July was a bit of a mixed bag for us. We certainly left some points on the table here and there, and nothing that would have us soaring up the rankings as Joeri Stallaert's absence was sorely noted. But we also had a couple of good results, one of which made me particularly happy. Have a look:

We wanted to start the month off strong, but the contrary was the case on the Faroe Islands. In this C1 race, against competition that should allow him to target the Top 5 at least, Fabio Silvestre was poorly positioned from the very start of the sprint preparations, too far from the front for even his great stamina and motor. A 12th place is his worse result so far, and while it's tough to be mad at anything he does this season, this is his third mediocre result in a row following 9th and 7th places in two of the three classics before. If we really want to make a promotion push, he needs to step up.

On the bright side, we actually had both Samuel and Moise Mugisha in the breakaway - their streak of aggressive riding certainly seems to continue from the last two months, which is great to see.

After a rather quiet season so far, Jacob Fiedler at some point needed to start to show that our not insignificant investment in him this offseason was warranted. And in the Celtic Chrono, he did a good job doing that. An 8th place is nothing extraordinary, but it increased his points total this year by 150% in one swoop. Admittedly, that says perhaps more about his previous racing, but if he can perform like this consistently for the rest of the year, we might end up with an acceptable overall picture.

We continued the month in New Zealand, and Jacob Fiedler seems to have caught fire. On the opening day, he missed the yellow jersey - which would have been just the second in team history - by less than a single second. However, just a day later, he actually took it from Alexander Cataford thanks to stage placements. What a turnaround from him in just a few days!

Madushanka Perera finished 10th on that stage, he would go on to finish 8th and then 4th on days 4 and 5, that 4th place being his best result for us so far. Valens Ndayisenga was our guy for the GC, and despite a team time trial holding him back, he finished on a very respectable 15th place overall.

But the real star of this race for us emerged on the final road stage on day 6. Having collected four KoM points from the breakaway earlier in the race, Samuel Mugisha joined the group of the day and, despite competing against nominally stronger puncheurs, collected 18 out of a possible 18 points to end up winning the KoM classification!

It's our fifth non-yellow jersey win in team history (Samuel actually provided one of our first when he won white at the Ras Tailteann last year) and it's made so much sweeter by the fact that it's scored by a home grown Rwandan talent. Plus, it's pretty decent points, considering this is a HC race.

After consecutive finishes of 9th and 12th, we were really hoping that Fabio Silvestre would return to his high-scoring ways of earlier months in the US. Alas, it was not meant to be. In admittedly a very tough field, 10th was all he could muster. In what has become a theme, the rest of the team hung around the back of the field, leaving us with barely any depth scoring.

The Tour of Slovenie started out with our favorite discipline ... a team time trial. We finished 15th, basically eliminating all of our riders from GC contention immediately. So of course, we had to focus on breakaways. Andrea Vendrame kicked things off, being in the breakaway of stage 2 and finishing the day in 2nd in the KoM rankings. He would collect a few ranking points by ending up 6th at the end of the race. Madushanka Perera added an 8th place in the sprint one day later before Jacob Fiedler had an absolutely abysmal time trial, finishing 68th (!!) despite being a Top 10 favorite.

But we had one highlight left, and it came on stage 5. Bonaventure Uwizeyimana joined the group and first collected enough KoM points to end up fourth there. But then it became clear that the group would make it to the finish line and he kicked into another gear. In the end, he would be beaten by just one man, Tejay Van Garderen, nothing to be ashamed about there. His performance also propelled him to 19th overall, and Joey Rosskopf somehow rode himself into 25th with a bunch of unspectacular, but good stages. All of that gives us a pretty decent chunk of points, and just some exciting racing to be happy about.

Two massive races for us and three where we can expect hardly anything. This month can make or break our promotion ambitions.

The two big races are, one, the Benelux Challenge, which is Joeri Stallaert's final race of the season, and two, the Deutschland Tour. Not only the home race of our second title sponsor, but also the place where Fabio Silvestre needs to find his footing again with 4 out of 5 sprint stages, and our best GC hope of this month for Jacob Fiedler in the time trial.

Joey Rosskopf will be our GC leader in both Britain and Denmark, although Fiedler has a shot in the latter if he somehow survives the only hilly stage. There's a chance we get a few decent points there, but we could also walk away with very little. Very little is what we 100% expect for the Clasica San Sebastian, as hilly classics are easily the worst races for us. Hopefully, we can get some good depth going.

This was a peculiar month for us. Loads of positive surprises, three wins, only minor disappointments ... and yet, it remains unclear if we've done enough to stay in a promotion spot. The upcoming update will bring clarity. Until then, let's just celebrate the really nice moments we got to enjoy in August:

The Deutschland Tour was a massive race for us. It's the highest level race we can claim as a "home race" for one of our title sponsors and it was also a big points scoring opportunity for both Fabio Silvestre and Jacob Fiedler.

Silvestre opened the race well enough with a fourth place, though just outside the bonus seconds. A rather poor 8th place followed and it looked like we were in for another grim race from him.

Then came the time trial, which would in all likelyhood decide the GC. Fiedler finished 11th, and 10th in the GC, which was a very solid result. And then, the race got even better because Fabio Silvestre finally pulled off a win again, his first in months. With his trademark late surge, he blasted past Demare and Manninen to win stage 4 - our first stage win on PTHC level!

Unfortunately, he couldn't follow that up with another good result, finishing 10th on the last day. But thanks to a nice time trial, he actually ended up 18th in the GC, scoring another few points that way. Silvestre was also 3rd in the points classification, and Moise Mugisha was second in the mountain classification after leading it until the final stage. While not overwhelming, the Deutschland Tour was still a very solid race for us.

I mentioned this in the preview of this month, but hilly classics are typically our worst terrain. The only real shot we have is to do something from the breakaway - and Souheil Khederi did just that. He joined the group of the day, stayed with them for as long as he could and then held on for a terrific 17th place. By far his best result in his two years with us!

This ... is where things started getting weird. Luckily, it was the good kind of weird. Madushanka Perera started things by finishing second in the opening stage, instantly his best result for us. Then, he followed it up with a third place on day two.

Joey Rosskopf then finished in the second main group on the first hilly stage of the race, as did Jacob Fiedler, incredibly, before it was time for another sprint stage ... and Perera won it!? What was happening here? One 4th and one 5th place were his best results before this, and now three podium finishes including a stage win?

And we weren't quite done yet. Because Fiedler, having lost hardly any time in the hill stage, finished the concluding individual time trial on a solid 10th place to claim 5th overall! Rosskopf had a rather bad day and ended up "only" in 14th in the GC. But adding those two results to what Perera did (which included winning the points classification), this was an exceptional race for us.

I said before that things started to get weird in Denmark. That is because Madushanka Perera wasn't done yet! Just a day or two after his previous stage win, he went on to do it again in the opening stage in Great Britain! What a mad lad! Jacob Fiedler then continued his string of good results with a fourth place in the following ITT, where unfortunately, Joey Rosskopf once again couldn't shine. He didn't do great in the following hill stages either and ended the race on a rather disappointing 26th place.

Andrea Vendrame and Moise Mugisha showed themselves in breakaways here, which was nice even if it didn't amount to anything. While ultimately not an amazing race points-wise, that stage win was pretty sweet and it brings our season win total to 13!

The weirdness persisted to a third consecutive race, this time the Benelux Challenge. It was supposed to be Joeri Stallaert's last hurrah of the season, but our leader disappointed for the first time. Neither in the sprints on day two and six nor in the two cobblestone stages was he anywhere near the front, and while he still somehow weaved his way into 21st overall, that was not what we were hoping for.

Luckily, the team around him really stepped up. Janvier Hadi finished 4th in the opening prologue and somehow got up to 2nd overall halfway through the race. He only ended up 34th in the end, but still. Our star here was Loic Vliegen though. Surviving both cobblestone stages near the front, he made use of his puncheur skills on the only hilly stage of the race to move all the way up to 5th overall! Under the radar, Yves Lampaert was really solid on all stages as well and 19th in the GC. With all that, we also ended up winning the teams competition! While not exactly playing out as we had hoped or expected in some ways, overall we were still pretty happy.

Since we’re neither in America nor the Balkans, September is a rather short month for us. But there are still a ton of points for us to grab. Fabio Silvestre has his final two scoring opportunities at Paris-Tours and the three flat stages of the Arab Tour, where Jacob Fiedler is looking for a good GC result from two time trials.

But of course the biggest race of the month, nay, the year is our home race, the GP Kigali. Last year, it was the big blemish on an otherwise good debut season when the best we could do was 16th. A domestique last year, Bob Schoonbroodt returns to the Mur de Kigali as our team leader to rectify that ignominy (is that how you use that word?).

baseballlover312 wrote:
Not a ton of racing for the team this coming month, but I'd reckon you've built up a sufficient gap in the promotion race already, pending the standings of course.

Pos	Last		Team	Total	RD	PpRD	Proj
1	2		Aker - MOT	3147	137	22,97	4020
2	1		Team Popo4Ever p/b Nemiroff	2940	155	18,97	3320
3	11		Los Pollos Hermanos	2870	160	17,94	3140
4	9		cycleYorkshire	2816	162	17,38	3042
5	10		Polar	2793	142	19,67	3442
6	3		Bralirwa - Stevens	2698	150	17,99	3148
7	5		Binance Cycling	2657	164	16,2	2835
8	12		Duolingo	2656	123	21,59	3778
9	7		Red Bull Zalgiris	2404	157	15,31	2679
10	6		Cedevita	2296	122	18,82	3294

Slowly but steadily, we continue to slip down the team rankings, but we're still in the promotion race. And with our Top 15 season goal long secured, everything is a bonus, anyway! We don't have a lot of race days left, but neither do many of our competitors, so we'll just have to wait and see.

A look at the individual rankings:

Pos	Rider		Team	Total
4	Fabio Silvestre		Bralirwa - Stevens	810
8	Joeri Stallaert		Bralirwa - Stevens	704
90	Jacob Fiedler		Bralirwa - Stevens	187
113	Loic Vliegen		Bralirwa - Stevens	149
115	Joey Rosskopf		Bralirwa - Stevens	143
119	Valens Ndayisenga		Bralirwa - Stevens	138
129	Madushanka Perera		Bralirwa - Stevens	126
170	Bonaventure Uwizeyimana		Bralirwa - Stevens	80
188	Yves Lampaert		Bralirwa - Stevens	69
199	Janvier Hadi		Bralirwa - Stevens	63
217	Mektel Eyob		Bralirwa - Stevens	57
263	Moise Mugisha		Bralirwa - Stevens	42
277	Bob Schoonbroodt		Bralirwa - Stevens	38
294	Samuel Mugisha		Bralirwa - Stevens	34
352	Souheil Khederi		Bralirwa - Stevens	20
353	Tesfom Okbamariam		Bralirwa - Stevens	19
387	Andrea Vendrame		Bralirwa - Stevens	15
495	Houcaine El Sabbahi		Bralirwa - Stevens	3
522	Natnael Tesfatsion		Bralirwa - Stevens	1

Fabio Silvestre and Joeri Stallaert remained in the Top 10, but we were most happy about our second row stepping up. Jacob Fiedler made a big leap into the Top 100 and is now our third best rider, which we would have expected at the beginning of the season to be this way.

Loic Vliegen, Madushanka Perera, Bonaventure Uwizeyimana and Moise Mugisha made major jumps up the rankings and Houcaine El Sabbahi scored his first points, which means that now every single one of our non-stagiaire riders is on the board! You love to see it!

The September review will follow soon, and the next PCT Rankings Update isn't far off either, so we will see where we stand heading into the final month of the season. Stay tuned!

This was a rough one. We had very few race days, so on paper, it’s not a surprised we didn’t score a lot, but we still had opportunities that were left on the table, including another painful outing on home soil. Not a ton of momentum carrying us into the final month of the season.

Paris Tours was Fabio Silvestre’s final big sprinter classic of the season. He was on a downward trajectory for a few months, so we hoped he could bounce back here to give us a boost towards promotion. Then he went on to score his worst result in such a race yet. 16th is really unfortunate, but, you know, how much bad things can you say about a man who’ll end up in the Top 10 of the individual rankings? He’s done his job and then some this year. Unfortunately, the rest of the team still hasn’t understood that even low Top 50 spots get some points.

Last year, we had our Waterloo moment in what was otherwise a terrific season when a 16th place by Tesfom Okbamariam was our best result in what was not only our home race, but our win goal. Both he and Bob Schoonbroodt returned with ambitions to rectify that, and while they did succeed on paper, they still came short of expectations.

The day started out alright with Souheil Khederi representing us in the breakaway, Okbamariam doing some work in the peloton and Bob Schoonbroodt looking pretty well as our designated leader. Unfortunately, once the pace got really intense, he couldn’t hold on. An 11th place, suplemented by Okbamariam’s 15th, is an improvement, but not cracking the Top 10 in two attempts is disheartening. As promotion looks more and more unlikely, getting another shot at this race would actually be a pretty positive outcome.

The Arab Tour somewhat saved this month from being just a total desaster. Time trialists Joey Rosskopf and Jacob Fiedler were our leaders, the former starting the race exceptionally well with a 7th place in the opening stage, the latter with a slightly more timid 13th.

Fabio Silvestre, in his final sprint outing of the year, unfortunately did nothing to improve his most recent impression, finishing 12th, 14th and 25th (!!!) in the three sprint stages, scoring only via the GC, where he finished 26th. Not sure what flipped his switch in the second half of the season.

Jacob Fiedler did well though, finishing 8th in the second time trial to end up 7th overall - more would have been possible with a better opening day, but still a solid result. Joey Rosskopf unfortunately couldn’t repeat his good start and dropped to 20th overall. Still, with almost 20 PpRD, this was our best race of this month.

Not a whole lot of scoring potential left. We’re hoping for a lot of breakaway activity from guys like Valens Ndayisenga, Bonaventure Uwizeyimana or Mektel Eyob in Maroc, ideally with some scoring via mountain points, good stage placements and maybe low-end Top 20 GC stuff. Madushanka Perera is there for the four sprint stages, too.

In Vilnius, we actually don’t have a terrible squad this year, but we shouldn’t expect too much. Then Uwizeyimana has a decent chance to score well with two time trials and a mountain stage in Bayern, where Jacob Fiedler should also hopefully score some stage points. And finally, well, hilly classics is not where we’ll score a bunch of points, that much is clear.

Our ambition is to end this season on a high note with some good results and courageous racing. And then, we’ll just see how it all shakes out.

We've been on a downturn for a while now, and after looking like promotion contenders halfway through the season, these last few races were all about saving our spot in the Top 10. We ended up succeeding in that, but it wasn't because we did well. Because we very much didn't.

It was always going to be tough to score many points in our final PTHC race of the month. Without a strong GC contender, we knew we had to try our luck in breakaways, and we did, but unfortunately, it did not amount to much. Samuel Mugisha took a few bonus seconds on the opening stage to be second in the U25 classification for one day. He was in the break again the following day as well as on stage 4 joined by Moise Mugisha, who took over on days 5 and 7.

Houcaine El Sabbahi snuck into the group of the day on stage 3, but our best shot at something tangible was when Valens Ndayisenga joined the breakaway on stages 6 and 7. Both times, the group would make it to the finish line, but both times, he wasn't strong enough to fight for the stage win. At least he'd ultimately end up in 19th place overall, scoring the bulk of our 30 ranking points. Madushanka Perera contributed a single one, an 8th place being his best result on the three flat stages.

Really, not much to say. Within our means, we did the best that we could and finished 14th of 18.

With Jacob Fiedler as a Top 5 favorite in two time trials and Bonaventure Uwizeyimana in a race that should suit him well - eventhough the competition was tough -, the Bayern Rundfahrt was our best hope for scoring a few points this month. That did not end up happening. Fiedler finished 6th and 7th, Uwi had okay-ish time trials but lost too much on the one mountain stage and ended up just 29th in the GC. That combined to a grand total of ... 5 points!

Hilly races are always tough for us. Without an out-and-out contender, our team usually sits towards the back of the peloton and gets distanced at some point. And the Giro dell'Emelia was no different. At least the ever-aggressive Samuel Mugisha represented us in the breakaway, as he did so often this year. Our best finisher ended up being Souheil Khederi in 56th place.

Wait, no ... this is it for the season!

Despite the late season struggles, this has been an extraordinary year for us. There will be a couple of season review posts coming over the next few days, but for now, thanks for following everyone!

cunego59 wrote:
.

Nemolito wrote:


NC's take place in November I guess, so time for an NC preview?

Congratulations on the top-10 btw. A shame you slipped a bit down the rankings in the end, but think you still got a nice core to build around and hopefully improve even.

redordead wrote:
Like with my time you ran a bit out of steam at the end to really compete for promotion.

But I'm guessing both of us had much better season's than expected, so gotta be happy with that?

Laurens147 wrote:
Nevertheless an impressive season from your team!

I won't dwell on this for too long, I've said this many times already. We've started the season sceptical of whether we had enough firepower to even survive in PCT. Then, we found ourselves in the middle of the promotion race. Ultimately, that was not where we belonged, but we still vastly outperformed expectations to end up in the Top 10 at the end of the year.

13 wins across GC, one day races and stages - more than we could have dreamed of before the season. Stallaert and Silvestre of course towered above everyone else, combining for 9 out of those 13 wins, but especially Valens Ndayisenga's two stage wins and Samuel Mugisha's KoM jersey brought joy to our Rwandan home fan base.

Another category where we've performed really well. Fabio Silvestre missed out on the Top 5 in Barbados by a single second, but maybe 5/5 would have been too much. Either way, this should give us decent financial flexibility as we attempt to stabilize in PCT.

Fabio Silvestre and Joeri Stallaert of course carried us with their massive points totals. Looking at an attempted efficiency measure, points per 1.000€ wage, Madushanka Perera provided the best value, being our 7th best scorer while on minimum wage. The likes of Valens Ndayisenga, Joey Rosskopf and Janvier Hadi did very well, too.

On the lower end, and excluding our non-maxed riders, Tesfom Okbamariam, Souheil Khederi and Andrea Vendrame provided the least value. The former two were mostly in domestique roles anyway, but Vendrame was expected to be a real contributor, similar to what Loic Vliegen gave us. He's perhaps the one major disappointment of our season, especially if you include his transfer fee.

With that transfer fee included, Bonaventure Uwizeyimana also looks like horrible value, and well, that is true. But we knew going into that transfer that he wouldn't be worth that money in points. Still, as one of the top Rwandan riders, he simply belongs on this team and we were happy to pay for that.

Speaking of Rwandan riders, I really want to highlight Moise and Samuel Mugisha. Both were still Lvl 3 riders this year, but contributed significant points thanks to their aggressive riding. They were a joy to watch and hopefully continue to be that next year.

redordead wrote:
Damn

With all those goals accomplished you're in for a big budget raise and that has to make you one of the promotion favourites for next year

jandal7 wrote:
A really great season for you goals-wise and overall, even if it's not what it looked like it maybe could be mid-season as you've said it was a great result compared to your expectations. I've really loved seeing you do so well and genuinely am so looking forward to racing you guys next season, I don't think we've ever actually been in a division with another African team (we missed Eritrel by one year in PCT) and I'm super excited to do it

An important part of the off-season is proceeding with and taking stock of rider development. At Bralirwa - Stevens, we currently have 5 young talents who are still improving year to year:

Of these riders, Houcaine El Sabbahi is perhaps the one most ready to contribute at a decent level already. He's very quick and could either become part of a sprint train should we decide to build one, be a dangerous threat from a breakaway or maybe even hunt for a good result or two as a lead sprinter if the race allows it.

Jonas Rutsch is on his way to becoming a reliable cobbles domestique and he will continue to grow into that role in the upcoming season, when he too should already be able to have an impact if a race suits him.

Having been active in breakaways all throughout last season, Moise Mugisha improves his tool kit with better capabilities going uphill, more pace and even more aggressiveness. We hope he'll continue to show up ahead of the peloton, and he should become even more successful doing so.

Samuel Mugisha was a great breakaway rider so far in his career as well and while he will still have that freedom, his path will likely lead to more dedicated domestique works, be it on flat stages or in team time trials. In this upcoming year, he might also be able to grab a point or two from TT race U25 classifications.

Maybe besides El Sabbahi, Natnael Tesfatsion is the crown jewel of Bralirwa - Stevens' talent development group. He'll shine as a climber/puncheur hybrid as his career progresses, but he might have some chances to show his remarkable talent at this point already, given his decent climbing skillset at this young age.

It's the circle of cycling life: As the youth progresses, older riders slowly decline as they make way for the next generation. On our team, two riders are affected:

We only really started to have a significant time trialing presence this season, but both of our leaders in that department might have been one year solutions. While both Jacob Fiedler and Joey Rosskopf can still be useful riders, their future on the team will depend a lot on their salary demands and how the team is shaping up outside of them.

Those two were both in our Top 5 points scorers and we can't and don't expect our up-and-comers to replace that scoring potential. But this is about continuing to build the foundation of our team and to make it sturdy enough that we only need individual pieces from transfers and free agency. While not quite at that point yet, this development is another good step on that path.