This was meant to be the February update but it was delayed to a point where some March races were included. We are also aware that an end-of-March rankings update has been published, but let's not pretend we are doing a big catchup on our race reports. We have moved up four places since the January update, mainly due to Claeys' GC win in Southland. Looking at the C1 alone we were the second-best scorers of the month. Individuallt, Uran jumps from ninth to seventh. Claeys jumps from 487th to 35th, having only spend 5 racedays so far!
Belgian classic bla bla bla. Good result from Zepuntke, a few support points and we're leave here satisfied.
Major tried to get into the break only to be dropped on the first cobblestone section, but he did finish the race. Zepuntke was very strong, chasing after other favorites who attacked and eventually dropping those who profited off his wheel.
It did not get him the victory. The front four were too strong and he didn't manage to catch them. From behind, Bush stole fifth place away in the final kilometer. Sixth place which could have been fifth, a good result from a HC-rated race. Albert finished 23rd for some extra points, both pre-race goals achieved!
Since the mid-March update, we have only raced one race: Kuurne -Bruxelles - Kuurne. Despite scoring a few points with Zepuntke and Albert we drop back in the rankings to 13th because other teams simply raced more. This update does not really provide new information, but we are obligated to provide it. Uran only dropped one place in the individual rankings, from 7 to 8.
We used to be banned from the USA, but with the bands system sometimes racing there is unavoidable. Out of protest we sent an improvised squad containing our Americans and a few second-tier leaders. Drapac was brought for the sprint but DNF'ed along the way. Janse van Rensburg did great in the final TT with a seventh place. For the other riders, hunting the breakaway was the goal.
Ivanov was the first to take his chance on stage three, and was fourth in the KoM after the stage. He returned for the next stage together with Haga, and the American moved up to fifth while the Bulgarian stayed fourth. With the breakaway also getting free room to go for stage glory, we had two contenders. They were both in the final four, but Klemme had the best uphill sprint. Ivanov finished second, Haga third.
It was Selander's turn on the next flat stage and he nearly made it to the finish line as well, being caught with four kilometer to go. Stage six was the final stage where mountain points were on offer, and Ivanov joined the break in hope of getting them. None of the riders above him in the classification were part of it as well, but he had Barton to help. The other riders in the break knew what we were up to and did not make it very difficult for us. Ivanov took enough points to conquer the mountains classification! All the breakaways also led to decent GC classifications, Ivanov in 20th and Haga in 24th!
We have three stage wins against our name in the Tour of Pologne, but that was when it was raced at continental level. Now it's PTHC and the competition is stronger. The race contains stages for everyone except cobbles, so deciding which terrain to prioritize is very difficult. In fact we prioritized nothing and sent another improvised squad, with Drapac leading the sprints and hoping Ivanov could go on another KoM hunt.
Drapac actually had a decent shot in a relatively weak sprinters field. Stage two and four were marked as flat, and it went to a sprint both times. Two seventh places is the outcome of his race, and this time he managed to finish. Kiflay surprised with a ninth place in the closing time trial.
As expected, we went KoM-hunting. Esmaeli took to the break on stage one, placing second in the KoM classification. However, for the real climbing we had to rely on Ivanov. He went into the break on stages five and six, and assembled enough points to classify joint-second. He truly is our KoM-goto as he had won California just a week prior.
As we are awaiting news from Ukraine, where we don't know what happened yet, we bring you coverage of the GP Liechtenstein. A PT race where we participated with a wildcard. Liechtenstein is in the middle of the Alps so the profile can only look like one thing: climbing.
No one was willing to go into the break as it would take a few years recovering from that effort. It was up and down and up and down, rinse and repeat until the final climb which was even longer. We waited with Uran to attack on the final climb, but so did everyone else.
Uran got out of the saddle and followed some attacks in the final 2.5 kilometer. It was too early, the climbing continued but the legs refused. As it was the same for everyone around him, it was a sprint of dying swans. Uran finished ninth, which is not a bad result in a PT field. A shame we can't score points.
It has been a while since we posted a review, but our PR-Minion has been busy. He's been sighted in Hungary, Cyprus, Germany, the Ardennes, Namibia, Sweden and Burkina Faso in the last weeks, but no mention of his beloved teams and their amazing races. Time to do a bit of catch-up, starting with Corsica International. A well-known fixture on our calendar, Uran being a former winner but a bit underwhelming in our colors.
We brought Drapac for stage one, who miserably failed, and Janse van Rensburg for stage two, who miserably failed. All eyes on Uran then. With his good time trial he set himself up for a decent GC, though losing time to some rivals.
On the attack then, which is exactly what he did together with Schelling, Valls and Tenorio. Only the latter was ahead of him in the GC, so beating him should be enough, but bonus seconds are important as well. Valls dropped, and then Tenorio struggled in the final kilometer. Knowing second place to Schelling was enough, we allowed the UBS rider to win the stage, as that means Rigoberto Uran has finally won Corsica International in our colors! Two years of getting close, but now we finally did it!
