A traditional fixture on the ProTour calendar is a TTT event. It will be the ninth edition as Copenhagen-Malmo, with the previous incarnation Eindhoven TTT being held five times meaning it is one of the few events held ever since the first season. Team Tinkoff took their second win last time out, after winning in 2016 as well. Record holders are the previous incarnations of Bennelong (Jayco/Oz) and eBuddy (1t4i/Jack Wolfskin), both winning three times. Some teams will like this race very much, others which they were allowed to stay home. They aren't, every ProTour team has to field a team, whether they like it or not.
Profile
The start is in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, the finish in the third-largest city in Sweden: Malmö. If you paid attention during geography you know Denmark and Sweden are separated by Öresund strait. Going around the Baltic sea through Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia and Finland would make this race nearly 5000 kilometers long. Luckily, they build the Öresund Bridge connecting the two cities, making the trip less than 60 kilometer. The only noticeable bit of elevation is going on and off the bridge, which will result in some spectacular images.
Startlist
Team
Top8
Top5
Top3
Top1
Best rider
Generali
76,6
77,2
77,7
78
Dennis
Team Tinkoff - La Datcha
76,5
78,8
79,3
80
Yatsevich
Team UBS
76,4
77,4
78,3
80
Dillier
Grieg-Maersk
76,1
77,6
78,7
82
Würtz
Team Puma - SAP
76
77,2
78
80
Sütterlin
King Power
75,5
77,6
79
79
Brändle
Rakuten Pro Cycling
75,1
76
76,3
77
Cheung
cycleYorkshire
74,9
78,8
80
81
Coppel
EA Vesuvio
74,3
76,2
77,3
78
Wirtgen
Gazelle
74,3
75,6
76
76
Kangert
Bennelong - Mitchelton
73,8
75,6
76
77
O'Shea
Moser - Sygic
73,8
76,4
77,3
79
Hepburn
Festina - OAKA
73,4
75,4
77,3
81
Vlatos
Volvo acc. by Spotify
73,3
77,2
78
79
Haugard
Air France - KLM
73
76,2
78
79
Kwok
Indosat Ooredoo
72,3
75,6
78
81
Keizer
ISA - Hexacta
72,3
72,8
73,3
75
Sepulveda
Aegon - Peroni
72,1
73,2
74,3
77
Frison
Aker - MOT
70,4
72,4
73,3
74
Anderberg
eBuddy
68
70,6
73
75
Kaczmarek
Isostar - Specialized
65,9
68,6
71,7
75
Daniel
Swisslion Cycling Team
65,1
67,4
69,3
73
Groselj
Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff
64,8
70,6
76
78
Golovash
Evonik - ELKO
63,4
65,4
66,7
68
Blythe
Looking at the quality of all riders, three teams come out on top though with different philosophies: Generali, Tinkoff and UBS.
Generali does not have a standout time trial star but all participants are good. They say the team is as strong as its weakest link, and Generali has the strongest weakest link of all squads.
Defending champions Tinkoff look to take their third victory. Yatsevich, Malori, Vorobev and Dal Col is a strong quartet, with the other four in the squad not particularly bad either.
UBS is a mixture of the two. A strong top end with Dillier, complemented by seven riders who know their way around time trials.
Grieg has arguably the best time trialist in the world at the moment: Würtz. While the rest of the squad is not bad in any stretch of the imagination, it is just a tad below the previous teams. Podium contenders for sure, and perhaps the Danish crowd can cheer them to more.
Puma won the most recent team time trial in the ProTour, the opening stage of the Tour of Northern Europe. We can't fully compare the two as ToNE contained cobblestones, but it is a sign the team is strong in team time trials in general.
King Power has three strong time trialists in Brändle, Viviani and Van Winden. They will do great if the rest of the team can keep up, but if they can't they are in trouble.
Rakuten goes for the Generali approach by having eight strong riders without one standing out above the rest. However, they are not as qualified as their Italian counterpart. They might look good on paper, but the road will decide their fate.
If you could only select five riders, cycleYorkshire would be the outright favorite. The fifth rider over the line does indeed count, but the other three riders can be important for the early parts of the race. Leaving them behind at the start is probably not a viable strategy.
Some former winners will likely not be on the top again. Vesuvio, Gazelle and Bennelong have squads capable of scoring a top ten but the win will be a surprise. If eBuddy wins their fourth I'll jump in the Öresund.
Aside Grieg, further teams with local support are Volvo and Aker. The Swedish-Norwegian outfit has five strong time trialists, but the other three might need to be pushed. The Norwegian-Danish outfit is not a contender for the top positions but also not one for the bottom positions.
The midfield is very close together with form on the day itself being a major factor which cannot be considered here. Moser and Air France both have strong teams capable of challenging for a top five, but they could also finish fifteenth.
Festina and Indosat finished bottom two in the last edition and have taken measures to avoid further humiliation. Some signings over the winter mean they can aim for a higher place in the rankings.
PCT Champions ISA brings their eight best time trialists but it will not be enough to fear the established teams. Aegon finishes seventh last time out but it will be difficult to get to a top ten this time around, as they sold their top time trialists and didn't bring in the needed replacement.
The invited ProContinental teams are Swisslion and Popo4Ever. Safe to say the ProTour teams won't be fearing them, as both bring squads of low quality due to race clashes. It is what it is.
Together with the aforementioned two, Isostar and Evonik will battle for the wooden spoon. In the case of Isostar, there is not much better available except Phinney who is understandably left out, while Evonik not having a time trialist in their full squad at all and just selecting some random riders. They were robbed of last place by Indosat last season, and want their righteous last place back.
Let's see Top 5 is definitely possible. Unfortunately couldn't bring Leung due to the Volta prologue, but on the other hand Reis had two race days left so will do his debut for us in this race
Aside Grieg, further teams with local support are pcmdaily.com/images/mg/2020/Micros/vlv.png Volvo and pcmdaily.com/images/mg/2020/Micros/akm.png Aker. The Swedish-Norwegian outfit has five strong time trialists, but the other three might need to be pushed. The Norwegian-Danish outfit is not a contender for the top positions but also not one for the bottom positions.
This surely is the nicest thing that has ever been said about our team for a traditional TTT (not taking our ToNE win a couple of years ago into consideration). Thank you, Marcovdw!
Definitely cheering for Grieg, but judging by the very strong top 5 guys for Tinkoff, the Russians must be the pre-race favourite, I think. Though, this should be tense. Looking at the power ranking, I'd say any team from Generali to King Power can win this.
Grieg has arguably the best time trialist in the world at the moment: Würtz. While the rest of the squad is not bad in any stretch of the imagination, it is just a tad below the previous teams. Podium contenders for sure, and perhaps the Danish crowd can cheer them to more.
Think Phinney would disagree (though I can see him being in an other category all together), but I certainly look forward to see if he can lift the team to a podium place here. Think we're still missing a few pieces to be able to fight for the win, but hopefully a good performance. Top five should be a realistic target, but hoping for more. We haven't done great here previously, so hoping for better luck this time.
2nd on the startlist is both extremely odd to me, and somewhat encouraging. I have nothing more than minor hopes for this race, but based on avg and that, I may be undervaluing us here.
Building an interest back up in this race after the early Eindhoven successes, with never having been better than 8th on the Swedish finish line.
Will be aiming higher in future seasons, most likely, and a return to the Top 10 this year would be a good start.
valverde321 wrote:
2nd on the startlist is both extremely odd to me, and somewhat encouraging. I have nothing more than minor hopes for this race, but based on avg and that, I may be undervaluing us here.
I really wouldn't place any value in being listed second, when you consider who are listed first
We bring an improved squad from our third place last season, which means quite high expectations for this edition.
Obviously, Top 8 is the ranking that looks the best for us, with quite a few teams having a stronger top end present here (thanks for that in-depth preview btw!).
This means it'll be vital for us that our core of five 75-76tt riders provides the team with a good base tempo and that Vasyliv at 72tt can be of sufficient use over the course of the race to make the difference against teams that have to drag along a couple of riders.
Unlike many teams, our lineup of the strongest TTers also include some decent climbers with Vasyliv, Stüssi and Bevin, so there's a decent, albeit random chance that we might use the bridge crossing to our advantage and either gain some seconds there or at least lose less energy.
Anything from p4 to p8 looks reasonable to expect, which would be good points.
I'd be happy to be surprised another time though!
Edited by cio93 on 17-11-2020 00:34
Generali bring a really good setup - especially if the uphill part of the bridge should have an impact, as pretty much all of their TTers can handle some hills as well.
I'll obviously be rooting for UBS once again, like in every PT race Would be great to see them take this one, or at least a podium!
I don't expect a win here based on last year's showing, but I'd be disappointed if we were to underperform once again. This is maybe not the kind of TTT I built my setup for, I'd need the bridge to be somewhat longer and steeper for it. Several strong teams here, but no outright tip top favourite. Thanks for the preview Marco!
Fabianski wrote:
Generali bring a really good setup - especially if the uphill part of the bridge should have an impact, as pretty much all of their TTers can handle some hills as well.
Wow, I think you just helped me realize something!!
I think the general assumption, unproven but logical, is that in any sort of TT, we've sadly reduced the impact of the hill stat to 0 with the mo/hil change since no individual TT of a significant length is ridden over 84 effort at any stage.
However, TTTs usually are ridden at 99 effort throughout, right?
This should mean that all TTs exclusively use the mountain stat for inclines, but TTTs exclusively use the hill stat??
Fabianski wrote:
Generali bring a really good setup - especially if the uphill part of the bridge should have an impact, as pretty much all of their TTers can handle some hills as well.
Wow, I think you just helped me realize something!!
I think the general assumption, unproven but logical, is that in any sort of TT, we've sadly reduced the impact of the hill stat to 0 with the mo/hil change since no individual TT of a significant length is ridden over 84 effort at any stage.
However, TTTs usually are ridden at 99 effort throughout, right?
This should mean that all TTs exclusively use the mountain stat for inclines, but TTTs exclusively use the hill stat??
I'd say this is definitely correct, although I haven't tested it. Of course, thats the front rider. The riders further back in the train may be using less effort, and actually do use the MO stat in that case.
I have three screenshots for every team (one for each section) but some where cut from the final report. If you want exclusive content for your HQ post, you can access all your team's screenshots at the following links, where XXX is your team abbreviation.
Also, an overview of how accurate the TopX predictions were. There is no clear best predictor as both Top8 and Top5 have teams they predicted well and some they were quite wrong at.
Team
Result
Top8
Top5
Top3
Top1
Grieg-Maersk
1
4
3
4
1
Team Tinkoff - La Datcha
2
2
1
2
5
Team Puma - SAP
3
5
6
6
5
cycleYorkshire
4
8
1
1
2
Generali
5
1
6
10
12
Moser - Sygic
6
11
9
11
8
King Power
7
6
3
3
8
Festina - OAKA
8
13
16
11
2
Volvo acc. by Spotify
9
14
6
6
8
Air France - KLM
10
15
10
6
8
Bennelong - Mitchelton
11
11
13
15
15
Team UBS
12
3
5
5
5
EA Vesuvio
13
9
10
11
12
Gazelle
14
9
13
15
18
ISA - Hexacta
15
16
18
19
19
Rakuten Pro Cycling
16
7
12
14
15
Indosat Ooredoo
17
16
13
6
2
Aker - MOT
18
19
19
19
22
Aegon - Peroni
19
18
17
18
15
eBuddy
20
20
20
21
19
Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff
21
23
20
15
12
Swisslion Cycling Team
22
22
23
23
23
Isostar - Specialized
23
21
22
22
19
Evonik - ELKO
24
24
24
24
24
Finally, regarding the MO/HL debate, I see no concrete evidence from this stage. A team like Tinkoff (with weak HL stats) did perform slightly worse compared to a Puma or cycleYorkshire (Coppel) on the second sector, which contained the hill. Only if there was another checkpoint right at the top of the hill we could properly test the influence. I also didn't record who led the teams when riding onto the bridge
Copenhagen-Malmo TTT 
