The Tour of Beijing favoured the climbers with one very tough mountain stage. Consdiering the long TTT on stage 2 we brought our best stage racers, sadly, not Davis, he was out with a gastroenteritis. Two very good climbers had registered for the race, Dan Martin and Elias Schmäh, and were considered to be the favourites.
Stage 1 went to Demare, who beat Matthews and Sagan. Aviva thenwon the team time trial, 10 seconds ahead of Schmäh's Trek and 27 seconds ahead of Martin's BMC, our first (and only) TTT win this season.
On the queen stage we were allowed to send Köszegi into the breakaway, we have previously seen the breakaway take the stage by a large margin. But this wasn't going to be the case this year, Trek and BMC worked to keep the gap reasonable.
Köszegi timed his effort well, dropping the rest of the breakaway on the long climb. Further back, the attacks started early and Martin and Schmäh were in good shape, riding away with ease, only Sergio Henao was able to follow them. Our riders did what they could, Foetz and Grande were the last to protect Marrou and he was able to launch a long attack which let him overtake most of the breakaway riders, though he had no chance of catching the better climbers, the time gaps were going to be large in the end.
But more importantly, Köszegi survived and won the stage nearly 2 minutes ahead of Schmäh and Dan Martin. If he doesn't lose too much time on the upcoming hilly stage, Aviva will have won yet another WT stage race, the fourth of the season. Sergio Henao finished a few seconds behind Schmäh and Martin, Cattenao was next, another two-and-a-half minutes behind, Marrou was 6th, losing an additional two minutes. Foetz was 10th, Grande 12th, they remain in the GC top 10 after the stage.
The next day saw early attacks from riders just outside the top 10, with over 10 minutes behind they weren't threatening Köszegi much, but definitely our other good GC positions. We rode hard up the large mountain in the first third of the stage and rounded up the escapees, but strong riders attacked once more and our team had to work as hard as it ever had. Oughton, Koloda and Manaia made sure the gap stayed around 3 minutes, exhausting themselves in the process.
But this didn't protect us against a late attack, initiated by Sagan, and followed by Martin and Henao, though Schmäh missed the cut. All our riders hit their limit on that final lap. In the end, Facchini was the last breakaway rider left standing and won the stage, impressive considering the competition was much stronger on paper. Sagan nearly caught him with Henao and Martin in tow. But our men arrived 51 seconds behind, securing Köszegi's victory, unless disaster strikes on the final flat stage.
Thankfully, the final stage was uneventful, Demare won, just as he had won the opening stage. The final top 10: Köszegi, Martin, Henao, Schmäh, Cattenao, Marrou, Foetz, Grande, Masciarelli, Sagan.
Köszegi also wins the mountain and U25 classifications, Sagan the points ranking. Aviva once again is the fastest team, 4 minutes ahead of BMC. Our fourth one-week stage race victory, achieved by four different riders. This is probably as good as it's ever going to get.
That was an unexpected breakthrough season – winning four WT stage races when previously we hadn't won a single one! Though I don't like the pressure of having to repeat that success, these wins were all flukes, more or less.
Here is the only other 2019 screenshot I took and forgot to post, and it's an important moment: Delfi Grande, wearing the Spanish NC jersey he won a year earlier, on his way to winning the opening stage of the Volta Catalunya which led to our first ever WT stage race win.
As you know, I'm a sucker for the WT team rankings, it's how I most like to measure success. I hadn't checked the rankings since the end of July and the final tally surpassed my wildest dreams: Aviva ends the season in second place! Wow! At the top is Katusha, with the largest margin I can remember, 2160 points, Aviva has 1278. But our team beat the rest by slim margins, Trek is just 12 points behind in third place. What an achievement for our low-wage team.
The two teams promoted this season will have to return to the PCT next year. MTN-Qhubeka managed a respectable score of 80 points, Netapp even collected 126 points, 121 came from König. But Cannondale, IAM and Ag2r survived with 175, 185 and 187 points.
1
Team Katusha
2160
2
Aviva Cycling
1278
3
Trek Factory Racing
1264
4
Astana Pro Team
1181
5
Team Sky
1130
6
QuickStep Team
1116
7
Movistar Team
1018
8
Orica - GreenEDGE
900
9
Lotto - Belisol
877
10
BMC Racing Team
865
11
Tinkoff - Saxo
353
12
Belkin Pro Cycling Team
329
13
Team Giant - Shimano
275
14
Ag2r La Mondiale
187
15
IAM Cycling
185
16
Cannondale
175
17
Team NetApp - Endura
126
18
MTN - Qhubeka
80
Quintana once again tops the individual rankings, just 5 points separate him from Kwiatkowski, then a larger gap to Rui Costa, who is followed by Sagan, Martin, Gilbert, our Ivan Singh, Betancur and Ulissi. While Astana relied nearly completely in Quintana, Aviva's result was a real team effort. Singh stands out, but Sergienko, Davis, Grmay and Marrou all made the top 30 as well.
Quickstep again collected more wins this season than any other team, 67 in all, well ahead of Astana (48) and Katusha (42). Aviva is 7th with 35 victories. We do very much focus on the World Tour, in the superprestige rankings our team is "only" 6th, Katusha leads this ranking, too, but Quickstep isn't far behind and Astana, Trek and Sky are also ahead of Aviva.
Just a season ago I thought there really wouldn't be much progression with this wage restriction. Aviva was 10th in the WT rankings, lower than the previous year, it seemed to come down to nuances. And then we follow it up with this incredible season. Ivan Singh played a large part, of course. Our previous record was 236 WT points, scored by Rafael Silva back in 2016, Singh scored 442 in 2019.
The "good news" is that this was his last season with us. In fact, we have to start over, both in hilly classics and Grand Tours. Singh signed with Netapp, who were relegated, however. Noah Davis moves to Giant and Tsgabu Grmay must have had a great offer from Torku, he'll drop down to CT level. That's three of our four top scorers. The fourth man is Igor Sergienko, who can only offer HIL 78 and AVG 73. He also beat our previous record, scoring 247 points, though he was lucky to ride in the slipstream of Singh, he was seldomly needed for protection duties. We'll see more of him next season, but he might struggle to do as well as he did this year.
Other riders who are leaving us: Marino De Windt moves to Orica, he's maxed out his SPR 79. Alexandr Polyakov, who managed to secure our first ever monument podium, is leaving for Team Sky. Delfi Grande, our first ever WT stage race winner, attracted an offer from Katusha. Isaurindo Manaia spent four years with our team, he didn't score in three out of four seasons, but in 2018 he was 5th Down Under and won a stage at the Tour de Suisse. His next team is Quickstep. Sebastian Henao scored only 2 WT points in his two seasons with us, frankly, we expected a little more from him. Maybe he'll do better in the PCT division with OFM. Arminas Morinas, maxed out with SPR 77 ACC 74, will join De Windt at Orica. Vyacheslav Kuznetsov moves to UnitedHealthcare, Rouven Schössler to IAM and Davide Formolo to Ag2r. After four seasons it's also time to thank Zdzislaw Wojtasik for his good work, he has a great palmares for a rider with AVG 71, he added a Catalunya stage and a national championship in 2019, he's our third rider picked up by Orica. Roland Foetz wasn't able to find a new team despite winning a TdS stage this year.
Despite such an amazing season, our goal tally is a mixed bag. 9 out of 15 isn't bad, but we missed plenty of stage win goals. Next year I'll radically select KOM goals instead.
Finally, here are the noteworthy results of 2019, as I recorded them in post #2. In all races (except for the Vuelta) I only picked the best result, had I recorded all top 10 results the list would be far longer.
6th overall Tour Down Under (Singh)
1st overall Tour du Haut Var-matin (Oughton)
7th overall Paris-Nice (Grande)
Stage 5 Tirreno-Adriatico (Sergienko)
9th overall Tirreno-Adriatico (Singh)
7th Milano-Sanremo (Singh)
Stage 1 Volta a Catalunya (Grande)
Stage 7 Volta a Catalunya (Wojtasik) 1st overall Volta a Catalunya (Grande)
1st Ronde van Drenthe (Heubach)
1st Classic Loire Atlantique (Veiby)
4th E3 Harelbeke (Veiby)
8th Gent-Wevelgem (Polyakov)
1st overall Three Days of De Panne (Veiby)
4th Ronde van Vlaanderen (Veiby) 3rd Paris-Roubaix (Polyakov)
1st Rund um Köln (Veiby)
4th La Fleche Wallone (Sergienko)
1st GP d'Argovie (Marrou)
Stage 5 Tour de Suisse (Marrou)
Stage 7 Tour de Suisse (Foetz)
Stage 9 Tour de Suisse (Grmay)
8th overall Tour de Suisse (Davis)
Stages 8 and 15 Tour de France (Köszegi)
Stages 9 and 19 Tour de France (Grmay)
5th Clasica San Sebastian (Singh) 1st overall Tour de Pologne (Davis) 1st overall Eneco Tour (Marrou)
8th Hamburg Cyclassics (De Windt) 1st GP Quest (Singh)
6th overall La Vuelta (Grmay)
7th overall La Vuelta (Davis) 1st GP Quebec (Singh)
2nd GP Montreal (Singh)
7th Il Lombardia (Singh) 1st overall Tour of Beijing (Köszegi)
KOM: Tour Down Under (Oughton), Paris-Nice (Kudus), Tirreno-Adriatico (Sequeiros), Volta a Catalunya (Grande), Pais Vasco (Denis), Romandie (Kudus), Giro d'Italia (Grande), Dauphine (Kudus), Tour de Suisse (Grmay), Tour de France (Köszegi), Tour de Pologne (Grande), Tour of Beijing (Köszegi)
NC road races won: Colombia (Sebastian Henao), Ethiopia (Grmay), Germany (Schössler), Kazakhstan (I. Sergienko), Poland (Wojtasik), Portugal (Manaia) and Russia (Kuznetsov)
We're back for another season with the Aviva Cycling Team. Our sponsor has increased the budget to 410k per month, of which we spend 140k on rider salaries and 148k on staff salaries. (For no real reason we hired a legendary scout and have sent him to the United Kingdom, just in case he finds an exciting talent.) Let's take a look at the 2020 squad:
(Name: New signing Wage: Renewal)
(Chg: year-on-year change in AVG, Chg: for new signings since 1st of August)
Investing in the best trainers certainly paid off. The improvements by Biello, Veiby and Heubach is greater than anything we've seen so far.
The first Aviva rider to reach AVG 76 was Ivan Singh, shortly before he left us us. But two more riders have reached that level since and both of them will be with us for two more seasons: Veiby and Biello. We expect a lot from Veiby, he alone should be able to complete our usual top 10 goals in the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix. Biello provided an excellent lead-out for De Windt last season, our top sprinter left us for Orica, so now it's up to Biello himself. SPR 79 ACC 77 won't impress other teams much, though, so he needs to continue to improve.
We lost our two best climbers with Davis and Grmay, but thankfully we were able to capture the very exciting Finn Jorgensen, who's already reached MON 78, outclassing them both. He's a pure climber, he doesn't like hills much and time trials even less. But he'll be our captain for the Tour and la Vuelta. Marrou will take over from Kudus as the captain of the stage racing team in the first half of the season, with MON 76, HIL 75 and TTR 76 he's the most complete stage racer we've had so far and we hope to see him in the top 10 several times.
The new signings aren't as spectacular as they were last year and we are also continuing with riders who have already maxed out their stats, so despite our legendary trainers a large part of our team cannot improve anymore. This is true for Kudus, Oughton, Roinas and Zilioli as well as the new signings Berhane, Bilbao, Fernandez, Hermans, Lammertink, Montes, Pedrocca, Wikkelso and Zamora. All the above are maxed out in their main stats.
As already discussed, our U23 signing David Pozin won't get very far either despite his potential 6. He'll become a decent allrounder, a trusty domestique, but nothing more. Next to Jorgensen we are only excited about Hontecillas, who is set to become our second best climber, and another sprinter, our first Brit, Donald Myles, who has as much potential as Biello, and maybe also Vincent Kipp, who seems quite versatile.
1st in climber standings Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco
*
Top 10 Paris - Roubaix
****
Top 10 Amstel Gold Race
***
Top 10 La Fleche Wallonne
*
Top 10 Liege - Bastogne - Liege
*****
1st in climber standings Giro d'Italia
****
1st in climber standings Criterium du Dauphine
**
1st in climber standings Tour de Suisse
**
Stage win(s) Tour de France
*****
Top 10 Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian
*
Stage win(s) Vuelta a Espana
***
At some point last season I wrote I'll never learn to change all stage win goals to KOM goals, but I've proved myself wrong. After winning all WT KOM rankings except for the Vuelta last season it seemed the obvious choice. The only stage win goals remaining are for the Tour and the Vuelta, having achieved multiple stage wins in these Grand Tours over the years. I also lowered expectations for the cobbled monuments, the sponsor wanted top 3 results in both races and despite Veiby and Heubach that seemed like a stretch. It meant reducing the budget by 35k/month. In hindsight I'm not entirely happy with that, I might have made the goals too easy to achieve. But after years of collecting KOM jerseys while failing goals it seemed the right call for this season.
World Tour teams 2020
WT
CQ
Wages
Chg
Top Earners
QuickStep
6
2
1,308,000
+130k
Degenkolb, Stybar, Vanmarcke
Team Sky
5
5
984,000
+52k
Porte, Dan Martin, Froome
Astana
4
3
925,000
+115k
Quintana, Dumoulin, Castroviejo
Katusha
1
1
917,500
-123k
Kwiatkowski, Kittel, Betancur
Trek
3
4
765,500
+29k
Sagan, Kristoff, Barguil
Orica
8
7
742,000
+60k
Rui Costa, Boom, Howson
BMC Racing
10
9
703,000
-61k
Cancellara, Caruso, Modolo
Movistar
7
8
646,000
+94k
Matthews, Durbridge, Pinot
Cannondale
16
14
489,000
+17k
Ulissi, Hagenaars, Juodvalkis
Lotto-Belisol
9
10
454,000
-47k
De Gendt, Bakelandts, De Buyst
Giant-Shimano
13
12
368,000
-92k
Goncalves, Porsev, Alaphilippe
Belkin
12
13
349,500
-30k
Chernetckii, Svendsen, Haas
IAM Cycling
15
17
329,000
-11k
Zabel, Riofrio, Jovanovic
Ag2r
14
15
306,500
-46k
Moser, Colbrelli, Vuillermoz
Tinkoff-Saxo
11
11
270,500
-10k
Mohoric, Kangert, Hoem
FDJ.fr
22
19
221,500
-17k
Duarte, Martinez, Polanc
Topsport
24
18
182,500
-17k
Cimolai, Vangronsveld, Kreder
Aviva Cycling
2
6
140,400
+10k
Hermans, Bilbao, Berhane
(Name: Earning 100k+ per month)
I have to lead with the two freshly promoted teams. The surprising addition is Topsport Vlaanderen, who handily outscored all competitors in the CQ rankings, nearly 500 points above the rest. They could have been joined by another new face, Bretagne-Seche Environnement, who lost out to FDJ by just one CQ point!
Last season Astana had signed Quintana on a one-year contract, paying him 149k, making him the second highest earner behind Sagan. The team extended his contract by two years and is now paying him 198k per month, the highest wage I think I've ever seen in PCM 14. Sagan remains at 165k, Rui Costa moved up to 3rd with 147k after his move from Lotto to Orica. 37-year old Gilbert only spent one season with Katusha and has returned to Quickstep, this will be his final season. BMC let Dan Martin go to Team Sky and replaced him with 38-year old Cancellara, though the Swiss machine is finally starting to show his age.
Now onto a possibly contentious point: I have decided to drop the age of decline for Quintana, Kwiatkowski and Betancur down to 30. Betancur already turned 30 last year, Quintana will do so in February and Kwiatkowski in June. They'll still win plenty of races, but I wasn't looking forward to them dominating everything for the next five years. Betancur maybe isn't that much of a problem, despite being the 4th best rider by AVG he's not won much and has never placed higher than 7th in the WT rankings, but he seemed overpowered from the get-go.
This year we face a standard variant with four flat and two hilly stages. We brought our best puncheurs, all four riders with HIL 78, Hermans, Denis, Lammertink and Sergienko. None of them are able to improve any further, but we've been quite successful with HIL 78 riders so far.
The first couple of stages of the new season were flat but with small difficulties in the finale and so I played them in 3D mode. We got riders into the top 10 both days, though not the top 5, Ulissi won both stages.
Next was a stage to Campbelltown, a hilly stage with a late cat. 2 and then moderately downhill to the finish. We have decided to let five riders go for the GC, the four mentioned above as well as Falkenmayer (HIL 77). The quintett moved to the front of the peloton as we reached the short but steep climb and they immediately attacked into the headwind. A few riders tagged along, Ulissi, Bardet, Ewan and Van Baarle, and this group was able to catch the 10 men who were ahead, 6 from the early breakaway, 4 more had attacked 30 km out.
We didn't concentrate on the stage result and possible bonus seconds, but pushed hard for a larger gap to the rest of the favourites. One rider had most his sprint energy intact, Denis, and he was able to secure a 3rd place behind Ulissi and Bardet. Dumoulin led the next group across the finish line, 1'13'' behind, while other co-favourites lost a lot of time, Dan Martin 4'19'', the peloton with Quintana even 6'51''. Our riders currently occupy 3rd down to 7th in the GC and all five now seem set for a top 10 finish.
Stage 4 was the first proper mass sprint and won by Bouhanni ahead of Debusschere and Demare. Then came the queen stage with the usual two ascents of Willunga Hill. Due to the large time losses on the previous hilly stage Ulissi's Cannondale and Bardet's Trek allowed ten riders to join the breakaway – including Chris Froome, who at the age of 34 has started his decline but still boasts an AVG 78. We allowed Oughton to try his luck rather than protect Hermans, who was still wearing the mountain jersey having crossed the late hill on stage 1 in first place.
The group set a blistering pace, Oughton played anchor, just getting dragged along, after all, all riders who were about 7 minutes back were soon in the virtual lead with a gap of over 10 minutes. Trek was the first to blink and increased the speed in the peloton, with Cannondale joining in later, too. But the GC situation was still unclear as the breakaway hit Willunga Hill the first time, the stage would definitely go to an escapee.
Already 50 km out the attacks in the breakaway began, which suited Oughton just fine, he stoically remained at the back of the group, wasting no energy. But as the group reached Willunga Hill Road for the first time he set a much higher pace and just about everybody had trouble keeping up, including Froome, only Cort Nielsen was still on his rear wheel and Oughton took top points on the first ascent. He offered to relay, but Cort Nielsen refused and soon Froome and others were back, all now being pulled by Oughton.
In the peloton our five puncheurs used the same effort as Oughton had done and created a group of 14, which included Ulissi, Bardet, white jersey Piton (HIL 78) as well as Dan Martin and Rolland and Van Baarle. We would have relayed to secure our top 10 spots, but the others were happy to do the work. Ulissi then risked attacking 10 km out and was rewarded, he finished alone and 18 seconds ahead of Bardet, securing the overall win.
At the front of the race Oughton still had plenty of energy reserves left and set an even higher pace on the second ascent and won the stage by 50 seconds ahead of Cort Nielsen and Froome. Oughton really loves his home race, last season he won the climber rankings, this year he wins a stage – and the KOM jersey, too.
Further back our other riders didn't put up much of a fight against Bardet, Rolland and Martin, the latter two couldn't catch us in the GC anyway. We did try to shake off Piton but were unable to do so. But we had dropped everybody else threatening our top 10 positions, so we start the season with an excellent result.
In fact, the last stage made it even better. White jersey wearer Piton was 5th, equal on time with all our riders bar Denis, who had picked up two bonus seconds. We thought if we form a sprint train we might finish ahead of him and push him down in the GC. Nine riders formed the breakaway on the short stage and would just about hold off the peloton, BMC's Boara won the stage ahead of Tony Martin, who had dropped down to the PCT with Caja Rural last season but is now back at the top level with Quickstep.
As soon as we could, we formed our sprint train with Oughton at the front, he wasn't riding for the GC so he could sacrifice himself. With 10 km to go our six riders were leading the peloton, then the strong Katusha team, with Kittel helping Bouhanni, pushed past us. Demare won the sprint for 10th, our riders finished between 20th and 30th, well ahead of Piton. In fact, as it turned out, the first 35 riders were awarded the same time as the stage winner, while the rest lost 2'18''. And that didn't just included Piton, but also Bardet, who loses his podium spot!
302 WT points, yeah! I'll be the first to admit that this was too easy. The fact alone that Oughton won the queen stage against vastly superior riders is odd. Hermans went from 0 career WT points to 70 in just one race. Hopefully he'll feel accepting our low wage offer was worth it already.
Maybe the only non-WT race I'll report on all season, and only because I took one of my rare screenshots. Getting there I played the Mallorca Tour, where Marrou finished 5th overall. Hermans added another fine result, winning the Classic Sud Ardeche, a few days later Falkenmayer won the GP Camaiore. Those two races were simulated and show how good our team has become – and how weak some other WT teams have become, to be honest, only a handful still have an impressive line-up.
The Strade Bianche is one of the most beautiful races on the calendar, reason enough to play it in 3D. Falkenmayer tried to join the breakaway but the peloton was unhappy and caught the group quickly and then our new signing Gerardo Zamora attacked and found himself alone on the road for a long time and forced the peloton to chase hard.
With 30 km to go one of Ulissi's team mates picked a speed which separated him and his captain from the pack and Ulissi used the opportunity, leaving his team mate behind and eventually winning the race by 28 seconds.
Four riders tried to follow him, Aru, Felline, Arredondo and young Tonini, while our men were now leading the rest of the peloton. Up the largest climb Hermans and Sergienko left everybody behind, Sergienko had more energy left and so Hermans worked for him. A little later Marrou and Falkenmayer attacked together. Going into the short but very steep final climb Sergienko dropped Hermans, caught up to and overtook the quartett ahead, except for Tonini, who had just enough left in the tank to hold off our man. But a fine podium for Sergienko, who wants to show last season wasn't a fluke, that he's really better than his AVG 73 suggests.
Top 10: Ulissi, Maurizio Tonini, Sergienko, Aru, Felline, Arredondo, Marrou, Hermans, Falkenmayer, Dennis
No mountains in this year's edition of Paris-Nice, so we mostly rely on our puncheurs and didn't nominate a captain. We started with a short prologue, won by the 26-year old Olandris, a rider we had contacted a season or two ago. He offers a rare combination of TTR and HIL (both 78). He beat Talansky and Spilak. Zabel won the mass sprint on stage 2, his first WT win since the Tour Down Under last season, his fourth overall, having won two Giro stages in 2017. Bouhanni beat Zabel a day later.
Starting with stage 4, the rest of the race was on hilly terrain, though only stage 5 finished uphill in Mende. Sequeiros joined the breakaway on stage 4 and collected 17 points for the mountain jersey, 8 more than Carlos Verona. The group was caught in time, on the plateau after the final climb of the day. The rest of the team followed the late attacks and finished between 4th and 9th on the stage, though in the end 109 riders were awarded the same time as the winner, Sky's Cetin Polat, who outsprinted Betancur and Moser.
The first attacks of stage 5 came immediately so Sequeiros, who started in the first row, had to join the move, with a first cat. 2 coming up quickly. Sequeiros secured top points on the climb and the subsequent climbs, 45 points might already be enough for the jersey and the goal, though stages 7 and 8 still offer plenty more points. Sequeiros was the last man of the breakaway to get caught, on the final steep climb. Our other riders couldn't quite keep up with the best. Rui Costa won the stage by 20 seconds ahead of Martin, Kwiatkowski, Hoem and Talansky. Lammertink, Denis, Tewelde and Koloda were 39 seconds behind in a group with Jungels, Betancur and Pinot. The climbers Fernandez and Kudus struggled more and were 19th and 20th, 1'37'' down.
Stage 6 was hilly once again, but fairly straightforward with a downhill run towards the finish line. Just in case the breakaway should make it, Ruben Fernandez joined the attack and took top points on most climbs to keep others away from Sequeiros in the KOM rankings. Again, the breakaway didn't make it, 39 riders finished together, Rui Costa won his second stage in a row and extended his GC lead. Tewelde was our best rider as 8th. We still have two difficult stages to go, but reduced bunch sprints are possible in both.
The 7th stage contained no less than nine classified climbs. Sequeiros was down to average freshness, but nobody was particularly fresh anymore, so the Spaniard used this stage to secure our 2-star goal. He picked up 48 more KOM points and leads Pirazzi by 49 points going into the last stage.
A problem with the breakaway was that it contained riders who weren't far back in the GC and Rui Costa and his Orica team didn't work hard enough to catch them. Cort Nielsen won the stage 59 seconds ahead of his breakaway companions and has climbed to 2nd in the GC, only 14 seconds behind Rui Costa. Carlos Verona also climbed to 7th and it knocked our riders back, Tewelde dropped to 10th. We were slightly disappointed that our men couldn't follow the best on the final flat section, losing 37 more seconds.
Kudus attacked immediately on the final stage and was joined by a good group of riders, he was less than 3 minutes behind in the GC and could maybe upset the favourites on this possibly mountainous stage with three cat. 1 climbs. However, these climbs really weren't much trouble for puncheurs, as we saw later in the day.
Nonetheless, Kudus was in the virtual lead for quite some time and was able to follow Esteban Chavez's attack near the top of the final climb. Disappointingly, though, Kudus wasn't able to keep up with Chavez in the final flat kilometres and was also overtaken by late attackers from the peloton, Wyss, Serry and Vichot and only finished 5th, 47 seconds behind Chavez and 48 seconds ahead of the peloton, which still contained 67 riders. The only top 10 rider missing was Verona after yesterday's effort. So at least Tewelde finished 9th in the GC.
Rui Costa thus wins Paris-Nice 2020, only 14 seconds ahead of Cort Nielsen, 31 seconds ahead of Kwiatkowski. Pinot, Talansky, Hoem, Dan Martin, Jungels, Tewelde and prologue winner Olandris complete the top 10.
Like Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico was mountainless this year. But since it finishes with an ITT of 15.6 km and Marrou is our best rider on the time trial bike, he's the clear captain and will be protected at all times.
The race starts with a tough hilly stage from Pisa to Firenze. New signing Zamora was our top pick for the breakaway, with some difficulty he finally established one, though the small group included 26-year old Campana and his HIL 78 and he beat Zamora on most of the climbs and at the end of the day leads the KOM rankings by 8 points. The escapees were eventually caught. The rest of our team was attentive to late attacks and finished safely in a group of 34 riders. Sergienko was our best performer as 5th, while Sagan won the stage convincingly.
The flat stage 2 ended in a mass sprint, young Donald Myles did well and finished 10th, Goss won. Stage 3's first attacker was Tejay Van Garderen, he may have lost 4 minutes on the previous day after a late crash, but he was a very dangerous rider to let go in a group of five, especially with Stybar at his side – when Bilbao tried to join the group he was chased down. But it was a long stage, over 215 km, and the gap was under 3 minutes before the penultimate climb, a cat 1. Categorising the stage as hilly was correct, though, Sergienko, Falkenmayer and Hermans had no trouble keeping up with Marrou.
All four managed to stay with the best riders on the climb and the following descent and did what they could on the final ramp. Van Garderen and Stybar just managed to hold off the chasers and won the stage by 10 seconds. Ulissi, Bardet, Sagan, Rolland and Slagter followed, while our four riders were in the larger next group, 39 seconds behind, they are just outside the top 10 in the GC.
The next mass sprint went to Demare ahead of Sagan and Oss. The following stage did not go as we had hoped. It ended with a small circuit of four laps and we completely lost sight of whom to follow and badly misjudged our energy reserves. The breakaway contained KOM leader Campana, McLean fought hard so our opponent wouldn't score top points, but Campana now leads Zamora by 19 points. Tomorrow's stage contains 10 classified climbs, though, Zamora will have to attack and hope Campana is already exhausted.
The breakaway also contained Richie Porte, who dropped everybody else and seemed to be on course to win the stage, but actually got caught easily and finished 13th, 2'21'' behind, that's how little we knew about the situation in the frantic finale. Sagan won the stage, by 21 seconds ahead of Ulissi. Rolland, Bardet and Caruso were next, 34 seconds down. Then Herrada, König and Mollema arrived 59 seconds behind – our best riders were in front of them for quite a while, I think, but they overtook us and were 34 seconds faster than Marrou, with Sergienko and Hermans another 23 seconds behind. Falkenmayer was dropped a long way before the finish and arrived with the remains of the peloton, 7'51'' behind. Our men are now 10th, 11th and 12th in the GC ahead of the tough queen stage and the final ITT.
On the menu today: 231.6 km from L'Aquila to Ascoli Piceno with lots of short climbs and a particularly nasty final ascent up a very steep dirt road and then a few kilometres downhill to the finish line. Zamora initiated the breakaway, he has some catching up to do to fulfil the 4-star goal of winning the climber's jersey. As we'd hoped, KOM leader Campana sat this one out, but 4th placed Bakelandts made the group and challenged Zamora for the points. Zamora had to concede the first two climbs to Bakelandts, so the gap between them decreased. But as the stage went on, Bakelandts faded and in the end, our man collected 44 points, Bakelandts 30. It put the latter equal on points with Campana, but Zamora fulfils our goal.
Then there was the matter of winning the stage. The breakaway seemed destined to make it, with a gap of 9 minutes and 50 km to go, but energy reserves became a real concern for Zamora, he has MON 72 and HIL 76, but his weak secondary stats lead to his AVG 72, so we feared he'd run out of energy before Bakelandts, Coppel and Lutsenko. We were pleasantly surprised that we were wrong about that – the three other riders were unable to follow Zamora on the final climb, Bakelandts and Coppel even cracked completely. Zamora wins the stage, 35 seconds ahead of Lutsenko, while the other two fell far back and ended just 37th and 39th. Winning a stage in P-N or T-A is always tough, well done, Gerardo Zamora.
The speed in the peloton really picked up on the penultimate climb and Aviva's GC men had trouble holding on and could only control the damage on the final climb, having lost contact to a group of 11 riders. Sagan was third on the day, in the end just 90 seconds behind Zamora, his group consisted of Ulissi, Bardet, König and Rolland. Thankfully, others had run out of steam and Marrou and Sergienko caught up to them, losing 1'17'' to the best. It makes König (still riding for Netapp, who secured a wild card for the race) the winner of the day, he moved up from 9th to 5th in the GC.
This year's ITT is a little longer than usual, slightly over 15 km, but completely flat. Of the favourites, race leader Sagan was the strongest, 6th on the day, and he convincingly wins Tirreno-Adriatico. Rolland was slightly faster than Ulissi, but not fast enough to capture 2nd place. Bardet, unsurprisingly, dropped off the podium. Mollema and Herrada overtook König, and our captain Marrou surged past Slagter and Caruso and finishes 8th overall, exactly 4 minutes behind Sagan.
The stage was won by Dumoulin, 2 seconds ahead of his team mate Castroviejo, with Dennis a fraction of a second behind. For Dumoulin it wasn't quite enough to reach the top 10, he is 11th, just ahead of Hermans and Sergienko. While no other team has three riders in the top 13, Trek still beat us in the team rankings thanks to Sagan, Bardet and Barguil. We win the mountain and U25 jerseys, Marrou is still only 23 years old, though he's nearly reached his full potential already.
Another KOM, another goal ticked off, a stage win by Zamora and a good GC result from Marrou. After all, he was faster than riders like Dumoulin, Quintana, Henao, Barguil, Kreuziger, Porte, Schmäh, Van Garderen and many more.
A top 10 result won't be easy to achieve. We decided to let our top sprinter Biello tackle the Grand Tours later in the year, giving him time to improve upon his SPR 79. So we were only able to bring Donald Myles, who's hardly ready for such a tough race. We have to rely on our punchers outsmarting the sprinters.
Since the peloton hates to let more than 3 riders go into the breakaway in this longest race of the year, this time we only had two brave souls in front after about 20 attacks were shut down. The steep Le Manie was on the menu and Aviva decided to race hard up the tough climb and hoped to reap some benefits later. The gap to the escapees was down to a minute, then increased back to three minutes before the speed picked up for good.
The big name this year to launch a long attack was Dan Martin. The peloton sped up accordingly, but seemed to run out of steam as the Cipressa reached the steeper slopes and Dan Martin was still a minute ahead. The gap didn't decrease on our way to the Poggio and Aviva's men were now clearly pulling the whole peloton. Up the Poggio, which seeemed particularly steep towards the top this year, three of our riders broke free and the others simply shut down.
Falkenmayer, Lammertink and Tewelde accelerated on the descent and then formed a sprint train. Dan Martin would remain out of reach and land a coup by winning La Classicissima, but our three men were close behind and 42 seconds ahead of the main field. Sagan won the sprint for 5th place. That's our third goal of the season completed, and in convincing fashion.
Top 10: Dan Martin, Falkenmayer, Lammertink, Tewelde, Sagan, Demare, Bennett, Matthews, Vanmarcke, Jovanovic
The World Tour visits the mountains for the first time this year. We have a small-ish mountaintop finish on stage 2 in Tagamanent and the queen stage on day 5 finishing with a tough climb up to Fontalba.
But we start with a hilly opening ITT of 33.7 km and are happy to report Marrou finished 4th, 17 seconds behind Taaramae, with Kreuziger and Ormad wedged between the two.
Stage 2 was going so well until the game got in the way again. McLean was in the breakaway, he was going to get caught on the final climb and rode a steady pace which would allow him to take over Marrou's protection duty from Fernandez with 4 km to go to the top. Marrou was leading the peloton, ready to react to attacks... but just before the link-up came, Marrou was blocked on the right side of the road by an exhausted escapee and lost about 20 positions. The favourites attacked at that point, naturally.
But thankfully Marrou didn't lose much time. Protected by McLean he caught and overtook a number of riders, he finished 9th and was given the same time as 3rd placed Zoidl. Slightly surprisingly, Kiserlovski won convincingly, 42 seconds ahead of Villela and 51 seconds ahead of Marrou's group, which also included Kreuziger, Hayden (a 25-year old American stage racer with MON 80), Boswell, Poels and Pinot. Kreuziger now leads the race 3 seconds ahead of Kiserlovski and 9 seconds ahead of Marrou.
The following hilly stage featured a few long but not very steep climbs while the final 20 km were flat. Ruben Fernandez had a spirited fight with De Gendt for the KOM points, De Gendt collected 45, Fernandez 44 – but McLean retains the lead with 46. The breakaway was caught easily and a peloton of 116 riders arrived together, the stage went to Pelucchi.
Stage 4 seemed even simpler, just three climbs, all quite long, but officially hilly, probably because it's a long way from the final mountain to the finish line. Pello Bilbao offers a good mix (FLA 71 MON 70 HIL 76) and might be a better sprinter than some, so he joined the breakaway. But the peloton was aggressive all day long, the escapees worked hard and still the gap never was much over 3 minutes. Just about every team mate had to be put on protection duty for Marrou. Late attacks into a headwind on the flat went nowhere and in the end Moser beat Betancur and Wyss in the reduced bunch sprint.
It's impossible to overstate the toughness of the queen stage. No flat sections, 168 km up and down, easing in with a cat. 4 and a cat. 3 before an HC climb, followed by a steep cat. 1, followed by a huge HC climb, then a slightly smaller cat. 2 and then another big and steep climb to Fontalba. None of Marrou's opponents have more than MON 80, but still, it'll be tough to hold onto the top 10 with his MON 76.
McLean wanted to protect his polkadot jersey, though it wasn't a goal in this race. Sadly, his attack attracted opponents who were both better climbers and further up in the GC, some not even 3 minutes back. And McLean was disappointing on the climbs, he was always third, usually behind Meintjes and Schelling. At the end of the day he was able to defend his jersey with 106 points, only 2 points ahead of Schelling and 4 points ahead of Meintjes. We hope he doesn't need to attack again, he's exhausted.
McLean riding with Meintjes, Zardini and Schelling
The gap grew to 10 minutes and so several teams set a high pace in the middle of the stage, reducing the peloton to just 60 riders. Towards the top of the second HC climb the speed picked up again and we were down to 30 men. Marrou still had Fernandez and Kudus with him, but they wouldn't be much use anymore. The final climb was steep and 12 km long and Marrou was all on his own with 11 km to go. He caught back a number of riders who had attacked at the foot of the climb, but didn't see the yellow jersey again. He finished 10th, 1'49'' behind Kreuziger, who won the stage by 21 seconds against Kiserlovski and extended his lead. A little further back were Rolland, Poels and breakaway rider Meintjes, who moved up to 10th in the GC. Marrou was in the next group and dropped to 5th in the GC, still an excellent position.
No luck for Sequeiros and the rest of the breakaway on stage 6, despite the tough stage the day before the sprinter teams did enough to catch the escapees, Reinhard Janse van Rensburg (who'll be shortened to RJVR in the future) beat Nizzolo and Swift in the sprint.
The final stage, and once again things weren't looking good for the breakaway. At least not for our man Zamora. The good news was that Schelling didn't try to join the breakaway and McLean thus wins the KOM jersey by just 2 points. Zamora was swallowed easily, but Vichot and Spilak were able to hold off the favourites, Vichot wins the stage. Marrou arrived safely in a group of 34 riders. No changes in the GC top 10 then. A fine GC finish for Marrou, thanks to a good ITT on the first stage and not losing too much time on the tough queen stage. Once more, he's also awarded the white jersey. Betancur took 3rd place on the final stage and that was enough to take the points jersey off Kreuziger.
Leading up to the race, Heubach won the simulated 1.HC Dwaars Door Vlaanderen ahead of Boasson Hagan and Veiby. The latter will surely perform well in the Ronde and Heubach is now a shoo-in to get that top 10 goal in Parix-Roubaix for us. His AVG has jumped to 77, a first for Aviva, and it's only been half a year since our first rider reached AVG 76. Heubach has made it to FLA 79 COB 81 and STA 78 and that's not even his full potential.
But to be honest, the GP E3 was slightly disappointing. Our captains Veiby and Heubach had a rare fitness level 1, Heubach was even named among the favourites ahead of the race – though we believe Veiby with his HIL 75 is certainly more valuable here. What possibly prevented a better result was a split into a headwind, which left three Quickstep riders and Trek's Sagan suddenly ahead of the peloton, still a long way out. The group wasn't going terribly fast and we hoped other teams would help bring them back, but it just wouldn't happen and the gap grew. So our two captains panicked and attacked and reached the quartett. But soon others also made it across, with the help of their domestiques, and so our men had lost precious energy reserves.
At least it soon became clear that both would finish in the top 10, because the top group was down to 9 men and then BMC's Cancellara was the last to join. But there was nothing we could do against the Quickstep armada. One man could, Peter Sagan, and won the race by 1'15''. It might be time to reduce his AoD as well. He's won every race he's entered so far this season, bar Milan-Sanremo (where he won the bunch sprint for 5th place). We could do no more than find the rear wheels of the last riders in the next group and Veiby managed to finish 7th, Heubach was 10th and last in the group.
Sagan also won Gent-Wevelgem with another solo ride, 2'39'' ahead of the rest. And so I did it and reduced his AoD to 30 as well, his current age, he's simply too good, untouchable in the hilly cobbled races. Even Quickstep, who have Vanmarcke, Van Avermaet, Degenkolb, Stybar, Demare and Offredo, just cannot control him.
Heubach and Veiby led over the Koppelberg both times, reducing the race to a group of 14 with still plenty of energy to work with. Further attacks whittled the top group down to just 7 riders, then Sagan launched his attack, Vanmarcke and Boom tried to follow, while Heubach pulled the rest.
Stybar and Cancellara were the next duo to attack, but working together Veiby and Heubach brought everybody except Sagan back, they had all exhausted themselves, trying in vain to reduce the gap. Heubach was pretty dead in the end, but Veiby easily won the sprint for 2nd place, ahead of Stybar and Vanmarcke. A very encouraging result, usually when top cobblestone specialists attack our boys don't see them again, but this time Veiby and Heubach were able to catch 4 out of 5 big names.
Top 10: Sagan, Veiby, Stybar, Vanmarcke, Boom, Cancellara, Heubach, GVK, Demare, De Buyst
The season's going great so far. At the end of March Aviva is leading the WT team rankings with 489 points, just ahead of Trek (475). Trek of course very much relies on Sagan, who clearly leads the individual standings with 329 points ahead of Ulissi (206), Dan Martin is in 3rd (139).
Heubach had another nice simulated victory, winning the first two stages and the GC of the Three Days of De Panne ahead of Degenkolb and Vanmarcke, Veiby was 4th.
No prize for guessing who won the Ronde by 2'31''. Montes Torrecilla was assigned to protection duty for Heubach right from the start. He has little to offer besides his COB 77 and in the previous races we tried to keep him fresh for later, but he was dropped early both times. Veiby meanwhile was protected by a number of team mates throughout the race.
We let our captains race from the front as we hit the first bunch of cobbled sectors, hoping others would have to waste energy staying with our lads or even having to catch up to them again and again. E1 was down to 33 riders after those sectors, and that included the early breakaway as well as a few riders who had attacked in the meantime. It took some time for the peloton to get back together, only very briefly it grew to 90 riders before a couple of hellingen reduced it down to 30 again.
Soon after we reached the second bunch of cobbled hills the size of the group dwindled and dwindled until we were down to just 7 riders again. At this point Sagan attacked and we just let him go, we were never going to catch him anyway. We played it conservatively and let other attackers go, too. First Vanmarcke, then Boom, then Kristoff, our duo was now just pulling Phinney and Spijkers, with our ex-rider Thys trying to catch us, but he ran out of steam before he could do so.
On top of the last cobbled hellingen our duo attacked briefly and then rode together until the finish. We reached Kristoff 3 km out, possibly Veiby should have taken his rear wheel before sprinting. We'd thought he'd be dead in the water, but he had the reserves left for a sprint after all.
So the final tally is: Sagan, of course, wins the race. His fourth Ronde, making him the sole record holder. Vanmarcke is 2'31'' behind, Boom 4'26'', Kristoff, Veiby and Heubach 5'08''. The top 10 is rounded off with Spijkers, Phinney, Thys and Debusschere. Fourth goal completed, and it's a 5-star goal, the sponsor confidence is currently maxed out.
Our next goal, just 1 star, is winning the climber's jersey in the Vuelta a Pais Vasco, which won't be easy with lots of classified climbs on all stages. Marrou and Hermans will be the protected captains for the GC.
Good news and bad news from the opening stage of this year's Basque Tour. Sergienko was the only rider near the front at the start of the race and decided to follow the first attack. Only he was followed by Adam Yates, who seemed too strong for a breakaway (AVG 78). Sergienko broke off his attack, then 20 more riders attacked and the peloton was in shambles, some of our riders quickly back in A1, but 150 of 160 riders came back together after a while. Our next attacking option was Pello Bilbao and he was ahead by a minute when one other rider decided to join him and he was just as bad as Yates, it was Thomas De Gendt.
The duo worked together, while further back any GC hopes for Hermans quickly evaporated on one of the dreaded narrow roads. I've taken a rare screenshot, Hermans had been at the front of the peloton at the foot of the climb and this was the situation only 2 km later, even with the help of Tewelde there was no chance of closing the gap which would open up, disgusted he gave up and arrived with what was probably the peloton, because it was the largest group, over 20 minutes behind. It was one of those Basque stages which was raced hard from beginning to end.
Hermans' GC hopes die quickly
So the sole focus was on Marrou, especially after De Gendt dropped Bilbao. Marrou didn't go all-in to follow the attacks from the favourites, started by Quintana, but caught up to the top group of 15 riders again on the final steep climb. Bilbao was still there and had a bit of energy left and with his help Marrou made it to the front of the group at the peak. Only 5 km downhill to the finish, Marrou had just enough energy for an attack and won the stage by 17 seconds and slipped into the leader's jersey! Brilliant!
The next day and Tewelde went on the attack, and again it was Adam Yates who couldn't help himself and this time the group stuck. Winning the mountain jersey here seems pretty much impossible with such competition, Yates collected 39 points, Tewelde managed just 5. Our man and the rest of the breakaway then gave up when Yates launched his late attack. Marrou once again looked fairly comfortable, didn't let anybody get away and once again started the downhill sprint after the last peak. 100 metres more and he might have even caught Yates, but he was 2nd, once again ahead of Kwiatkowski, and retains the race lead.
Stage 3 and our great run still holds. Denis joined the breakaway, he was 13 minutes behind, most of his companions even further, but there was Olondris as a slight GC threat, 6 minutes down. Denis took top points on the three climbs, but 14 points only draws him level with Bilbao, far behind Yates. When Denis launched a brief attack on the last classified climb only Durbridge and Madrazo followed, but he dropped them on an unclassified climb 6 km out.
But at that point Kwiatkowski attacked, caught the rest of the breakaway, and Marrou dared to use up all his energy for a counter to catch him and latch onto Kwiato's rear wheel. But Denis was still ahead an won the stage by 46 seconds. Marrou rolled across the line in 3rd, just behind Kwiatek, the group only contained 9 riders and some of those had been in the breakaway. Many favourites lost nearly a minute. After stage 3, Marrou still leads by 17 seconds, but now only ahead of Rolland, Pinot and Kwiatkowski. The rest of the top 10 is 1'09'' behind.
But the toughest stage still awaits, with a longer and steeper final climb than before, once more the peak is just a few km from the finish line.
How did the queen stage go? First, the breakaway: Hermans was our last man with excellent freshness, we hoped he'd collect plenty of mountain points and even win the stage. But sadly, that's not how it went. He was facing Ormad and Geijo and the climbs must have been too mountainous for his liking, he really struggled even staying with them towards the peaks, let alone beat them to the top points. Well before the final climb he was nearly out of energy and the breakaway seemed doomed, so he just gave up and eventually finished 73rd. Ormad was the last man to get caught, he finished 7th on the day.
Onto the main course. Ormad was also a slight GC threat, 6 minutes behind, so Tewelde actually took the helm and pulled the peloton along, so the gap wouldn't get too large and the peloton not too frantic in the difficult finale. But that plan didn't really work. The pace was insanely high on a steep cat. 1, with two more hills ahead. Zamora and then Kudus were the last riders to help our captain.
As soon as we reached the foot of the final tough climb the big names launched their attack. Quintana, Dan Martin, Kwiatkowski, Rui Costa and Barguil. Marrou was now without support, but he had a group of Sky riders around him – Kreuziger, Talansky and Froome – who apparently couldn't go any faster, either. Barguil won the stage just ahead of Rui Costa. Barguil was nearly 2 minutes behind in the GC, and he won't do well in the ITT, but Costa was among the riders 1'09'' behind Marrou. The gap to Kwiatek, Martin and Quintana was 42 seconds. Marrou had a bit of sprint energy left and finished 6th, 1'12'' down.
A great result, which means he's still 3rd in the GC, just 13 seconds behind Kwiatkowski and 3 seconds behind Rui Costa, 17 seconds ahead of Pinot and Rolland. Only the first 20 riders remain within 10 minutes of the leader, so tomorrow's breakaway might have a real chance.
Stage 5, and again let's start with the breakaway report, the only report you'd hear from Aviva in many previous seasons. Hermans had as much or as little freshness as everybody else and maybe even a shot at fulfilling our KOM goal, the amount of points might just be enough, if he's first on every climb. As luck would have it, that's exactly what happened. Polat, Rabottini and Santi showed no interest in the KOM points, except for the final one to launch a late attack. Hermans collected 24 points, and with the 23 points from the previous stage he brought his total to 47, enough to displace Adam Yates and his 42 points.
On the final climb, nearly exhausted, Hermans was able to catch everybody and used the little sprint energy he had for an attack. Nobody could respond, Hermans would ride a steady 72 effort across the final kilometres and win the stage by a minute ahead of Rabottini and Polat. The third stage for our colours! In a race where we had trouble winning a stage throughout this career so far.
Marrou's report is much shorter: The peloton rode a steady pace until the final 15 km. Once more it was Quintana who was first to attack on the last short climb, but Marrou was happy to see the whole top 10 set off after him and held onto the back of the group. There was a short worry when Slagter attacked and caught up to his team mate, but Kwiatkowski made sure they wouldn't get far. Marrou finished safely in the group of 12 riders. Turns out that the whole top 10 hadn't made it after all, a few riders lost 55 seconds, but the situation on the podium remains unchanged.
The ITT in Zalla was hilly and 24.6 km long. We put our trust in the simulated result and: Well, Marrou disappointed, he was only 25th, our best rider was Hermans as 13th. But Marrou still only lost 46 seconds against Talansky, who beat Dumoulin and Dennis, and remains on the podium. It should have been close between him and Rui Costa, but Costa was 25 seconds faster. Kwiatkowski, of course, wins the race, though it was pretty close in the end, just 16 seconds between him and Costa.
Top 10: Kwiatkowski, Rui Costa, Marrou, Quintana, Rolland, Talansky, Pinot, Dan Martin, Barguil, Ion Izagirre
Ulissi, Slagter, Froome, Kreuziger, Mollema and Betancur finish just outside the top 10, just goes to show what a great performance it was from Marrou, he achieved it fair and square. Marrou also wins the white jersey and wasn't far behind Kwiatek in the points rankings. Plus three stages, and Hermans keeps the goal-winning streak alive by barely winning the KOM classification.
It took a long time for just two riders to form the breakaway in Paris-Roubaix. At the half-way point two more riders attacked and caught up to the other duo. But it was all in vain, with 80 km to go we had a top group of 57 riders. A few dropped off the back and then it was Vanmarcke, not Sagan, who launched the first attack.
The speed really picked up, but still Sagan attacked and a little later Boom and Phinney. And then it was time for our duo, Veiby and Heubach, they would work together in the final 40 km, their cooperation worked out well so far. Phinney had overestimated himself and was caught and left behind by our duo. Boom caught Sagan and later left him behind, maybe the Slovakian was slightly ill. Vanmarcke takes the crown, 3'03'' ahead of Boom, 4'02'' ahead of Sagan. Our men were set to finish 4th and 5th, but suddenly Cancellara appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Both our captains then tried attacks, but Cancellara could answer them and eventually he beat Heubach and Veiby in the sprint as well. Giant's Goncalvez (COB 76) had an excellent day and finished 7th, well ahead of Phinney and 4 minutes ahead of Demare and Stybar.
Another notch in the belt, 6th goal of the season. To keep the streak going we have to make the top 10 in all three Ardennes classics.
Heubach added another simulated victory to his palmares, the Brabantse Pijl, ahead of Veiby. As we'd hoped, an excellent cobblestone campaign by our two captains. Heubach was 5th in Roubaix, 6th in the Ronde, 7th in Wevelgem and 10th in Harelbeke. Plus he won the simulated Three Days of De Panne, Dwars door Vlaanderen and De Brabantse Pijl. Veiby has no victory to his name, but did even better in the WT races: 6th in Roubaix, 5th in the Ronde, 7th in Harelbeke and 2nd in Gent-Wevelgem. Unlike Heubach, Veiby will stay with us another season and will be even stronger next year. It's not much of a spoiler to reveal he'll be the first name in our 2021 squad list which I always sort by AVG.
Amstel Gold was a pretty frustrating race. The peloton chose an insane speed with 50 km to go and we pushed our riders as hard as we dared. And yet, soon most of them, including the protected Hermans, were dropped and had no chance of making it back. Eventually it was just Emile Denis against roughly 30 riders split into three or four groups. He stoically picked his own pace and after a while caught a large group and rode to the front when the decisive climb came 5 km out. Unusually for an Aviva rider he risked an all-out attack, hoping everybody is knackered. Just one rider managed to bridge the gap, Hoem with his HIL 82, and beat Denis in the sprint. But at least it was the sprint for 6th, so Denis finishes 7th and completes our goal. Everybody else missed the top 20.
There was a four-man sprint for victory and this year's Amstel Gold goes to Dan Martin, who beat Slagter and Toralf Mendez, Kwiatkowski is only 4th, Sagan a minute behind as 5th. Hoem was 6th, Denis 7th, Gilbert, Jungels and Ted Thiarra round off the top 10.
Edited by Ripley on 25-12-2019 08:52
In Holland Lammertink wasn't feeling well, this time it's Hermans. Three riders were given protection: Denis, Lammertink and Sergienko, while Koloda was a free element. It was the variant with the narrow roads up a steep climb and fast descent just before turning onto the Mur de Huy.
As the speed started to pick up our men chose a free effort and were usually at the front of the race in the final 25 km. By simply increasing our speed we negated a number of attacks, but on the penultimate climb the top stars left us in the dust. We effectively blocked the riders behind us by using the whole width of the narrow road and simply let everybody attack individually as soon as we hit the Mur.
At the front, it was a clear victory for Kwiatkowski ahead of Mendez, Dan Martin and Rui Costa. They were followed by three of our men, Lammertink was 10 seconds ahead of Koloda and Denis. Behind us were Betancur, Ulissi and Slagter. Hermans was diagnosed with a virus and will miss LBL. It was Kwiatek's third Fleche Wallone, equalling the record held by four others riders.
