The sprinters have to work well if this team is to be up there in the rankings. Moscon should do well, but I'm not sure how Pernstainer fits in. He's a very good rider, so clever planning will be needed to make use of both of them. The climbers are not spectacular, but at least Signorini is not there anymore.
Abhi Thanks. I'm happy with sprinters and puncheurs, indeed, but much less with the climbers. Definitely had other plans - but well, plans and actual transfers often clash I'm hoping for a position between 6 and 10, for Top 5 the sprinters would need to work very, very well.
jandal Indeed, I'm looking forward to next year - hoping there will be stage races on the calendar that will fit Masnada's skillset! Signing a leader for pure mountain stage races will be key, for sure. And I'd finally like to cover the holes in TTs and cobbles. I too hope Scully will do well - if he doesn't score at least as many points as Freuler last year, the swap would be considered a huge failure.
redordead Yeah, going all-in on the sprints is a very risky strategy, given how messy sprints often were last year. Planning will be the key to a successful season anyway, not just for Pernsteiner. I think he'll have his chances to shine, too
Signorini was indeed a sub-par rider with PCM18, there was no way he'd get a new contract with us.
After race planning is or should be done by all teams, it's time to present our schedule and - in the upcoming days - our whole schedule.
For those of you who don't like walls of text, here's the short version of our goals:
Country
Race
Goal
Züri Metzgete (C2HC)
Win
Giro del Trentino (C2)
Top 5
Coppa Placci (C2)
Top 10
Trofeo Laigueglia (C2HC)
Top 10
Team Standings
Top 10
As last year, we were quite conservative with our goals - especially that we didn't have any great leaders going into transfers, with Guillén released during renewals. Some of the goals may sound too easy with the firepower we finally assembled, but no-one will be unhappy if the goals are over-achieved!
Most of the goals are in the first half of the season, starting with the new one-day classic Trofeo Laigueglia (C2HC, 28-Feb). One more "home race" in the C2HC calendar allowed us to focus even more on this region regarding our goals, hence this one replaces the Tour of Bulgaria goal from last season.
Let's have a look at the profile and the roster that will try to achieve a Top 10 result in Italy:
Rider
Hi
Mo
Rider
Hi
Mo
Gianni Moscon
79
73
Mirco Saggiorato
73
77
Hermann Pernsteiner
77
75
Nico Brüngger
72
71
Fabian Lienhard
75
66
Leonardo Basso
72
67
Cyrille Thièry
74
70
Stefan Bissegger
66
64
Gianni Moscon will obviously be our leader - but given Hermann Pernsteiner's downhill strength, he might be a dangerous weapon, too. We hope that sprinting won't have much of an impact on this profile, given that our best puncheurs aren't the best sprinters - however, Fabian Lienhard could have outsider chances with his attacking spirit and sprinting capabilities.
The second goal was one we missed to achieve last year - because the breakaway took the first spots, else we'd have achieved it. Let's try to do better this year at Coppa Placci (C2, 19-Apr). The hilly race in San Marino seems to be breakaway-prone, as both editions weren't won by the favorites, so only a few Top 10 spots were remaining for them. Let's see if we can get one of them, as our sponsors fixed the same goal as last year: Top 10
Rider
Hi
Mo
Rider
Hi
Mo
Gianni Moscon
79
73
Mirco Saggiorato
73
77
Hermann Pernsteiner
77
75
Leonardo Basso
72
67
Fabian Lienhard
75
66
Gino Mäder
68
73
Cyrille Thièry
74
70
Stefan Bissegger
66
64
The uphill finish should be well suited to our top puncheurs. Moreover, with that much climbing during the whole race, both Gianni Moscon and even more Hermann Pernsteiner should have an advantage over the pure puncheurs. Mirco Saggiorato should provide great support on these parts.
