@Aquarius97 - I hope so, although I suspect seeing a couple of the 83-84MO riders make the same move
@Fabianski - Yeah, but next season both should be available as I can cover some of their qualities with my "own" riders. Thanks btw - I hope you are right, although a GT is always very difficult. Despite Lecuisinier being good I can still see a good handful of riders that can potentially beat him in a 21 RD race. I surely do hope Coquard performs better or at the very least similar but with "worse" riders around him.
@jandal7 - Indeed. It was always the plan to get Lecuisinier up to 85 sooner rather than later - I made Coquard "the best" sprinter through heavy trainings too, and my ambition was to make Koretzky a top 3 puncheur too, but given that this was his last training season I decided against making him an 83HI rider - I don't think he would necessarily be scoring significantly better through this, because of his "low" MO stat.
A big shoutout need to be sent in the direction of the_hoyle for yet another astonishing jersey design! Our trusted designer have been with the team ever since 2016 where he was the mastermind behind the rebuild of the Festina-brand, creating the i-Gen format.
This time we have gone back in time a bit, to the "good old Festina-days". Atleast in terms of jersey design. The retro design have clear connections to the original 2009-10 jersey designs, but with a modern twist.
In order to fully understand the history of the team brand "Festina" here is a quick look back in the books:
We haven't been active on our social media HQ platform, but we have decided that it is time to give it a go in order to make up for it. As there is no point in talking too much about the past, we'll write up a brief dislaimer for our month of january, before speaking about our 2020 expectations - and later on present our setups for the already begun races of february.
The first race of 2020 was the Chinese race, Badaling International. A race we have a proud tradition of performing at - but we have to go back some year. In 2010 we won the race, and the next 4 seasons we managed to get good results, but since 2016 we haven't managed to land a top 10 one single time.
Because of that it came as a very nice surprice to see Clement Koretzky get 3rd just behind Simone Ponzi and Edvald Boasson Hagen.
At the Tour of Qatar we had much higher hopes, as it is historically a race where we perform well. In 2009 we won the race from Thor Hushovd, but in recent years we have been strongly commited to the top 10 with multiple stagewin and GC top 10s from 2014 onwards. In fact we have won stages in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019 aswell as landing 3, 3, 4, 6, 9 in the GC.
On paper Bryan Coquard is the man to beat, but he have never won the race, and this time we didn't manage to do well... Coquard did win his stage (stage 3), but was only 6th in the GC - Fortunately Panagiotis Vlatos did well to finish 15th. In 2016 he finished 9th being his best ever result here.
After Qatar we went straight to East Java where both Coquard and Lecuisinier came with big expectations. Unfortunately Bryan Coquard didn't live up to expectations and had a dull sprint, while Lecuisinier slightly underwhelmed with 4th GC.
Despite the ups'n'downs we were the 2nd highest scoring team in the PT, so the base was made for a february where we also expect a decent scoring! More on that later!
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Let's have a look at the overall expectations for the team:
Much like in the past, we have decided to divide our peers into groups that represent different aspects of the cycling momentum, so let's have a look at who is where, and what we expect.
Stageracers
2019 PT Points
2020 Expectations
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
1231
1600
Francesco Bongiorno
419
400
Michail Mavrikakis
43
100
William Barta
0
125
Ioannis Spanopoulos
77
100
Juan Osorio
0
75
Miltiadis Giannoutsos
0
75
Total
1770
2475
Having received a massive amount of training in the offseason, we obviously have to increase our expectations to Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, which puts him to expected 1600. Last season he ended up in 18th place with 1231 points. With 1600 points we can expect him to land in the area of around 10th. That resemblances what Timofey Kritskiy and Romain Sicard proved possible last season, so in fact it may be slightly defensive, but in order to secure 1800-2000 points he likely needs to with his GT, and we can't fully expect him to do so. The rest is up to planning and chance.
Francesco Bongiorno is our main card besides Lecuisininer and we have decided to put him up at aproximately the level from what he performed last season. Given that he will ride less free this season than the previous one it may be a bit over the top, but let's hope that whatever he may lose will instead be added to Lecuisinier.
Finally we have Mavrikakis, Barta, Spanopoulos, Osorio and Giannoutsos who are all expected to finish the races they attend, and who knows - maybe one or two will land a good stage or KOM result which propels them up in the area of around 100 points. Normally we expect our domestiques to do something between 50-125 points each.
Puncheurs
2019 PT Points
2020 Expectations
Clement Koretzky
652
750
David Boily
0
350
Aidan van Niekerk
302
250
Anatoliy Budyak
0
150
Charalampas Kastrantas
316
200
Andreas Miltiadis
0
75
Emmanuel Morin
0
75
Total
1270
1850
In the puncheur-category Clement Koretzky is usually producing between 625-800 points. We believe 600-650 is too little for him, while 800 might be a bit over the top. We have gone for a relatively high ranking expectations from him this season, as the riders around him in general are better than last season.
David Boily is a big questionsmark for us really. He will ride quite a lot for himself, aswell as riding one day races where he doesn't have to hit many homeruns to get a good overall points haul, but in fact 350 could well be 250 I think. But we have to try, as a decent amount of GC races fit him quite nicely on paper.
Aidan van Niekerk had a pretty astounding 2019 and we can't see him replicate that despite having developped further since then. Much came from breakaways and this time we are eager to see if the points come from more steady riding or if he can stay aggressive. Budyak is quite similar to van Niekerk and both of them have the potential to also score a few U25 points here and there. Budyak is not set as high but still on a fair amount.
On paper Kastrantas' planning is very much over the top, but the game seem to like him, and he haven't been below 150 points in 4 seasons, with last season jumping past 300 so we believe 200 is realistic, however he'll manage to get their is yet to be seen. Finally Morin and Miltiadis is put on the lowest pointgrade, but seeing Militadis already on 43 points it could be better (for him atleast).
Sprinters
2019 PT Points
2020 Expectations
Bryan Coquard
1108
1000
Giacomo Nizzolo
133
200
Georgios Bouglas
0
125
Stylianos Farantakis
0
75
Total
1241
1400
We have lost a massive amount of depth in the sprinting department, but neither Petit, Ackermann or Stauff actually performed big figures, and more often than not they messed up the leadouts too, so we decided to go with Coquard as sole leader and then Nizzolo as a subtop sprinter with his own chances. Landing on 1000 points really should be possible for Coquard. Last season he didn't have a top season yet managed 1108 - but with a stronger setup around him.
Nizzolo will be expected to score slightly better than last season, and that basically comes down to us expecting that the skewed planning will fit him better than last season where he was often in the mix with a bunch of top sprinters. This time around he will often be seen where one would argue that bringing a sprinter might not be ideal, and such he should land a few good results.
Bouglas aswell have a decent amount of those kind of races so we hope to see him hit 1 or 2 good stageresults and then claim whatever he can from team GC or just getting over the line. Farantakis is merely a helper, and while he could be lucky with his decent TT/PRL combo we don't see him score more than survival points.
Timetriallers
2019 PT Points
2020 Expectations
Panagiotis Vlatos
346
350
Nikolaos Ioannidis
141
150
Riccardo Zoidl
0
150
Ioannidis Kiriakidis
0
75
Total
487
725
In terms of TT we see a tendency towards stage races fitting Vlatos better than last season, and he is already on a decent amount of points, so we believe he can be expected somewhere around what he did last season, even with fewer stage results.
