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[PT] Team Puma - SAP | Training
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| cio93 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 16:01
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World Champion
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Formed in 2012 with a clear focus on developing German and Western European talent to one day reap the rewards, Team Puma - SAP has been a staple of the ManGame world ever since with unchanged main sponsors and an unchanged love for teaching young riders the winning ways.
After a surprise first year promotion on the back of legendary Daniele Bennati, team management decided to not reach for the stars right away, but rather accept likely relegation and use the extra funds to lay the foundation for a game-changing team further down the road.
Notable additions to the team in that season were Arnaud Demare and Francesco Bongiorno, with especially the former now being one of the standout riders in the entire peloton.
The 2014 season saw a change of the guard from Bennati to Gerald Ciolek, who took over as team captain, and in a move to further bolster the German core of the team, a big gamble was taken and major funds were used to acquire the second cornerstone of future Team Puma - SAP, stage racing Wunderkind Silvio Herklotz.
Subsequently, the results were far and in between compared to the first two seasons, and a quiet mid-table finishing position was the result.
With Herklotz and Demare in the team however, the direction for the future was set. All that remained to be done was to deliver.
And deliver the 2015 iteration of the team did! Every rider delivered as best as they could, and a podium spot in PCT was achieved, meaning the second promotion to Pro Tour in the team's history. And this time, we were here to stay.
Nikias Arndt and Patrick Bevin were the two added riders that year who are still important pieces of the team now.
2016, with Herklotz and Demare steadily improving and Adam Blythe offering us decent chances for cobbled success for the first time ever, saw a much more prepared Team Puma - SAP in Pro Tour, going straight to the top echelon of teams and finishing a respectable 6th place overall.
The very next year saw a slight dip to 7th in the final standings, but the direction was clear, and Arnaud Demare as well as Silvio Herklotz responded very well to the off-season training again to further improve as riders and cement our position as mainstays of the pro peloton. With the signing of Colin Stüssi, we also delved into the Swiss rider pool again after many years.
Then, 2018 came along.
The duel between Michael van Stayen and Arnaud Demare has long taken over major news headlines, and Silvio Herklotz finally reached a stage where he could take on the challenge of any climber in the world in even the most prestigious races.
Nevertheless, transfer season was dominated by the acquisition of two further talents to keep the cycle going and to not become complacent and only live in the present.
Filippo Ganna has tremendous TT potential, and Rémi Cavagna is a very versatile rider already that will try his luck wherever rouleur qualities are needed.
Furthermore, to carry the Puma and SAP brands into the world, Eritrean Hadi and Isreali Sagiv add diversity to the team.
A slow early season start quickly sped up when Demare won Grand-Duche and the Ronde van Nederland along with finishing well in MSR to set us up very well for the GT part of the season.
At the first of those, the Giro d'Italia, Arnaud Demare confirmed his amazing form and ability to put his mark on the race by winning no less than six stages, tying the record for stage wins in this race and confirming the validity of our 6 year long plan for him.
At the same time in California, Silvio Herklotz did not want let the Frenchman take all the headlines and went on to win the PT HC race held there. Team Puma - SAP was firmly along the best teams in the world at that point, and there was still more to follow.
Along came the Vuelta a Espana. The first GT for a fully developed Herklotz, the race we spent a lot of wage budget on preparing for since 2015.
The race started slowly and tedious with a lot of flat stages, so anxiety levels were high when finally the mountains came along.
Herklotz, with a time gap of nearly 4 minutes to pre-race favorite Phinney after a massive TT, did not wait long to eat into that deficit by finishing second and well ahead of the American in the first uphill finish of the race.
The first real mountains on the day after saw the young German go even better, a lightning strike in the white jersey dropping everyone but Phinney and Madrazo to win his first ever Grand Tour stage!
Herklotz had to pay for those efforts slightly on stage 13, conceding time to Madrazo and Martin, but Phinney had an even worse day, losing 90 seconds and the race lead to the Spaniard.
The race for the overall win was on, and with one of the best days of his career, Silvio Herklotz stunned the cycling world to win the undulating TT the following day against the World Champion and several other top time trialists to creep within half a minute of the leaders jersey.
