@ Booker and whitejersey It will be good to race against the new teams as well, as long as you dont have great teams In all seriousness, we wish you well and it will be interesting to see what teams you will assemble, and we hope we will have a nice amount of battles!

@ DaveTwoBob ah my most loyal supporter! We do hope on getting promoted as well as we didnt give a good account of ourselves the last time we went up, maybe next time we will perform much better depending on if we make it. Especially considering the competition we will have it will be very tough.


@ jandal7 Good luck to you as well for the upcoming season, hopefully we can both get promoted providing you dont take too many points from me!

@ all Goals have been announced as well, feel free to check them out and then say they aren't achievable

Since we have a goal of winning the individual rider standings this year, we feel it would be relevant to review Tvetcov's all conquering season in 2016. Of the 6 races he raced in 2016, he scored a total of 554 points; over 50% of our total points scored across the season showing just how valuable he is to our success this season.
Tvetcov won both the USPCC and the Tour of Bulgaria along the way, one which included a monstrous performance in the queen stage of the USPCC where he took almost 4 minutes out of his competitors on one climb alone. Such a performance hasn't been replicated anywhere else and was the foundations of his win.




He secured other notable GC finishes, never placing outside the top 8; which included 3rd place in the Tour of Scotland, narrowly missing the podium in Southland (4th), 2nd in Azerbaijan while also faltering in the searing heat of the Middle East (placing only 8th). Consistent stage placings throughout all kinds of terrain also secured him a Points classification win in USPCC, although he came narrowly close to winning other jerseys elsewhere.




Results in focus:

1st General Classification - Tour of Bulgaria
2nd Points Classification - Tour of Bulgaria
1st General Classification - US Pro Cycling Challenge
1st Points Classification - US Pro Cycling Challenge
Stage win, stage 5 - US Pro Cycling Challenge
Stage win, stage 7 - US Pro Cycling Challenge
2nd General Classification - Tour of Azerbaijan
2nd Points Classification - Tour of Azerbaijan
3rd General Classification - Tour of Scotland
4th General Classification - Tour of Southland
3rd Points Classification - Tour of Southland
8th General Classification - Tour of the Middle East

Its been a relatively busy transfer season for the boys from Yorkshire and while we didn't get all our targets, we are confident that we have improved the team in some of the areas we needed. However, we still don't have the "full package" like some other teams do, but we will try our best to compete in what is a stacked CT this year. Without further ado, this is the team that will challenge for wins throughout the 2017 season.

Last name	First name	Flat	Mo	Hill	TT	Sta	Res	Rec	Cob	Spr	Acc	Fig	Dow	Pro	2017 Team
Dennis	Rohan	72	74	75	78	73	75	67	53	65	68	69	56	81	cycleYorkshire
Tvetcov	Serghei	71	77	75	74	72	71	76	58	72	73	73	64	75	cycleYorkshire
Thwaites	Scott	73	59	65	61	74	70	76	76	78	76	60	70	61	cycleYorkshire
Tennant	Andrew	77	63	69	78	76	76	77	54	67	68	78	67	77	cycleYorkshire
Rowe	Matt	72	50	62	67	80	58	79	67	80	70	61	66	67	cycleYorkshire
Corti	Marco	72	61	63	62	74	64	77	59	78	76	66	63	62	cycleYorkshire
Robert	Stelly	67	57	60	79	66	70	68	57	55	55	74	70	79	cycleYorkshire
Stannard	Ian	75	53	55	79	69	70	67	66	57	72	69	61	79	cycleYorkshire
Takenouchi	Yu	73	58	64	61	72	70	68	74	65	70	67	68	61	cycleYorkshire
Murray	Thomas	69	52	64	62	70	68	70	59	75	77	61	66	62	cycleYorkshire
Brammeier	Matthew	72	52	63	71	70	66	67	61	74	77	72	56	71	cycleYorkshire
Ford	William	75	68	69	74	71	74	72	58	68	73	80	63	74	cycleYorkshire
Lampier	Steven	67	69	72	65	68	70	69	70	69	69	69	65	65	cycleYorkshire
Woods	Michael	68	73	70	64	71	72	68	54	58	61	54	68	65	cycleYorkshire
Semple	Adam	65	67	71	62	67	68	64	52	68	73	77	66	62	cycleYorkshire
Wu	Shengjun	73	60	67	59	72	72	67	56	66	70	75	63	59	cycleYorkshire

Overall, we feel that this team can compete for wins in a variety of stage races across the season with Tvetcov in the high mountains and Dennis and our band of TTers, including new star signing Andrew Tennant in the more flat races decided by TTs. We brought in one of Yorkshire's finest riders in Scott Thwaites and he'll surely be competitive in a variety of northern classic styled races; something we haven't been confident of doing in years previous. Rowe will yet again be our main sprinter and we don't really possess a one day classic rider, points which stand as our major weaknesses for the year ahead. But despite this, we are confident for a successful year.

