This is uncharted territory for out team - actual competitiveness on cobblestones! Van Aert and Van der Poel were too strong, but Keukeleire just barely won the sprint behind the two to finish third, despite not having his best day. A promising result going forward.
This was supposed to be David Gaudu’s race while Soler continued to prep for Catalunya. But then Soler crushed the opening time trial and Gaudu had terrible legs on the first mountain stage. He gave Soler the go, who promptly won the stage, took the yellow jersey and never gave it back. Gaudu and Gesbert both provided great support on the ensuing mountain stages and our lead was never in danger. This is no doubt the biggest win of our tenure with Cofidis so far - let's hope it doesn't spell trouble for Gaudu's relationship with either Soler or the team.
Unfortunately, Christophe Laporte didn't do well in the first sprint stage, and after the second, which went to a breakaway, he was diagnosed with an Achilles tenditis. It is unclear how long he'll be out, but Milano - Sanremo is very much in danger.
Wow great result by Soler, hitting the ground running and just aceing Paris-Nice, well done. Flawless performance with two stage wins and great support for sure.
And Utr and Barcelo, what..How did this happen. Choo-choo hype train!
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
In his first World Tour race as a Cofidis leader, Pierre Latour made the absolute most of this opportunity. We lost a pretty big chunk of time in the opening TTT, but a stellar performance on the only mountain stage vaulted Pierre into podium contention. Unfortunately, Patrick Konrad was too strong on both hilltop finishes and recovered enough time to narrowly take third place, but this was still a great race for us. Except for the sprint stages, which were nothing to write home about, but we’ll look past that here.
Laporte was still suffering from his Achilles tenditis, but the team doctors cleared him to race. With Viviani going to Catalunya, we had no Plan B and Laporte was very, very clear that he wanted to race. So he did. His rough condition showed, but he still did reasonably well. Van der Poel defended his title in dominant fashion.
Shonak wrote:
Seems like VDP is auto winning MSR the next few years like Merckx. Odd tbat Viviani didnt race tho.
We really have to think of something if we want to take that race from him ^^ As for Viviani, we wanted one of the top sprinters in Catalunya, and maybe the logical thing would have been to have the Italian race MSR, but Laporte has earned the right to race the more prestigeous race, so that's what we went with. As you'll see, Viviani hopefully won't be too upset:
Marc Soler is on a roll! Having taken the yellow jersey with a stage win on day three, Pinot and Bernal were just slightly stronger on stage 4. But he limited his losses, and with an aggressive attack on the final hill of stage 7, he took stage win number two and enough bonus seconds for the overall victory. Elia Viviani also had some highlights after a subpar Tirreno-Adriatico, with two stage wins - in an arguably weaker field, but stage wins nonetheless!
purepasd wrote:
Very dominant. Perhaps it's time to consider raising the difficulty further to keep it interesting?
Yeah, I'm thinking about that. My current idea for a workaround is instead to set my riders' goals in a way that it's impossible for them to get fitness peaks. Because I feel like the difficulty actually works fine in general, what makes my riders slightly OP is that they consistently have daily forms of +4 and +5 and never any bad days. Gaudu at Paris-Nice is a good example to avoid that: His early season objective is LBL, and he had a little bad luck with daily form, so he wasn't able to compete with the best.
I'm a bit further in the season already and about to start the Giro, where I unintentionally messed up the goal setting for Latour, so he enters the race in good shape but without the fitness peak. I'll see how that goes. I think with the possibility of bad days and +3 to +5 being the exception, we could have a good balance and most importantly some variance.
Curious what you think about it guys, so let me know
purepasd wrote:
Very dominant. Perhaps it's time to consider raising the difficulty further to keep it interesting?
Yeah, I'm thinking about that. My current idea for a workaround is instead to set my riders' goals in a way that it's impossible for them to get fitness peaks. Because I feel like the difficulty actually works fine in general, what makes my riders slightly OP is that they consistently have daily forms of +4 and +5 and never any bad days. Gaudu at Paris-Nice is a good example to avoid that: His early season objective is LBL, and he had a little bad luck with daily form, so he wasn't able to compete with the best.
I'm a bit further in the season already and about to start the Giro, where I unintentionally messed up the goal setting for Latour, so he enters the race in good shape but without the fitness peak. I'll see how that goes. I think with the possibility of bad days and +3 to +5 being the exception, we could have a good balance and most importantly some variance.
Curious what you think about it guys, so let me know
To me, it seems better to up the difficulty, so that you can still be rewarded from micromanaging goals and fitness. It will be harder to obtain consistent results, but the occasional win where everything aligns feels so much better. It just seems strange to intentionally make planning mistakes to make it harder for yourself, instead of toughening the opposition and still being able to beat the game. But if you want to try your method, absolutely feel free to do so
If you use PCM Career Explorer you can fix the fitness schedule and race planning of AI teams. I find this helps smaller races have more competition. And even races like Strade or OHN have much better startlists. I think you might have to do it on JAN 1st in your save though, so maybe only possible for future seasons.
valverde321 wrote:
If you use PCM Career Explorer you can fix the fitness schedule and race planning of AI teams. I find this helps smaller races have more competition. And even races like Strade or OHN have much better startlists. I think you might have to do it on JAN 1st in your save though, so maybe only possible for future seasons.
That's an interesting tool, I'll look into it, thank you
@Shonak: That would be a very, very last resort
@purepasd: I'll think about it further, thanks for the input. I just think that it would make races more interesting to have more variance, with the possibility of bad days (and the additional strategic challenge that comes with them) but also the option to actually dominate if I have one or two good days, and more realistic as well. I understand that it's weird to torpedo myself, but reaching fitness peaks isn't all that difficult, so it's not totally rewarding either. We'll see
A group of 28 made it through the cobbles and hills and we still had Laporte and the quickly-recovered Keukeleire there, so we felt good. But attacks kept coming and coming and Keukeleire soon proved not to be at 100% yet. Laporte tried to hang on as good as he could, but he had to trust the others to catch all the attackers. In the end, Politt (at least for now besting his BORA predecessor Sagan) and Naesen were successful escapees, but Laporte finished third in the sprint of the rest, a massive improvement over last year’s 15th.
Keukeleire had a very up and down week health-wise, not feeling well again for GW. So we relied on the combination of Petit and Laporte. Unfortunately, that led us to try and neutralize all late attacks, which we weren’t ultimately able to. Petit was our last man standing, who would have been better off joining the successful move. He still finished third from the main group, but this was not the optimum for us.
Laport on a roll and some great season form, also saving the results when keukeleir was not up to it. Hopefully Keukeleire comes into form for Ronde and Roubaix because it is unlikely that Laporte can get punch above his weight in those races.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
Jens Keukeleire had a puncture at a very unfortunate time and was out of contention then and there. Adrien Petit took over and did reasonably well, but it was his lack of uphill skills that eventually prevented him from doing better than 10th in a frankly mediocre field.
Previous results on cobbles hadn't been too encouraging, but Jens hit his peak at just the right time. He was in the right group with nine of the very best cobblers and lost contact only at the very last ascent. Quite the improvement from last year’s 26th place. Shoutout to rookie Henry Desbordes, who was a very good domestique for a long time and finished his first cobblestone monument 44th.
This was one of our most important sponsor goals - a Top 10 was asked of us. Jens had achieved that a week before, and he had just enough of a good day to pull it off again. Once more, he was in the final selection inside the last 10 kilometers. This time, it wasn’t his stamina but his tire that held him back.
When he was rolling again, he got together with Mathieu Van der Poel who had lost touch earlier. Riding a steady pace to the finish, they swept up an exhausted Nils Politt on the way. That trio sprinted for positions 9-11, and luckily Jens was faster than the German to achieve the goal. Adrien Petit also did very well, finishing 13th, as Alberto Bettiol gets his second monument win after De Ronde in 2019.
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad | 01.03.2021
A. Petit
J. Herrada
A. Viviani
Peter Sagan
Mathieu Van der Poel
Tadej Pogacar
Rigoberto Urán
Pascal Ackermann
Rui Costa
Alex Kirsch
Rafal Majka
James Knox
Jonas Vingegaard
Carl Fredrik Hagen
The team will try to keep up the great performances 
N. Haas
Patrick Konrad
Fabian Lienhard
Lawson Craddock
Jaakko Hänninen
Soler is a legend in the making, and Viviani to top it off with two stage wins.
Zdenek Stybar
