AbhishekLFC wrote:
Was expecting your team to be higher up the table at this stage of the season. Hope the rest of the races can bring better luck after the last two horrendous results.

One of our four races this year with a Team Goal was the Criterium du Dauphine. We didn't necessarily expect a Top 5 to be easy for George Bennett, but a weaker-than-expected startlist gave us great hope, despite the presence of a prologue and an ITT.

In a prologue which saw huge gaps for such a short stage, Bennett lost almost a minute - not a great start! Our loanee Regan Gough punched above his weight and took 11th on the stage, following it up with a Top 20 in the sprint on the second day and moving to a temporary fifth overnight on GC.


The PT teams present might not have known about it, but the PCT ones will have known for years now that Stage 3's hilltop finish was perfectly suited to George - he's made a trademark off of it. Nikiema, also a fast finisher uphill, put him in position and Mr. Xero opened up the sprint with 500m to go.


And nobody could pass him, proving again he's one of the best in the business on this kind of finish. A fantastic stage victory, and Nikiema added to it by coming 5th himself!

Stage 4's ITT saw Bennett improve from 176th to 55th in terms of placement on the day from the prologue, but still lost three and a half minutes to stage winner Mattia Cattaneo and around three minutes to many other contenders.


Into the snow and the Alps they went and Bennett was a very solid 6th, part of the first group behidn the major favourites. If it wasn't for the time trial kilometres this would be enough for him to target the Top 5 positions, but we would need more than that in the next two days, with him sitting 12th on GC, those three minutes down on the Top 5. On the undulating Stage 8 he didn't find the space to attack and lead the favourites group home in 13th behind the breakaway, moving to 9th in the GC as some riders were dropped.

Far from an awful race but the lack of pure HI/MO races this year means that this kind of mediocre GC result really seems like his ceiling for a lot of his calendar - however the stage win and good mountain form make this a promising showing ahead of the Tour of America.

1	Justo Tenorio	MOL Cycling Team	25h55'15
2	Mattia Cattaneo	Minions - Subwoolfer	+ 24
3	Joseph Dombrowski	Gazelle	+ 1'28
9	George Bennett	Xero Racing	+ 5'04
54	James Fouche	Xero Racing	+ 25'32
76	Henri Tesfaye Haudepin	Xero Racing	+ 33'03
91	Bachirou Nikiema	Xero Racing	+ 36'33
116	Salim Kipkemboi	Xero Racing	+ 46'16
129	Ilan Van Wilder	Xero Racing	+ 53'52
136	Corbin Strong	Xero Racing	+ 55'39
153	Regan Gough	Xero Racing	+ 1h09'27

redordead wrote:
Seems about right, of course the stage win makes things a lot better.

Nemolito wrote:
Sucks to miss out on a sponsor goal. Apart from the ITT's it seems like he did have a very good race indeed. I hope Bennett can get some revenge in ToA, and still give you a positive feeling about his season

In our three years of our previous PCT stint, we always got up for our home race in South Africa, with stints in yellow from Debesay, Roux, and Houle, 2nd and 4th on GC for Houle, and a Top 10 for Roux, both of them winning the points jersey, and four stage wins between the trio, with at least one in every edition. In our return to the race, we brought an actually good TTT squad in order to help Houle chase basically the only thing left for us to do here: winning the GC.


He was a big favourite for the lighter stages and somewhat dissapointed with 4th on the opening day, followed by losing a minute already on day 2. Habtemichael took over GC leadership as he made the 16-rider selection, moving him into a tie for the U25 lead. Our continued furthered with Houle too tired to sprint on Stage 3.


The team impressed in the TTT on Stage 4, which in 2019 and 20 was what stopped us winning the GC with Houle. For a time we were on the hot couch and Habtemichael in the virtual GC lead, but we ended up 2nd on the stage, and Habtemichael in 3rd on GC, our best ever TTT result. Don't tell the Evonik manager we sold out.


Habtemichael unfortunately was dropped on Stage 5, and despite almost making the tail of the front group, they were adjudged to have a small gap to the last rider in it - unfortunately due to how strung out it was, that was a nearly two-and-a-half minute gap to the front of the group.


Houle only mustered up a third place on the final stage to compound a dour race for him and the team. What a shame the year we finally put it together in the TTT we can't repeat our usual success on the road stages. Apologies to the home fans.

1	Bruno Borges	Indosat Ooredoo	22h49'11
2	Alex Aranburu	Carlsberg - Danske Bank	+ 1'16
3	Aidan Van Niekerk	Project: Africa	+ 1'24
17	Daniel Habtemichael	Xero Racing	+ 4'59
35	Hugo Houle	Xero Racing	+ 11'10
46	Johann Van Zyl	Xero Racing	+ 12'54
79	Jamalidin Novardianto	Xero Racing	+ 22'43
89	Florian Vermeersch	Xero Racing	+ 25'09
112	Morne Van Niekerk	Xero Racing	+ 30'20
141	Nils Schomber	Xero Racing	+ 1h03'33
145	Darren Young	Xero Racing	+ 1h08'30

Laurens147 wrote:
I would have loved to see you get a good result in South Africa, what a shame!

A long mountainous classic, George Bennett was a consensus second tier favourite, right behind Padun - more a rival of Areruya than Bennett in previous years, but still somebody the team would love to get one over after our many battles!


The young American Sepp Kuss looked to bring his freedom to the Great White North by escaping the pack, and Bennett was looking strong and attentive, matching his move which split the peloton in a big way. 32 riders left and Habtemichael didn't make the cut, leaving our leader to fight for himself.


However that was little concern, as not long after Padun made a counterattack, and Bennett was the only one who could follow, setting up what looked like it could be a one-on-one showdown on the road to Apex Mountain!


With still 8km to go on the climb, they were caught by a select group, but Bennett then launched his own powerful move and got some solo separation!


Fernandez, the last remaining domestique, reeled George back but as soon as he was caught he was off again!


This time it stuck, and Bennett was solo for the rest of the climb as the group splintered behind him. Padun marked himself as the strongest and caught Bennett just before the summit.


No time to admire the gorgeous vistas of British Columbia as the duo descended to a sprint finish. With 4km to go Kuss was shutting the gap with some maverick downhill riding!


Under the red flag Padun had eked out a sizeable gap while Kuss continued to bear down on Bennett.


As the road flattened Bennett seemed to have a better kick and a bit more in the tank but still had a large gap to close!


And he was shutting it...


All the way to the line, and with a large lunge earned a photo finish, where it was confirmed he took the victory! After a great duel the two could barely be separated, but on the day we think the real winner was cycling, as agreed by the very gracious Popo4Ever manager who acknowledged the strength of Bennett and took the close loss of Padun, who albeit a slightly stronger climber is widely known to be worse in a sprint and a long race, with humility and respect.
Obviously Padun coming 2nd instead of 1st is a way bigger underperformance than Habtemichael coming 79th instead of in the Top 15
Actually no, the real winner was us. Our first classic victory since 2020 and Bennett's first since 2017 (not that he rides lots of classics). He's conquered Canada, now bring on America!

1	George Bennett	Xero Racing	6h09'08
2	Mark Padun	Team Popo4Ever	s.t.
3	Sepp Kuss	McCormick Pro Cycling	+ 8
57	James Fouche	Xero Racing	+ 7'11
79	Daniel Habtemichael	Xero Racing	+ 9'51
105	Ilan Van Wilder	Xero Racing	+ 11'39
112	Florian Vermeersch	Xero Racing	+ 14'22
129	Corbin Strong	Xero Racing	+ 19'29
147	Yacine Hamza	Xero Racing	+ 21'44
156	Regan Gough	Xero Racing	+ 22'31

redordead wrote:
Apex was a fun race

June had some rough results and some memorable moments, but overall it's not the brightest feeling at Team HQ as we sit well away from our pre-season ambitions of moving somewhere into the outer disband-promotion talk and have only one race in July and no Bennett or Areruya until September.

With Areruya moving to within one of the all-time team RoTM record, with two victories it was time for this man to extend his lead once again...

July was our second month of the season to only feature one race, the PTHC Tour of Lithuania. Spearheaded by Hugo Houle, we had hope that he could survive the hills to a decent result if we could get our TTT train going as well as in South Africa - but in a PTHC field that's easier said than done!


He was a very good 5th, 8th and 9th (slightly dissapointing in a sprinting sense but great from a puncheur's perspective!) in the road stages but was let down by the TTT and was only 19th on GC.

Naturally...

With Stannard, Novardianto and Schomber it was a grabbag team but one we hoped could do some animating of the race.


An error from the forecasting saw Schomber sent out in the brief rain during the prologue, though he impressed in tough conditions his 4th place wasn't what we came here for. Robert Stannard impressed on the pan flat Stage 2, not his terrain but a Top 10 in the sprint nonetheless!


However that had nothing on his performance the next day. Though his countryman Plapp remained ahead of the peloton from the morning breakaway, our man finished ahead of the rest from his own attack and was arguably deserving of a gap that would have given him the GC lead - instead the group well behind him in this photo got the same time and he moved only to 11th overall. He would lose 5 minutes on the cobbled stage to slip to 21st overall by the end of the race - hardly a bad effort for him. Florian Vermeersch took his first career Top 10 in the final day's sprint as well.

1	Stefan Kung	Crabbe-CC Chevigny	21h03'28
2	Sam Bewley	Amaysim Cervelo	+ 2
3	Albert Kireva	Project: Africa	+ 15
21	Robert Stannard	Xero Racing	+ 7'07
41	Jamalidin Novardianto	Xero Racing	+ 11'13
54	Florian Vermeersch	Xero Racing	+ 14'07
69	Morne Van Niekerk	Xero Racing	+ 18'11
90	Yacine Hamza	Xero Racing	+ 23'23
119	Ilan Van Wilder	Xero Racing	+ 35'26
121	Corbin Strong	Xero Racing	+ 35'29
164	Nils Schomber	Xero Racing	+ 1h29'07

A profile which suits Houle very well as shown two years ago with his 2nd place here. A tough one for a flat classic which means he should have something extra in his legs for an attack or a final sprint than the rest.


Houle was involved in a couple of attacks around the 20km mark, eventually getting away with two companions.


With 9km to go the gap was around 20 seconds. Houle went out solo and managed to maintain it as his former companions were caught.


Heartbreakingly he was caught with just 1km to go!


However the race ended up not being a disaster as a very impressive Tesfaye Hoffman used his local knowledge to time his sprint and finish 6th! Houle hung on to 12th to make this a solid day's outing for us. Disappointed to miss in a winnable race given the weaker field, but could have been worse and great to see Tesfaye continue his form in these races.

1	Max Kanter	Tryg - Gobik	5h39'58
2	Dylan Kennett	Binance	s.t.
3	Peter Varga	Team Popo4Ever	s.t.
6	Helmut Tesfaye Hoffman	Xero Racing	s.t.
12	Hugo Houle	Xero Racing	s.t.
26	Corbin Strong	Xero Racing	s.t.
49	Morne Van Niekerk	Xero Racing	s.t.
52	Ilan Van Wilder	Xero Racing	s.t.
93	Jamalidin Novardianto	Xero Racing	s.t.
95	Florian Vermeersch	Xero Racing	s.t.
105	Yacine Hamza	Xero Racing	s.t.

A few days later a similar squad travelled a few countries over to Latvia for the Riga - Jurmala GP, another race where we were hopeful for Houle to do well even if it was in a tougher field this time. In a hard race or a late attack he should be attacking the podium or a win.


However for maybe the first time ever Houle was caught out by the wind splits in the peloton and inside the final 10km he wasn't in the 65 rider selection!


However he and the other favourites from that group bridged across and our man even managed to get to the front of the pack and sprint to 10th in the final kilometres - not the result we came for but an impressive salvage job from Houle! Tesfaye Hartmanis negotiated a familiar finale to come home 17th and bring in some more points.

1	Bryan Coquard	ELCO - ABEA	4h09'54
2	Fernando Gaviria	Isostar - Specialized	s.t.
3	Eduard Grosu	Huski Chocolate	s.t.
10	Hugo Houle	Xero Racing	s.t.
17	Henrijs Tesfaye Hartmanis	Xero Racing	s.t.
83	Yacine Hamza	Xero Racing	+ 1'11
91	Florian Vermeersch	Xero Racing	s.t.
92	Jamalidin Novardianto	Xero Racing	s.t.
147	Ilan Van Wilder	Xero Racing	s.t.
153	Darren Young	Xero Racing	s.t.
156	Morne Van Niekerk	Xero Racing	s.t.

August was a quiet month - flat classics are always high potential races for us with our riders but sometimes they are quiet ones, and Benelux was not one of our most anticipated races in terms of scoring.


We did get a victory however, just not in the pros - Florian Vermeersch won a stage of the U23 Tour de l'Avenir while leading out Thomas Pidcock (who ended the race a somewhat disappointing 5th on GC) where he was too strong for the rest of the pack and held on for the win!

For his over-performances in the flat classics including a great 6th place...