teams had multiple riders for a certain race.
This helped us plan the season, from a point-pr-race-day point of view, and in the end this allowed us to take 1.409 points from the PTHC - most points of all PT teams.
Throughout the season, we have been able to tweak our tool for the upcoming season, knowing which races are most likely to give big opposition, aswell as including the likelyhood of people gambling more/less in the PTHC direction. We believe that these numbers and codes have been the key to us lifting the 2017 trophy, and will help us to achieve the best possible result in 2018 where the team will start a new transformation in order to help further the progress of riders like Lecuisinier, Coquard and Koretzky - who will remain as the core of the team!
At the beginning of the season we made a benchmark for all riders within the team. Numbers were done from linear impairment because of the big uncertainty in fewer racedays available, aswell as the new added PTHC. For the upcoming season numbers will be easier to crack. These are the numbers of each rider going into the 2017 season:
Here it is easy to see, that Simon Spilak was the key in winning the rankings. Most key riders have performed what was expected, or close to it, with the exception of Clement Koretzky. As there are a lot of factors to count, such as decrease in stats, new opponents, reduced calender, added PTHC an uncertainty of 15% +/- will always be normal, maybe even higher. So riders within 20% +/- is what I refer to as normal. This means that only a few riders have performed better or worse.
Simon Spilak being the biggest increase in terms of points, but not in terms of beating the expected. Here instead we find loanie Cameron Bayly who managed a staggering 175 points compared to the expected 80. The points obviously comes from winning a stage at the Giro d'Italia, as 75 points deducted would put him in the "normal" zone.
Bryan Coquard is the biggest surprise for us. If we only look at his points calculation from last season he should score 263 points, but we took into consideration that Georgos Tzortzakis was now gone, and he was trained a bit in the off season, and instead we estimated that 450 points was realistic. He went to shatter that by scoring 786 points beating the projection by 75%. That is huge!
We have to also credit loanies James Piccoli and Julian Alaphilippe who both went better than expected!
On the negative we have to pinpoint Clement Koretzky as the biggest upset. Despite getting 10th in Milano San Remo, taking a stagewin here and there and finishing the season in style by getting 5th in Giro di Lombardia, we can't help but think that 520 points is simply not good enough. Considering that he scored much better last season, and was trained in this off season, that is definately the biggest upset. We also have to look at newly signed Pieter Jacobs, who was actually benchmarked fairly cautious at 150 points. He dissapointed massively by not even managing to break the 100 points barrier, and thus leaving 37% in the negative.
Jakub Novak was unlucky throughout the season with multiple crashes, and therefor it comes as no big surprise that he ends up 48% behind the estimate. We won't go too deep into this. He has a relatively few amounts of racedays and crashed in atleast 50% of those.
Manuel Stocker and Murilo Affonso were just on the wrong side of the note, but with so few points on offer it isn't worth going to evaluate. Loanie Nawuti Liphongyu was 56% behind expected, but this was mainly due to planning him as a helper in TTT heavy (and GT) races, aswell as him not finishing a GT where he was set for 10-15 points.
For the upcoming seasonwe know that we have to say goodbye to James Piccoli, Cameron Bayly, Nawuti Liphongyu and Julian Alaphilippe. We want to thank the managers allowing them to stay with us for the season. We are greatful, and thankful - and we hope they will all return stronger for your teams next season. In total those 4 riders managed to score 430 points. Almost the difference between getting 1st and 2nd in the overall Pro Tour Rankings!
We end the season on a high. We have regained the title, we have secured all season goals, we have finally managed to win the Tour de France, but also added Giro di Lombardia, Tour of Norway and Lac Megantic Classic to our recordlist. And most importantly - we have managed to keep our core of talents while doing so! Thanks a lot for another great season, and we will see you in a while for the off season.
We, here at Festina-Dexia, are proud to announce, that we have won our 3rd consecutive Pro Tour title, finally entering the history books with a record of our own!
Winning the Pro Tour in 2015, 2016 and 2017 puts us alone in the all time winners list, also (obviously) adding a new record of most consecutive wins after having tied the record with Wikipedia after the 2016 win.
Not quite yet
Certainly three in a row is a record, so congratulations for that! Always interesting to see how much thought, planning and analysis goes into the game, and your team has consistently paid you back for that in these last few seasons. And if anywhere made the difference in particular this season, it was certainly the PTHC category.
It will be interesting to see where you go from here, even with changes, you'll no doubt still be up there.
Hard work in the off-season pays off. Interesting to see Tom David almost as successful as was expected from you before the season. Poor boy was surely criticized during the season too much from you!
One take from this for me: It looks like I really need to improve my team in the area of secondary leaders. Riders like Vasyliv or Vlatos made quite a difference for your total points count. Will be interesting to find out what you have in your mind for the next year.
Tom David
Pieter Jacobs
Julien Taramarcaz
Panagiotis Vlatos
Goran Antonijevic
Jerome Coppel
Nawuti Liphongyu
Deutschland Tour
GP Moscow
East Midlands Cicle Classic
- But leading by 150 points and having 2 additional races, while we must be almost similar in points in TTT and Lombardia (The latter might even be better for Moser), should se me score 500+ points in Lombardia to stand an outside chance.
