Home race for our wannabe superstar Zmorka, who didn't do too great there last year. Back then Spilak sacrificed himself for the Ukrainian, but this time around we might see Marlen having to do some domestique work himself, as we also bring GC man Keizer.

Speaking about, the Dutchie was our GC hope in Italy, but didn't perform at all. We started the race with a rather poor team time trial and it quickly became clear that we weren't in for a top-10 in the GC, or anything close. Zmorka on the other hand also forgot he was a time trialist, finishing outside of the top-40 (!) in the individual time trial, just like Sütterlin. The Ukrainian made up for it by going in the attack in four out of five stages and scoring KoM-points almost everywhere, leading to the win in that classification. Remarkable start of the season for him, to say the least.

Special moment for Los Pollos Hermanos, as we will be at the startlist of our first monument ever. We didn't bring a puncheur, but we'll be present with Finnish playboy Matti Manninen. We don't expect him to win it like he did in Qatar, but a strong result would definitely be welcome after a rather disappointing start of the season overall. Last year a rouleur won it though, so it's definitely a shame the legendary Quispe is no longer riding for us, as this would have been a perfect race for him.

We expected this to be our worst race of the triple header, and our expectations were met. Second sprinter Abdul Halil wasn't strong enough to be a real contender in the sprints, with a fourteenth place as his best result. Loanees Turner and Stojnic got some media attention with their attempts of joining the breaks, but were also simply not good enough to keep up with the rest of the strong PT riders there. Definitely no shame in that though.

Nemolito wrote:

Been a while since I posted, so time for make up for that. In this post I'll give a quick overview of our first three GT's ever. In a later post there will be some other Los Pollos highlights from the past races.

Let's start with the good news. We almost immediately secured our first ever GT win! Although Kelderman has a lot of haters, the Dutch bad boy delivered on the fifth stage. Nobody was able to follow his attack with 3.3 km to go, and he held on until the finish line. Hurray!

Also in Italy were Munoz and Abdul Halil. Whereas the Malaysian sprinter did okay with some stage top-10s, the Colombian disappointed with barely a decent stage to tell about, and only finishing 32nd in the final GC.

The highlight of the Tour is easy to find: two stage wins by mighty
Manninen. Early on our favourite Finn won two sprint stages, which meant our pre-race goals were accomplished. After that our lead-out started to be rather bad, but thanks to 2 fourth places Manninen didn't give up on his green dream. In the end the winner of that jersey was Dainese, beating Manninen just like he did on the final classic Champs-Élysées stage. Also a nice mention for Peruvian champion Ruiz, who did some valuable work as Manninen's final guy, and even finished sixth on a stage himself.

Already tired of writing the same thing once again, but here we go.
Munoz didn't just disappoint, he heavily disappointed. Only one attack in a whole race, which was painful to watch itself as well. Finishing outside of the top-50 in the GC could mean the end of his LPH career. Time triallist Sütterlin also definitely did not fill in the expectations, finishing 62nd in the time trial. For some reason our only attacker seemed to be Nareklishvili. Although he is a nice guy and we like having him in the team, he is definitely not the guy that wins GT stages.