Stage 16 then was the deciding stage of the race, as Herklotz yet again set a tempo too high for Phinney and Madrazo, dropping them on his ride to stage victory #3 and riding into the red jersey of overall leader!
The remaining week of the race is told rather quickly.
Silvio Herklotz went on to win three more stages, to set a new record for stage wins in La Vuelta and tie his team mate Demare's endeavours in the Giro, and won his first GT by a very comfortable margin of over 4 minutes to put Team Puma - SAP on top of the Pro Tour standings by an incredible gap of 1500 points.
The rest of the 2018 paled in comparison to that stretch of results, despite Dominik Nerz riding an immense Tour de France campaign to win the KoM jersey by a large margin, and in its fourth Pro Tour season and its seventh season of existence, Team Puma - SAP were crowned Pro Tour winners!
But the team will not stop here.
We accept the fact that repeating this level of success will be hard and cannot be expected just by virtue of continuing our work. The opposition is tough and works at least as hard as we do.
But we pledge to do our best to keep Team Puma - SAP at the top of the sport and keep the team known across the world and its name synonymous with success, dedication, and development.
Edited by cio93 on 07-10-2019 19:03
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| cio93 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 16:01
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
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reserved
Edited by cio93 on 07-10-2019 19:07
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| cio93 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 16:01
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
PCM$: 500.00
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reserved
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| cio93 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 16:02
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
PCM$: 500.00
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reserved
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| cio93 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 16:02
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
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Renewals and transfer availability
Renewals are never an easy part of the off-season. But while it's already hard to prepare for the dreaded day on any regular team, it's impossible to prepare for renewals day on the Pro Tour winning team.
We will keep the long story short however, since as you have likely already seen, at the end of the day, most people involved were in high spirits again and ready to start transfer season with a positive look forward.
Both Silvio Herklotz and Arnaud Demare had their breakthrough seasons and are now allowed to call themselves Grand Tour winner and Grand Tour stage win record holder respectively, among other great results along the way.
Therefore, we accepted the fact that despite mutual and continuous efforts to keep their wages respectable throughout the years, their big pay day had finally arrived.
We still believe both riders to be well worth the investment and will look to continue with them into the 2019 season, and potentially even continue their development even further?
Further down the pay grade, Wilco Kelderman saw a slight rise after showing better ability this season than the last, where he accepted a cut.
The positive surprise of renewals day came in the batch of Francesco Bongiorno and Nikias Arndt, who despite doing great work again this season, agreed to further slight cuts to bring their wages to an incredibly low level for their qualities.
Dominik Nerz also was very nice to work with and decided to not pursue a raise despite winning the KoM jersey in the Tour de France.
Jasha Sütterlin and Tim Declerq see slight wage increases which are reasonable, and our experience with negotiating with young riders saw fruitful talks with both Filippo Ganna and Remi Cavagna to bring their wages down from their market prices after acquiring them last transfer season.
Last but definitely not least, we have let go of two riders to keep our expenses bearable and our position going into transfers flexible, Jetse Bol and Clement Chevrier.
In particular, losing Jetse Bol does hurt us.
Jetse was part of our team going into our inaugural season in 2012 and has been a loyal helper ever since. He was there for all of our highs and all of our lows in the seven seasons since, never expecting more than the minimum salary for his hard work to help us succeed.
We thank Jetse dearly for his dedication to the team and wish him a successful rest of his career. He will undoubtedly be picked up by another team and we already envy them.
Clement had also been in our team for a very long time, since 2014 to be exact. Half a decade of impeccable domestique duties later, we believe he will also find a new team and hopefully get a free role there to chase victories in the mountains and hills when the opportunity arises. Thank you Clement!
World class puncheur available?
Now for the part everyone is coming here: transfer availabilty. Yes, we already let the cat out of the bag in the overview.
It is hard to keep a good PT team together and below the wage cap on renewals day, and it proved to be impossible to keep this team together and below the wage cap for us this time.
The fee we had to pay to MGUCI was rather low and we are not far off the target, but it is obvious that we only have the minimum amount of riders and are still over the cap.
We cannot go into the 2019 season with this roster, and have come up with several plans to make this squad eligible.
The riders you see marked as "likely" or "possible" are riders we will always entertain offers for during transfer season, the earlier the better of course.
There are a multitude of ways to achieve our goals for transfers with random combinations of sales of those riders, so we cannot guarantee that the rider you inquire about will indeed be sold, but do not hesitate to initiate talks and get your name on the top of our list.
But, there is also an easy way to solve every possible issue, and it is a step we debated intensely.
Wilco Kelderman, a member of Team Puma - SAP since our (and his) very first professional season, a world class puncheur able of winning races in PT and likely the future top puncheur in PCT on a very affordable wage for teams of both divisions, is on the market this transfer season.
Despite his abilities and long time on top form, he is still only 28 and even has two years of training eligibility left in case 82 hill isn't quite good enough for you yet.
We do have a particular price range in mind based on his abilites and similar transfers in the past, but will consider all serious inquiries come the start of transfer season.
Most likely, we will seek financial compensation, but adding a suitable rider on a lower wage to the deal might make sense for us too.
If Wilco does leave us, we want to express how eternally grateful we are for his time in our team and how much we will cherish the memories we experienced together.
We would not be the team we are today without Wilco Kelderman.
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| tsmoha |
Posted on 18-09-2019 17:12
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Directeur Sportif
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One interesting 'likely' outta there... 
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| cio93 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 17:20
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
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Perseverance does deserve to get rewarded eventually
No promises yet though!
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| knockout |
Posted on 18-09-2019 17:27
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Grand Tour Champion
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You're going to sell Kelderman for a bazillion of cash? Lets just agree to not spend anything for training on our punchy sprinters anymore 
Not sure whether ive congratulated for the world tour title at another place already. Ive written before that your team was one of my favourite teams before i joined and i think one can find quite a few similarities between riders we chased in past years. It turned into a team that i love to hate as this feels like one of the coolest rivalries in mg. Will be tough to catch you ever again with demare and herklotz set up to dominate for years (i joined the mg a year too late ) but i certainly will try to give you a good battle again at some point
A Big Thank You To All MG Reporters! |
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 18-09-2019 19:22
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World Champion
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Some interesting riders available and we'd definitely have the cap room...
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| cio93 |
Posted on 19-09-2019 00:17
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
PCM$: 500.00
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knockout wrote:
You're going to sell Kelderman for a bazillion of cash? Lets just agree to not spend anything for training on our punchy sprinters anymore
I know the training rules too well, nice try to force your ineligibility upon me!
Besides, who says this is for Demare?
...
knockout wrote:
Not sure whether ive congratulated for the world tour title at another place already. Ive written before that your team was one of my favourite teams before i joined and i think one can find quite a few similarities between riders we chased in past years. It turned into a team that i love to hate as this feels like one of the coolest rivalries in mg. Will be tough to catch you ever again with demare and herklotz set up to dominate for years (i joined the mg a year too late ) but i certainly will try to give you a good battle again at some point
Thank you very much, that means a lot.
I believe we are the intricate love/hate-relationship any good TV series needs to succeed. 
I do not want to speculate whether this is the most interesting one for the viewer in this universe, but I hope it is an overarching storyline that will remain intense for a long time to come and will be looked back on as a major plot point in the big review if this game ever comes to an end.
I would say since the pressure to compete for the title is now gone, I'm much more free to pursue whatever direction I enjoy exploring, so there's a good chance the team already has peaked, and that would be absolutely okay.
We had our 15 minutes.
Also, did you see what MAL is gonna turn into? You definitely have a chance to finish ahead of me in every future season.
valverde321 wrote:
Some interesting riders available and we'd definitely have the cap room...
Now that's a team I did absolutely not expect to take interest in our riders looking at your roster and history, but especially a fellow 2012 inductee is certainly always welcome to offer any deal that's on his mind!
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| SportingNonsense |
Posted on 19-09-2019 00:26
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Team Manager
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Congratulations on taking the ProTour team. A just reward for the dedication, and relentless pursuit of talent!
Now to see what you do next!
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 19-09-2019 00:29
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World Champion
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Some mildly interesting names available... one in particular, but I know tsmoha will be damned if someone else gets Bevin before him
Looking forward to see where you take the team after your fantastic season in 2019, don't think I said congrats on the PT title already so congrats 
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
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| AbhishekLFC |
Posted on 19-09-2019 06:16
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Directeur Sportif
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Interesting, very interesting
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| Jakstar22 |
Posted on 19-09-2019 07:03
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Team Leader
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Oooo I like the like of one rider I bet no one can guess who I'm talking about...Although I feel a 3 way battle coming...Jandal, tsmoha...don't even think about 
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| cio93 |
Posted on 19-09-2019 15:19
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
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SportingNonsense wrote:
Congratulations on taking the ProTour team. A just reward for the dedication, and relentless pursuit of talent!
Now to see what you do next!
Thank you.
It's hard to overstate how important it is to me to read this coming from you.
It indeed has been a validation of sticking to my rather unique plan on the highest possible level and made all those doubts throughout the years worth enduring.
I don't know yet myself, but expect the unexpected!
I don't see myself at the top again this season, or maybe ever again, but it is very liberating that I can now afford to just focus on having fun (and preferably not relegate!) over maximizing the profit and chasing the title.
jandal7 wrote:
Some mildly interesting names available... one in particular, but I know tsmoha will be damned if someone else gets Bevin before him
Looking forward to see where you take the team after your fantastic season in 2019, don't think I said congrats on the PT title already so congrats
Jakstar22 wrote:
Oooo I like the like of one rider I bet no one can guess who I'm talking about...Although I feel a 3 way battle coming...Jandal, tsmoha...don't even think about
Thank you jandal!
I would lie if I said I wasn't hoping for this post to appear here eventually.
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| Roman |
Posted on 19-09-2019 15:50
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Grand Tour Specialist
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Your patience was clearly rewarded with the most prestigious prize to win, congrats on winning the title! Although it is pretty damn grueling to see my team just losing the title to yet another and different team, this was probably the most impressive titile run as after that Vuelta win, it was pretty much over. Looking forward to enjoy another year of hopefully a more closer battle in the coming year.
Looking at that bargain Herklotz wage, not sure that my team actually stands a chance though. And that's before that highly surprising HIL 81 for Coquard.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 19-09-2019 16:11
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World Champion
Posts: 10845
Joined: 29-10-2007
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Roman wrote:
Your patience was clearly rewarded with the most prestigious prize to win, congrats on winning the title! Although it is pretty damn grueling to see my team just losing the title to yet another and different team, this was probably the most impressive titile run as after that Vuelta win, it was pretty much over. Looking forward to enjoy another year of hopefully a more closer battle in the coming year.
Thank you! As I said above, chances will definitely improve for everyone else.
We had some crazy consistency that I don't expect to replicate, even less now that we're over the cap with this roster.
Roman wrote:
Looking at that bargain Herklotz wage, not sure that my team actually stands a chance though. And that's before that highly surprising HIL 81 for Coquard.
Who? I do not want to be associated with any riders of mere third placed teams...
And while you see a bargain, I still see a sequence of 400k -> 700k -> 900k. 
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| ember |
Posted on 19-09-2019 17:50
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Team Leader
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With Herklotz as an absolute world class leader, as shown by the individual rankings in the 2018 season, I must agree with Roman. It's difficult to see you end the transfer season as anything else than the favourite for the title again. And I'm looking forward to see what minor changes you'll do!
Seeing the riders listed as available/possibly available, Bongiorno is the one that stands out for me. Expect quite a few managers to be interested in him, and I could well be one of them. |
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| jph27 |
Posted on 19-09-2019 18:10
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Team Leader
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Wouldn't be transfer season without us talking, and I'm strongly of the view you can never have too many top quality puncheurs, so I expect our yearly tradition of futile talks will continue |
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| valverde321 |
Posted on 20-09-2019 03:08
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World Champion
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cio93 wrote:
valverde321 wrote:
Some interesting riders available and we'd definitely have the cap room...
Now that's a team I did absolutely not expect to take interest in our riders looking at your roster and history, but especially a fellow 2012 inductee is certainly always welcome to offer any deal that's on his mind!
I've decided to try and actually win now
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Silvio Herklotz
Arnaud Demare
Wilco Kelderman
Fabio Felline
Tim Declerq
Patrick Bevin
Conor Dunne
Janvier Hadi
Guy Sagiv
Colin Stüssi
