Very nice insight into how and with what expectations you're approaching races. Overall, a pretty decent season so far it seems, even with underperformances like Colombia.
cunego59 wrote:
Very nice insight into how and with what expectations you're approaching races. Overall, a pretty decent season so far it seems, even with underperformances like Colombia.
Thanks mate - We usually come pretty close to our estimates, with some blunders and other overperformances leveling things out. I have enjoyed that part for quite some seasons, where I evaluate on each riders potential in a said race. Obviously without knowing the opposition this can be difficult, but normally the PT is pretty easy to guess for most riders.
Indeed we cannot be unhappy with the season so far. Overall we have estimated a pointscoring between 1.650-2.245pts at this point, and we have scored (if all calculations are correct) 2.347pts, so almost exactly 100 points better than our best possible estimate. It's still January that keeps us above expectations though, so we should fall to the expected level next month, unless we punch above weight again - which I can't see possible though given the races we attend.
With March being another month with a reasonable outing, we end the first quarter in the positive. Many racedays have been spent by Coquard in particular, and this obviously plays a part. Lecuisinier have used the "normal" amount of racedays while Koretzky still have a lot of racedays left - He did however use the once spent very well! Let's begin the 2nd quarter of the year with the month of April.
Paris-Roubaix:
Ronde van Vlaanderen saw us score 60 points, and something similar is expected here. It all depends on Karatzios and perhaps Kortsidakis. We have to expect that not all riders survive this race, but if one of our riders slightly overplays his hand that might not make too much of a difference. To beat the 100 mark we simply need better quality. We might have to look into that in the upcoming season, given the amount of cobbled races there is.
Expected Points: 40-70pts
Giro d'Italia:
The first Grand Tour of the season surely isn't our best. We come with an all-out breakaway setup involving riders like Aidan van Niekerk and Gyung Gu Jang. Without a GC leader, a top puncheur or a top sprinter (or a sprinter at all) we can't expect many points. We have a good amount of decent climbers, but whether or not they will work well together or play it all wrong is very difficult to settle beforehand. Hopefully the race will give us some interesting intel for further seasons, as setups like this might be the norm rather than the exception for races like this.
We could end up with barely nothing, but given the structure of the team I suspect we will hit a minor jackpot every now and again to get a reasonable outing. This is a very difficult call though!
Expected Points: 200-300pts
GP Liechtenstein:
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier is here, and with Herklotz, Kudus, Morton and Dombrowski all playing it out at the Giro we have to get a top result here. Riders like Madrazo, Pluchkin, Taaramäe and obviously Phinney will always be a struggle, but we won't find a race that suits Lecuisinier better, and given the lower competition we have to target the win. In particularly after the very poor Vuelta a Colombia, slightly below expectation Tour of Tasmania, and missed win in Pro Hallstatt - It's about time we see what Lecuisinier is made of. Otherwise we cannot justify having a wage similar to Phinney and Herklotz!
Expected Points: 150-200
GP Wallonie:
Clement Koretzky is our go-to-guy in the hills and he often deliver. This is the first hilly race of the season where he joins forces with his heir Aidan van Niekerk, and we hope the two work well together. Last season Koretzky took a surprise podium in this race, and while that is not likely to happen again, a top 10 definately is possible if he's having a normal day. The combination of him and van Niekerk will hopefully lift the overall level of the team to perform a good result.
Expected Points: 75-125
Amstel Gold Race:
Amstel is a pretty similar race to GP Wallonie, and while the competition is usually more difficult here, the expectations are pretty much the same. Aidan van Niekerk is here once more to help his captain achieve a good result.
Expected Points: 100-150
Overall Expectations:
With two races having a poor lineup (Roubaix and Giro) we can't expect much of a score here, and the gap between the lower and the higher expectation is pretty large this time due to the uncertainty of breakaway succes. A lot can go wrong, but even if we have a good month, we will still make a significant drop in the rankings due to the Giro d'Italia.
Every season we spend a good amount of time evaluating our riders, project the future points and calibrate for what to expect. This season obviously is no different, although the presentation of our final prediction and expectations comes later than usual.
Last season we scored 6950pts which normally would be equivalent to a top 3, although only secured us 5th. Actually quite far from a podium (7428pts Puma). In our own prediction for the 2021 season we had another 5th place marked as realistic, but we don't think almost 7000pts is needed to end up in top 5. 6500 should do it easily in a normal season. Last season, however, that would have landed us 8th, so there is quite some flexibility in order to actually finish 5th.
Let's have a look, though as to how we can expect things to turn out, how it refers to last season and whether or not we are trailing or having a head start. To do so, we always bite our teams into more digestable sizes and piece it together again bit by bit. From the top down...
GC Riders:
In 2020 we had just two riders in this category. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier and Francesco Bongiorno. Combined they scored 2.316 points and exceeded expectations by quite a lot. The expected level was 2.000 points. Lecuisinier exceeded a lot, while Bongiorno actually never met up to standards by only scoring 233 points.
In 2021 we again have two riders. But rather than Bongiorno we have David de la Cruz, who in our perspective is a better rider, more suitable for higher points at PT level.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Lecuisinier
2000
55,6
46,3
1.667
-333
De la Cruz
500
8,1
3,7
229
-271
Total
-604
It's easy to see that our group of GC riders are far from up to the task so far. Both lead a GT though so if all goes well and Lecuisinier wins the Tour de France, while De La Cruz makes a good show in both Tour de France and Vuelta a España, som ground should be covered of course. For De La Cruz to double his outing seems a bit unrealistic, however but we might have shot expectations a bit high for him. Lecuisinier really need to cover that 2000 points mark though for us to realistically target the PT top 5.
Hills:
In the hills we had Clement Koretzky, David Boily, Aidan van Niekerk and Anatoliy Budyak last season and we just have to accept that we cannot match that this season. van Niekerk have become a better puncheur, but the lost ground isn't going to come back. The 4 riders scored a combined 1555 points, with Budyak hardly showing up, but both Boily and van Niekerk scoring above 300 points with Koretzky a massive 830, setting a new record high for him. We can't expect him to score that well again, but we might want to see Aidan score even higher than last season to cover the lost.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Koretzky
800
16,7
50,7
2.434
1.634
van Niekerk
400
6,3
3,3
211
-189
Total
1.445
Koretzky have performed marvellous so far, and already scored close to half what we expect from him, but having only spent 7 out of his 48 racedays. Obviously some races in the future doesn't suit him well, and thus will drastically reduce his potential, but with the upcoming ardennes we must expect for him to make an average of atleast 45 points pr. race, to keep his PPrD pretty high. Still we don't expect him to score even half what his PPrD currently suggests. But he might score what Lecuisinier lacks, which is a very solid feeling. Aidan van Niekerk however is a bit disturbing seeing as he have already been active as a leader in Paris-Nice. There, he scored 3,9 PPrD, which was significantly lower than what we expected. Unless he has a reasonable amount of succes as a free rider in the Giro d'Italia, we can't expect him to live up to expectations by any means.