Ioannidis, Zoidl and Kiriakidis are all GC timetriallists, but are very much planned towards getting decent GC succes whenever there is a TT race with whatever climb/hill involved. Hopefully it turns out to be a good call.
Cobblers
2019 PT Points
2020 Expectations
Georgios Karatzios
139
150
Total
139
150
Karatzios is our sole cobbler, and while he won't have any support what so ever, we do expect him to fare decently alone. He's very strong and maybe he will hit a good result or two from the fairly big amount of cobbled racedays. Atleast we expect him to perform better maxed than he did last season even being a helper for a cobbler that didn't work by any means.
Overall our expected points see us in the mix for a PT podium with aproximately 6500 points. Depending on what the other teams do it would normally mean anything from 2nd to 6th, with the best bet being us somewhere in between - 4th or 5th likely. And we will be happy to take that!
Much like every season, planning the tripple-header can be a headache if the routes isn't perfectly suited, you lack the riders to fill depth or simply wish to save your leaders for a later time. This season has been no different.
The first puzzle to solve was the regular "where to put your puncheur"-puzzle. Given that Clement Koretzky is easily our strongest card in that department, and he had quite a lot of racedays left after planning the remaining races, it felt obvious to let him participate in the longer stagerace to get stage results aswell as GC points. But because we couldn't possibly see our subtopleaders Aidan van Niekerk and David Boily get anywhere close to a top 10 in Classique du Grand-Duché we took the gamble and sent Koretzky there in the hope for a weak startlist. This meant that he would go without any proper domestiques though as the remaining quality had to be put into the GC fight and stagehunt - Tirreno-Adriatico.
Only one race suited our best GC setup so it was not difficult to plan Lecuisinier and Bongiorno in Paris-Nice in the hope for a GC win. Given that Lecuisinier was fixed for Vuelta aswell as 2 RD races in Liechtenstein, East Java and Pro Hallstatt we only had two options left. Paris-Nice or Criterium du Dauphine. And then it would be best to treat the tripple-header as a key part of the season!
The only thing left would be to plan sprinters. Last season Bryan Coquard had great succes in Tirreno-Adriatico taking two stagewins and also leading GC and points jersey for a long time. That was originally the plan this season too, but instead we too a final decision to put our Italian Sprinter, Nizzolo, in Tirreno-Adriatico and our French sprinter, Coquard, in Paris-Nice.
Here is the lineups, and brief writedown of the races!
We entered the race full of anticipation as it seemed Clement Koretzky was a realistic podiumcontender for the race given the startlist. He was also part of the final attacking group, but unfortunately he didn't trust his own chances in the final dash, so he spent an abnormous amount of energy attacking the win. We can't be unhappy that our riders want to win, but it did cost a spot or two in the result - and almost costed a complete collapse.
Both Charalampas Kastrantas and Andreas Miltiadis gave a very solid performance to finish 23rd and 24th respectively.
Overall points: 152 Points
Tirreno-Adriatico:
#211 Giacomo Nizzolo
#212 William Barta
#213 David Boily
#214 Stylianos Farantakis
#215 Miltiadis Giannoutsos
#216 Nikolaos Ioannidis
#217 Aidan van Niekerk
#218 Panagiotis Vlatos
The Tirreno-Adriatico didn't leave much expectations for us. We had some hopes that Nizzolo and Vlatos could perform well to take a stageresult, and maybe David Boily could finish 15th with Aidan van Niekerk attacking for some lucky points. It wasn't at all how things went however. We didn't land many stagepoints despite both Vlatos and Nizzolo taking stage top 10s. But because of some solid performances in the GC we landed a good pointshaul. David Boily finished the race in 8th, while both Barta and van Niekerk also secured a decent scoring from GC and U25.
On the final hilly stage 6, David Boily was in a great position to take 5th in the GC, but unfortunately he exploded in the final few 100 meters and was caught by the next group, not gaining the time that the group just ahead of him did. Still 8th is a great result for us.
The final race of the tripple-header was the strongest one. Before the race we announced that we would expect 3-4 stagewins aswell as the overall GC, and this was exactly what we got. Bryan Coquard started out with a very poor prologue, but he then went to take 2 stagewins to salvage his performance. Lecuisinier attacked the race to take another stagewin for the team, aswell as two runners-up results, and thus taking not only the GC but also the pointsjersey - where Coquard landed 5th aswell.
There could have even been more points on offer if Lecuisinier could have beat Alarcon in the sprint on stage 6 or if the team could have protected the gap on the final stage, and this unfortunately is our biggest concern. Bongiorno and the other domestiques was absolutely invisible during the race and wasn't able to score many points - which would have been obvious from a decent GC and Team GC. Overall this was a great race though.
Overall points: 576 Points
Looking back, we made just one small mistake, which was to include Ioannidis Kiriakidis in the Classique du Grand-Duché rather than in Tirreno-Adriatico where he with his stat combo could potentially have sneaked into the top 50 and thus landed 10 points rather than 5. That must be an acceptable margin of error.
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After the first 7 races of the season all riders have been thrown into the action and such we will make our first small progressive estimate. First is our leaders:
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier is well on his way to great things, but with just 3 races left his PpRD will reduce drastically during the Vuelta a España. He should keep/increase it during Pro Hallstatt Classic aswell as Liechtenstein and thus be on aproximately 850 points before riding the Vuelta. And by then it seems very realistic that he will end up on our expected 1600 points overall. To have given him a higher output we would have needed to plan him without a Grand Tour and instead let him ride the likes of Tour of Switzerland/Dauphine, Tasmania, Marocco and Chrono des Herbiers. There is a thought to work on next season for sure if we want him to win the individual ranking at one point!
Despite of a very solid Paris-Nice and a respectable Tour of Qatar, Bryan Coquard is well on his way to dissapoint our goal of 1000 points, but Coquard still have a lot of racing left, and even 5 of them being one day races with several others potentially also offering GC points there is a real chance that he can lift his PpRD to 23,3 which is needed for him to land on 1000 points. He landed "just" 13,9 PpRD in Paris-Nice despite winning both stages, which put his points a bit in perspective, as this was one of only 5 races of the season without a GC or win potential. Tour of East Java being another.
Clement Koretzky is another example of a rider 1) Punching well above his weight and 2) Having far too small sample-size to actually cover his actual worth - That said scoring 226 points at this state is extremely strong! He should score decent throughout the season and his expected 750 seems very likely at this rate. Maybe this season will be a new record year for the fan-favorite.
After a bad Badaling but a very strong Tirreno-Adriatico David Boily benchmarks a very interesting 684 projected points. If it wasn't for the fact that he was riding a Grand Tour where we can't expect many points it would be a nice presentation of his potential, yet our expectation of him scoring 350 points seems very realistic. For that to happen he need to be somewhat consistent in top 20 GC or to have just one more good race like Tirreno and a couple of OK results. So who knows, maybe he could be a very strong rider for us, as he's mostly riding his own chances.
On the contrary Francesco Bongiorno need to step up. 228 points isn't horrible, but not good enough from Bongiorno. The fortunate thing is, that he only have been riding as a domestique so far - the unfortunate thing is that he already did this 3 times, and need to do so another two times. One being as a domestique in a Grand Tour though where we expect him to finish top 25 atleast. He also have a Grand Tour aswell as another GC for himself, so it seems realistic that he can atleast pick up something like 300 points. He need a very good race though to land 400 like expected.
The final "leader" is Panagiotis Vlatos and he is probably the rider with the most representative race benchmark so far. He scored a decent amount of points from GC in Qatar and he have 3-4 races similar to that including the Individual TT. He also have a couple of GC races where his PPrDs will be very low though so hopefully he can keep it up.
