Lincoln GP: The Lincoln GP is the only British race on the World Tour calendar and therefore an important race for us, even though our sponsor cares more about international recognition. And with Peter Sagan on the team we just had to select it as a focus race, he won the last three editions, after all. Still, the competition was immense.
A shoutout to Stefan van Winden, who protected Sagan really well, after a first attack produced a group of a dozen riders only Sagan still had a team mate with him. Van Winden finished 22nd, so he finally collected some points after he was our only scoreless rider in 2019.
Senechal made the decisive attack with 14 km to go, followed by GVK and Degenkolb – and Sagan was the only rider to react quickly and catch up to the trio. They quickly carved out an advantage of 90 seconds, Degenkolb was the last to try a solo attack, Sagan was fresher going into the short final climb and sprinted to an undisputed victory. Brilliant! Plus five team mates finished between 20th and 40th and added minor points.
Sochi: Our next focus race followed soon. We had guessed correctly that no other MON 80+ rider might book this race, which made Majka the favourite for victory for the first time in his WT career. Majka lost 38 seconds against Kelderman in the TTT, then won the queen stage by nearly a minute, and even added bonus seconds a day later by sprinting to 3rd, he took a lead of 27 seconds into the ITT. Sadly, he slipped in a corner, took a while to get up, finished 34th and lost the GC lead. A shame we couldn't win our first WT stage race, plus a focus race, but it was a good performance nonetheless. Not only by Majka but also by our 24-year old new addition Cano Gonzalez, who finished 14th overall and was ony behind Van der Poel in the U25 classification.
Giro: Our highlight of this year's Giro was stage 14 which was won by Jordi Simon. His first win at the age of 30. He's been with us since the team was founded, a very reliable domestique who improved continously and now reaps the results. He represented us in several breakaways and finished 4th in the KOM classification.
After Peiffer crashed on stage 3, the door was wide open for Geoghegan Hart to win his next GT white jersey. He took the jersey on that stage and never relinquished it again. It wasn't his most consistent performance, but he finished 11th overall, another very good result. Ruben Fernandez seemed to be in better shape until a crash on stage 17 cost him half an hour, and forced Guerin to retire, which also cost us a better result in the teams ranking. Sadly, Arndt disappointed again. After a couple of decent results he refused to sprint on stages 11 and 12 before missing the time cut on stage 14.
Aosta: The Aviva Futura Project celebrated its first ever victory when Max Fritsch won stage 5 of the Giro Aosta. He looked in excellent shape and launched his attack inside the final 2 km to win by 20 seconds. He went on to finish 4th overall, a fine result for our best U23 rider.
WT Scoring 2020
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Total
Majka
169
438
607
Cavendish
2
420
167
589
Sagan
150
544
629
220
1543
Hart
132
341
473
Fernández
30
4
105
139
Stannard
23
6
3
32
Arndt
37
37
Dibben
46
80
20
146
Pöstlberger
4
18
22
Cano
27
88
115
Wagner
70
70
Simón
3
196
199
Guerin
27
27
Garcia
7
7
Christian
2
3
2
7
Lei
Meyer
2
2
Hansen
18
18
Lowsley-W
Cuming
McCluskey
9
9
Diederich
17
17
D. v. Winden
5
5
S. v. Winden
16
16
Birch
Total
184
169
1200
1007
1520
4080
RDs
7
6
20
17
28
19
23
19
33
8
180
Pts/RD
26.3
28.2
60.0
59.2
54.3
52.3
WT Rank
13
12
3
2
2
2
1520 WT points in one month is a new record, beating last September (1320). Phenomenal performance so far. Sagan leads the charge, Majka, Cav and once again Tao have also been very convincing. Simon is punching above his weight for the third year running. However, Stannard and Arndt have disappointed. Ian scored 408 points last season and even improved his core stat, 32 points so far is miserable. Nikias managed a couple of decent results at the Giro but was mostly found outside the top 100 all season long.
Of course, but for role-playing reasons it seemed like a good excuse as for why Majka lost nearly a minute to Kelderman. Had the gap been smaller I wouldn't have had to come up with such a wild story.
Just three race days for this month, our superstar Phinney will participate at every event, two cobbled classics and a ITT. We expect results from good to great here, because we need to keep the pace of the teams which will score plenty of points in GCs. Copenhagen - Malmö is our 4th focus race.
Aleko Vitoša
Like every cobbled CT.2 race, we want to play with numbers, the team is strong, the only unknown is the long climbs. The race is selective as expected, and in the end we are in high number, Van Goethem is pacing so hard that none is able to follow, just Phinney is with him on the last climb. Broeckx can sit behind opponents' wheels. In the end Brian is still super good, and not even Taylor can follow him! Fantastic 1-2! ...and behind a fresher Broeckx can leave the party to take 3! This is our best performance ever in ICL, completed by Declercq 7th, Stuyven 13th and Aerts 30th.
University of Lincoln GP
WT classic with a tricky finish, that isn't well suited to Phinney compared to other classic specialists. Last Km is quite hard with an uphill in final meters, Taylor is able to remain with the first group until the end, but on the climb he pays his weight and gets a 9th place. Good race for Broeckx 16th, while other scorers are Stuyven 28th and Aerts, who joined the early break, 38th.
Copenhagen - Malmö ITT Â
Focus race. We have also Talansky who was let rest in the last ITT classic, which in the end will get the best result for our team, but far from good placements in 12th position. Phinney had a bad day despite numbers weren't so bad, but according to Team BP manager, the wind over Øresund Bridge changed suddenly direction many times, he was a bit unlucky and finished 23th. Van Zummeren was quite good with a 19th place. Not the best choice as focus race.
Planning for the 2020 season we had one major and one minor goal in mind. The major goal was to increase our budget, to catch up with the bigger teams. 2019 was an excellent year, as a freshly promoted team we finished 7th in the WT ranking, but it didn't really pay off in terms of budget, which hardly increased. More success in the focus races as well as fighting for the World Cup competition are the two routes to more success and Peter Sagan promised to help with both singlehandedly, which made him our top priority.
With Guatemala we've completed four of our five focus races and we are delighted to report that all of them went well or even very well. Sagan won Lincoln, Cavendish was 2nd in MSR, Majka was runner-up in Sochi and Guatemala, with additional points from stage wins, team mates and other classifications. We are pretty certain that we've already been successful, no matter how our final focus race, Paris-Tours, goes. Sagan has also built up a very promising lead in the World Cup, with 481 points so far he's doing even better than he was last season. Should he retain his jersey it'd amount to another nice budget boost.
The minor goal was to score more victories than last season. As great as the team performance was, it was underwhelming to only win three times at WT level. This year, in mid-June, we've already picked up 10 WT wins: Majka won four stages including the prestigious queen stage of Guatemala, while Sagan won three classics including the monument Paris-Roubaix. Cavendish, Simon and McCluskey added one stage each.
So we're basically done for the year. Anything that happens from now on is just a bonus. We're incredibly well placed in the WT teams ranking at the end of May, of course we'd like to improve upon last season's result, but it'd be no shame to drop down to mid table. There's no pressure to perform at the Tour de France, we certainly won't play much of a role at the Vuelta, nor in the ToNE let alone the Virginia Chrono Tour. We hope to be competitive in the remaining WT one-day races as well as the Eneco Tour (Sagan), the Quebec Sprint Challenge (Cav) and the Course de la Paix (Majka). But we can follow all of them in a very relaxed state.
Deutschland: Sagan did very well and finished 4th overall. He laid the groundwork on stage 4, where he nearly missed the decisive split but was only beaten by Kwiatkowski.
The Cavendish Conundrum: Our top sprinter has done very well so far in the flat classics, he was 2nd in MSR and GW and well positioned in the Palm Classic before a late crash. But we have trouble setting him up for the sprints in stage races. Ster ZLM Tour and Germany had five mass sprints each and Cav failed to make the top 10 eight times. When he gets into the mix he's very successful, winning the other two sprints, but we'd really like to see more consistency.
Guatemala: Our worst team performance of the season happened in this focus race on stage 2. Majka was only 7th while Tao, who should have slipped into white, finished at least 6 minutes behind his nominally weaker competition. The time trial was also terrible, Dennis van Winden (TTR 72) was nearly a minute faster than his captain (TTR 77). But Majka's fortunes changed just one day later: In last season's summary we had one wish for Rafal, that he would win a mountain stage against top competition. And he managed it on the queen stage, he beat Herrada to win the stage, and did more than enough to move up to 2nd overall. To top it off he even managed to win the final stage as well, what a nice surprise. Instead of leaving with our heads hanging we return from Guatemala with a smile on our faces.