Timetrials:
In the 2020 timetrial setup we had Vlatos, Ioannidis and Zoidl present, and while we have lost Zoidl we have decided to include Kiriakidis to this as he is now almost up to a level where we can expect him to score more than minimum. Both Vlatos and Ioannidis remain at the same level. Last season the trio scored 703 poits, with no one scoring below 100 points. Zoidl and Ioannidis both roamed in the area of 110 points while Vlatos had a new record scoring season claiming a total of 484 points, while expectations where at "only" 350 equivalent to his average. We have turned the expectations back to 350 for Vlatos, while Ioannidis is slightly up from his 125 last season.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Vlatos
350
5,0
7,4
518
168
Ioannidis
150
1,9
4,5
351
201
Kiriakidis
100
1,1
1,9
181
81
Total
450
Considering just how bad our TT's have felt, we have been remarkably succesful. All our three greek riders are well above the expected level at this point. Ioannidis have scored reasonably well in all three GC races so far - although it looked like he could have scored significantly better in Paris-Nice. Kiriakidis seems to be picking up scrabs here and there, which is exactly what we need from the young Ioannidis-clone. Vlatos is basically the rider who performed to worst so far, and while his PPrD looks very solid, it's a bit dissapointing due to the fact that his top targets are now past him. For Vlatos there's only Chrono d'Arenberg and Chrono des Herbiers left that can actually catapult him towards the 350 points, and while Herbiers should be good the results are all over the place, and Chrono d'Arenberg is very difficult to grasp. Still it seems like we are going to score atleast what we expected overall.
Sprinters:
Bryan Coquard have been our main sprinter ever since Tzortzakis left the team, and this season is no different. Coquard scored 965 points last season, which was slightly below expectation, and notably worse than 2019. Nizzolo, however was the big misfit with only 84 points against the relatively modest 200 point expectation. Bouglas with 117 points were better while Farantakis with 50 was more of a domestique. Overall the quadruple landed 1216 points. This season there's no Nizzolo and no Bouglas (unfortunately), so we have to rely on Coquard and the development of Farantakis, which is to the level of Bouglas though.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Coquard
1000
23,8
22,9
962
-38
Farantakis
75
1,00
3,5
277
202
Total
164
On paper the 572 points scored by Coquard at this point is a great achievement, but in fact the amount of racedays spent see him struggle to land the expected 1000 points. Only the Tour of Qatar overall win and the dishonest stagewin in Tasmania leaves us with points - otherwise it has been one big dissapointment. Fortunately for Coquard some of his most gambled racedays (Tirreno-Adriatico, Praha-Karlovy Vary-Praha and Milano San Remo) are now over, and he still have some very interesting races left in the tank in the final half of the season. In particular the 3 one day races and 2 flat GC races could see him score the needed points. Farantakis on the other hand is flying. The expected outcome of 75 points might have been a bit pessimistic, but the combination of GC results due to decent TT skills and actual sprinting for Coquard have seen him already score 50 points more than we expected. The points already gained can't be taken away, but the PPrD will surely go down, as he is mainly a helper for Coquard. What can save him is the two races as a leader in Vuelta a España and Tour of Slovenie. The fact that he's only a 78SPR rider however see us have limited expectations in him scoring much from here, but who knows - he might score 200 points and thus help Coquard to the line.
Cobblers:
The cobbled department of the team have been neglected since the departure of Maxime Daniel, and it's evident that we won't score a lot of points. The combination of Karatzios and Kortsidakis is more of roulleurs and domestiques than they are cobblers, yet those stat combinations might be worth a few points here and there. Last season Kortsidakis was away on loan out, while Karatzios was the cobbled leader of the team, and Karatzios actually did well. Scoring 193 points was well above the expected 150 points, which are now carried over as a mixture with the ambition of scoring 175.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Karatzios
175
2,4
2,5
185
10
Kortsidakis
100
1,3
2,9
223
123
Total
133
Both are well underway for now, Karatzios pretty much exactly on par, while Kortsidakis with a few solid results in Ronde van Nederland and Paris-Roubaix now well above the expected. As most cobbles are now over I would expect Karatzios to drop a bit, while Kortsidakis is probably the more well rounded of the two, and could cover whatever Karatzios isn't going to fly back home. Overall I would expect this to land on par or slightly above.
The rest:
The remaining rider pool is relatively large, and covers a decent spread of quality, from riders that we expect as little as 50 points from to the more well rounded once in the spectrum of 150 points. This is the pool where it's not so important who score what, but rather that we get the points needed in general. Some will be helpers and others will get a lucky punch and this will affect the PpRD drastically. Last season we had 9 riders and 2 stagiares in this pool, and they scored a combined 838 points with Kastrantas being the usual overperformer, and Morin at level 3 unsurprisingly scored the least. This time we have 10 riders in the pool, but no stagiares, yet we expect slightly more than we actually got last season, as some are quite capable, and could have been put in other categories.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Mavrikakis
100
1,3
2,6
203
103
Spanopoulos
100
1,3
1,3
104
4
Giannoutsos
150
1,9
2,4
192
42
Kastrantas
150
1,9
2,9
241
91
Vila
50
0,8
2,2
132
82
Miltiadis
100
1,1
1,7
160
60
Agrotis
50
0,8
1,0
66
16
Rochas
75
0,8
0,7
64
-11
Kopfauf
50
0,9
0,4
24
-26
Jang
150
2,0
2,6
198
48
Total
409
The numbers in this category is still so small, that it can go in any direction. Also a lot relies within Grand Tours where some might get a lucky break while others will simply just survive the race for minimum points and thus heavily decrease their PPrD. Some have more PTHC races than others and other factors. What we can see though is that so far it looks very likely that we will end up atleast on par with some riders already very far ahead their expected value, with a couple of guys struggling a bit. Rochas with very limited racing time though and Kopfauf with hardly any suiting races this far. Abandoning the cobbled races certainly didn't help, but once he start getting 5 points for completing races he will make a big jump towards the goal - and if some miss the target so be it. In particular the unmaxed riders like Giannoutsos, Vila, Miltiadis, Agrotis, Rochas and Kopfauf doesn't necessarily have good fits in terms of points.
Conclusion:
The conclusion after the first quarter + Roubaix is that we are in a very solid state going into the Grand Tours, where 2/3 probably will move points down a lot while the final one drags down everyone bar Lecuisinier who hopefully moves up closer to the expected target. If all points were to add up throughout the season we seem to be very close to 8500 points, but that is why it's very important to keep particularly the Grand Tours at bay, as they will always bring down the overall with a total of 504 Racedays being pulled (24 riders x 21 RD's). So far we have ridden a total of 399 racedays spread across all 21 riders. After the Giro d'Italia which is not only a bad race for us in terms of quality, but also an expensive experience RD-wise we can get closer to a realistic evaluation. After the Vuelta a España, only the Tour de France is left, where we have big ambitions - also for the Team GC - it will be reasonable to make a final look at the team and make a prediction looking at the final 12 races for us (albeit 6 are PTHC).
For now it does look promising in the respect of reaching atleast 6500 points as we are more than 1/3rd of the way and the big riders still have aproximately 2500 points to be put in the bank. The remaining 1700-1800 points should then come from the remaining rider (everyone not Lecuisinier, Coquard and Koretzky). This should be possible!
As always - Feel free to comment, as it is much more interesting to debate than to just post numbers
March was on point, despite the dissapointment in Colombia, so even if the month starts with cobbles we have a reasonable amount of trust in this months performances too.