#
Rider
Team
Time
1
Rigoberto Uran
Minions
6h50'51
2
Justo Tenorio
Desigual
+ 14
3
Patrick Schelling
Team UBS
+ 39
45
Yasmani Martinez
Minions
+ 7'47
67
Chad Haga
Minions
+ 11'44
74
Borislav Ivanov
Minions
+ 12'48
95
Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg
Minions
+ 17'56
105
Metkel Kiflay
Minions
+ 22'50
110
Chris Barton
Minions
+ 23'33
173
Damion Drapac
Minions
+ 46'23
(5/5)
The real reason this took so long is we just woke up from the celebration party.
Also a delayed report but the race itself was delayed as well, by a few days, not the eternities we've been slacking off. Anyway, hills everywhere but two stages are time trials. Claeys is good on one but bad at the other, hence a GC victory might be out of the question.
And indeed, our suspicions turned out to be correct. A horrible time on the opening day and to make matters worse, the second stage turned out to be very friendly to the pure climbers, which he is not as well. Janse van Rensburg put in a decent effort on the opening hill climb but his advantage was gone after stage two as well.
Haga is able to combine the best of both worlds, so might be our best bet at a good GC result. His opening hillclimb was a bit underwhelming, but he managed to relatively hang on at the mountains (albeit five minutes behind Pluchkin). On the final TT he finished in a very good tenth, giving him 14th place in the GC. Janse van Rensburg took 16th place on the stage and 19th in the GC.
Veenendaal - Veenendaal is a race in the city of Veenendaal, the Netherlands. The race is flat with some minor hills, Vantomme as leader hoping on a decent result. We have a big boost in this race as our biggest fan lives here, and will stand alongside the road cheering us on.
However, it turns out the race was actually relocated to Fourmies, France. Why on earth, no one knows. Now it's just another cycling race for us and worst of all, our biggest fan stood outside all day in the cold and rain waiting for his favorite riders to pas, but now he feels disappointed. We sent him a gift package to make things right.
Oh yeah, Vantomme finished seventeenth, which is not actually that bad given his performances and late attacks spoiling the sprints.
GP Wallonie is a C1 race in Belgium, and the profile is perfectly suited to Claeys. Bru and Selander as support who could pick up some points in their own right.
Having a pre-race favorite, we did some work in the chasing. Claeys and Selander remained in the 23 rider peloton at the foot of the climb. A good result was on the cards.
Once on the climb, Claeys got away with four others. Kinoshita started the sprint, but a bit too early. Claeys used his slipstream to get past and win GP Wallonie! Selander dropped back to 29th.
A few decent races and we skyrocket up the rankings, from thirteenth to eighth. It's actually a shame the races we won were C1 rather than HC or higher, otherwise we could have entered the top five. We hope to be able to challenge for promotion again, and by doing so we need to count on Uran and Claeys keeping up their form. The Colombian is up to sixth in the individual standings after his Corsica win, and the Belgian is knocking on the door of the top thirty with a win in Wallone.
The first race in the month of May takes place in Brexitania, sorry, the United Kingdom. More precisely in the county of Cheshire, northwestern England. The race has five stages, three flat and two cobbled. Hence we bring a sprinters team, led by Vantomme, and a cobbles team, led by Zepuntke.
The opening stage was carnage. Zepuntke did not have his best days and was dropped pretty soon, but Marcos, Albert and even Vantomme held on quite well and all finished in the top twenty, even though Marcos as eighth already lost seven minutes to Summerhill. Avila and Hodeg abandoned. On the next stage, Albert was caught behind a split and lost a minute and a few places, but Vantomme sprinted to eighth place and moved up to tenth in the GC.
And that's where our luck ended. Vantomme was not able to put in a good sprint on stage three, the break won stage four with none of us in it, and stage five also went to the morning breakaway without Minion. Zepuntke attacked his way to eighth place, but 39th in the GC is not good enough. Vantomme dropped and finished 47th. On the plus side, Marcos held on to eighth and Albert finished twelfth, so not bad after all. And we finished runner-up in the teams classification!
#
Rider
Team
Time
1
Danny Summerhill
Andorra Cycling Project
23h20'14
2
Joeri Stallaert
Volvo acc. by Spotify
+ 28
3
Pieter Vanspeybrouck
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
+ 41
8
Leandro Marcos
Minions
+ 7'06
12
Niels Albert
Minions
+ 8'22
28
Bert-Jan Lindeman
Minions
+ 13'46
39
Ruben Zepuntke
Minions
+ 16'34
42
Andzs Flaksis
Minions
+ 17'11
47
Maxime Vantomme
Minions
+ 19'52
DNF
Edwin Avila
Minions
DNF
Alvaro Hodeg
Minions
(3/5)
When the leaders fall, the helpers take over.
It is mandatory for PCT teams to attend some C2 events and ride amongst the continental teams. We elected the single day of Dunkirk as one of those. Since we have a strong cobblestone squad, we expect to challenge on the cobblestone route even though Zepuntke is banned from participating, presumably because he's German. A rare chance for Albert to be team leader, with Flaksis, Lindeman and Marcos as support.
A rider who hates cobblestones is Kiflay, so to give him something fun to do he could go into the breakaway. After a few cobble sections it was done though, but he did finish inside the time limit unlike Rosas.
Albert and Marcos were our strongest riders, Flaksis dropped quite early and Lindeman did not have the legs as well. The gentlemen out front could not follow the attacks and finished rather anonimously in 12th and 17th. Definitely could, should have been better.
Marcovdw wrote:
(2/5)
We got our ass kicked by the CT teams.[/center]
We've all been there
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." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Cobblestone races are usually one-day events. This is too, but individual. Chrono d'Arenberg is a cobblestone time trial, the only one on the calendar. Zepuntke finished runner-up last year, and he is by no means a good time trialist, so the cobblestone is the key factor in this race. Hence we bring our three best cobblestone riders: Zepuntke, Albert and Flaksis.
Flaksis was the first rider out of only 24 to start, and finished 23rd. Only one rider was slower than him, despite him being a good cobblestone rider.
Whatever happened, the time trial specialists came out on top, as Zepuntke and Albert didn't get further than 18th and 19th. They score points thanks to the incredibly small startlist, but they were expected to finish much higher. Whether the time trial specialists trained on the cobblestones, sudden weather changes, smooth roads or a few riders just took a major shortcut, we don't know.
#
Rider
Team
Time
1
Silvan Dillier
Team UBS
1h06'42
2
Roger Kluge
Bianchi - Campagnolo
+ 10
3
Tom Bohli
Team UBS
+ 32
18
Ruben Zepuntke
Minions
+ 3'28
22
Niels Albert
Minions
+ 6'55
23
Andzs Flaksis
Minions
+ 7'09
(0/5)
Or the evil, purple Minions removed the cobblestones.
Flatter than a pancake, this Berlin ProRace. Unfortunately our team has not done well in sprints so far, time for Vantomme to set the record straight.
No rider in the break but that didn't survive anyway. A split occured in the peloton at about thirty kilometer to go, and all our riders were behind. Everyone.
As things split up further, Vantomme found himself with Albert, Lindeman and Major. Together they tried to get back, but fell 1'40 short in the end. We have four riders between 40th and 50th, but we'd rather have one in the top twenty.
Another race in Germany, on the other side of the country in Frankfurt. Whereas the profile indicator shows flat, there are some serious hills to conquer. Compared to Berlin, we drop Avila from the squad and replace him with Selander. Our hopes are still behind Vantomme, probably futile.
We send no one in the breakaway, again. Vantomme was dropped on the final climb, to nobody's surprise.
Did everything go wrong then? No. We had one rider in the front group at the end: Selander. He finished 23rd in the sprint, and scored two rankings points! It was a good decision to bring him to the race.
Andorra is a small country in the Pyrenees, between France and Spain. Still, it manages to host a five-day stage race with only one kind of stage: climbing. There is no moment of flat in this race, only up and down, up and down, up and down. It should not be surprising we bring our best climbing squad and focus on Uran for the overall victory.
The first stage immediately had a lot of climbing, and a mountain top finish. Uran came out as strongest from the bunch, but without gaining much time on his rivals. However, we did conquer the yellow jersey which we intend to hold from start to finish. Stage two was ridden quite passively, so we didn't have to do much to defend.
On stage three, a certain mister Martin attacked and was uncatchable, dropping us down to second in the GC. On the next mountain time trial, Uran was unable to gain time on the Irishman, finishing second to him on the stage. We tried an all-or-nothing attempt on the final stage, but Martin countered it and beat us to the line. Second place in the GC and points classification, a stage win and two other stage podiums, a very successful race for Uran. But we wanted the win.
Belgium | PTHC | Classic | Cobble | March 30
Edwin Avila
Andzs Flaksis
Bert-Jan Lindeman
Jay Major
Leandro Marcos
Ruben Zepuntke
United States | HC | 7 stages | Mountain / Time trial / Flat | April 1 - 7
Damion Drapac
Borislav Ivanov
Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg
Pologne | PTHC | 7 stages | Mountain / Time trial / Flat | April 9 - 15
Tareq Esmaeli
Metkel Kiflay
Ukraine | HC | 3 stages | Hill / Time trial | April 13 - 15
Laureano Rosas
Liechtenstein | PT | Classic | Mountain | April 17
France | C1 | 3 stages | Mountain / Time trial / Flat | April 28 - 30
United Kingdom | HC | 5 stages | Cobble / Flat | May 1 - 5
Andorra | C1 | 5 stages | Mountain | May 19 -23
Norway | PTHC | 5 stages | Hill / Flat / Time trial | May 27 - 31
