liefwarrior wrote:
I'm liking the NC jerseys, although a touch concerned about who has been racing in Hong Hong...

redordead wrote:
When you have multiple leaders including climbers that surely has to make race selections and the subsequent planning much easier.

Looking good, but I'm not looking forward to facing your team

Three points on Choi's agenda for the season - Goals, Wildcrads and Experiments. Choi will lead the team in all three mountain goal races - Tour of America, Suisse and Colombia. He will also lead in the experimental outings at Ukraine and Pro Halstatt. He will be a part of the teams travelling to Grand Duche and Flech Wallone for two of our three wildcard races.

**Races marked in bold are Goal races.

Benoot takes care of our other goal race in Battenkill. He will lead the hills races, with classics outnumbering stage races once again. He was not a part of the squad when we picked, so it might have been a different story otherwise. He will also lead in also the punchy cobbled races and co-lead with Saya Kuroeda in some other cobbles races.

**Races marked in bold are Goal races.

Penasa has a very similar calendar to last season. With a stronger stage racer/climber field in the PCT this time, we hope he will still be able to get regular Top 10s.

Van Asbroeck is our sprinter of choice in the Tour of America. Most of the rest of the season will be spent supporting the cobbles team with a couple of appearances in flat classics.

Minali is tasked with covering some of the flat classics and every stage race we could fit into his schedule which have at least two flat rated stages.

Saya Kuroeda either leads or co-leads the flat cobbled races. He also turns up as support rider in multiple terrains to make up the team numbers. It isn't the ideal calendar for him but there simply isn't enough suiting RDs available.

William Barta will lead the team in our C2 outings at Trentino and California.

Week 1 begins with a Prologue and we will be taking MG legend Stoltz as our leader for this stage. Choi, Eenkhoorn and Barta are all competitive in Prologues and should not lose too much time here. Stages 2 to 9 is a combination of flat and hills and we have riders to try to be competitive on those as well.

Van Asbroeck will lead our charge on the flats, with Stages 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 18 and 21 on his target list. While he is not the fastest sprinter out there, we hope he can be wily enough to surf the right wheels and pick up enough points for a Green Jersey push. He will have Stoltz to help him out on the flats, with the latter's abilities well suited to that role.

Velasco will target Stages 3 through 6 in week and possibly a couple of hilly stages in week 2, in addition to his role on other stages where he will slot in as another domestique for Choi.

Speaking of our GC leader, we will hope to keep Choi safe and in touch with the top of the GC till Stage 10. Like we already mentioned before, his decent Prologue capability should mean he is competitive in the Prologue and not lose too much time to his rivals there. Stage 11 onwards is where the real action will begin for him. We hope his stage racing abilities will allow him to challenge for a podium finish in this race.

Eenkhoorn will take on the responsibility of being the primary domestique for Choi and also hopefully mount a challenge on the White Jersey in this race. Champoussin will also be in a similar role, albeit he is not expected to be as strong as the former.

Xandri and Barta will have the responsibility of keeping Choi safe on the early slopes of the major climbs, putting him into good positions to mount his own attacks while also chasing down attacks from opponents. We do expect them to do well in the MTT, given their capabilities.

redordead wrote:
Hopefully you have more 'luck' with ToA sprinting then me. It would be nice to see someone other than Haller dominating those stages this year.

Van Asbroeck achieved an impressive 4th in this race last season, but we do not expect a repeat this time. However, the support team is strong enough to keep him safe and deliver him to a good starting position in the sprint.

Bulked up Benoot rides his first race as our leader. Minali also takes up sprinter responsibilities for the first time in our colours having completed his development. We are quite excited to see both of them in action for the first time. Most of the support team from the Down Under Classic stays on in Australia for this one as well.

@knockout: Looking forward to the race! Hope the lineup translates to the desired results

TinxiaS wrote:
Good luck with Van Asbroeck. I thing It's only a bit of acc missing otherwise it would be hard to beat him and Benoot will defenetly be hard to compete againt him.

The both Kuroeda will defenetly be interesting to keep eye on both of them special if one of them will go into attack or breakaway.