Paris-Roubaix:
On paper the best suited cobbled race for our two greek powerhouses Karatzios and Kortsidakis. Karatzios did what he always does, and attacked far from the line, to no real effect. Overall the two did however do reasonably well to sit in 23rd and 32nd. Kortsidakis however being the better due to sitting tight and doing nothing. Obviously the better tactic, but we can't punish Karatzios for trying when we know he isn't a top 15 rider. We landed safely inside our succes margin of the race.
Overall Points: 54pts
Giro d'Italia:
We didn't bring a lot of quality to the Giro d'Italia, but we didn't send a bunch of solid breakaway options such as Aidan van Niekerk, Gyung Gu Jang, Michail Mavrikakis etc. so we had some ambitions towards stage succes and KOM succes, but we didn't get any of that unfortunately! In the end we didn't manage to meat our expected level of 200-300 points which is dissapointning. Not because the figure as such is so important, but because we came out from the race as the worst of all. And despite not having a top team there, we didn't have the worst setup either.
Overall Points: 175pts
GP Liechtenstein:
Having messed up the Giro d'Italia we really needed redemption in a race we knew we could thrive in. Last season Lecuisinier won the GP Liechtenstein, and with a number of top candidates at the Giro we had to look mainly for Phinney, Madrazo, Tenorio and Taaramäe.
The race escalated relatively soon, with also Lecusinier taking part of the show. With 13km to go on the final flat run-in Madrazo and Lecuisinier were alone ahead and as soon as the ramps started Madrazo took a crumble and Lecuisinier could ride his own pace to the top taking a strong win about 1 minute ahead of Madrazo and a blistering 3'30 on Phinney in 6th.
What we lost in expected points in the Giro (25-125) we pretty much gained back here with 250 points compared to the expected 150-200 gap.
Overall Points: 250pts
GP Wallonie:
With Koretzky coming from this race with a fresh 3rd place in the memory we had a reasonably high ambition to see if he could take another top 5, and with Aidan van Niekerk another decent depth scoring would be possible.
Clement Koretzky was among the initiators of the final, and managed to stay active until the very end to finish in a very solid 4th in the final sprint.
Unfortunately the rest of the team didn't show up, and in a PTHC race that equals very limited points. In fact only Koretzky managed to score points from the race, which obviously isn't very satisfying. The strong performance by Koretzky though secured a score safely inside our expected level.
Overall Points: 90pts
Amstel Gold Race:
After a solid time in Wallonie hopes were high for a continuation of the higher top 10s. And it looked pretty decent with Rochas out in the early break giving room for Koretzky to take it easy in the chase. However he wasn’t strong enough on the day, and when the favorite groups split into 2, he was on the wrong side of things – and even as they merged back together he couldn’t find the kick to move up.
14th is a very bad result for us, and we can only hope for the remaining part of the Ardennes season to be better, otherwise there will be quite a lot of catching up to do!
Overall Points: 76
Overall Result:
The Giro was the race that could have sparked this month from being a lower end of the mediocre stuff into a solid month, but we must accept that we didn't bring enough quality to the plate, by any means. And thus we find ourselves in the lower end of the expected spectrum. The GP Liechtenstein win keeps us afloat inside the expected points between 565-845pts, but not by much. Amstel Gold Race didn’t help, as we should have secured atleast 40 points more looking at the startlist.
April was the first month where we struggled to get good results, and if Lecuisinier hadn't won GP Liechtenstein we could have even missed the minimum expectations. Ending the month with a bad first day in the ardennes wasn't a very good indicator, but let's still have a look at the races to ride in the month of May.
Fleche Wallone:
Last season Clement Koretzky surprised everyone with a great 2nd place in the Fleche Wallone, but after a devastating 14th place in the Amstel Gold Race, we expect a result somewhere in the middle of those results. Something like 6-9th depending on the race situaition. We have Aidan van Niekerk as main domestique and thus obviously expect to finally see him towards the 25-35 best riders atleast. The Amstel Gold Race only gave us 76 points, and we really need to be above 100!
Expected Points: 100-150pts
Liege-Bastogne-Liege:
Similar to the other ardennes we expect a top 10 finish from Koretzky. This being a monument the potential to score higher is there, yet the race also seems a bit too difficult for Koretzky normally.
A top 10 finish really should be possible and we have put the level of team together to make it happen - and we need it to happen!
Expected Points: 100-150pts
Chrono d'Arenberg:
A cobbled TT really isn't our cup of tea. Well, on paper that is. But when you look into the result list of last season we see some interesting things. Firstly the race was won by Cataford and followed by Dillier who are similar to Vlatos in terms of cobbled stat (68), but both are also worse timetriallists. Cosnefroy in 3rd is also a "hybrid" with main TT stat and a reasonable cobbled stat just below 70. So for all we know Vlatos could be a podium contender in this race.
If the race turns out to be more in favor of the cobbled riders though we have absolutely nothing to show. Miltiadis and Kiriakidis are brought here to see if their statcombination can bring them a little bit of points - if only minimum, then so be it.
Expected Points: 70-100
Rund um Köln:
With 3 races hard to determine we can't expect anything less than a top result in Köln. Bryan Coquard is still among the top sprinters and he has his favorite setup around him, so there are no excuses not to perform a top 3 result.
Well, we know it isn't as easy as that, but in terms of expectations we can't really play it any differently. It's the first real one day race for Coquard of the season, so the result will also be a benchmark for races like Philadelphia and GP Moscow.
Expected Points: 150-200
Vuelta a España:
The 2nd Grand Tour of the season, should hopefully be better than the first, albeit not by much. In comparison to last we actually have a sprinter in Farantakis joining the fun - and while we aknowledge that he's not among the favorites, who knows if he can land a top 5 a couple of times? Besides Farantakis we have David de la Cruz, who on paper should be able to fight for a position inside the top 20, maybe as high as 15th. If he can also ride aggressively we could get a reasonable result.
But as in the Giro, it's all up to chance - and so far chance hasn't been our friend!
Expected Points: 250-400
Overall Expectations:
Having 5 races in which we can somewhat expect reasonable scoring in 670 points is the bare minimum we can expect - and while this obviously can happen, we do expect to be atleast on 800 points or even towards 1000. To move beyond that we need to be both good and lucky.
Expected Points: 670-1000ptsEdited by SotD on 09-02-2022 12:51
Amstel Gold Race was all but sufficient for us, so we needed a good kickoff in May to get back on track, before the 2nd Grand Tour of the season took place!
Fleche Wallone:
Last season Koretzky had a stellar fleche Wallone, but similar to Amstel Gold Race he seemed to struggle to really find the motion going. It certainly didn't help that Aidan van Niekerk had to drop from the large favorite group with 40km to the line. After a couple of splits Koretzky used a large portion of his energy to claw back to a group of 7 riders that had broken lose. On paper a decent though as this would result in him being there to fight for the win - ultimately though it costed him a lot of energy and the sprint finish saw him in 11th. Not satisfying when having a goal of 100-150 points.
Actual Points: 82pts
Liege-Bastogne-Liege:
Normally this is the most difficult of the ardennes for Koretzky, but having had some below expectations in the first two races it could hardly get much worse. Unlike the other two races we decided to hold all riders back to help Koretzky for as long as possible, and that seemed to work very well, as the race got less intense in the final, thus leaving Koretzky in a semilarge group for a final dash. And we know how strong he is in those.