For goal number 3, we jump again out of San Marino, back to its surrounding country, Italy. The Giro del Trentino (C2, 18-20 May) goal was another one we failed last year - and with all the incredible climber quality added to CT this year, it will be even harder to achieve this time. Our sponsors are demanding again a Top 5 GC result. We got 6th place last year, so it isn't impossible - and we have slightly improved our TTT squad, which will hopefully lose less time on that stage. One TTT, two mountain stages - that's the Giro del Trentino:
Rider
Mt
TT
Rider
Mt
TT
Andrea Manfredi
78
65
Gianni Moscon
73
66
Mirco Saggiorato
77
66
Nico Brüngger
71
73
Hermann Pernsteiner
75
61
Leonardo Basso
67
72
Gino Mäder
73
71
Stefan Bissegger
64
69
We will bring pretty much every rider who can climb or time trial to this race. Our leaders will be Andrea Manfredi and Mirco Saggiorato, hoping for a good amount of help by puncheur Hermann Pernsteiner. We were long time hesitating to nominate Gianni Moscon as well, as we didn't have any more useful races to send him to - and so we really hope he'll agree to take a domestique role for once, as he could do a great job for the team here!
The final goal race of the season is again the season finale, at home in Zürich! The Züri Metzgete (C2HC, 18-Oct) is again our win goal - a goal we almost achieved with Cyrille Thièry's 2nd place last year. This time, we should bring along enough power to win the race from far away:
Rider
Hi
Mo
Rider
Hi
Mo
Gianni Moscon
79
73
Mirco Saggiorato
73
77
Hermann Pernsteiner
77
75
Gino Mäder
68
73
Fabian Lienhard
75
66
Robin Froidevaux
67
62
Cyrille Thièry
74
70
Stefan Bissegger
66
64
Given the pretty long flat and the missing sprinter abilities of Gianni Moscon and Hermann Pernsteiner, both would need to get a solo win - they're the most beautiful ones anyway! If they don't manage to get a gap, we must try to bring Fabian Lienhard or last year's runner-up Cyrille Thièry across the hills, as they would do a great job in a reduced bunch sprint. It will be an exciting season finale - potentially deciding whether it's a good season for us or not.
But it's a long, long way until we'll finally arrive in Zürich. 148 race days come before - and together with that final race at home, we'll see if we can achieve our Top 10 Team Standings goal. We do believe that we have got the potential, although we don't have equally strong setups for all terrains. Our 3-year masterplan expects this Top 10 rank, and a real push for promotion next year - let's see what the next 10 months bring along!
Besides Trentino, I think those are quite achievable goals and a 4/5 return won't surprise me at all. Kind of cool that we've managed to keep all our puncher goals separate
Abhi 4/5 may be a bit optimistic, I'd be happy with 3/5. The Top 10 goals in Coppa Placci and Trofeo Laigueglia are mandatory goals, there won't be an excuse for missing any of them. The Top 10 goal in the overall standings should be doable, too - if the puncheurs and sprinters perform as expected. Winning in Zürich would be a highlight for sure - not impossible, but not very probable, either.
And I'm with you that the Trentino goal will be the hardest part. I really expected to get a good climber - was trying to buy Bongiorno for most of the transfer period - but no. Well, Saggiorato got 6th last year, why not climb one spot?
We have already published our race calendar yesterday, and it can be found here. We won't go into too much details here, as the races will be presented in the beginning of the respective month. But let's still take a look at how our races are distributed across all our possible categories, and over the 10 months of the 2020 season:
HC
C1
C2HC
C2
Total
January
2
2
4
---
8
February
---
3
4
5
12
March
4
14
6
---
24
April
---
---
4
4
8
May
---
12
3
5
20
June
2
6
12
7
27
July
---
---
9
12
21
August
---
---
---
2
2
September
---
7
8
---
15
October
---
2
11
---
13
Total
8
46
61
35
150
Without much of a surprise, the most frequent category is the mandatory C2HC one. But we will participate in quite a lot of C1 races, too, where we will try to steal some big points from the PCT teams. The C2 races are on one hand great chances for our leaders to shine, and on the other hand are a great possibilities for developing our talents. And as last year, we will participate in three HC races again. As the Austria tour clashes with one of our goal races, we decided to rather apply for the Barbados Cycling Festival instead. And our sprinters will even get two more chances to score at this level, as we will partake in the season opener Down Under Classic, as well as in the Berlin Pro Race, which will be one of two showings in Germany.
We didn't apply for Emilia, where we participated last year, as it clashes with our most important goal race of the season. Still, we are happy to get these 8 HC race days.
In terms of distribution over the year, we can see a slow start, with only 20 race days combined in January and February. March will then be our second busiest month, before a short breather in April.
The period from May throuh July will be crucial for us, as these three months contain almost half of our race days. In June alone, we'll have almost as many race days as in the final three months of the season - so if we want to end up in the upper part of the rankings, we'll need a good margin by the end of July! Let's see how it all works out - stay tuned for the January preview coming up soon
Soon we will head into our second CT season, and after the roster and goals presentation it's now time to focus on our first races.
January will be a pretty calm month - first of all, it's shorter than most others racing-wise, as there's no event on the first nine days of the year. Then, we only have 8 race days this month. It's four one-day races for us, but only two days of racing, as we have two pairs of clashes.
Which means that the first day of the season, we'll have two races:
Jan 10 | Down Under Classic (HC)
Spoiler
The very first race is a really short one - the classic PCT opener in Down Under, one of three HC races for us this year. In a really stacked PCT sprinter field, we want to find out how OUR sprinters can do compared with the upper league guys.
But hey, we won't make this trip just to watch and learn, but try to get our first points of the season! And while our sprinters don't have the highest top speed, there's no cyclist in the MG-universe having a better acceleration than our Theo Reinhardt - let's see if he can turn his biggest strength into a great result! Here's the full roster:
Rider
Spr
Acc
Fl
Rider
Spr
Acc
Fl
Theo Reinhardt
79
84
71
Benedikt Mundle
59
69
79
Tom Scully
79
80
74
Max Walscheid
74
75
69
Issiaka Cissé
78
77
74
Stefan Bissegger
69
70
69
Manuel Stocker
76
77
75
For a CT team, we guess it's safe to say that we bring a really stacked sprinter team to Australia. Not only will we have the man with the best acceleration, we bring as well one of the best rouleurs in the peloton. So if the PCT teams should ask us for help with bringing back escapees, they shouldn't be surprised if Mundle tears apart the pack. With our well proven leadout duo Stocker-Cissé, we should be able to bring Reinhardt and/or Scully into a great position - and then, anything can happen. We're looking forward to this kick-off, and we're hoping to upset the PCT teams!
Expectations: Top 10
Best result so far: N/A
Jan 10 | GP Yekaterinburg (C2HC)
Spoiler
We don't know who had the highly sadistic idea of holding a race in Russia in January - all we can say is that we're still working with our jersey manufacturer Cuore to find a cloth that's warm enough yet not too bulky. We've got positive signs - hopefully we'll get it until racing kicks off!
But well, maybe the riders will just go harder, which might be the best way to avoid freezing. Our puncheurs are definitiely looking forward to their season opener - and we can already tell you that they won't be kidding. These are our ice-resistant men:
Rider
Hi
Mo
Acc
Rider
Hi
Mo
Acc
Gianni Moscon
79
73
73
Mirco Saggiorato
73
77
72
Hermann Pernsteiner
77
75
72
Nico Brüngger
72
71
66
Fabian Lienhard
75
66
76
Leonardo Basso
72
67
69
Cyrille Thièry
74
70
73
Andrea Manfredi
65
78
73
Is that a roster with enough depth on the hills? We think so. And just in case, we bring our best climbers to this race, too, as they don't have that many mountain races this year.
Gianni Moscon is definitely one of CT's Top 5 puncheurs - and of them, he's the best climber. Add his great resistance - one of the best you can find among puncheurs in CT - and you have one of the race's favorites. Hermann Pernsteiner isn't too bad as a backup, either - and the Austrian is an even better climber. So there's absolutely no excuse for not delivering in this race - even a certain Kelderman should beware of our squad (that's what we hope, at least). On longer uphill finishes like in Russia, we want to target the win this year - we're still waiting for our first one in a one-day-race. That would be a great way to start the season - let's go!
Expectations: Top 3
Best result so far: 15h (Cyrille Thièry, 2019)
Jan 31 | Gisborne GP (C1)
Spoiler
Just like on the first day of racing in January, we have clashing hilly and flat races on the last day, too. This time, both races will be held in Oceania, starting with the hilly Gisborne GP. It's another race with an uphill finish, and pretty climbing-heavy - so we are quite positive to get a good result with the following roster:
Rider
Hi
Mo
Acc
Rider
Hi
Mo
Acc
Gianni Moscon
79
73
73
Nico Brüngger
72
71
66
Hermann Pernsteiner
77
75
72
Gino Mäder
68
73
63
Fabian Lienhard
75
66
76
Andrea Manfredi
65
78
73
Cyrille Thièry
74
70
73
Of course, although Moscon is a great puncheur on CT level, there's a lot more competition in the C1 category. Still, with his climbing skills and resistance combined with his hill riding capabilities and good team support, he should be able to get at least a Top 10 result, if not better. And if there should be too much climbing for him, we still have Pernsteiner as a backup option - or even Manfredi?
Expectations: Top 10
Best result so far: 14th (Simon Pellaud, 2019)
Jan 31 | Great Ocean Road Classic (C2HC)
Spoiler
The final race of the month makes it 3/4 January races in Oceania. Not a pan-flat one, but definitely one for our sprinters. And one where we did well a year ago, with Guillén's 5th place (note that two late attackers took the first two spots), so our hopes are high to get another fine result here! Let' see who will fight for line honors in 2020:
Rider
Spr
Acc
Fl
Rider
Spr
Acc
Fl
Tom Scully
79
80
74
Benedikt Mundle
59
69
79
Pedro Merino Criado
77
79
72
Max Walscheid
74
75
69
Manuel Stocker
76
77
75
Stefan Bissegger
69
70
69
It must hurt Tom to know that we're racing in his home country the same day, and he isn't there. Nonetheless, he agrees that he'll be much more useful in Australia on this day. With him is his season-long leadout duo Merino Criado and Walscheid, this time complemented by Stocker. And to avoid a late breakaway win scenario like last year, we bring our flat machine Mundle, too. We expect a really stacked field - but we're confident that our setup will work out well!
Expectations: Top 5
Best result so far: 5th (Marco Guillén, 2019)
And that's it! Four races, two pairs of clashes - January will be a short yet interesting month for us! We bring riders capable of doing well in all of these races - let's try to kick off the season in the best possible way!
Moscon is a nice rider to have on CT level. His missing sprint might hurt him here and there but ideally he is already ahead of some opponents before the final 500m.
Regarding your goals, I would be hugely surprised if Manfredi becomes an option in Gisborne though. If so, the stage design really has gone incredibly wrong.
roturn wrote:
Moscon is a nice rider to have on CT level. His missing sprint might hurt him here and there but ideally he is already ahead of some opponents before the final 500m.
Regarding your goals, I would be hugely surprised if Manfredi becomes an option in Gisborne though. If so, the stage design really has gone incredibly wrong.
I guess you can't have it all in CT... Of course his sprint will hurt, and his acceleration isn't top-notch, either. Training the sprint would be cheap, but rather pointless, too... He'd really better break away before those final meters
I agree on the Manfredi thing - I just thought he might try to make it to the breakaway. But even then, there will be many better puncheurs - I'm not seriously counting on him, but you need to motivate the guys somehow
Seems like we'll only meet in the mandatory C2HC races in January, it will be strange for you to see Guillén in red and yellow I suppose (that is, if he manages to survive until the final sprint )
Moscon will probably create havoc in Russia and New Zealand. It will be interesting to see how he compares to the other top puncheurs. I'm kinda relieved to see Reinhardt won't be competing in Australia but Scully will most probably want to prove himself that close to home and has the stats to do so.
Nemolito Well, I'm happy he found a new home And I'm pretty sure he'll beat us from time to time, but I hope he doesn't outscore our sprinters this year - else I'd really have made a huge mistake during renewals
Guave I hope Moscon will do well. As others have mentioned, he doesn't know what a sprint is, so that might cost him some points - hopefully not that many on uphill finishes.
And don't worry, you'll surely cross Reinhardt's path in some races But yeah, we had to send Scully to Australia, I hope the Oceanian air will give him a great daily form
Here we go, the 2020 season is finally on! And boy, were our riders on fire! As presented in the January preview, we had even two races on that first day of the (racing) year - and both of them saw our jersey very, very high up in the rankings!
Let's go through these races one by one.
Race Review | Down Under Classic (HC)
We had to get up very early in the morning here in Switzerland to follow the race on the other side of the globe - but it was worth it all!
When looking at our preview in hindsight, it looks sort of prophetic; we were asked to help out with chasing, and we did. We were positive to bring at least one of our sprinters in position, and we did. We were hoping to upset the PCT teams - and we did it!
Yeah, we didn't win, or get a podium - but we were really, really close! Although it wasn't very clear who did all the great work for us during the stage, we guess it was Benedikt Mundle, who even went on to finish just inside the points (29th place). But most importantly, he delivered Theo Reinhardt exactly where he had to. Although we didn't set up a proper train, our German top sprinter hung onto the right wheel, and was even challenging for the win for some meters!
He finally just fell short, with his speed dropping a bit too early - but 4th place is a tremendous result for a CT team in an HC classic! If Theo is even able to claim a great result in a pretty stacked PCT field - what will he be able to do "down" in CT? We'll find it out in February!
Theo Reinhardt claiming 4th place in our Down Under season opener!
Race Review | GP Yekaterinburg (C2HC)
At the same time of the day - though in reality a few hours later due to different timezones - CT racing properly started in ice-cold Russia, with a tough hilly race on the menu.
We wanted to make the race hard, being very active - and we did so. Together with Italian formation Sotto il sole di Riccione, we did by far most of the work in the race - which unfortunately had the negative outcome of none of our riders scoring so-called depth-points, i.e. adding some points to the leader's. Nonetheless, it was great to see at least Nico Brüngger, Cyrille Thièry and Fabian Lienhard (those were named during the race) perfectly setting up their captain.
But what a shocker as the riders reached the red kite, as Gianni Moscon seemed to be completely asleep, far off a decent position! It even looked like he would have to be content with a lower Top 10 place - which would have been all but satisfying!
However, while Kelderman cruised to an easy first win of the year, Gianni Moscon gained one position after the other, doing something he shouldn't be able to do according to some comments - namely sprinting past everyone! Literally everyone bar the dominant winner, meaning that our Italian puncheur made the podium in his very first race for us, claiming 2nd place in Russia!
Gianni Moscon claiming a safe 2nd place in his debut race for Centovalli - Fiat!
Summary
All in all, it was an amazing first day for our team. While the podium in Russia was to be expected, Reinhardt's Top 5 in Australia was a nice surprise - and worth a lot of points! If we understood the MGUCI point scales correctly, we scored a total of 125 points on a single day of racing (accounting for 4 race days, however)! Just to say, that is more than 10% of our total points last season!
However, we want to keep our feet on the ground - or rather on the pedals - as we know that we've got a long season ahead, including some cobbles and ITTs - where we won't score that many points for sure. But those results definitely give our boys the boost they needed to train hard during the next two weeks and a half - until we'll finally get back to racing in Oceania. Hopefully with more great things to come!
Couldn’t really have asked for a better start Indeed on track for a really good position this season. Great start for Moscon - which bodes well for his scoring potential this season
Aidan Indeed, Moscon's final sprint was a great relief for me - on one hand because he secured the podium and a good amount of points, on the other hand because his low sprint doesn't seem to be as much of an issue as some were thinking before the season. Instead, his backup stats seem to be much more important - which is really, really promising of course
redordead You're welcome Well, first of all, I'm happy for having scored those points for my team, I don't really care about PCT this year that much tbh
Was pretty surprised to see Reinhardt in the mix, not being mentioned in the preview - but that gives quite some hope for the upcoming races!
Nemolito Thanks. Yeah, this might indeed happen - however, the plan was rather to promote next year, to have a trainable Masnada once we get to PCT, plus getting a maxed Mäder back from his PT loan But of course, I wouldn't say no to a Top 5 already this year.
Well, we knew that not every race this year would work out as well as the first two - but what happened today in Australia was almost a pure fiasco for our team. It was pretty much the practical application of Murphy's law: what can go wrong, will go wrong!
Not being part of the breakaway of the day wasn't too concerning for us, as the preview expected us to have one of the race favorites in our ranks, hence seeing us rather as a chasing than an attacking team. But no - 5-6 teams shared the chasing workload, and our jerseys where nowhere to be seen! We weren't working, we weren't attacking - we basically did nothing all race long, which is unacceptable!
And even worse: we didn't really manage to bring our sprinter Tom Scully near to a good position. Instead, the one who should have him led there, Benedikt Mundle, tried to get a good result on his own, attacking inside the final kilometers! Which not only was to no avail - this attack actually opened a gap in the pack, and our sprint train was caught behind. So instead of building up things, he destroyed them with his attack - which furthermore provided a perfect launch pad for Katrasnik's winning acceleration.
Mundle finally went on to secure 15th place and some minor points - even ahead of big race favorite Kragh Andersen - but this result definitely is far from what we expected - and surely would have been able to accomplish with a proper sprint preparation. Our team leader finally finished 50th, completely frustrated and not even properly sprinting.
The atmosphere in the team bus after the race was not good, as you can imagine. Although it would be wrong to put all the fault on Mundle, our flat beast needs to understand that we expect him to collaborate next time - so we're really hoping this was a once-in-a-season showing. Scully and Mundle will ride plenty more races together, and we absolutely need them to work together, if we want to get the results we target.
But well, we still have a lot to learn; today definitely was a day with a lot of learning potential. And it's not the end of the world - we still got some minor points. And another chance to do better later today in Gisborne!
Benedikt Mundle attacking and breaking the peloton
I was really surprised to see Scully such a non-factor. With so many sprinters, there's of course always a bit of a lottery as not everyone can be at the front, but as you did I expected Sully to be decently high in the AI calculations. I'm sure that he'll get a lot of opportunities to prove himself this year
Time for redemption! After things didn't really work out as expected across the Tasmanian Sea, our puncheurs' task was to save the day for our team.
And it started well, with Gino Mäder joining the breakaway of the day! He isn't known to be one of the top fighters, but he still joins those moves now and then - which is great to see!
Gino Mäder doing a great job in the breakaway
After having shown our colours for most of the race - he was the last escapee to be reeled in, with just about 10km to go - it then was time for the favorites to step into action. For us, this meant bringing Gianni Moscon into the best possible position.
However, he apparently didn't have the best of days, not quite being able to follow the decisive move. Hermann Pernsteiner did a great job, pulling his leader up the final hill - but the latter apparently didn't have anything left in the tank. So the Austrian got our best result of the day, finishing 9th, while Moscon completed the Centovalli-Edmondson sandwich, taking 11th. Given that some weaker climbers and guys with lower resistance finished ahead of him, this was a bit disappointing to see - but Pernie definitely saved the day for us!
Furthermore, Fabian Lienhard scored his first points for the team as well, making it three riders in the Top 20 (20th). Mäder finished just outside the Top 50; he spent too much energy on the breakaway to be able to get a scoring result.
So whereas we had a high finish without any depth points in Russia, New Zealand now brought us a lot of depth points without the top result - which could somehow be expected, given the PCT competition. With a total of 35 points, we can end our Oceanian stay pretty satisfied.
Edmondson sandwiched by Hermann Pernsteiner and Gianni Moscon
January summary
This concludes a great starting month for us! With a total of 167 points, we are currently 4th in the CT standings. Moreover, with just 8 race days spent so far, we are even 2nd in the Points per Race Day rankings, having scored more than 20 points on average! Most of our leaders really have delivered so far, which makes us pretty optimistic for the adventures to come! Although we know that not every month will be quite as successful, let's enjoy the moment - and then re-focus and go ahead!
I'm hoping for a position between 6 and 10, for Top 5 the sprinters would need to work very, very well.
Barbados Cycling Festival instead. And our sprinters will even get two more chances to score at this level, as we will partake in the season opener 
Down Under Classic, as well as in the 
Berlin Pro Race, which will be one of two showings in Germany.
GP Yekaterinburg (C2HC)
