valverde321 wrote:
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.
Mannion has been really steady all season long. Also in the width many riders who score points, very promising for next year
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
valverde321 wrote:
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.
Mannion has been really steady all season long. Also in the width many riders who score points, very promising for next year
Thanks, I was expecting Uran to be the top rider on the team for this season, with Mannion being just slightly behind, but I think Mannion has had a bit more luck on his side, while Uran has also had a few really bad days in longer stage races which have hurt him. I'm glad my depth approach is working out for the most part. I'm excited to see what my team will look like next season, and its very nice to see many other new managers who have joined at the same time as me, having success as well
The ICL released the July standings and KBC-Godiva are sitting in 6th position, by far their highest ranking ever. We were finally able to reach KBC-Godiva manager, Willie McRettin, whose availability since the end of the Tour de France has been consistently described as "uncertain" by team media personnel. We talked to Willie from Le Bar at the Four Season Hotel George V in Paris.
Willie, understand you have been in Paris celebrating the results at the Tour for a few weeks, you must be over the moon about that and with your team's position in the standings?
The boys were just great, fantastic, feckin great. Nairo was great, Kittel was great, Henao great, Mapemba fantastic, Enrique great, gutted for Kenyeres crashing in Paris, but he was fantastic, Vallee great, prior to his crash, and McMullen was a champion. He has struggled on the TT bike, got to talk to Nikolay [Mihaylov] about that when I sober up, but I love him, what a hero.
But on the standings - I cannae say I'm all that fussed. Happy for the boys, they've been great, but what is it all about - publicity for some Belgian bank. If we had failed would they be here for us? Feckin sponsors, all take, no give, look at Krisa, we promoted together, fabulous team, great rider in Aru - and one piece of misfortune and the sponsors all running for the feckin' hills like Haggis in hunting season.
It makes me sick. I been drinking feckin Jack and Tonics and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrell for weeks now and that hasnae made me as half as sick as the very thought of feckin' sponsors.
Still I'm getting maudlin. We had a right old celebration after the tour. Took Nairo a day or two to come around given he missed 3 straight Tours wins and the Giro Tour double by feckin 46 seconds. But he cheered up day 4 and I can tell you the 8th Arrondissement has never heard the Proclaimers sung so loud. Even Kittel was singing, although he doesn't have anything like Nairo's range.
So you feeling confident about achieving your goal of maintaining your Pro Tour place?
Confidence, never heard of him, never met him. Feck. Serve the bank right if we relegated anyway.
What was your highlight from the Tour?
So many great moments, just great, fantastic moments. But best has tae be wee Nairo sprinting like a man possessed on the Champs, he was so feckin angry about not being able to catch Herrada. The looks on those big feckin sprinter's faces when Nairo went flying by them. Lucky he didn't catch Kittel that would nae be good for team spirit.
So you think you will be back for another shot at the Tour with Quintana next year?
Next year laddie? I have nae thought about next week. Right now ma big problem is getting the bleeding banking bastards to pay my bar bill. Once I win that battle, I'll fight the next one. Feck. Think that's Hans calling me.
McRettin hung up at this point and we weren't able to get further insights.
Following the victory in the Tour de Pologne from Wout Poels as well as clinching the Teams Classification crown in the race after fruitful TT stage, Ivaneurope has announced that Polestar (sponsor since 2018) and Telenor (sponsor since 2019) have extended their sponsorhip agreements with the team. The team's recent success has convinced the sponsors to continue their long standing partnership. "I'm very pleased that Polestar and Telenor decided to continue supporting our project." - said Ivaneurope when he announced the extensions.
The past 2 months were dominated by the first presence of Cadejo – BikeXpress in a World Tour race. The team travelled to the neighboring country of Guatemala, for the Vuelta, with a bit of nervousness due to the competition around it, but also with high hopes and spirits. The 7 riders who made the trip and waited excitedly for the start were Andrey Amador, Julian Arredondo, Pedro del Mar, Yelko Gomez, Anders Newbury, Diego Ochoa and Thomas Rose.
The team relied on its more experienced riders who already rode on the ICL circuit in the past seasons and this was obvious from the first stage when Andrey Amador joined the breakaway, showcasing his Costa Rican national champion jersey. Still, the first half of the race didn’t go particularly well for the team, los Cadejos ending with anything remarkable in the first 3 stages. However, the situation changed with the 5th stage. Perhaps the riders needed more time to shake the jitters of the race and only accustomed themselves slowly with the World Tour peloton, but Pedro del Mar put a strong effort in the queen stage achieving the 10th place, while Yelko Gomez and Julian Arredondo crossed the finishing line 19th and 20th respectively. These results brought a big jump for the team in the General Classification, Pedro del Mar sitting on the 12th place, Julian Arredondo on the 16th and Yelko Gomez on the 19th before the final stage. Yelko Gomez went in the breakaway on the final day, but unfortunately for him he spent too much of his energy and lost 6 places in the General Classification by the end of the stage. To the delight of everyone around the team Pedro del Mar and Julian Arredondo went in the opposite direction, gaining places and bringing 2 top 15 presences in the General Classification for Cadejo – BikeXpress, del Mar finishing 11th and Arredondo 14th. To top what the riders managed individually in the Teams Classification Cadejo – BikeXpress came away with the 4th place among such prestigious competitors.