Finishing 4th in Liege-Bastogne-Liege is a new record high for Koretzky who have now top 5 results in all three ardennes to his record. Expecting once more between 100-150 points it was nice to finally see a result that amounted to more than the expected. 180 points here see us landing a median of 113 points pr. race. Still below the expected median of 125, but fairly close - and close enough to avoid the disaster.
Actual Points: 180pts
Chrono d'Arenberg:
We came into Crono d'Arenberg as a minor race favorite, as Vlatos have a solid stat combination for a race like this. Unfortunately he wasn't strong enough to give us the expected 70-100 points from this race. Just below however with 62 is alright, but we need the remaining races of May to become better!
Actual Points: 62pts
Rund um Köln:
Having Bryan Coquard as a lead sprinter we have to anticipate a favorites role in a flat race. It cannot be delivered any other way. The race however turned out to be very chaotic with numerous strong attacks towards the end of the race - and despite joining forced with other teams a couple of riders were simply too strong in the end.
Grosu charged very very early, and we decided to stick to the train for a bit longer. In the end it wasn't the right move, as Grosu survived out front for 3rd, but Coquard showed that he was the strongest rider in the sprint to take 4th. Not optimum, but still very much in the center of our expected 150-200 points fro the race.
Actual Points: 174pts
Vuelta a España:
David de la Cruz came for this race with big ambitions to take a stagewin, or maybe fight for a low top 10 or KOM. He nearly made one of those goals when he took 2nd on a stage. Also Panagiotis Vlatos took 2nd in the early timetrial. Unfortunately he already lost a lot of time, so he could make a jump in the GC. Other than that the race was mostly watching other riders unfold. We have to give a little shoutout to Giannoutsos and Farantakis who both had a small breakthrough in this race. Farantakis with numerous top 10s in the sprints, and Giannoutsos with a respectable 4th on a difficult day for the attackers. Next season both should be fully developped and could look for the stagewin!
We expected between 250-400 points from the race, and only a lack of interest in breaks by de la Cruz made us miss the upper end of the target. Still we are pretty pleased with the efforts having none of our top riders involved in the race.
Actual Points: 338pts
Overall Result:
Prior to the month we had an expected 670-1000 points margin, with a 800 points mark as our hope. We achieved that by scoring 836 points so despite being our of the ardennes and a 2nd Grand Tour we are still on track to score an amount of point that will take us to 3-5th in the overall PT rankings. Obviously next month will be a month to forget, but then The Tour de France!
We were back in the safe zone in May with a reasonable outing, despite not quite landing any particular top scorings. The month of June holds just 3 races for us, with one being particularly interesting, and the other two - races to forget!
Tour de Suisse:
In the past, Tour de Suisse have been on of our key races back from the days were our team was part swiss, and very focused on week-long racedays. In fact the race was won by Festina and Simon Spilak back in 2015, and we have a number of top 10s. Unfortunately non of those have been created after Spilaks win, which is now 5 editions in a row. We have however won 3 stages in the last two editions. Two of those - Aidan van Niekerk and Panagiotis Vlatos are back for a 2nd try!
Looking at the first stage we hope to see Vlatos give it his all to take an early lead as that would be worth a lot of points for us. Also Kopfauf are here with his first free role, and that first stage looks interesting for him too also with the U25 jersey in mind.
Other than that it's every man for himself, and we hope to see an aggressive ride from David de la Cruz, maybe also Spanopoulos and van Niekerk. Can we land a stagewin and a GC top 15 this race is pretty much settled.
Expected Points: 100-150pts
Tour of East Java:
Similar to last season we have thrown our strongest assets into this race. Bryan Coquard with his favorite sprint train are here for early succes in the flat stage 1, and Lecuisinier is here with Mavrikakis and Rochas to hopeully win the race.
We know that races with low racedays are often an indication of very difficult competition, and with just 1 mounainstage a lot can happen. The win isn't given by any means, and top 3 might be sufficient in the end, but when bringing Lecuisinier to a race - we have to expect him to perform!
With him are a couple of glory hunters like Gyung Gu Jang, Nikolaos Ioannidis and Miltiadis Giannoutsos. Most realistic scenario though is, that we will come away with a very limited amount of points.
Expected Points: 75-125
Overall Expectations:
With just 3 races, where 2 are long shots at best, we cannot expect a lot of points from this month. In fact we expect this to be our worst month in the calender - even if Tour of East Java should become a succes.
As promised it is time to take a look at how the team is actually performing here after the 2nd Grand Tour. It is usually here we can make the best benchmark for the entire season, as most riders have ridden a representative display of racedays.
Last season we scored 6950pts which secured 5th in the PT, whilst normally it would have seen us in 2nd or 3rd. We have an expected result of aproximately 6500-7000 points with 6750 being the benchmark. That is slightly worse than last season, but would normally produce a better overall result.
Let's have a look, though as to how we can expect things to turn out, how it refers to last season and whether or not we are trailing or having a head start. To do so, we always bite our teams into more digestable sizes and piece it together again bit by bit. From the top down...
GC Riders:
In 2020 we had just two riders in this category. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier and Francesco Bongiorno. Combined they scored 2.316 points and exceeded expectations by quite a lot. The expected level was 2.000 points. Lecuisinier exceeded a lot, while Bongiorno actually never met up to standards by only scoring 233 points.
In 2021 we again have two riders. But rather than Bongiorno we have David de la Cruz, who in our perspective is a better rider, more suitable for higher points at PT level.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Lecuisinier
2000
55,6
55,9
2.012
12
De la Cruz
500
8,1
5,6
347
-153
Total
-141
Last time we had a projected result of -604 points from this category, which have been drastically reduced to being just -141pts. David de la Cruz had a respctable Vuelta a España, while Lecuisinier came back on track after winning GP Liechtenstein. Having just 727 points Lecuisinier does however need to produce a massive result in the Tour de France, where he come as the big pre-race favorite. He also have the Tour of East Java, to temporarily kick the PPrD up over the expected level. David de la Cruz also have just two races left - Tour de Suisse and Tour de France. As he joins the latter as a domestique we expect to see him score significantly less in the final part, and may end up at 250-300 points in total. Far behind the pre expected 500, which in hindsight was also too ambitious.
Hills:
In the hills we had Clement Koretzky, David Boily, Aidan van Niekerk and Anatoliy Budyak last season and we just have to accept that we cannot match that this season. van Niekerk have become a better puncheur, but the lost ground isn't going to come back. The 4 riders scored a combined 1555 points, with Budyak hardly showing up, but both Boily and van Niekerk scoring above 300 points with Koretzky a massive 830, setting a new record high for him. We can't expect him to score that well again, but we might want to see Aidan score even higher than last season to cover the lost.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Koretzky
800
16,7
44,3
2.126
1.326
van Niekerk
400
6,3
1,9
122
-278
Total
1.048
Koretzky is still hammering away with a massive 44,3 PPrD, which is seeing him shattering his previous record of 830 points in a season. As we speak he is on 664, so just 166 points behind. There is no doubt that Koretzky should beat the benchmark significantly with 6 races still to come. That said, his best racedays are behind him, and we will not see him even come close to the level he's currently performing at. But he is needed to have a solid season, because Aidan van Niekerk haven't shown up at all... Last season Aidan van Niekerk scored 327 points, which is 200 points higher than his current expected points. He is at just 81 points which is truly devastating after the monstrous amount of money put into his training efforts. He has just 4 races left - all of which are used as supplement to Koretzky's, so 100 points is more realistic than 150. Still it seems like the combination of the two will be in the green - maybe enough to cover the losses of the GC category.
Timetrials:
In the 2020 timetrial setup we had Vlatos, Ioannidis and Zoidl present, and while we have lost Zoidl we have decided to include Kiriakidis to this as he is now almost up to a level where we can expect him to score more than minimum. Both Vlatos and Ioannidis remain at the same level. Last season the trio scored 703 points, with no one scoring below 100 points. Zoidl and Ioannidis both roamed in the area of 110 points while Vlatos had a new record scoring season claiming a total of 484 points, while expectations where at "only" 350 equivalent to his average. We have turned the expectations back to 350 for Vlatos, while Ioannidis is slightly up from his 125 last season.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Vlatos
350
5,0
6,0
420
70
Ioannidis
150
1,9
2,1
164
14
Kiriakidis
100
1,1
1,5
143
43
Total
127
Vlatos have come down slightly to an expected level of 420, but we are very satisfied with that since he rode the Vuelta a España in this period losing a massive 21 RD for hardly any points. He still have 4 races to go in which we could see him score decent. He is currently at 275 points just lacking 75 points to clear our benchmark. I believe it should be possible with just 1 strong result in the remaining races. We hope to see him clear the 400 point mark having still Chrono des Herbiers among the races. Ioannidis is still on track to cover his 150 points already being at 132 having ridden both Giro and Vuelta. He has 2 races left, so we can't expect him to do much more than the 150 points however. Kiriakidis is also slightly above the expected level with him already at 85 points looking towards 100 with 9 races to go. Just one reasonable race and he will smash the expectations - but regardles he should atleast beat the benchmark. Overall we have come down by almost 300 points in expected level though.
Sprinters:
Bryan Coquard have been our main sprinter ever since Tzortzakis left the team, and this season is no different. Coquard scored 965 points last season, which was slightly below expectation, and notably worse than 2019. Nizzolo, however was the big misfit with only 84 points against the relatively modest 200 point expectation. Bouglas with 117 points were better while Farantakis with 50 was more of a domestique. Overall the quadruple landed 1216 points. This season there's no Nizzolo and no Bouglas (unfortunately), so we have to rely on Coquard and the development of Farantakis, which is to the level of Bouglas though.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Coquard
1000
23,8
25,4
1067
67
Farantakis
75
1,00
3,0
234
159
Total
223
Last time Coquard was slightly below his expecte value, now he's slightly above - so it seems realistic that his benchmark of 1000 points is on par. He is currently on 685 with 5 races to go of varied quality. Still 315 points from those races should be doable even with some doubtful performances along the way. Farantakis however is still charging away. We had some low expectations from him - maybe too low with 75 points. He's currently on 171 with 6 races to go. There's a good chance he will end up above 200 points, but we also know that the life of being a domestique can sometimes turn out to give hardly any points. Regardless, we are looking solid in this category!
Cobblers:
The cobbled department of the team have been neglected since the departure of Maxime Daniel, and it's evident that we won't score a lot of points. The combination of Karatzios and Kortsidakis is more of roulleurs and domestiques than they are cobblers, yet those stat combinations might be worth a few points here and there. Last season Kortsidakis was away on loan out, while Karatzios was the cobbled leader of the team, and Karatzios actually did well. Scoring 193 points was well above the expected 150 points, which are now carried over as a mixture with the ambition of scoring 175.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Karatzios
175
2,4
2,2
158
-17
Kortsidakis
100
1,3
3,3
251
151
Total
134
When we looked at this last time we came out with 133 expected points above the expected, this time it's 134, so the two are keeping their level. Karatzios is slightly below expectations, while Kortsidakis is punching well above his weight. Both have a lot of races to come - 8 and 9 respectively and while neither are particularly good they are on a total of 174 points right now, with an expected total of 275, so it can't go completely broke. We still expect this group to be on par +/- 50 points. One good result can give a massive jackpot here though.
The rest:
The remaining rider pool is relatively large, and covers a decent spread of quality, from riders that we expect as little as 50 points from to the more well rounded once in the spectrum of 150 points. This is the pool where it's not so important who score what, but rather that we get the points needed in general. Some will be helpers and others will get a lucky punch and this will affect the PpRD drastically. Last season we had 9 riders and 2 stagiares in this pool, and they scored a combined 838 points with Kastrantas being the usual overperformer, and Morin at level 3 unsurprisingly scored the least. This time we have 10 riders in the pool, but no stagiares, yet we expect slightly more than we actually got last season, as some are quite capable, and could have been put in other categories.
Name
Exp. Result
Exp. PPrD
Actual PPrD
Projected result
Difference
Mavrikakis
100
1,3
2,7
211
111
Vila
50
0,8
2,1
126
76
Rochas
75
0,8
1,3
118
43
Agrotis
50
0,8
1,3
86
36
Miltiadis
100
1,1
1,1
100
0
Kopfauf
50
0,9
0,7
41
-9
Kastrantas
150
1,9
1,7
141
-9
Spanopoulos
100
1,3
1,1
88
-12
Giannoutsos
150
1,9
1,4
113
-37
Jang
150
2,0
1,3
99
-51
Total
148
Last time we looked very solid in this category bagging out 400 points in the green, whilst we are now in the +150 points zone. Still all is looking fine. Some riders have performed well, others not so much, but in the bigger picture it's still within the expected level. Mavrikakis have had a very solid season already 43 points ahead of the goal with 3 races left to go including the Tour de France where he might get a bit from Team GC and from keeping with Lecuisinier for some time. Vila is another rider who are already home safe after a couple of strong performances in Praha and Ronde van Nederland. Most dissapointing is Gyung Gu Jang who stopped performing altogether after a strong Paris-Nice. Since it has been a major letdown. He still have 4 races to pull himself up, but he's currently trailing by 100 points. Overall I expect this group to be fairly on point, within +/- 100 points. It won't be where the big effect is measured as we have yet to see some succesful breaks from the lot.
Conclusion:
At the end of the first analysis we looked towards landing aproximately 8500 points well knowing that the Grand Tours (the first two in particular) would drastically reduce the final result. The goal of landing above 6500 points however seems very realistic at this point. If we add up all expected values we get a total of 8.167 points. Last time those figures were 8.500, so in total we have lost only 350 points from the first to the second analysis. This gives us a possibility to lose another 1.417 points and still reach our expected 6.750 points. We still have to take the crazy overachievement by Koretzky into account here, who's looking to score 2000 points this season, which we know is not going to happen.
Due to this, we have decided to increase our ambitions slightly to match that of last season (6.950 points). For this to happen, we need a massive Tour de France though - Preferably a total scoring in the region of 1500 points.
As always - Feel free to comment, as it is much more interesting to debate than to just post numbers
Always love this writeup. I think most of your assumptions look quite reasonable. Koretzky is the obvious outlier that needs to be corrected and Lecuisinier the biggest chunk where its still up in the air how big it actually is. But i think a total of 6900 - 7200 looks possible if Lecuisinier has the expected dominant Tour.
knockout wrote:
Always love this writeup. I think most of your assumptions look quite reasonable. Koretzky is the obvious outlier that needs to be corrected and Lecuisinier the biggest chunk where its still up in the air how big it actually is. But i think a total of 6900 - 7200 looks possible if Lecuisinier has the expected dominant Tour.
Thanks, I enjoy making them, but I'll admit it's more fun when people comment them, so thanks for the interest
Yeah, Koretzky is not really a benchmark rider, so I still expect him to finish around where he usually end up 800-850 points. But that can be OK if Lecuisinier does his job proberly. And he really has no excuses not to. The competition have to be limited, and he has the strongest possible team around him to finish the job.
It has been a major goal for me since starting the Festina brand to have a French winner of the Tour de France. First I tried for Moreau, but that wasn't really viable, then I hoped to see Sicard joining the team, but he became a nomade rider, and then finally there was added a french talent that could (albeit with A LOT of effort) potentially do it.
So I also need to look for further development in the team if that goal is achieved. I still lack the Giro, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Roubaix and Ronde van Vlaanderen of the Monuments, so there are still obtainable goals out there.
I went through every single PT and PTHC race and made a list to see which races I had been succesful in, and which I hadn't, and I surprised me to see that I have never won a races like Criterium du Dauphine so I will probably go all in for a combination of Giro and Dauphine next season if I decide to keep Lecuisinier
Always been a big fan of your team and of the project in general as well as your management style.
Looks like it's been a fairly good season although it surprised me to see Koretzky overperforming as a whole given he looked to struggle a bit in the races I reported of him recently. Still a great points scoring option at all levels though
Luis Leon Sanchez wrote:
Always been a big fan of your team and of the project in general as well as your management style.
Looks like it's been a fairly good season although it surprised me to see Koretzky overperforming as a whole given he looked to struggle a bit in the races I reported of him recently. Still a great points scoring option at all levels though
Thanks a lot mate - I can only say the same about you and your team Easily one of my favorite, despite having hardly ever ridden against it.
Yes so far it looks like my expectations can be met by the end of the season. Nothing spectacular though.
The thing about Koretzky is that his raceday scenario cheats the eye a bit. He have mostly ridden 2RD races so far, and the majority of the one day races that he fancies are now done - so I would be surprised if he holds just half the level of the overall expectation from now.
His remaining calender is:
* Criterium du Dauphine
* Tour of Slovenie
* Balkans International
* Tour of Northern Europe
* Grand Prix Cyclistes
* Giro di Lombardia
He has a pretty decent trackrecord of results from 4-10 in Lombardia, but the other races are up to chance really. I would be surprised if he doesn't do something reasonably in 1-2 of the races, but there's every chance of him doing hardly any pointscoring in most of these races.
A 23 year old Koretzky joined the team as part of a large french legion in 2013 at level 2.00. His first season was ridden at Evian-MIAT in the PCT with a number of other Festina-trials such as Bryan Coquard, Charalampas Kastrantas and Alexis Gougeard, who also came to play significant roles in the development of the future PT winning setup.
Clement Koretzky
2.00
23yo
2013
€75.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
70
68
72
60
70
67
68
63
68
73
69
69
60
In an inflated sporting industry it can seem absolutely nonsense that a talent such as Clement Koretzky could be aquired for a salary of just €75.000 but that was indeed the case. Obviously the first season was meant as a learning curve, and numerous attacks saw Koretzky slowly but steadily find his pace in the professional peloton. Once he entered the Festina setup for the first season at Pro Tour level, his general condition had significantly improved.
Clement Koretzky
3.11
24yo
2014
€60.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
71
69
74
60
72
68
69
63
69
75
70
69
60
It didn't take long for the versatile puncheur to find succes. In one of the first professionel races of his career he landed a brilliant stagewin in Tour of Qatar, and he went on to be a significant domestique bagging well above 200 points.
In 2015 he was far from fully developped, but the 25 year old puncheur had increased significantly in strength moving from a domestiques role to a lieutenaint role behind the likes of Spilak and Ricco and alongside fellow countryman Laurent Pichon he saw an increase in free roles for the team.
Clement Koretzky
4.37
25yo
2015
€150.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
72
70
77
61
75
69
70
63
70
77
72
70
61
It was undisputable a gem for the team, and this also saw Koretzky receive his first significant payraise to double the amount of the initial contract - despite not being fully developped at this point. The aggressive nature of Koretzky saw him land a brilliant 7th place in the difficult oneday race Badaling International, and throughout the season he helped Simon Spilak to take massive results, claiming 2nd in all three ardennes - behind Simone Ponzi. But it was the final race of the season that saw Koretzky take the big jump from being a domestique to being something the team would go far to aquire in the future. Going head to head with Vesuvio and the legendary Schleck-brothers + Gastauer without Simon Spilak onboard, it seemed like an easy call to throw the Vesuvians into pole position - but a crazy turn of events saw Clement Koretzky take a significant career highlight when he sprinted to 4th ahead of riders like Sagan, van Garderen, Hagen and Ginnani. Also compatriot Laurent Pichon had a monstrous result to take 7th, while team captain Ricco also claimed 10th - And just like that the dream of winning the Pro Tour Division had come true - with Koretzky in the leading role.
This also started the career as a top rider, being a regular top 50 individual rankings level performer. And finally - fully developped, at the age of 26.
Clement Koretzky
4.100
26yo
2016
€280.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
73
71
79
61
77
70
71
63
71
79
73
70
61
The development saw Koretzky move up to take the role of Riccardo Ricco as our leader behind Simon Spilak. Also Laurent Pichon saw his chances to lead a team, and we unfortunately couldn't keep the duo together. Instead Alexis Gougeard from Koretzkys first season away on loan stepped up to become a vital helper for the new Festina-star.
It was clear to everyone that Koretzky was a man to follow, but because of the duo-thread with Spilak as the galleon figure Koretzky had a lot of races as a leader in hilly GC races. Landing 6th in Tour of California, 7th in Tirreno-Adriatico and 9th in Deutschland Tour sparked a lot of speculation as to whether or not Koretzky would evidently be a much more potent GC rider in the future than a puncheur - and he catapulted himself into a record high 33rd in the individual rankings, scoring above 800 points. Thus helping the team securing back-to-back victories in the Pro Tour.
Clement Koretzky
4.100
27yo
2017
€280.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
73
71
80
61
77
70
71
63
71
79
73
70
61
Koretzky kept on progessing in level, evidently with a long term interest in him taking over the leading role in the one-day races after Simon Spilak. The 2017 season however saw him having a more laid-back role, as also Jerome Coppel joined the team and thus covering some of the punchy races that Spilak could not attend. And with Lecuisinier now also fully developped this handed some more freedom for Spilak to pick his own calender.
Despite winning the Pro Tour for a record 3 consequtive time, Koretzky had a relatively weak season with few highlights. Two nice stagewin and another 4th place in his favorite race Giro di Lombardia showed that he was still one to count on for the future however.