Fuji: The race was a disaster for Ruben Fernandez after he picked up a painful injury along the way. He was unable to follow any of his team mates on the queen stage, not Pöstlberger, not Gao Lei, not even Lowsley who had been in the breakaway and was caught before the decisive final climb. 30th overall was the poor result. However, we are happy to report that Philip McCluskey won the final stage, beating his more experienced breakaway companions. It's his first career win!
Luxembourg: Sagan finished 8th in this extremely short ITT, not quite as good as last season, but still more points to buffer his World Cup lead. It was a pleasant surprise that Stannard and Cuming also made the top 20.
Suisse: We booked the race for our domestiques, looking for breakaway appearances. We only had one, but that turned out to be very successful, Gonzalo Garcia won stage 6, another maiden win.
Ardennes: Edward Birch had a productive breakaway on the opening stage, enough to finish 2nd in the KOM ranking, to wear the green jersey for two days and to collect 61 prestige points.
WT Scoring 2020
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Total
Majka
169
438
478
1085
Cavendish
2
420
167
27
616
Sagan
150
544
629
220
213
1756
Hart
132
341
41
514
Fernández
30
4
105
1
140
Stannard
23
6
3
32
Arndt
37
37
Dibben
46
80
20
146
Pöstlberger
4
18
22
Cano
27
88
11
126
Wagner
70
3
73
Simón
3
196
199
Guerin
27
27
Garcia
7
7
Christian
2
3
2
7
Lei
Meyer
2
2
Hansen
18
18
Lowsley-W
2
2
Cuming
McCluskey
9
50
59
Diederich
17
17
D. v. Winden
5
3
8
S. v. Winden
16
16
Birch
Total
184
169
1200
1007
1520
829
4909
RDs
7
6
20
17
28
19
23
19
33
8
180
Pts/RD
26.3
28.2
60.0
59.2
54.3
43.6
50.6
WT Rank
13
12
3
2
2
3
3
Another great focus race from Majka, another good performance by Sagan, the stage win for McCluskey was excellent. But Tao, Cav and especially Ruben (who crashed again) were disappointing. Birch, Cuming and Gao Lei have failed to score WT points so far, only Lei hasn't scored any prestige points yet.
TdF Preview: We're bringing three of our top 4 riders to the biggest race on the calendar. Majka is the captain, it's his only Grand Tour of the year. As we had expected, the competition is tough, a top 5 would be a good result. Tao on the other hand is the favourite to win white after he was runner-up last year. It's Cav's favourite race and he'd love to win at least one stage in his final year as one of the top sprinters. We are sending Arndt and Wagner in support, it hasn't done much good so far this season and maybe we should have strengthened the support for Majka and the TTT instead.
The Cavendish Conundrum: Our top sprinter has done very well so far in the flat classics, he was 2nd in MSR and GW and well positioned in the Palm Classic before a late crash. But we have trouble setting him up for the sprints in stage races. Ster ZLM Tour and Germany had five mass sprints each and Cav failed to make the top 10 eight times. When he gets into the mix he's very successful, winning the other two sprints, but we'd really like to see more consistency.
Wish we had Cav's success in ZLM but generally the same observation about Kittel. In Palm and MSR our leadouts were excellent but Germany he was struggling for top 10s. A 3rd in a stage the break won was the best result. Need it to turn around at the tour.
I know, Kittel's having problems, too. Though if you check the screenshots from the first two stages of the German tour, Kittel is at least in the mix, while Cav is totally absent, you can see him in the background on stage 2, 300+ metres behind all the other sprinters.
We'll get videos for the TdF, so I'll get a chance to see what is going wrong.
Another month with just three races, all CT.2. Engeldinger will be with no doubt the main rider involved, leading the team in all three races. We are expecting a podium in Andorra and hopefully a top5 in Germany and on Mont Ventoux to keep the pace for promotion.
Rheinland-Pfalz Rundfahrt Engeldinger rides it perfectly, always in front, protected from risks. In the last stage he makes the decisive move with a fantastic solo, taking the stage and his first GC win. Hofland sprinted for the first time of the season on podium in 4th stage, but it's clearly a disappointing season for him so far. Wouters, who finished his task as lead-out for Moreno after stage 4, exploited his freedom on last stage to join the break. The team strategy worked all the week for Charles, giving us a great boost of confidence.
Tour d'Andorra
The race starts with an anonimous stage 1, with a mass sprint without sprinters, while on 2nd stage Engeldinger take the lead with a great win outsprinting Tilegen in a two man finish. Unfortunately Charles already crashes the day later, and he will suffer until the last stage where he lose 9 minutes, dropping to 7th in GC, something to forget after great preamble and high expetations. Bakelants helped the leader until he was in GC contention, then joined the break in 4th stage, same for Putt in the last one.
Dark clouds above the Ceramica Panaria - Autogrill headquarters?
After the disappointment in the Tour de France. The team got contacted by it's main partners. Unfortunately no good news to mention from the sponsors side. We'll share the sponsors point of view. Afterwards a small reaction from the team manager and our Polish superstar Michal Kwiatkowski
Ceramica Panaria
Hi krisa
We are informing you about the end of our contract as main sponsor with the team. We are deeply saddened we have to leave the team. We will look back on 3 brilliant years with the squad, including the massive Giro d'Italia in 2018 where all leaders had our logo on their kit. To not mention the day Fabio became world champion, still know the day after we celebrated we to much prosecco and beers.
Unfortunately due to the recent struggles at the team, massive dissapointments after a more then doubled budget I simply can't convince our stakeholders to make the same investments next year.
However this doesn't have to mean we end our collaboration. Instead we want to stay a partner of the team, to not mention the believe in the Aru4Ever team where we want to stay the main partner from.
Depending on the further results of the team we have decided that this are our options.
- Team reaches top 5 WT and wins one of these races (LOmbardia, Vuelta or World Championships): In this case we will rethink our decision completely
- Team reaches top 10 WT and wins one of these races (LOmbardia, Vuelta or World Championships): We will stay sponsor of the squad
- If none of the above goals is reached we will leave the main squad and fully focus on the development squad.
We are here to inform you about of our sponsorship agreement as of 2021. Looking at the results we got in 2020 we are annoyed to see what has happened with our doubled budget. As for 2021 we are going to sponsor AC Milan who can give our logo a more international exposure.
Looking back on our history together with tears in our eyes. Reaching impossible things together, it's time to move on for us.
Whish you all the best in the future
Gianmario Tondato Da Ruos
Group Chief Executive Officer Autogrill
Cipollini
Hi krisa
I'm here to inform you we will end our aggreement at the end of the season. We are utterly dissapointed to hear some of the riders say in the press the TT bikes are just not good enough. We as a brand don't seem to have the same values as some of your riders. Also saying our bikes are the reason so many guys crashed is pretty bad. Next year we will sponsor some instagram influencers I think.
Currently I'm in talks with some more potential partners. However not one of them is able to even pay the budget needed for a Continental team.
As for the rest of the season, our riders will have to make a good impression. Starting with Aru who seems to recover pretty fast. Let's hope he's ready for the Vuelta.
Kwiatkowski
Pretty sad to hear the team has no sponsors for next season. The boss even asked me if I couldn't bring a new sponsor out of Poland to the team. Sad to hear the boss is so desperately looking for budget next season.
As for my season I hope to perform in the next races to show what our team stands for. In the beginning of the season I was sick and didn't recover any time soon, which concluded in terrible results. In Germany I started to feel pretty well and Asmara was a good confirmation
A great read, krisa! Pretty serious, I know, but personally I wouldn't mind a shorter team name. The goals from the main sponsor aren't outlandish, I have a pretty good feeling your team should achieve the smaller goal at least. Good luck!
Ripley wrote:
A great read, krisa! Pretty serious, I know, but personally I wouldn't mind a shorter team name. The goals from the main sponsor aren't outlandish, I have a pretty good feeling your team should achieve the smaller goal at least. Good luck!
Thanks a lot
Haha Italian teams need long names though and many sponsors on their kit. + it's pretty easy to find my riders in the results .
Yeah we'll see
When we last spoke, EF was at the very top of the CT division and sitting in a promotion spot in the Prestige rankings.
We are now over half way through the season, and the team manager has still had time to prepare some of the back end planning, and other work required as manager. However, some of the front end work, and media availability has been lacking, with little time to speak to the media.
Overall, the manager is very happy with his teams debut season. Just 3 riders on the team over the age of 30, and just 6 over the age of 26, means the squad should be much improved for next season. Sitting in 8th in the Prestige rankings for CT teams, if we manage to hold on to that spot we can be very proud of our season. It gives the team a good building block for next season, and our star rider, Mannion seems to just be hitting his peak.
Perhaps the team will try to add more Colombians to the team next year, as Uran has began to start showing his age. The sponsors will demand a highly reputable rider to replace him, should he end up leaving the team, as Sarmiento also looks to be losing a step this season.
As for the U23's, we have been active in all the races, but only a few noteworthy results so far this season. Experience is most important at this stage however, and the riders are getting along well, which helps to build a strong and enjoyable team environment.
(Sorry, I didnt have a pun for the title this time)
Asmara: Stefan van Winden once again did a great job protecting his captain until the decisive attack was started. Sagan was a little far back, latched onto Lutsenko who closed the gap to the six riders who got away. Sagan overtook Mohoric and Lutsenko to finish 6th, another good result. No depth scoring, though, all our other riders were outside the top 50.
Tour: After the disappointing Tour of Germany Cav and the team did a much better job in mass sprints in Le Tour, even Rafal and Tao worked for him. Cav was heartbreakingly close to winning stage 3 and was runner-up once more on the Champs Elysees, but he missed many opportunities in between and was only 7th in the points classification.
Majka was underperforming badly throughout most of the Tour and was 6th, over 4 minutes behind the podium, after stage 17. But he celebrated a fantastic comeback in the final few days: He was only behind Quintana in the MTT, he won stage 19 atop Alpe d'Huez outright and distanced his rivals once more on stage 20. A podium finish in the Tour de France was his reward, plus a prestigious stage win, we could hardly be prouder.
Tao Hart's performance mirrored Rafal's, he needed until stage 12 to finally distance Scott Davies and earn the white jersey, but the lead was slim and becoming slimmer. But like his captain he rode an excellent MTT and very well on stage 19 and eventually won the U25 competition by a generous margin while also finishing 17th overall. A good result in the end and with that performance he completed his hat-trick, winning white jerseys back-to-back in Vuelta, Giro and Tour. Bravo! A shame he'll outgrow the competition next season.
WT Scoring 2020
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Total
Majka
169
438
478
666
1751
Cavendish
2
420
167
27
236
852
Sagan
150
544
629
220
213
80
1836
Hart
132
341
41
243
757
Fernández
30
4
105
1
140
Stannard
23
6
3
32
Arndt
37
37
Dibben
46
80
20
146
Pöstlberger
4
18
22
Cano
27
88
11
1
127
Wagner
70
3
73
Simón
3
196
199
Guerin
27
27
Garcia
7
7
Christian
2
3
2
7
Lei
Meyer
2
6
8
Hansen
18
20
38
Lowsley-W
2
2
Cuming
McCluskey
9
50
59
Diederich
17
17
D. v. Winden
5
3
8
S. v. Winden
16
16
Birch
Total
184
169
1200
1007
1520
829
1252
6161
RDs
7
6
20
17
28
19
23
19
33
8
180
Pts/RD
26.3
28.2
60.0
59.2
54.3
43.6
54.4
51.3
WT Rank
13
12
3
2
2
3
2
2
Majka, Cav and Tao collected quite a few points in the TdF. Geoghegan Hart only has Annecy left and so won't get close to the 1000+ points he scored last season, which on the plus side should lead to a less painful contract negotiation than last year. While Majka is only 6 points shy of last season's total and should be able to break the 2000-point barrier this season.
August Preview
San Sebastian: Sagan continues his World Cup campaign. The race should suit him well, but this year's competition couldn't be tougher, worthy of a WT classic.
Surrey: We can't miss a race on home soil, though there is no chance of a good result, but we hope some fans will turn up to cheer on our riders, all our British domestiques (and our dev team) are here.
Northern Europe: Considering the blood bath last season and our lack of top punchers we mostly aim for the flat stages with Cav, who is supported by Arndt. Stannard is the nominal captain, but we don't expect anything from him, he's had a terrible season so far.
Annecy: Majka was a fine 4th here last year and is looking for another good result, though there is more competition this time around. Tao is the secondary scorer, the first time he's featuring in a one-day race for us.
Rio: Another CT.2 race we expect nothing from, though this time we have the best possible captain by AVG, Simon has the maximum allowed AVG 74.5. But he's not a puncher.
Cyclassics: Cav and Sagan join forces again with the best possible support for this flat classic. I wonder if we'll successfully form a sprint train.
Eneco: On paper this race looks perfect for Sagan and he's won it twice so far, but having reviewed last season's results we aren't terribly confident, pretty much anything can happen.
Latvijas Balzams - Olainfarm: June Preview
Aleko Vitoša
Copenhagen - Malmö ITT  