The next line of riders are what I would call domestiques, despite a very big variation in quality:
Most of these figures doesn't make much sense to look through at the moment, but it does show that a number of riders have only ridden oneday races or have overperformed according to their stats, such as Kiriakidis, Spanopoulos and Miltiadis. What is somewhat interesting is that our subleaders Nizzolo, van Niekerk, Budyak, Kastrantas and Ioannidis are well on their way to land close to expected despite some of them being a bit aggressive expectations, while only a coupe of riders, Karatzios and Zoidl are yet to make a notice. Karatzios should hopefully increase a lot during the cobbled season, but then make a halt, while Zoidl have indeed been dissapointing this far. We need him to perform much better.
In the previous post we showcased how well the tripple-header of 2020 went, but we are yet to cover the remaining month of february - which went pretty good! Let's have a look at the final races, and sum up the points in the end.
The last couple of seasons we have been very poorly performing in TeamTimetrials, which hurt a bit as Festina used to have a very potent setup. In the off season to 2020 we made some improvements, albeit nothing extraordinary by any means. A couple of talents have improved over the season, while Riccardo Zoidl have been signed. So we went into the race hoping for a top 10 - but expecting nothing. 6 Greek riders entered the race, including national TT Champ, Panagiotis Vlatos. Will we finally be able to feat a fully Greek setup in a PT race next season?
We roled on slow and steady, without being extraordinary at all - yet claiming 8th in the end just 5 seconds short of 6th. This gives us hopes for the remaining TeamTimetrials, despite not bringing out A-game. We are atleast not in the bottom 3 anymore - and this will definately be an aread of improvement in the next season aswell!
Overall Points: 65 Points
Pro Hallstatt Classic:
#21 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
#22 William Barta
#23 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#24 Michail Mavrikakis
#25 Miltiadis Giannoutsos
#26 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#27 Emmanuel Morin
#28 Juan Osorio
Going into a race with Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier will always see us hopring to achieve atleast a podium, but we know that the competition is always tight, and in a one-day race anything can happen. Having a relatively (atleast in comparison to the competition) team around our team leader, can also have a bad influence.
The race went more or less like we wanted it to, with other teams taking responsibility to keep things together. When Taylor Phinney attacked it was either "Go with him" or "Let others do the dirty work". We chose the 2nd option as we felt the attack was coming from too far out. Especially Herklotz was very willing to do shifts to bring back Phinney which in the end tired them both - unfortunately Lecuisinier didn't have the legs, when Sicard put down the hammer with a couple of hundred meters to go. In the end both Taaramae and Guldhammer also had the edge, but landing 4th looking at the race evolved, we can be fairly satisfied, although we would have liked a podium. Because of our weak overall setup, only Lecuisinier scored points though.
Historically speaking, one of our best races of all time, including a 1-2 win in 2012 with Ulissi and Pozzato aswell as a win in 2014 from Riccardo Ricco and a win in our take-over-season 2008 with Samuel Sanchez. Overall we have a grand total of 6 podiums in this race and another handful of top 5 results. Last season we landed a very dissapointing 19th however which was our 2nd worst result ever - only beaten by 2016 where Jerome Coppel was 24th being our best rider.
This time, however a late split saw us on the ride side of things, and when Koretzky lead out Coquard in the final kilometer it seemed like a very likely scenario that our team should take it's 4th Milano San Remo win!
Unfortunately the sprint became a bit too long for Coquard as he tired towards the end of this +250km race only to be ovetaken by the two sprinters in his wheel, Degenkolb and Ewan. The late attacker, Søren Kragh also managed to just hold back Coquard for 4th. Still, a very pleasant surprise after seeing last seasons dreadful result.
All of Koretzky, Bouglas and Kastrantas managed to secure the team a couple of additional points aswell, making this a very succesful finish to the month of february.
Welcome to the month of March! We enter the month as the leading team in the Pro Tour, and while that is a very pleasant surprise, we struggle to find a realistic outcome where we also will lead by the end of March.
We have 5 races this month, let's have a look at each of them.
Last season we had somewhat expectations of Maxime Daniel entering the top 10, but the very difficult race didn't leave us with anything interesting. This year we bring last seasons 123th as out leader. Karatzios have improved, and might be able to sneak away something like a top 30 but without any quality helpers it seems very unlikely.
Entering the czech TT-race we have some hopes for a decent race. Bringing 3 potential leaders may be over the top, especially Clement Koretzky, but in fact he is here to help lead out Coquard. The initial prologue should be decent for Coquard and Vlatos, and the long ITT should be OK for Vlatos. Hopefully the latter can survive the bumpy flat stages to get a decent GC, while Coquard can hopefully battle for a stagewin or two. In the ideal world we will see Ioannidis and Zoidl also get a few GC points, but as a lot of TT capable riders will attend the race it isn't given.
The dutch race is a difficult race to call. Last season it was a good race (on paper) for us, with Coquard aiming to be a leading figure. He ended up 10th though. This time around we expect the race to be ridden significantly harder, and thus have decided to let Coquard stay at home. In his place we have Nizzolo and Bouglas trying to feat in the finals, while Koretzky is here to lead the team and hopefully land a decent GC result. van Niekerk, Budyak and Kastrantas all have free roles and will hopefully attack the race and/or land a decent GC result of their own. The hardness of the race is very difficult to showcase prior to the race though. Hopefully it will be somewhat difficult, so it isn't for the strongest sprinters though!
Expected points: 100-200pts
Ronde van Vlaanderen:
#181 Georgios Karatzios
#182 Michail Mavrikakis
#183 Stylianos Farantakis
#184 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#185 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#186 Andreas Militadis
#187 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#188 Juan Osorio
Much like in Strada Appia Antica we come with nothing, but a blunt hope that Karatzios can somehow overperform to get us above the bar mininim. We cannot expect that however! We are very proud to feature a team with 7 riders from Greece/Cyprus though with only Osorio here for development purposes.
Expected points: 40pts
E3 Prijs:
#181 Georgios Karatzios
#182 Emmanuel Morin
#183 Stylianos Farantakis
#184 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#185 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#186 Andreas Militadis
#187 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#188 Juan Osorio
To make matters worse, another cobbled race in E3 Prijs is on our calender, and due to it's PTHC nature, we can almost guarantee that 5 points is the best we can aim for, which is really dreadful. Fortunately/hopefully this will be our only race in that category however!
Expected points: 5-10pts
Overall expectations:
Looking at the month overview we should be incredibly lucky to get into the area of 500 points, meaning that we will make heavy drop during the month of March - and will definately not be leading at the end of the month. The only thing that keeps this month remotely interesting is the combination of Praha and Nederland GC prospects, but even with a couple of good races there we are likely to end up with a very low points harvest - possibly among the top 3 worst of all.
Expected points: 310-490ptsEdited by SotD on 03-01-2021 14:44
With Karatzios as the team leader and no one to protect him we never quite know what we are going to get. Expectations are low, but from time to time you could see a rider with a strong flat, decent cobble and OK hill making a good selection or an early break that lasts for long.
However, it was not to be and with a 47th place in hand we were looking at almost minimum points. 10 points for Karatzios, 5 for the rest. Not a good start!
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha was postponed, and thus ridden as the last race of the month - we do, however keep it in track in our review.