After the recent announcement all main partners are leaving the team, or are not sure whether they can sign a new agreement, the team is pleased to announce that Visit Trentino will be one of the main partners of the team.
Trentino: We are pleased to announce we will be partnering with the team formerly known as Ceramica Panaria. We are happy we can be part of such a team built around fellow Italian Fabio Aru. As we are a region full of great facilities for training, we will provide the team with a new service course in Riva del Garda. Made out of mountain goats the team will find excellent roads and even some mountain passes.
The region is commited to become main sponsor if the team fails to stay in the WT, But at the moment we will be playing the secondary role after the "secret" main sponsor.
We're very happy to become such an important partner and we whish the team the best of luck for the remaining part of 2020
A Mixed First Season for Guinness Cycling p/b Blackberry
From the outside, underwhelming would be an understatement for Guinness's inaugural season. At the end of July, they were 19th in the CT division and 33rd in Prestige rankings. They have no individual riders in the top 25 of either ranking.
For the dev team, things have been even worse. It was obvious from the beginning that they wouldn't be too active without any significant talents to lead, but it couldn't be much worse for them. Last in the U23 rankings, and second last in the prestige rankings.
Of course, expectations for results this year were never especially high. Both sponsors and management made their goal going into the season clear: begin developing a cycling culture in Ireland and Canada, and establish a professional identity and presence. They knew that splurging with big money for retiring Daniel Martin and young Xavier Langlois would make them less competitive in the short term. They wanted exposure and name recognition to build on.
Helping Langlois to reach his maximum potential is a #1 priority for Guinness, and there have been mixed results. Shown above, he managed to sprint to the team's very first stage win in Tropicale Amissa Bongo. But his results have at times been perplexing. While he's often overperformed on hills, cobbles, and even the mountains, his pure finishing speed has often been lacking, leaving him to mop up minor placings. Langlois is someone they hope to build around, so they hope he can take the next step by next season, as he has entered his prime.
Martin has also been up and down. When he's on form, he's shown why he is so highly paid and has been such a prolific rider over the last decade, with solid podium results in both classics and stage races. At other times, he's been in inexplicably bad positions and had a hard time with crashes. He crashed hard in Paris-Nice, a season goal for him, which not only ruined his scoring for that race, but hurt his fitness going forward. The team hopes he will be able to finish out his career well with a good fall classics campaign.
Other riders such as Anthony Desjardins, Philip Lavery and Frederic Cossette haven't had much to write home about. Desjardins and Cossette are two young Canadians that were highly sought after by Blackberry. While Cossette hoped only to become a good cobbles domestique, he has constantly been lackluster and left Lavery isolated early. Desjardins was projected to be a real contender in CT TT's, but 16th in the Olympic TT is about as good as it's gotten. Lavery at least has an excuse. Poor planning saw him in way too many WT classics, and the CT division is very strong on cobbles as is. He's just been outmatched.
An optimistic story has come in the form of Sam Bennett. Last season, he had a very weak year, and by season's end appeared to have serious motivation issues along with the yips. After winning the Irish NC and joining a home nation team, he trained very hard to get back to his previous level. At first, it wasn't showing up in races. He had a slow start to the season, and it appeared he may simply be past his peak at only 29 years old.
However, he has made huge progress of the fast few months. Slowly but surely, the top 5's and podiums became more consistent, with a couple of stage wins thrown in. The last month, things have really started to click. Above is his win in Gran Premio San Jose, where he managed to survive the hills in an elite group of mostly puncheurs to win a reduced sprint easily. That win came just after he took a GC victory and Points jersey in Circulo de Juarez through consistency and alertness. These results have helped his morale, and given his team hope that he has a few top years still in him.
So, Guinness definitely hoped for a little more so far this year, but they didn't hope for it all. While immediate success would mean greater budgets and a fast progression, Guinness hope that they have at least built a foundation and an identity to build on going forward. And hey, maybe Dan Martin still has something special left for this fall.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Earlier this morning CCC Sprandi Polkowice has released short statement. The information that has been speculated about for a long time has finally been confirmed. At the end of the current season, CCC ceases to sponsor the CCC Sprandi Polkowice cycling team. We don't know exactly what was the ultimate reason for its withdrawal from sponsorship. However, cyclists are now free to find a new employer for upcoming season.
Tejay Van Garderen has already confirmed his departure from CCC after current season finishes. Diego Ulissi, long time leader of the team also is rumoured to be one of the riders to leave the team. Other riders hasn't confirmed yet what awaits next for them. Interesting thing is, few of them might stay with its manager because it's probably not over with team itself.
There are no official information about new sponsors yet. Rumours says that team license might stay in Poland, but that is only speculation. Team manager has said that upcoming months are going to be the hardest in team history and he will do his best to find new sponsors for next season.
San Sebastian: In a star-studded field 4 top riders managed to hold off the rest, but best of the rest was Sagan as 5th. Another excellent result for our classics captain. Pöstlberger was 25th.
Annecy: The same result as last season and again a very good result. Majka made the final selection of 4 riders, as the worst sprinter he predictably finished 4th. Tao Hart ends his season quietly, he arrived in a large group and was 40th.
Olympic Games: Despite a tough hilly course the Olympic road race was only decided on the last lap. Again four top favourites pulled away, again Sagan was 5th and even Cav managed to finish 12th, a great result considering he hates hills. Majka rode an excellent ITT and was 7th.
Tour of Northern Europe: Cav's best result already came on stage 1 where he was only beaten by Kittel. He wore the leader's jersey for a day on stage 3 and held onto the green jersey for a while, but eventually Kittel outscored him. Still a good race for the Manx Missile. Nothing from the rest of the team, though.
Hamburg: We had no clue if the AI would handle a double captaincy well, but the Cyclassics proved extremely successful in that regard. Cav finished 3rd, Sagan 6th, what a great result.
Eneco Tour: We couldn't have wished for a better start, Sagan won the prologue and defended his slim lead until stage 5. However, we threw away victory with a terrible mistake on that 5th stage, Sagan dropped to 3rd in the GC, which is still a very good result. McCluskey wore white for a day.
Mauritius: Max Fritsch was a decent 17th overall, more noteworthy is that Andrew Shelton won the KOM classification. A first for our development team.
WT Points 2020
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Total
Majka
169
438
478
666
125
1876
Cavendish
2
420
167
27
236
340
1192
Sagan
150
544
629
220
213
80
510
2346
Hart
132
341
41
243
2
759
Fernández
30
4
105
1
140
Stannard
23
6
3
22
54
Arndt
37
37
Dibben
46
80
20
1
147
Pöstlberger
4
18
22
Cano
27
88
11
1
127
Wagner
70
3
1
74
Simón
3
196
199
Guerin
27
27
Garcia
7
7
Christian
2
3
2
35
42
Lei
Meyer
2
6
8
Hansen
18
20
38
Lowsley-W
2
2
Cuming
McCluskey
9
50
4
63
Diederich
17
17
D. v. Winden
5
3
8
S. v. Winden
16
16
Birch
Total
184
169
1200
1007
1520
829
1252
1040
7201
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
54.7
51.8
WT Rank
13
12
3
2
2
3
2
2
2
Another month with over 1000 points and over 50 points per race day, simply fantastic. Sagan is amazing, Majka very good, Cav at least solid. Tao Hart finishes his season with 759 points. A far cry from the 1207 points he scored the previous year, but still a very good haul. Plus the white jerseys in Giro and Tour, of course.
September Preview:
Vuelta: This will be a low-scoring GT for us, we can only hope for some some breakaway success. Ruben Fernandez is our captain for his home tour, he had a terrible season so far, with crashes in his last two races. This is his final chance to get anything out of the season, though we cannot expect more than a top 15. Support comes from our other Spanish climbers Cano and Simon while Wagner will try to represent us in mass sprints.
Paix: We have far higher hopes for the Course de la Paix, on paper Majka is the top favourite. However, the queen stage didn't cause big gaps last year, so the new final stage could prove decisive.
Britain: We hoped we could field a stronger team in our home tour this year, but sadly, it's only gotten worse without Hardy and Valgren. Leadership falls to Pöstlberger, a fantastic rider, but with HIL 73 he's hardly top 10 material.
Quebec Sprint Challenge: Cav was only beaten by Kittel last season, we hope for a lucky draw and another appearance in the finals. Sagan was pencilled in as the other rider, but the race isn't part of the World Cup and so Arndt gets the other spot.
Richmond: But the Richmond Criterium counts towards the WC which means it's Sagan's 5th and final CT appearance this year. He won the race in 2018 and was 3rd last season behind GVK and Vanmarcke.
Virginia: Who on earth designed a TT tour? We are bringing just about the best team we have for the job, which means we won't get anywhere with no rider above TTR 74.
Fernandez really has a season to forget, lets hope he can redeem himself a bit in the Vuelta. Sagan is on fire this year, probably even stronger than in the Carbon heydays. Loss of Eneco Tour was more than unfortunate.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
After the highly succesfull ending (2 stage wins + GC win) of the Tour of Northern Europe the teammanager krisa and Michal Kwiatkowski traveled with a plane from Gothenburg to the capital of Poland, Warsaw. At Warsaw Chopin Airport in the Qatar Airways lobby the team was awaited by mister Wojciech Strusiński (Vice President of Qumak S.A.). Together they drove, in a classy maybach limousine, to the Raffles Europejski Warsaw Hotel where the other directors of Qumak S.A. were. The team is happy to announce they had a great meeting and even made a deal for the upcoming season. Qumak will be the third namesponsor of the team. For the first time in the history of the team at least one of the namesponsors won't be coming from Italy.
Qumak S.A.
We are really happy to announce we will be partnering up with the former Ceramica Panaria team. We got excited after we heard from Michal there was a spot left. We are gladly supporting one of Poland biggest athletes after the one and only Robert Lewandowski. We also had plans to support the CCC team but in the end it seemed a bigger opportunity to sponsor Michal even though CCC has the upcoming Komisarek. We also added a small dealbreaker to the contract. The team will have to have at least 3 Polish riders signed (one of them being Michal Kwiatkowski of course). We're looking forward to this partnership
Tomasz Laudy
President of the Management Board Qumak S.A.
Kwiatkowski
After all those years in foreign teams I'm glad the team also found a Polish sponsor. This means a lot to me to have signed one of Poland's biggest IT companies. I'm really happy this also means I will have some more compatriots in the team.
About the latest races I can only say the team starts to understand me better, and I start to understand them better as well. Looking at the ToNE hwo big the support was was absolutely insane even second leader Tom pulling so hard for me is totally awesome. Let's see how it goes for the final races. Maybe I can reach a podium spot in the rankings
Surprising news seems to struck management of CCC cycling team. As when everything seemed to be working fine and well in terms of finding news sponsor, people responsible for finding new partners have to start all over again. Main Director Sportive of CCC Sprandi Polkowice confirmed that management was in talk with Qumak S.A. about potential deal for sponsorship for upcoming season.
Tomasz Laudy, President of the Management Board Qumak S.A., has confirmed in recent interview that they talked with CCC about potential deal but they haven't got to an agreement in terms of potential plans for future. In the meantime, Qumak was looking for other opportunities and it turned out Ceramica Panaria was also looking for new sponsors for their cycling team. Laudy also said that Michał Kwiatkowski is far more recognizable cyclist than Patryk Komisarek which turns out to be biggest Polish star of CCC. Information about leaving of Tejay Van Garderen and Diego Ulissi hasn't helped CCC with negotiations with Qumak. President of the Management Board Qumak S.A. also said they are actually in touch with few cyclists from CCC, including Komisarek, about potential transfer to new team. CCC has refused to give feedback on those revelations as press spokesman only said "Patryk stays with us". That was taken as quite a harsh respond.
We still have no idea about future sponsorship of CCC Sprandi Polkowice in next season as first "big name" decided to try their chances somewhere else.
Spoiler
@krisa, I really had to use that part of you mentioning CCC to my own (dis)advantage, lol
Sources within the Cadejo – BikeXpress cycling team inform us that the team manager is currently in search of a new frames provider. Following several mechanical incidents suffered by the team’s riders during Cigar City Classic and an accumulation of smaller issues over the course of this year DarkWolf was left deeply unsatisfied by the Merida frames the team is using at the moment. Recently, the team managed to hire the Costa Rican mechanic Claudio Valdivia, who brings with him a bounty of over 30 years’ experience of racing and equipment managing. It seems that this new hire also played a part in the team manager’s decision of seeking a new frames provider for Cadejo – BikeXpress. According to our sources the team is in contact with 3 manufacturers in their attempt of finding the best possible equipment for the next season.
CADEJO - BIKEXPRESS - JUNE/JULY REVIEW
Guatemala, for the Vuelta, with a bit of nervousness due to the competition around it, but also with high hopes and spirits. The 7 riders who made the trip and waited excitedly for the start were 
Andrey Amador, 
Julian Arredondo, 
Pedro del Mar, 
Yelko Gomez, 
Anders Newbury, 
Tour d’Andorra and 5th on stage 1 of 
Tour of Vancouver, Diego Ochoa finished 3rd in stage 2 of 
Volta a Portugal, Julian Arredondo 3rd in stage 3 of 
Darren Matthews 4th in stage 3 of 
Circuit des Ardennes. In general classifications Yelko Gomez finished 9th and Pedro del Mar 10th in the same race, 
Circulo de Juarez and 
)
Daniel Martin and young 
Latvijas Balzams - Olainfarm: September Preview