Clement Koretzky
4.100
28yo
2018
€350.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
73
71
80
62
77
70
71
63
71
79
73
70
61
Despite having a mediocre season, the agent of Koretzky kept asking for more money, and the added €70.000, meant reallocation of riders and roles. Simon Spilak wanted to try his luck elsewhere and the Festina we had come to know from the era 2015-2017 was gone. This saw a lot of weight being put on the homegrown supertalents, Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier, Clement Koretzky, Panagiotis Vlatos and Bryan Coquard combined with questionable signings in Chamorro, van der Hugenhaben and former lead sprinter, the now aging Georgos Tzortzakis. It was truly different times.
The team however was in a downgoing state, and needed to find now paths to stay relevant in the top of the rankings.
Clement Koretzky
4.100
29yo
2019
€400.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
73
71
81
63
77
70
71
63
71
79
73
70
61
The solution was to intensify the quality of Koretzky, Coquard and Lecuisinier who could now lift a professionel PT team by themselves. That said the trio was still below level of many top riders around the world, and as the depth of the team wasn't strong the season too wasn't too great. The manager had decided to put a large focus into greek talents but unlike the french talentpool, the pool was limited and the quality questionable. This left Koretzky isolated, although stronger. Landing 4th in the Liege - Bastogne - Liege proved this, but ever so often he was alone for too long, and couldn't respond to all attacks, and thus rather than fighting for top 5s ended up fighting for 8-12th places like in Fleche Wallonne, Amstel Gold Race, Colombo Classic etc.
Only 652 points was the perfect describer of the problem. There was too far between leaders and lieutenaints, and the team saw a remarkable drop in the rankings, that needed immidiate change.
Clement Koretzky
4.100
30yo
2020
€350.000
Fl
Mo
Hi
TT
St
Rs
Rc
Co
Sp
Ac
Fi
Dh
Pr
73
71
81
63
77
70
71
63
71
79
73
70
61
The downfall of Festina saw the manager take desperate measures and catapulted Lecuisinier into a leading position, by throwing a significant amount of money after his development, while the plan had been to enhance Koretzky to become an even bigger threat in one day races in his last chance to do so. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be, and Koretzky had to find his own paths for succes.
That said, the manager reacted quickly to the solitary issues late in the race and put a significant amount of money into signing David Boily and loaning Anatoliy Budyak while also homegrown talent Aidan van Niekerk took a massive leap. This was easy to spot in the fight for individual succes, and Koretzky charged through for a recordbreaking 2020. Ending in 32nd in the individual ranking while scoring 875 points Koretzky's journey wasn't over - by any means. A superiour 2nd in Fleche Wallone and 3rd in both GP Wallonie and Badaling International resparked the old discussion as to whether or not he would be a rider capable of winning one of the greats races in the cycling history. But for now it would be close but no cigar!
No matter the outcome, Clement Koretzky have become the second homegrown Festina-legend - the first obviously being Georgos Tzortzakis.
Career Highligts
Over the course of a long career, Clement Koretzky have adjusted his focuses numerous times, from being an aggressive breakaway specialist, to a GC rider and ultimately of course a stellar one-day rider. It has amounted to 8 stagewins throughout his career already opening in 2014 being a level 3 rider. Here he took a brilliant win in both Volta a Catalunya and Tour of Qatar. His brilliant stagewin in the 2016 edition of the Tour of California was instrumental to his overall 6th place in the GC which also landed him the KOM jersey and a respectable 6th in the pts competition. As a french rider in a french team we have to highlight the brilliant 2019 stagewin on the final stage of the Paris-Nice being of particular significance to the team.
Looking past the stagewins the results in the hilly one day races obviously have a great importance, so we have decided to list his best results in the biggest one day races below:
On paper the 2nd place in Fleche Wallone 2020 is the key moment of Clement Koretzky's career, but as a manager of Festina his 2015, still unmaxed, 4th place in Giro di Lombardia which saw us steal the PT crown for the first time in the teams history from Accumalux/Vesuvio in the final race of the season is by far the most decisive moment in the history of Clement Koretzky.
Overall Clement Koretzky has bagged an impressive 4.951 points in the Festina jersey which is equivalent to being a tough competitor for a PT team in the fight for survival!
Only 3 races in June, all of which relatively short GC races, with East Java on 2 racedays being the shortest, and Tour de Suisse with 9 being 1 more than Dauphine. Expectations were moderate at best, as neither Suisse nor Dauphine on paper was any good, while East Java should be good.
Tour de Suisse:
We came to the race expecting a decent showing from David de la Cruz, and a hope to be in the midst for a stagewin if the race was to go well. It turned out absolutely brilliant, however. David de la Cruz lifted the task of making it into the top 10, albeit by the tips of his fingers - but throughout he looked solid and probably should have gone 1-2 places better. Still on paper a better result than we had dared to but in our estimate.
Panagiotis Vlatos started out with a rare but good timetrial to finish 2nd and thus claiming a decent outing.
But it was from a different side of the table, things turned out brilliantly. Aidan van Niekerk had woken up from half a year of blunders to take not only 1, but two stagewins, also crowning his efforts by being 3rd in the points competition, a respectable 30th in the GC and 5th in the U25. That was brilliant.
Ioannis Spanopoulos also showed remarkable strength to finish inside the top 40 and thus crowning a great allround team performance, to shatter the upper end of the expected points tally of 150
Actual Points: 279pts
Tour of East Java:
In East Java we came with high expectations, as both Coquard and Lecuisinier had decided to put in their efforts. As expected the competitions in the GC field was fierce, but the sprint competititon was anonymous at best. Still Coquard managed to Coquard his way into misery and do nothing what so ever.
Lecuisinier wasn't among the riders capable of winning the race, despite his efforts. Phinney and Herklotz was yet again in another league, and Lecuisinier had to settle for 3rd, which was on par with expectations though.
We expected between 150-200 points, and landed safely in the middle.
That sure didn't happen, and only Ioannidis made some halfarsed attempts, and finally landed a place just inside the top 50 to score us 5 points above the minimum possible (for finishing). It was an embarrassing result, and to have expected between 75-125 points here come out as very poor judgement in the end.
Actual Points: 45
Overall Results:
A month with ups and downs, and something in the middle shows that our expected values isn't far off. We expected between 325-475 points, but because of Suisse, we landed just above that, and thus for once actually beating the expected level.
After a very solid June, we enter the month we have been looking forward to for half a year. July offers 4 races of variated complexity, from flat races, to semiflat/hilly over an ITT one day race and evidently the race everyone loves - Tour de France.
Tour de France:
The first race of the month is no less than the epic race, Tour de France. The biggest race on the calender, and we bring our very best to target the crown. Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier won his first ever Grand Tour last season when he won the Vuelta a España in close competition with Justo Tenorio - But this time he will take on his home race, where he have helped Simon Spilak to glory in 2017. The year after Lecuisinier took his first (and only) Tour de France stagewin. Lecuisinier also have happy memories from the Tour GC as he won the U25 competition ahead of Lachlan Morton in the past.
Looking at the outfolds of the Giro and the Vuelta we expect Lecuisinier to be the no #1 favorite for the win, with riders such as Pluchkin, Kritskiy and Eastman being among the top contenders for a podium.