So here are the team goals for the year 2018... Seems we have gone for a more conservative difficulty rating but with the riders we have it may be hard for us to complete our goals, namely the Tour of Britain and Cheshire Cycling Tour - our home races :/
As we break our goals down we will start with the Tour of Britain here we will bring a team lead by new signing, Jonathan Bellis where we hope he can be inspired by the home fans to roll back the years and win the overall. Although that possibility seems pretty low, we will still bring a creditable team to fight for stage wins.
The Tour of Southland is a much more reliable goal for us, but with the increase in competition, like Coppel and Zmorka, both likely to attend this race - we are hoping our arsenal of Luke Durbridge, Emilien Viennet and Andrew Tennant can fight for overall honours while Andreas Stauff fights for stage wins.
The Cheshire Cycling Tour provides us with yet another home race to target yet we don't really have a top rider to fight for the overall honours. We bring new rider and leader, Andrew Fenn to this race hoping for something special and while we bring a creditable lead out train for Matt Rowe, little is expected from this race.
Our final race goal is the Deutschland Tour where we expect the TT to be the main decider in the overall standings. We bring good depth as usual as Durbridge, Viennet, Stannard and Robert fight for top honours in the TT while Andreas Stauff aims for podiums in his home race.

Our overall standings goal is to finish in the top 15, which with a bit of luck seems entirely possible (IMO), but avoiding relegation is the much smarter and legitimate option.

This will be the full roster for the new season



Riders in Bold - Loaned in rider
Riders in italics - Stagaires

As we enter the new season we need to announce our team of challengers for the new season. Our big new shiny addition was Louis Meinjtes. He may be slightly overpaid (#blamejandal) but he offers a top class leader for us in our many races that involves a mountain or two, he will be backed up by Tvetcov, our former mountain leader who was demoted after a disappointing 2017 and former Avenir winner Tim Kennaugh. Jonathan Bellis offers a capable yet not stunning option for one day classics yet we still believe he can deliver a shock result or two in this very competitive PCT division. Other than that sprint leaders include Andreas Stauff and stalwart Matt Rowe. While this is not an area we should score often, a stage win or two may be delivered in weaker startlists. Andrew Fenn deserves a minor mention as our flanders classics leader, still he is on a relatively cheap wage for someone of his ability and we hope he can deliver many top 10 results along with deputy Scott Thwaites.
Our last mention is what the team is mainly built around - TTs. It is obviously the teams strong point with many capable riders that can deliver results on this terrain like Durbridge, Viennet, Stannard, Tennant and Robert. All these riders should deliver most of our points this year and should deliver stage race results that are decided by TTs like Olympia's Tour and will help form a formidable TTT line up when necessary. We hope all this delivers us a solid PCT team, but we are never sure in such a competitive division so perfect planning may be needed that I likely wont provide.

jandal7 wrote:
So you didn't even plan on Meintjes? Unbelievable

Due to popular request we have decided to leak our highly paid leader's schedule for the forthcoming season. We hope that he will be successful in these races by placing highly in the top 10 in every race. We believe that all these races play to Meintjes' strengths - with most of these races involving many medium mountain stages which will hopefully suit his abilities.

	Volta a Catalunya	C1
	Tour of Vancouver	HC
	Tour of California	PTHC
	Tour de Romandie	C1
	Tour of Japan	C1
	Tour de Suisse	PT
	Kenya Mountain Classic	HC
	Volta a Portugal	PTHC

	Tour Down Under	C1
	Tour de Pologne	HC
	Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha	PT
	Strade Bianche	PTHC
	Jelajah SKL	C1
	Tour of Ukraine	HC
	Lisbon Classic	PTHC
	Sochi Cup	C1
	Scandinavian Open Road Race	PTHC
	Post Danmark Rundt	HC
	Colombo Classic	PTHC
	Tour of Beijing	HC
	Tour of Britain	C1
	Giro dell'Emilia	HC

Bellis will race all our Ardennes classic esque classics as our makeshift leader for this year, in the past he has been successful in this terrain but younger, stronger riders now make him a lower class leader in this division. Even so, he has the attacking spirit to go for the race win where others would not and we hope this will lead him to a few top 10 placings in the season

	Down Under Classic	HC
	Tour Down Under	C1
	Tour of the Middle East	HC
	Ras Tailteann	C1
	SAA Tour d'Afrique	PTHC
	Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha	PT
	Tour of Southland	C1
	Lisbon Classic	PTHC
	Veenendaal - Veenendaal	HC
	Berlin ProRace	HC
	Olympia's Tour	C1
	Tour de Suisse	PT
	Ronde van Het Ijsselmeer	C1
	Rund um Koln	PTHC
	Deutschland Tour	PTHC
	Rheden GP	PTHC
	Barbados Cycling Festival	HC

For Stauff, its a pretty simple calendar, he will be the main leader for the sprint classics this season, apart from Philadelphia which clashes with Veenendaal - Rowe will lead there. He will also be the main sprinter in other stage races through out the year where we seem fit.