On paper a very solid race for us, with Panagiotis Vlatos joining as the shared 5th favorite for the timetrials and thus the GC fight. With him a couple of more versatile TT'ers in case the stages should be difficult - Ioannidis and Zoidl.
We also had superstar, Bryan Coquard with his usual leadout setup Bouglas and Karatzios present and finally even Clement Koretzky for a late attack if all went to hell.
All did, go to hell - and no attacks either. Bryan Coquard showed his quality by finishing 6th on the best stage for him, and messing up the sprint for grabs on the final stage - but Panagiotis Vlatos was even worse. 74th on the prologue, only to finish in the low 30's - even beaten by Zoidl in the long - and more safe - timetrial.
An utter shitshow that we can't remember similar for us in many seasons! Fortunately!
This relatively difficult race with it's flat and hillish look would be a decent fit for Clement Koretzky. With him was Nizzolo in the hopes to land a good stage result aswell. Nizzolo did get in the mix on the first stage, but it was way too difficult.
Stage 2 was messed up, and thus nothing for Nizzolo. Fortunately Koretzky was attentive on the final stage and made the elite selection. 8th on the day didn't help much though and in the end he was 10th overall.
An OK result, but could have been better.
Overall points: 110pts
Ronde van Vlaanderen:
#181 Georgios Karatzios
#182 Michail Mavrikakis
#183 Stylianos Farantakis
#184 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#185 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#186 Andreas Militadis
#187 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#188 Juan Osorio
The best suited cobble race for Karatzios of the entire season with it's cobbles and hills and many flat kilometers too.
Yet again as his own man though, but this time much much better. Despite being shed out the back early on, the greek powerhouse never gave up, and showed how cobbles is supposed to be ridden, clawing his way back up throughout the entire stage, finishing on an impressive 16th place. Alone in the world however, as the remaining team was nowhere to be found.
Overall points: 71pts
E3 Prijs:
#181 Georgios Karatzios
#182 Emmanuel Morin
#183 Stylianos Farantakis
#184 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#185 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#186 Andreas Militadis
#187 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#188 Juan Osorio
The E3 Prijs was the one PTHC race we desperately wanted to avoid, but the other races in the pack was too good to ignore - so any points would be good!
The startlist, however wasn't scary, and suddenly it felt like Karatzios could possible manage a top 10. Unfortunately his tactics was identical to the much more difficult Ronde van Vlaanderen, which made him go too slow from the gun.
15th in the end wasn't bad at all though, and we came away from the race with points. Also more than we had anticipated.
Overall points: 20pts
Overall the month was destroyed by the horrible performance of Praha - Karlovy - Vary which was our one key race of the month. We didn't expect many points, but we certainly didn't expect as little as we got. As seen in the preview we expected between 310 and 490 with 310 beeing the very lowest we could possibly expect.
305 points in total, and a staggering kick to the groin for especially Panagiotis Vlatos, who now have to cut back significantly to reach his expected level. At the end of April we will again take a look at our riders expected level.
The harsh words for Praha KV Praha are fully deserved as the race completely overshadowes the month. The rest of the month was okay i'd say with races where you couldnt have the highest expectations and got rather anonymous racing to mostly expected results. If the rest of the month is great, those results often look fine but if the headline race is such a desaster, the whole month looks very disappointing.
After a very dissapointing month of March we enter the month of April with a bit more anticipation. Despite of the month not being a given succes, there are a few races that would see us shine - hopefully. Let's give them a look.
Paris-Roubaix:
#151 Georgios Karatzios
#152 Stylianos Farantakis
#153 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#154 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#155 Michail Mavrikakis
#156 Andreas Militadis
#157 Juan Osorio
#158 Ioannis Spanopoulos
On home turf for our team, and with some decent result in fresh memory we could see Karatzios landing a top 20 here. The race isn't quite as suitable for us than Ronde van Vlaanderen, but we expect a little bit more from our cobbled races now we know what Karatzios is capable of!
The race has been ridden in the meantime - and we can announce that we reached our goal, and scored a total of: 63 points.
Expected points: 50-60pts
Giro d'Italia:
#121 Francesco Bongiorno
#122 Nikolaos Ioannidis
#123 Charalampas Kastrantas
#124 Michail Mavrikakis
#125 Giacomo Nizzolo
#126 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#127 Aidan van Niekerk
#128 Riccardo Zoidl
The very first Grand Tour of the season, and we are eager to get to ride in Italy. We have brought both of our Italian guys and allowed them to lead the show - and hope they can pay us back in terms of points. On paper, Bongiorno should finish around 15th in the GC and maybe get a couple of decent stageresults during that period. The remaining team is all fairly competent climbers, and a couple of them are also decent timetriallists: Ioannidis and Zoidl. What can be expected from them in such a long race?
We also have our attack-duo of Aidan van Niekerk and Charalampas Kastrantas present - between them, they scored almost 400 GT related points last season! We hope to see them every bit as active as last season, getting to ride in the KOM jersey and perhaps snatch a stagewin or two.
Giacomo Nizzolo is here on a free ticket. He will ride his own chances, and despite it not going all too well so far we do have some hopes that he can maybe get a stagewin from one of the 6 possible chances. He should be a top 10 regular and we would love to see that.
Expected points: 300-350pts
GP Liechtenstein:
#31 Piere-Henri Lecuisinier
#32 William Barta
#33 Anatoliy Budyak
#34 Stylianos Farantakis
#35 Miltiadis Giannoutsos
#36 Ioannis Kiriakidis
#37 Andreas Miltiadis
#38 Juan Osorio
On paper a very solid race for us with Lecuisinier possibly dominating the race. However, as we have our best support riders all in Italy and saving racedays for Boily we are a bit uneasy with the race. Still, Lecuisinier is among the top 3 climbers in the world, and should be able to stay safely inside the front group untill the final where we expect the usual suspects like Phinney, Madrazo, Herklotz, Dombrowski, Morton and possibly Pluchkin to be targeting the win.
We must expect a top 3 given that the likes of Taaramäe and Spilak are in Italy, but how many of our riders will finish the race besides him? If last season is anything to go by, we would expect all but Farantakis to survive the race.
Expected points: 160-200pts
GP Wallonie:
#141 Clement Koretzky
#142 Anatoliy Budyak
#143 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#144 Charalampas Kastrantas
#145 Andreas Militadis
#146 Emmanuel Morin
#147 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#148 Aidan van Niekerk
The Wallonie race is one of those that could be very difficult to get a good result in. On paper, a very solid opportunity for Koretzky, but the potential field is making this a difficult race to call. We have the strong setup of van Niekerk, Budyak and Kastrantas with him, all of which should be able to fight for a top 50 on their own.
We expect a decent show, but not a top 5 result.
Expected points: 50-80pts
Amstel Gold Race:
#111 Clement Koretzky
#112 Anatoliy Budyak
#113 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#114 Charalampas Kastrantas
#115 Andreas Militadis
#116 Juan Osorio
#117 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#118 Aidan van Niekerk
Similar to Wallonie this is usually a decent race for Koretzky fighting for a spot around 10th. On paper he's probably more suitable for an outing in the area 10-15, but we believe he can do well here again. The setup for him is similar to Wallonie, but the points on offer a bigger.
Expected points: 100pts
Overall expectations:
With five races, and just one not suitable for us at all we expect to see us double the amount of points we landed last season - still that wouldn't be a good month and would see us fall even further - but if we can somehow stay within the PT top 5 after this month we are pretty happy - as May could be our month!
knockout wrote:
The harsh words for Praha KV Praha are fully deserved as the race completely overshadowes the month. The rest of the month was okay i'd say with races where you couldnt have the highest expectations and got rather anonymous racing to mostly expected results. If the rest of the month is great, those results often look fine but if the headline race is such a desaster, the whole month looks very disappointing.