Lecuisinier have the strongest possible setup around him with David de la Cruz as lieutenaint aswell as Michail Mavrikakis as a super domestique. David De la Cruz recently finished 13th in the Vuelta a España while Mavrikakis ended 21st in the Giro d'Italia, so both riders are in the upper spectrum of domestiques. Gyung Gu Jang, Ioannis Spanopoulos, Miltiadis Giannoutsos and Remy Rochas join the force for succes, and should all be of significant strength to keep Lecuisinier out of problems as well as keeping the team high in the Team GC. Finally Kortsidakis have been picked as road captain to keep things focused on the flatter terrain.
We have big expectations, nothing less than an overall win, and hopefully also atleast top 3 in points, KOM and Team GC on the way. We expect 3-4 stagewins and to catapult Lecuisinier up to his expected 2000 points. In order to do so, he needs to score almost 1200 points himself!
Expected Points: 1200-1500pts
Philadelphia International Championship:
This flat sprinters classic is a perfect occassion for Coquard to bounce back from a very unconvincing and uneven season. He comes as one of the main favorites for the win, and with Farantakis and Karatzios as leadouts he does have what he needs to win - Yet we have seen way too often, that he fails to deliver, where delivery is due.
That said, there is no excusion for not landing a top 3.
Expected Points: 150-200pts
Tour de Slovenie:
Timetrials and teamtimetrials doesn't flow well with Clement Koretzky and he's our leader here. We have to hope that he can somehow produce some effective pulls in the hilly stage 2 and 5 in order to secure a result for us, but we don't expect a GC result from this. We are likely to lose a significant amount of points in the TTT, and only Ioannidis have what it takes to claw some back in the ITT.
Farantakis is here to help limit the losses somewhat in the TTT, and to give it his all on the flat stage 3.
We do expect to find ourselves in the top 10 a couple of times, but whether or not that will amount to decent points, or hardly any is difficult to say.
Expected Points: 20-50
Chrono des Herbiers:
Panagiotis Vlatos have a decent history in the Chrono des Herbiers, and being among the top 5 timetrials in the world we expect him to deliver something like that. He showed decent form in Chrono d'Arenberg, and good form in Tour de Suisse, so we expect him to be around where he should be to fight for a top 5 - and maybe a top 3 if all goes well.
Expected Points: 100-150
Overall Expectations:
Going into a month where we expect to win a Grand Tour anything less than a record scoring month would be a major disspointment. We expect this month to stand out distinctly from the others and catapult us back into consideration for 3rd place in the PT standings. Whether or not we can kill the button of the magic 2000 point is probably too unrealistic, but a great month would indeed see us close.
June was good, and July on paper should be very good again.
Tour de France:
Let's cut to the chase. We expected a dominant win and close to 1500 points from the race. We god the win, but not the dominance. Not by any means. Lecuisinier barely closed the 1000 points margin, and the remaining riders had the usual dull performances, getting positioned somewhere in the top 100. David de la Cruz had a decent race inside the top 25 to keep us afloat of the bare minimum expected 1200 points.
Actual Points: 1251pts
Philadelphia International Championship:
In the flat classics we always expect Coquard to make a decent performance, somewhat close to a win and at the very least a top 3. He didn't manage to do so, and instead of 150-200 points we scored just above 100.
Actual Points: 106pts
Tour de Slovenie:
The Tour de Slovenie was never meant as a good race for us, but after dissapointning in Philadelphia and a non-dominant Tour de France victory, it was nice to see both Farantakis and Koretzky performing really well. In our wildest imagination we had expected up towards 50 points. We scored more than double that!
Still doubling a very low amount of points doesn't really move a lot.
Actual Points: 126pts
Chrono des Herbiers:
Panagiotis Vlatos have a good history in this race, but still no podium. This season was much closer than in the past, but still he couldn't beat 4th of last season. Instead it would end in 5th. With an anticipated score of 100-150 points we end up in the lower spectrum of the acceptable.
Actual Points: 112pts
Overall Result:
We had 3 races that should have been really good, but we failed to deliver in any of them - albeit all of them were withing the lower end of "OK". Only Slovenie stood out, and that would amount to little points. Any dream of reaching close to 2000 points this month diminished almost before the month started. Still this was our best month obviously - and should move us up in the rankings. Not anywhere close to the top 2 however.
We didn't quite get the dominant show of force in July, and August could well be among our worst months of the calender - if not the worst. Let's give the race schedule a glance.
Deutschland Tour:
On first glance Deustchland Tour could be very solid for us with the combination of Coquard and Vlatos going for stagewins and GC succes, but history has taught us, that sprinting doesn't work in the current formation, and Coquard is rarely (if ever) close to being a dominant figure, and while stats would suggest that he should realistically land 2 stagewins, I suspect he won't get any. Vlatos could be among the top 3 favorites for the GC, but we know that he usually struggle to keep focused for multiple days to avoid stupid timelosses. 2 flat stages in Praha was possible, 5 in Qatar too many.
Given the nature of stage 2 we expect to see Vlatos eventually losing time, and thus being out of contention for the GC even before the decisive timetrial on stage 3. If not, the race could be decent for us.
Expected Points: 150-200pts
GP Moscow:
This flat sprinters classic is a perfect occassion for Coquard to bounce back from a very unconvincing and uneven season. He comes as one of the main favorites for the win, and with Farantakis and Karatzios as leadouts he does have what he needs to win - Yet we have seen way too often, that he fails to deliver, where delivery is due.
That said, there is no excusion for not landing a top 3.
Expected Points: 100-200pts
SAA Tour d'Afrique:
Another one of those races that on paper suits our team very well. In 2016 our team was lead by Tzortzakis to take 3rd, while in 2017 a young Coquard took 7th. Last time we participated Coquard was 2nd behind Ben Swift. If Coquard can live up to expectations we should get a stage win and a good GC from the race - but unfortunately we are yet to see him compile a good list of results.
Expected Points: 200-250
East Midlands Cicle Classic:
One of 3 remaining cobbled races for us, that should just be over with. We never score high in the cobbles, and there's a very good reason for that. Being a PT even it usually guarantees a tiny bit of points though.
Expected Points: 50-80
Overall Expectations:
This month comes with quite some uncertainty in the pointsestimate. Looking at the numbers we could score as high as 730 points, but we could also blunder and score 500 or even below that. The month is very much make or break for Coquard though attending 3/4 races here, which will also conclude his season. He is currently trailing 225 points on his estimated season result!
- We usually come pretty close to our estimates, with some blunders and other overperformances leveling things out. I have enjoyed that part for quite some seasons, where I evaluate on each riders potential in a said race. Obviously without knowing the opposition this can be difficult, but normally the PT is pretty easy to guess for most riders.
Paris-Roubaix:
Giro d'Italia:
GP Liechtenstein:
Amstel Gold Race:
Lecuisinier
De la Cruz
van Niekerk
Vlatos
Miltiadis
Kopfauf
Jang
Tour de Suisse:
Tour of East Java:
Classique du Grand-Duché
Colombo International
Tour of Qatar
Tour of Norway
Tour of California
Volta a Portugal
Tour of Scandinavia
Tour de Slovenie:
GP Moscow:
SAA Tour d'Afrique:
East Midlands Cicle Classic:
