Mark Dzamastagic has gained a reputation for his ability to perform late attacks but his main job is to deliver our lead sprinter safely to the line. He will accompy Van Stayen in every MVS race with the exceptions of Amstel Gold Race and Fleche Wallone. He will attempt to prove his versatility in the Tour of Northern Europe.

He will have two opportunity as the leader for our sprints: He'll ride the Dauphine Libere in the hope that the clashing Tour de Suisse might weaken the startlist and more importantly, we expect the Giro d'Italia to have the weakest sprinter startlist and believe that Dzamastagic has chances for a stage win in the second and third week of the race.

When we signed Tobyn, his most valuable assets to us was his ability to perform in cobbled races and hence, he will follow Greg Van Avermaet throughout the cobbled season with the exception of Rheden GP where he will lead for us due to a calendar clash with another cobbled race. He has shown in 2016 already that he likes the race by finishing 2nd in 2016 behind Strava's Jerome Baugnies and ahead of Danny Summerhill.

Rumors that Horton would be part of Michael Van Stayen's leadout train were quickly shot down by the management. The truth is that Horton and Van Stayen won't ride together a single time this season. Outside of cobbled races Tobyn will have three races on his schedule where he can sprint for own results: Vuelta a Espana, Paris - Nice and together with Mansilla in Tour de Suisse. He doesnt have any pressure to get results but we hope that he gets into positions where he will participate in sprints and hope that he can use his rare acceleration at some point for minor results.

Fun Fact: There are only two PT riders with 76FL+ and 82ACC+: Tobyn Horton and Sam Bewley.

Our third season season in Pro Tour is about to start and is there a better way to get ready for the new season than reminding of past moments of glory? We went from highlight to highlight in 2017 and enjoyed success after success. Sometimes the results were anticipated, sometimes we hoped that something might be possible and sometimes we just were shocked by our team. For this post we count down our top ten moments of the season. Moments that were memorable because of good results, active racing or because of previous history:

- Emils Liepins finishes second on two Vuelta stages
- Greg Van Avermaet shows superb consistency by finishing all early season cobbles on the podium
- Michel Koch is mentioned amongst the TDF GC favourites
- Greg Van Avermaet rides to solo victory on stage four of the Tour of Northern Europe

It's the Tour de France and our team is build around Michael Van Staeyen. The race so far has been a disappointment for our Belgian sprint leader with no stage win to this point but only two second places and two fourth places to this day.

The pressure is huge as the pre-race expectations were far from satisfied, the sprint field weakened with Ben Swift out of the race and Arnaud Demare potentially injured after a crash on the previous stage and a perfectly suited flat stage profile with some smaller hills along the way and a bit of an uphill final kilometer.

Strava used strong winds to split the pack resulting in a select group of 43 people without strong contenders like Demare or Keukeleire. Instead eight Strava riders and six Evonik guys made the group. With four kilometers left ahead, Strava made a team attack with Hermans, Boeckmans and Vanendert.

Evonik is the only team with enough man power to chase them down. Dzamastagic turn at the front of the group was so strong that only Van Stayen and Reinhardt were able to follow him and the trio could link with the Strava trio. On the day of the biggest pressure he outsprinted Boeckmans for the stage win.

Many teams aim for the final classification of Grand Tours, Evonik doesn't. Due to the lack of a top climber and with their sprinters not attending the Giro, we had to rely on aggressive riding to get some results. Aggressive riding can lead to tv exposure, stage wins and KoM jerseys. You normally need to be a good climber to stand a chance at the KoM jersey. But this didnt stop Marc Potts (63 MO) from riding into the KoM jersey and defending it for several days. He started his hunt for KoM points early with his breakaway attempt on the first road stage after the opening time trial which saw him in the KoM jersey for the first time and followed this effort with six more breakaway attempts. He joined the break on flat, hilly and even mountainous stages and wore the jersey on 13 consecutive stages (some of them as replacement for the GC leader).

Many teams build their team around a domestic star and so do we. Tom Skujins is our posterboy and the ideal of most aspiring young latvians.

He is amongst the best puncheurs in the world and proved that by winning the Scandinavia Open Road Race 2017. While I would love to write you a detailed race report, I won't do it because it was a rather dull race to watch. The favourites were watching and guarding each other for very long and key for his victory was that he remained cool till the finish and was concentrated enought to start the final sprint from the perfect position with perfect timing. While not being known for his sprint finish his timing was excellent and he beat Jan Bakelandts and Simone Ponzi to the line. It was his first classic win for Evonik after multiple stage wins and a couple of great classic finishes.

The Tour of California is widely seen as a climbers event but already in 2016 a couple of puncheurs have proven that they are a real danger for the race favourites and Yuri Trofimov even ran away with the overall victory. Once again on the fifth stage of the 2017 Tour of Cali madness took over. With 160 kilometres to go the best puncheurs in the peleton cooperated to attack the climbers. Riders such as Juul-Jensen, Tom Jelte Slagter, De Bie and Koretzky were part of the attack - together with Toms Skujins. While the move wasnt succesful immediately, it hurt the leaders as much that race leader Romain Sicard blew up with over 100km to go. It would take too long to recap all the action that happened including tons of attacks, Dzamastagic chasing and countless riders abandoning the race. Skujins might only have finished fifth on the day but the stage will be remembered for the pure epicness of all the action.

Sam "Bewbastard" Bewley has been the bully of the entire cobble division for far too long. No matter how the race is raced he was, is and will be the favourite. Evonik - ELKO has a rich history of second place finishes behind him: Starting from our first monument wildcard, Paris Roubaix 2015, where Tom Boonen entered the velodrome together with Bewley to countless battles between Boonen and Greg Van Avermaet.

The East Midland Cycle Classic 2017 was the time where Evonik finally beat Bewley in a cobbled classic. After Bewley dominated the race in previous year with back-to-back-to-back-to-back victories it long looked like we were witnessing a fivepeat especially once Greg Van Avermaet lost contact over the last sector. However, multiple attacks by Bewley failed and GVA returned to the front and with 2,5 kilometres to go he attacked his rivals and soloed towards the finish line. Incidently, the first victory over the arch rival was also the final cobbled classic for Greg Van Avermaet before his decline.

Evonik traditionally struggles in the mountains and the double header of Dauphine and Suisse is far from our favourite time of the year. Two mountainous stage races where our team has no favourites whatsoever and that are basically just a matter of not wasting too many important rider's race days without having any expectations.

Our hopes for a result in the Dauphine were immediately exceeded as Janis Dakteris sprinted to a stage win on the opening stage also taking the leader jersey for a day. But it didnt end there. Andris Smirnovs joined the morning breakaway on the fourth and fifth stage which he finished as fourth and second respectively. On the way he earned the right to ride in the mountain jersey and finished second in the final KoM classification and fifth in the points classification.

While these results might be super surprising this wasnt even our best race of the week. The Tour de Suisse started similarly with our lead sprinter for the race Greg Van Avermaet finishing second. The rest of the race was a very selective route that had attracted one of the strongest start lists in the history of cycling featuring Rein Taaramae, Andy Schleck, Pluchkin, Madrazzo, Alarcon, Amador, Machado, Dombrowski, Herklotz and many more while our top duo of Vosekalns and Koch was not noticed by anyone before the race started. However, they should turn into a major talking point. Koch started with a brilliant ride on the third stage after an attack midway through the stage on the Glaubenbielen ascent. Being ignored for a while he could enter the final climb with a gap towards most favourites which helped him finishing 9th on the stage. Now high in the GC he continued to fight for every position and stayed largely in contact with some of the best stage racers in the world. After dropping a bit in the GC he entered the break of the day on the final and nineth stage of the race which he finished second on the day. His efforts were rewarded with a 10th place in GC and the KoM jersey at the end of the tour.

While the definition of the word "moment" might be stretched a bit these unexpected results were a major surprise for our team and will surely be remembered for quite some time!

A look at the profile should be a strong hint that this a profile that Evonik likes as around half the leaders in team history excel on flat rated sprint races with lots of hills along the way and the team already did very well in 2016 with Van Stayen finishing 2nd and Dzamastagic finishing seventh.

A strong attack by Wisniowski (who previously was, is and will be amongst our transfer targets) saw the peleton struggling and got a big enough gap to require a strong reaction by the peleton. Siskevicius was the one to take the duty to chase and his efforts completely destroyed the peloton that only Van Avermaet, Mohs, Van Asbroeck, Dzamastagic, Kluge and Langeveld were able to follow. While Wisniowski couldnt be caught we came away with a 3rd, 4th, 6th, 11th and 15th place which is a ridiculous depth scoring. We recommend to watch the final KMs to see the powerful effort by Evaldas Siskevicius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxtrs...xtrsOIiBcc

Most sponsors love the PR that comes from wearing a GT leaders jersey and our sponsors are no different. However unlike most other teams our only realistic chance is to grab it on the first couple of stages. We already had the pleasure in the 2016 Giro after Michael Van Stayen won the opening stage and you wouldnt find many pundits who expected us to get another stint in the jersey and you cannot blame them for being wrong without Yannick Stoltz being our only stage hope on the first three stages and a TTT scheduled for the fourth day.

However, Andris Vosekalns attacked the peloton on the fifth stage after last man standing from the original break, Marc Potts was caught and because noone in the peleton really tried to chase him down he was strong enough to solo to the victory. Despite being 2'40 down in GC, the gap grew large enough to wear the pink jersey until stage 8.

GP Moscow turned into one of our favourite races in 2016 when Greg Van Avermaet converted a 12 kilometer long solo into a surprising victory ahead of Russian rocketman Roman Maximov.

In 2017 same profile, but this time Michael Van Stayen is our leader with Greg Van Avermaet only as our 2nd option. Wind up to 45 km/h promised some carnage and we might know a team willing to create carnage on flat roads: It's only 2500m from the finish line when the peloton notices that a dangerous group of five excellent rouleurs escape: Evonik guys Greg Van Avermaet, Mark Dzamastagic, Yannick Stoltz are accompanied by two guys who know Evonik tactics: Lasse Norman Hansen, who was contracted with us between 2014 and 2015 and Danny Summerhill, who already was part of Dzamastagic's winning move in in the [url=]Down Under Classic 2015[/url].

And in the end it is Dzamastagic winning the classic while Van Avermaet finishes second just behind him and Michael Van Stayen completes the fantastic team result as 7th.
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Evonik creates carnage on the final 3km

Evonik might still be one of the youngest WT teams but we already had a reputation as one of the strongest teams for the classic before the 2017 season even started. Especially our monument record was impressive as we finished our first five monuments on the podium: 2nd Paris-Roubaix 2015 with Tom Boonen, 3rd Milan San Remo 2016 with Michael Van Stayen, 2nd Ronde Van Vlaanderen 2016 with Greg Van Avermaet, 2nd Paris - Roubaix 2016 with Greg Van Avermaet and 3rd Liege - Bastogne - Liege 2016 with Toms Skujins. While the streak snapped at the Giro di Lombardia 2016, we continued to strive for our first monument victory.

And we wanted to use the very next opportunity as Michael Van Stayen is always one of the top favourites in Milan San Remo. Evonik was seen at the front of the peloton early as the team was the first to chase down attacks even 15 kilometres before the Cipressa already with Smirnovs at the front of the peloton and later on the Cipressa and between Cipressa and Poggio it is Dzamastagic to ramp up the pace.

After the Poggio it is a group of 23 with two Evonik guys in there: Greg Van Avermaet and Michael Van Stayen. A picture perfect leadout by Van Avermaet delivers Michael Van Stayen into the perfect position and even makes the victory look easy in the end. A perfect race by Evonik to finally give us our first monument victory and possibly the biggest moment in the history of Evonik - ELKO so far.

jandal7 wrote:
What a season, such amazing moments, all of them Personal favourites being Vosekalns in the Giro, GVA's final hurrah over Bewley at the end of the year, the GP Moscow Dzamastravaganza, of course MSR, and the stunning Tour de Suisse from Koch But loved them all, and great recap!

2016 Sam Bewley wins ahead of Greg Van Avermaet
2017 Sam Bewley wins ahead of Greg Van Avermaet
And 2018 was finally the year of Greg Van Avermaet

It was an action packed edition of the Tour of Flanders and once again it was all about the battle between Sam Bewley and Greg Van Avermaet. They found themselves at the front again and again with changing companions. And often enough these groups failed to stay upfront because one of them didnt want to ride for the other one.

The race was decided when (just in last seasons East Midlands Cycle Classic) Sam Bewley could not follow Greg Van Avermaets counter attack three kilometres before the finish and the Belgian soloed home alone for Evoniks first cobbled monument victory after 1 third place and four second places in previous years.

Once the final Grand Tour finishes the rankings usually shape up and offer a good picture. Similar to the past few years Evonik is on track to achieve the season goal of a top ten finish in the rankings. The team is currently 8th in the rankings and while the repeat of a third place finish might look unlikely at this point, we are expected to rise a bit until the final rankings drop.

The individual rankings show that none of our three big leaders is inside the top 15 but each of them still has a couple of important races left:

Michael Van Stayen has the least race days left of the trio as he will only lead in Riga - Jurmala, GP Moscow and the Tour of Tasmania.

Toms Skujins still has 21 of his race days left as he will start in two long PTHC stage races (Volta ao Portugal and Balkans International) as well as the closer of the season, the Giro di Lombardia.

Greg Van Avermaet is only 31st in the individual rankings right now but he has a packed late season schedule with leader opportunities in the Tour of Northern Europe, the East Midlands Cycle Classic and the Tour of the Battenkill while also participating in Riga - Jurmala, GP Moscow and Giro di Lombardia as a key domestique.

Current prediction: Top 5 finish.