Yeah exactly. The month in general wasn't bad - Had I just scored, let's say 120 points from Praha, then it would have been an OK/expected month, with 200 points in Praha making it a good month and above that a great one.
Fortunately for me the low months expecations really doesn't amount to a lot - it is a matter of 100-200 points at most, while a month like February probably gave something like 200-300 points more than we could have expected.
January was also 100 or so points below expectations so I guess overall we are close to par at the moment, which is also shown by the fact that most of my riders are looking pretty good in terms of replicating last seasons result or getting past my expected points. At the moment only Bongiorno, Nizzolo and Vlatos are really far behind. The two latter could get back on track with a decent Giro. Bongiorno in 10-12th + some stage succes would catapult him back in the saddle, while a stage win and a stage podium for Nizzolo would bring him very close to being home safe with sub-mediocre riding the rest of the season.
Once more we have 5 races in a month. In the month of April we were set for our last cobbled race for a while, aswell as entering the reign of the Grand Tours. So we had everything to look forward to!
Paris-Roubaix:
#181 Georgios Karatzios
#182 Stylianos Farantakis
#183 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#184 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#185 Michail Mavrikakis
#186 Andreas Militadis
#187 Juan Osorio
#188 Ioannis Spanopoulos
Much like in all of our previous cobbled races, going with Karatzios as sole leader is never a great situation to be in. But as proved before he does know how to fight his way into a decent result, and the Paris-Roubaix was no different with a very decent 17th place. Finishing in a group containing the likes of Vanspeybrouck, Kasperkiewiecz, Lampaert and Tom David is very solid.
Only one rider didn't make it through the race, and thus securing us 63 points in total. Aproximately what we wanted, but higher than we could have anticipated.
Overall points: 63pts
Giro d'Italia:
#111 Francesco Bongiorno
#112 Nikolaos Ioannidis
#113 Charalampas Kastrantas
#114 Michail Mavrikakis
#115 Giacomo Nizzolo
#116 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#117 Aidan van Niekerk
#118 Riccardo Zoidl
On paper we went into the race with out heads held high, and a good feeling that Bongiorno could get a decent run - perhaps a top 10, a stagewin or a KOM battle. With Nizzolo we also had the flat stages covered, and a bunch of strong climbing puncheurs like van Niekerk and Kastrantas we felt like all stages could have some sort of presence.
For depth scoring we saw an opportunity for Zoidl, Ioannidis and Mavrikakis to fight for positions in the mix of 30-50. Only Spanopoulos was a desginated helper, and even he could potentially be a decent breakaway rider.
Boy were we wrong. The race went so poorly that we can't even feature a promising picture. Our best stage result was Kastrantas 4th place, while both Bongiorno and Nizzolo had one result as 6th.
Francesco Bongiorno was eventually 15th in the GC, which was OK had he been attentive and riding aggressively. He did in the first week, but after that the race was one to forget. We scored 2nd to last in a race where we had a team that should have seen us somewhere in the midtable, maybe at the lower end, but somewhere around 15th atleast.
Leaving a Grand Tour with less than 250 points will make the charge for overall succes VERY difficult!
Overall points: 224 pts
GP Liechtenstein:
#11 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
#12 William Barta
#13 Anatoliy Budyak
#14 Stylianos Farantakis
#15 Miltiadis Giannoutsos
#16 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#17 Andreas Miltiadis
#18 Juan Osorio
While the Giro was really poor, we entered the GP Liechtenstein as one of 3-4 pre race favorites. Lecuisinier had prior to the race delivered really well in the Paris-Nice and decently in Hallstatt and East Java, but not enough for us to fancy his chances of a win.
Especially when looking at the domestiques offered for his services. William Barta as the sole mountaingoat, and with just 76MO it would be difficult to see him perform the needed efforts.
Yet, Lecuisinier found his god-like form, and just clawed the tempo off the front, setting back one after the other.
In the end Lecuisinier took a sole victory leaving behind Dombrowski, his old nemesis Morton and his upcoming nemesis Phinney.
A sublime result after a very dreadful Giro d'Italia performance. The depth scoring was decent aswell with only Farantakis missing out. Barta even secured 10 points. In the end this one day race saw us score a higher amount of points than the entire Giro d'Italia did!
Overall points: 260pts
GP Wallonie:
#91 Clement Koretzky
#92 Anatoliy Budyak
#93 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#94 Charalampas Kastrantas
#95 Andreas Militadis
#96 Emmanuel Morin
#97 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#98 Aidan van Niekerk
The hilly one day races always offer a decent chance for an upset with Clement Koretzky leading the team backed up by the likes of van Niekerk and Budyak. More often than not, he will enter the final with relatively fresh legs and a high motivation to attack.
Yet we are fully aware that he is not a top top rider, and that he from time to time will fall well outside the top 10. Going into this race a top 10 was the minimum though. and hopes of a top 5 was present.
Throughout the entire race, Koretzky was very attentive and aggressive which led to him entering the final in the front group. Unfortunately a couple of riders were stronger than him, but he had the firepower to fend off the chasers from behind to ride solo into 3rd. A great achievement to add to his already impressive season, including 3rd in Badaling International and 5th in Classique du Grand-Duché.
Moving into the "real" ardennes week we can only hope for Koretzky to keep up his momentum!
Much like in the past, however, we are barely getting any points out of Budyak and van Niekerk which is really dissapointing.
Overall points: 100pts
Amstel Gold Race:
#131 Clement Koretzky
#132 Anatoliy Budyak
#133 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#134 Charalampas Kastrantas
#135 Andreas Militadis
#136 Juan Osorio
#137 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#137 Aidan van Niekerk
We enter the first ardennes race with a good run from one day races. First a good effort from Karatzios in Paris-Roubaix and Ronde van Vlaanderen, then a solid win in Liechtenstein from Lecuisinier and finally a podium in GP Wallonie from the man in the game, Clement Koretzky.
The race is yet to be raced, and the points will be updated accordingly!
Overall points: 49pts*Updated
To conclude on the month before Amstel Gold Race seems a little bit off, as a good result there can change everything. But so far we have had 2 very good races, a pretty decent one and a horrible one. Unfortunately the horrible one being the one with the highest stakes, and thus the most loss of points. Leaving the Giro with just 224 points simply cannot be covered by a win in Liechtenstein and a podium in Wallonie. On normal circumstances those would have been 3rd and 7th (or so) and the points difference is unfortunately not to our benefit.
Still, we have to accept that April was a decent one, despite the massive Giro-failure, and we enter May with a high motivation. We will never be favorites for the ardennes, but we can perform well in all races on offer. Fleche Wallone and Liege-Bastogne-Liege as outside-potential scoring races while Vuelta a España will hopefully be every bit as "boring and regular" as they come and see Lecuisinier set a strong effort, eventually winning the race or come very close! Finally Tour of Norway on paper is a good race with Coquard, Vlatos and Koretzky too, but can often turn out very unimpressive.
Our overall pointscoring before the Amstel Gold Race looks pretty much right in terms of our expected score of 660-790pts, with 660 being very pessimistic. A good Amstel can see us get closer to the 790 than the 660 and that would be a very solid effort after the Giro. *Updated* Apparently not.
The month of April Grand Total: 696 Points
*Updated
Individual succes Festina 2020
So, why the rush to cut down April before it is actually over? Well I promised some figures after the first Grand Tour, and that is done by now.
Last time we saw some very solid PpRD figures from the likes of Lecuisinier and Koretzky and some very unsatisfying figures from Bongiorno, Nizzolo, Ioannidis and Zoidl in particular. To be honest, that haven't changed a whole lot.
We see that Lecuisinier is already close to the 1000 points margin, but with just one race to go. If he can make sure to win the Vuelta, it seems very likely that he will atleast score the 1600 points we expected from him before the season started. But it does require a solid effort! To see him score the 2.000 points his PpRD suggests, he would need to set the race on fire, and I cannot see that happen.
Bryan Coquard haven't been riding a lot since last time and is fixed on just above 800 points for the season. We expected 1000 points from him, so he still have some work to do. Whether or not he can increase his PpRD really feat around his one day abilites in the latter part of the season.
Clement Koretzky is so far the big revelation of the team with a PpRD of 27,9 which should only increase during the ardennes. From then on it is difficult to see him keep it as high though, but it seems very likely that he will finish the season with atleast (or above) our expected 750 points. Lat season he scored 652 points and he is already on 419, so we hope that at the end of the ardennes he will have outscored last seasons figures. To see him score the expected 1400 points more miracles need to find their way though. He is definately on a positive note though and we do now expect him to beat his expected pre-season score by atleast 100 points.
David Boily is still on a miraculously high expected outcome, but haven't been riding a lot lately and his next races in France (Dauphine and TdF) surely will see his exptected points drop significantly.
Francesco Bongiorno leaves the Giro with less points than hoped for - significantly, and seeing him go into the Vuelta as a domestique and thus having just Switzerland left as a leader we find it difficult to see him come even close to our pre-expected 400 points. He should get atleast half of that, but we need him closer than that unfortunately!
Panagiotis Vlatos had a serious setback after a stupid Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha where he delivered like a 72TT rider. He is still expected to score just below 300 points though - which is just 50 points less than before the season.
-----
Looking past my leaders we see a dissapointing trend. Riders such as Aidan van Niekerk, Anatoliy Budyak, William Barta, Charalampas Kastrantas, Giacomo Nizzolo, Riccardo Zoidl and Nikolaos Ioannidis were all expected in the region of 150-250 points.
This pool of riders was expected to score 1.375 pts. prior to the season. They are almost exactly on track with 1.374 pts, at the moment, but we must aknowledge the fact that it is artificial due to Karatzios scoring 4,6 PpRD and his "high-scoring"-races are over. The likes of van Niekerk, Nizzolo and Zoidl are heavily putting pressure on their teammates by scoring significantly below expectations.
The remaining riders are all set to score between 75-100 points which looks about right in general.
Our team was expected to score 6500 points at the end of the season, and we are trailing just a bit - but not much. So chances are, that we are still a top 3-5 team at the end of the season!
FINAL NOTE:
And we can see that Koretzky have just managed to fuck up the first of the 3 ardennes, so a lot of the above is looking like nonsense now I realize.
The final note is brilliant - so much effort for the whole post and then retracting nearly everything at the end again
I love these posts, they give a great overview over your season and whats still to expect for the rest of the season. Kinda forgot / didnt notice how Koretzky had a very good season (so far)
Just the ardennes finale is between us and the 2nd Grand Tour of the season. And while the Giro d'Italia was a disaster, we expect the Vuelta a España to be significantly better! We come with a chance of the overall victory, but at the bare minimum a podium aspiration in Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier who won Paris-Nice aswell as Liechtenstein GP earlier this year.
Let's have a look at the team we brought here:
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
10th Grand Tour
Francesco Bongiorno
10th Grand Tour
Nikolaos Ioannidis
4th Grand Tour
Ioannis Spanopoulos
3rd Grand Tour
Michail Mavrikakis
3rd Grand Tour
William Barta
2nd Grand Tour
Anatoliy Budyak
Grand Tour debut
Georgios Bouglas
Grand Tour debut
Despite being a Grand Tour debutant Georgios Bouglas come as the only rider with a designated free role on the team. The greek sprinter have shown a decent capability to shuffle through the front and deliver Bryan Coquard from time to time. With 8 semi-flat finishes we couldn't see ourself past having atleast an outside chance for some sprint action and hence Bouglas is here to see if there is a room for him to manouvre in. He will likely be among the first riders to form a train for Lecuisinier, however if we are to get hold of the leaders jersey at one point.
Another Grand Tour debutant Anatoliy Budyak joins from PCT loan, and will be Lecuisiniers right hand man in the many difficult hilly stages. If they become somewhat select we believe that having a good puncheur can make the difference between salvaging a good result and having a bad day on the lose. Lecuisinier is likely among the weaker puncheurs from the favorites group, so it is important that he is kept up front at all time.
Moving past the debutants we spot William Barta who rode the Vuelta a España last season, surviving the race in 149th. Not particularly impressive, but neither horrible. Barta joins as part of the Lecuisinier mountain train, and the young rider could - if all goes well, get a decent U25 result out of the race if he is among the strongest domestiques. We don't expect much, but here's hoping!
Michail Mavrikakis is another relatively young and not fully developped riders to take on a difficult Grand Tour. His recent one was a succes, however as he managed to finish 49th in the Giro d'Italia. Last season he also had a go at the Tour de France, were he finished just outside the top 100. Mavrikakis have shown pretty solid efforts throughout his career despite his numbers doesn't quite match the effect, and we believe that he can occasionally sit with his leader for quite some time. With this years Vuelta a España in hand he is the first of our domestiques to have ridden all three Grand Tours.
Another rider who will make his 3rd Grand Tour appearance is Ioannis Spanopoulos. Just like Mavrikakis he comes out of the Giro d'Italia with a decent result finishing 84th, easily bettering his first Grand Tour appearance from 2019, where he in Puma - SAP colors finished 158th in the Vuelta a España. He's back for more, and we hope to see him well inside the top 100.
Compared to the list above, Nikolaos Ioannidis is an experienced member, landing his 4th Grand Tour total, after completing his GT "hattrick" earlier this season with the Giro d'Italia, finishing 60th. Last season Ioannidis finished 84th in the Tour de France and 171th in the Vuelta a España. We do believe he should have enough quality to finish around 45-60th. The greek rider doesn't only excel in the long climbs, he also goes fairly quick in the timetrials, and thus may be able to keep us close in the battle for a good Team GC.
From Ioannidis we take a somewhat massive leap, and presents Francesco Bongiorno. The Italian climber have ridden 9 Grand Tours prior to this one, debuting all the way back in the Vuelta a España 2014, where he finished in 84th place. Bongiorno have ridden aproximately half his Grand Tours as a leader, bringing him a key career highlight in 2017 where he finished 8th in the Giro d'Italia even taking home the stagewin on the difficult stage 15. Bongiorno have a strong history of finishing within 12-20th, having done so 6 times. Only once after his debut have he missed the top 20 - this was back in the 2016 edition of the Giro d'Italia. Since his debut on Festina, Bongiorno have finished 12th and 15th in the Giro d'Italia (2019-20), and 15th in last seasons edition of the Vuelta a España. It is the first time ever Bongiorno leads out Lecuisinier in a Grand Tour, but the duo was very succesful earlier this year at Paris-Nice aswell as Tour of East Java, while last season they didn't ride together even once. We do believe, though, that Bongiorno will be key to Lecuisiniers chances of overall succes, and fingers are crossed that they will find eachother well.
The last man, our captain, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier probably doesn't need much of an introduction, but I still think some will be surprised to know, that Lecuisinier have never finished on the podium of a Grand Tour, despite having won the U25 jersey in all (Giro d'Italia 2018, Tour de France 2018 and Vuelta a España 2016 and 2017). Lecuisinier debuted in a Grand Tour in the 2014 edition of Tour de France, having spent 2013 at CT level on a loan out. He finished the race in 47th, and took home 9th in the U25 competition. During that race he helped Simon Spilak to a 3rd place behind Andy Schleck and Aleksandr Pluchkin. After his debut the lowest ever result from Lecuisinier is 13th, which he achieved twice the year after in both Tour de France and Vuelta a España. On both occasions he finished 2nd in the U25 competition (Dombrowski, Tour - Wellens, Vuelta), being infuriatingly close to beating Tim Wellens in the Vuelta. In fact Lecuisinier was leading the U25 competition fairly solid going into stage 20. Unfortunately Lecuisinier had a pretty bad day losing 3'30 to Tim Wellens and thus losing the U25 competition by a minute. This was also the reason why he came back in 2016 and 2017 to underline that he should have won that jersey already back in 2015! It was also in the 2016 edition of the Vuelta a España that made everyone look deeper at Lecuisinier when he finished the race in 4th GC. A result he since replicated in the 2018 edition of Giro d'Italia and 2019 edition of Tour de France. So much like his U25 jerseys, he has a nice hattrick of 4th places in all Grand Tours. So it is about time to move up a notch!
In 2018 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier took his only two stagewins in Grand Tour contention, which saw him raise his arms on stage 20 of the 2018 Tour de France. Earlier that season he also won the 9th stage of the Giro d'Italia though. This season, Lecuisinier comes with the strongest palmares ever, winning GP Liechtenstein and Paris-Nice aswell as a stagewin and the points competition along the way.
We are very eager to get the race going, and believe that Lecuisinier can finally claim his podium. Whatever step it will be, is yet to be seen, but we await a fierce battle of supposedly, Taylor Phinney and Lecuisiniers old teacher, Simon Spilak. It will surely be one to watch!
5 races for Festina in the month of may, and a big one towards the end. It should be a great month, but let's have a look!
Fleche Wallone:
#131 Clement Koretzky
#132 Anatoliy Budyak
#133 Militaidis Giannoutsos
#134 Charalampas Kastrantas
#135 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#136 Andreas Militadis
#137 Juan Osorio
#138 Ioannis Spanopoulos
After a dreadful performance in Amstel Gold Race, motivation was quite low going into the 2nd race of the ardennes. Luckily Koretzky came out with a completely different take to the race. With 11km to go, Koretzky jumped from the pack and to the lead group, and while things melted a bit together he stayed on his toes to the very end using up clever positioning aswell as his fast finish to take a huge 2nd place and thus a new career highlight for the aging french puncheur!
The poor team depth was showing though with Juan Osorio claiming our best of the rest landing 89th, and thus again a dissapointing result by Budyak especially. Overall a very good result however!
Overall points: 196pts
Liege-Bastogne-Liege:
#131 Clement Koretzky
#132 Anatoliy Budyak
#133 Charalampas Kastrantas
#134 Ioannidis Kiriakidis
#135 Andreas Militadis
#136 Emmanuel Morin
#137 Ioannis Spanopoulos
#138 Aidan van Niekerk
After first a dissapointment, and then a huge celebration, we were both eager and a bit scared to get going for the Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Much like in Fleche Wallone, Koretzky was ready to give it a go though, and when he attacked from quite far out it seemed possible for a while, but as the peloton was awake he wasn't allowed any leeway.
Going into the finald 10km of the race Koretzky was still where he needed to be, in the elite group of 16 riders still within a shot at the win. In the very finale Koretzky was the key to catching Lutsenko, but in hindsight it wasn't his job to do, and could well have costed the final kick in the sprint for the win. Normally Koretzky would finish higher than 9th from such a sprint, but he lacked the final touch to stay in the mix. Still 9th is not a bad result by any means.
Aidan van Niekerk showed a reasonable level for once to finish inside the top 50. Still a long way to go for him to become an ardennes king though!
In the german flat(ish) classic Rund um Köln all eyes were yet again on the likes of Coquard and Degenkolb, but we know that Coquard have often struggled to compete when the pressure is on - so Kastrantas took matters into his own hands when he told Coquard that he would put the hammer down on Bensberg, which effectively thinned the peloton down to just 30 riders.
Due to the effort of the greek champion, it became a more regular battle between the strongest and fastest, and there Coquard showed why is it touted one of the best riders to finish 2nd just behind Peter Kennaugh, who had the edge on the day. Both Koretzky and Kastrantas were also inside the top 30 to claim some important depth points.
Going into the norwegian race we had a quiet hope for a stagewin or two, as we didn't have the best rider suited for the task. On hindsight a rider like Boily should probably have been here as the hills weren't difficult enough to make much of a difference.
Coquard was there to lead the way on the opening two flat stages, and did exactly what we wanted, when he claimed the win on stage 1 also taking both pointsjersey and the GC lead. A massive win by the french champion.
On stage 2 he was a bit overambitious, but still landed 5th. On the long TT Panagiotis Vlatos was the fastest on the first sector giving the team a feeling of false security. In the end he collapsed on the 2nd sector, but still took home a 4th place and some (for him in particularly) much needed points. The hills were a noshow, despite having Koretzky there, and Zoidl had two bad stages to nulify his own chances. First a slow TT, and then a horrible effort on the mountainous puncheurstage. Not quite the amount of points we had hoped for, but not particularly bad at all!
Overall points: 110 pts
Vuelta a España:
#1 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
#2 William Barta
#3 Francesco Bongiorno
#4 Georgios Bouglas
#5 Anatoliy Budyak
#6 Nikolaos Ioannidis
#7 Michail Mavrikakis
#8 Ioannis Spanopoulos
We entered the Vuelta with just 1 goal - Win the race! Despite not being the best TT'er in the race, Lecuisinier should have enough quality to overthrow the likes of Gesink, Kritskiy and Tenorio over the course of 3 weeks. And things started out well!
First Georgios Bouglas attached a new career highlight when he took home 3rd on the opening stage, and when Lecuisinier took 2nd on stage 3 the path was highlighted for glory. Even better was it, when he made a huge upset to win the hilly stage 4 ahead of arch enemy Tenorio, and also taking the red jersey over his shoulders. At this point there was speculation as to whether or not he would even allow others to take the jersey from here on!
On 6 however he wasn't paying enough attention at the front - and while the breakaway riders took the top prize, Gesink snuck away to claim bonus seconds, coming infuriatingly close to the jersey, and on stage 7 it was breakaway rider Bouchard who was almost fast enough to take the jersey. At this point it seemed obvious that it would be a matter of time before the jersey was lost - and sure thing: Stage 8 saw Willie Smit taking not only the stagewin, but also the lead - just before the important TT.
After a poor showing in the TT Lecuisinier was all the way down to 3rd after Tenorio and Gesink, and then the battle to claw back began! Willie Smit showed character to take the jersey back after another stagewin on stage 10 (impressive feat!), but Lecuisinier took a 2nd stagewin on stage 11 to show everyone that he was not ready to give up.
It was only enough to take up 2nd place though in the GC, and as the long 40km TT came closer and closer it was evident, that he needed to find time - serious time. It didn't help on the mood when Lecuisinier was poorly positioned in the finale on stage 13, which saw Gesink win ahead of Tenorio so both took valuable bonus seconds on Lecuisinier. The timekeeper even awarded a gap of 11 seconds. At this point the GC win was far away, and with both Gesink and Kritskity right below Lecuisinier it could end up in disaster!
The mountainous stage 14 didn't help, and panic started to arive. Not so much for Lecuisinier though who put the hammer down on stage 15 instead! Despite of an amateur move in the end that costed the stagewin to Prado, this was still where the win was created!
1'10" later (+bonus seconds) a deprived Tenorio arrived with his head sunk between his arms. A new 42 seconds lead for Lecuisinier was in hand. Still too little to claim the win, but enough to keep the dream alive. On stage 16 Lecuisinier found another 30 seconds by going all out, and those 30 seconds should prove to be vital!
As the long 40km TT again underlined, this isn't the best of TT-seasons for Lecuisinier. Tenorio was always the big favorite, but Lecuisinier should be able to fight for a stage podium on such a stage. He certainly did not, finishing in 9th place losing 1'08 to the winner (just 6 seconds less than he had to Tenorio!) - Luckily and surprisingly the winner wasn't Tenorio - but Prado (again), and a time loss of 42 seconds to Tenorio would have been devastating had it not been for those 30 seconds found on stage 16! Still in red at this point though it was more a matter of controlled effort, than going all out though and in the end, there were no problem controlling the win!
In 2013 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier signed with Festina - Canal+ as a young lad looking up to Contador and Fothen as the key leaders of the team. 7 Years (and 7,4mio) later he is crowned the winner of his first Grand Tour. Let's hope it is not the last! A big congratulations to him.
Overall points: 1368 pts
And with that result, we conclude the month of May - It has been a good month. Not a briliant month, but very solid and should take us back into the fight for a top 3-5 PT position. As this concludes the season for Lecuisinier though, we have to look elsewhere to find consistent pointscoring!
The month of May Grand Total: 2.006 Points
Individual succes Festina 2020
The 2nd Grand Tour is over, the cobbles are virtually over, and the ardennes are over, Lecuisiniers season is over. This seems to be the perfect time to cut down some numbers!
This is what our leaders looked like last time: Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier | 2.083 Points | 59,5 PpRD | 2.083 Actual pts
Bryan Coquard | 652 Points | 22,5 PpRD | 967 Exp. pts.
Clement Koretzky | 707 Points | 25,3 PpRD | 1.290 Exp. pts.
David Boily | 106 Points | 11,8 PpRD | 684 Ext. pts.
Francesco Bongiorno 179 Points | 3,3 PpRD | 215 Exp. pts.
Panagiotis Vlatos 98 Points | 4,1 PpRD | 258 Exp. pts.
Bryan Coquard is slowly getting there, and his expected points isn't far off the 1.000 points mark we set for him prior to the season. He still have a decent schedule to go, and a good race like Rund um Köln can make or break his season. Clement Koretzky has already surpassed his pointscoring from last season (707 vs 652) but while he is set to make a record scoring 1290 points, those can't be expected. He did well in the ardennes, while he scored virtually nothing in Norway, and as 3/5 of the remaining races are more resembling Norway than the ardennes, we are still hoping for him to pass 850 points to beat his current best ever. Could he get closer to 1000 points it would be great. Before the season we had him at 750, that seems very possible!
David Boily haven't been riding since last ime, and he still have a very high expected points due to his Tirreno performance. We still await to see what he can deliver, but we have expected 350 points total from him. It could be around that. Bongiorno on the other hand is having a horrible season. 179 points and just two races to go. He won't go anyway near the expected 400 points due to two underwhelming GT performances. One could say that what Lecuisinier scored over the top, Bongiorno lost or close to. If he doesn't perform really well in Switzerland it will be a season to forget for him.
Vlatos is still in the game, but 350 points which was around last seasons performance isn't going to happen. And I do think even 250 is over the top. So all in all our leaders is looking to be on par, with Lecuisinier and Koretzky scoring more than expected, Coquard and Boily probably on par and Bongiorno and Vlatos definately not.
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After our leaders we are still very dissapointed with the efforts. Our subleaders/breakaway riders are just doing absolutely nothing this season, and while their points may not be completely broken, we are yet to see a succesful breakaway scoring higher than what Kastrantas' 15 points in the Giro got. We don't have ideal breakaway riders all over, but they are definately better than 15 points. Last season we landed something similar to 450-500 points on this account. Just half of that would be appreciated at this point:
This pool of riders was expected to score 1.375 pts. prior to the season. Last time we checked, they were almost on track to do so, despite some dissapointing trends. Let's just conclude that the trend has continued, as we currently see ourselves ending up with 1.153, meaning a loss of 222 points - and that sum isn't covered from our leaders unfortunately!
The remaining riders are all set to score between 75-100 points which still looks about right in general.
Our team was expected to score 6500 points at the end of the season, and while we are trailing behind a bit here and there I do believe it is still possible. We have 16 races left to go, and will need an average score of 101 points pr. race to do so! We will definately have races with less points, but unless our Tour de France is equally bad as the Giro there atleast should be created some leeway there. Coquard on paper have 4 good races aswell which hopefully lands closer to 150 points pr. race than 100, so all is still open - but it isn't a given that we will finish in the 3-5th region which was initially the expectation.
Thanks for reading, and do feel free to comment as always!
Congrats on taking the Vuelta! Anything else would've been a big disappointment. Must be quite fulfilling to see that time investment payoff.
Must say, I was disappointed not to see van Niekerk do anything at the Giro. He did do a fair amount of pacing, but nothing exciting in the breakaways.
aidanvn13 wrote:
Congrats on taking the Vuelta! Anything else would've been a big disappointment. Must be quite fulfilling to see that time investment payoff.
Must say, I was disappointed not to see van Niekerk do anything at the Giro. He did do a fair amount of pacing, but nothing exciting in the breakaways.
Thanks a lot mate! It is indeed very fulfilling. It feels like I have been working on it forever, so to finally have it working out is absolutely brilliant. Even more so when all my leaders are selfmade. The only riders in my team scoring a decent amount of points, that I haven't developped myself is Bongiorno and Boily - and the latter isn't even fully true, as he was a loanie when level 4.XX.
Other than that I get most of my points from Lecuisinier, Koretzky, Coquard, Vlatos, Karatzios, Kastrantas and van Niekerk who are all Festina-developped
The next riders in line could be ready next season hopefully when Mavrikakis, Spanopoulos, Kortsidakis and Ioannidis are ready to make gains too. The latter is training eligeble next season and could become 77-78MO depending on the amount of money I'll have. And then we will start to see Giannoutsos, Farantakis, Rochas, Osorio, Miltiadis, Kiriakidis, Vila, Morin and Stavrakakis in 2022/23 hopefully.
I must admit I find that path very intruiging, despite it not always being the most beneficial path
We just have to get you scoring points again. I guess training is the way to go about it
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
Francesco Bongiorno
Michail Mavrikakis
William Barta
Juan Osorio
David Boily
Aidan van Niekerk
Anatoliy Budyak
Andreas Miltiadis
Riccardo Zoidl
Classique du Grand-Duché:
Copenhagen-Malmo TTT:
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha:
Ronde van Nederland:
Ronde van Vlaanderen:
GP Liechtenstein:
Rund um Köln:
Tour of Norway:
Vuelta a España:
