Mresuperstar wrote:
Coward journalists not asking about Girmay In all seriousness, best of luck this season. I think you have the firepower to be in the PT next season and deserve to be there.

Mr. Boss: With pleasure! Renus was our main target this year - really, the only talent we wanted to pursue. We are therefore very happy to have signed him.

Ulrich Ulriksen wrote:
A very balanced assessment. I have a nice German sprinter who will be on the market next year - just in case you were wondering.

I am sure Angel is a great team player but can't imagine he was thrilled with the news he was opening his season with 6 days in the desert.

A bit late, but we're gonna catch up to current events over the next few days. The year started with a very eventful month of January - five races, including our first ever PT Wild Card ... with mixed but overall arguably successful results. Let's go through each one.

Fabio Silvestre opens the season with an okay-ish result.

Last year, we started in Australia with a bang. Fabio Silvestre won the Down Under Classic and we had quiet hopes that he might repeat that feat. But in a tough PCT sprinting field, that was always a long shot. Ultimately, Fabio finished 6th, which is not fantastic, but fine. The rest of the squad did not exactly cover themselves in glory, either.

We stayed in Australia for the Tour Down Under. Four flat stages, two hilly ones - with no Silvestre, we couldn't really expect much. Joeri Stallaert had one of his few outings as our primary sprinter and he actually started out quite well. 6th and 5th places in the opening two stages scored us a few points - but it was downhill from there.

On the two hilly stages, none of Valens Ndayisenga, Mektel Eyob or Souheil Khederi even tried anything. If you look at their final GC ranks, it looks almost like a refusal to work. Alex Mengoulas was our only single breakaway participant all week, and while Stallaert couldn't do anything in the final two sprint stages, he at least somehow hung on to a Top 50 finish to add another few points. It's thanks to him alone that this trip wasn't entirely pointless (in both senses of the word).

Next up was the Tour of Qatar. Our first ever PT race! As a wild card team, we weren't here for points, but we still had ambitions. Fabio Silvestre was here for the five flat stages, but initially, he was completely overwhelmed on this higher level of competition.

He started out with a 23rd and a 20th place, then at leasted sniffed the Top 10 with a 9th place, followed by a 12th. Finally, on the final sprint stage, he found his legs and his nose for the right position. Behind only overall winner Manninen, he crossed the line in second place. That was enough to move into 14th overall, and Bonaventure Uwizeyimana snuck into the Top 30 with a good time trial on the final day. Not quite what we hoped for, but not a desaster by any means.

Oh yeah, and this was also the very first race in our colors for Angel Madrazo. Of course, he had no ambitions here and perhaps his presence even distracted our team from fully supporting Silvestre. But still, it's a noteworthy event!

Hilly stage races are typically not our forté. Joey Rosskopf used his time trial last year to score a decent 13th place in Hong Kong but this year, surprisingly enough, we would do even better. And it was Bonaventure Uwizeyimana who had the performance of his Bralirwa career.

On a hilly day one, he managed to just barely hang on to the lead group of 21. He then finished 34th in the following time trial, not a tremendous result on paper, but combined with stage 1, that was enough to vault him to 7th in the GC. And he didn't stop there! With a fantastic effort on the uphill finish of the final day, where he crossed the line in 7th place, he ended up in 4th place overall! An absolutely massive result for us, exactly the type of depth scoring we need in the promotion race.

Our final race of January was a big one. The Franceville Classique was our first goal race of the season and we had been ambitious: Following Joeri Stallaert's second place last year, we were aiming for nothing less than the win. And what can we say? Joeri delivered!

In a wild finale, it ultimately came down to a bunch sprint and our Belgian Champ had the best legs, beating surprise Clement Venturini and grandmaster Sam Bewley, the man who had bested him a year earlier. What a fantastic way to start the cobbles season for our superstar! In addition, youngster loanee Samuele Menicucci scored his first points for us, parlaying his breakaway efforts into a strong 36th place and Tesfom Okbamariam just barely squeezed into the Top 50 as well. A great day all around.

We continue at a high pace. Goal races 2 and 3 await with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad - as the cobbles season progresses for Stallaert - as well as the Circulo de Juarez for Silvestre. But all eyes are on Angel Madrazo's "real" debut for the team in Portugal.

The ship has sailed for catching up on monthly reviews, so let's do something slightly different to get back up to speed. We built the team consciously very top heavy, which meant that our three leaders really had to pull their weight to get us to the top of the PCT table. It also means that almost all of our races featured one of them, so let's look back on the first five to six months of the season through this lense.

A quick reminder: After our offseason plans to get ourselves a future superstar were thwarted, we paid a whopping 2.3 million plus 600k in salaries for Angel, putting all our chips on the table for an immediate promotion push. We did not plan our schedule with an elite climber in mind, but still found 7 races (excluding wild cards) where we thought he could do very well. 5 of them have come and gone, with mixed results.

	Race	Cat	GC	Stages
	Volta a Portugal	PTHC	7.	1x 4th
	Vuelta a Colombia	PTHC	6.	1x 10th
	Tour of Chile	C1	7.	1x 7th
	Pro Hallstatt Classic	HC	1.
	Tour of East Java	PTHC	2.	1x 2nd

In Portugal, Angel fell victim to a poor hilly stage. In Colombia, he couldn't keep up with riders nominally worse than him. And in Chile, the mountain stage simply wasn't selective enough and his low speed cost saw him cross the finish line last among the first group. Three stage races, three disappointments, no way around it. At this point, those 2.3 million looked like a rather terrible investment.

Luckily, around came the Pro Hallstatt Classic and it was here that Angel finally made good on his potential. Entering as the top favorite, he delivered us our first non-flat one day race victory, a milestone and an important inflection point, at least it looks like one right now. Because only a few days later, Angel secured a big second place finish on the only mountain stage of the Tour of East Java and a second overall to go along with it.


Just two races remain, both of which he'll enter as one of, if not the top favorite. What he'll be able to do there will significantly define the final outlook of our season.

	Race	Cat	Date
	Tour d'Andorra	C1	25.07. - 29.07.
	Tour du Maroc	HC	01.10. - 06.10.

Fabio was a supremely consistent points scorer last year, including several victories, boosting him to a Top 10 finish in the individual rankings as the second best sprinter of the division. While he's been solid so far this year, he hasn't reached those heights quite yet.

	Race	Cat	GC	Stages
	Down Under Classic	HC	6.
	Circulo de Juarez	HC	8.	1x 3., 1x 6.
	Tour de Guadaloupe	C1	2.	1x 3., 2x 4.
	Baltic Chain Tour	C1	9.	1x 3., 1x 5.
	Berlin Pro Race	C1	18.
	Veenendaal - Veenendaal	PTHC	17.
	Hanko Classic	C1	5.

A bunch of Top 10s, some stage podiums, but no win yet and two major flops in Berlin and Veenendaal. It's a far cry from last year, where he had already won the Down Under Classic, the Circulo de Juarez and a stage at the Barbados Cycling Festival by this point.

However, while he started strongly then, Fabio ultimately faded a bit towards the end. Maybe this season, it's going to be the other way around? He has ample opportunity to score big points over the next few months.

	Race	Cat	Date
	Torshavn GP	C1	01.07.
	Philadelphia International Championship	PTHC	13.07.
	Deutschland Tour	PTHC	01.08. - 05.08.
	Frankfurt Eschborn	C1	15.08.
	Riga - Jurmala GP	PTHC	18.08.
	Paris Tours	PTHC	01.09.
	GP Lugano	C1	28.09.

Even if some things didn't go perfectly for Angel and Fabio, there was one man that we could always rely on. Despite losing some important pieces to his support system, Joeri Stallaert continued his PCT cobbles supremacy:

	Race	Cat	GC	Stages
	Tour Down Under	HC	-	1x 5th, 1x 6.
	Franceville Classique	PTHC	1.
	Omloop Het Nieuwsblad	HC	1.
	Le Samyn	HC	9.
	Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne	C1	1.
	Lillestrom GP	C1	3.
	Tour de Pologne	HC	-	1x 7th, 1x 10th
	Roma Maxima	PTHC	6.
	Lisbon Classic	HC	70.
	1 Jour de Dunkerque	HC	3.

Casually collecting three wins, one each at PTHC, HC and C1 level, and adding two more podium finishes, Joeri is just an incredible rider to follow. If a 9th and a 6th place can be considered disappointing, you know the calibre of rider you're working with. He even added a handful of Top 10 results as a sprinter in stage races - nothing splashy, but just showing up consistently (Lisbon was rough, but also really not a great profile for him).


The only bad thing looking at that list is that there are few race days left for Joeri. First, the notoriously unpredictable Benelux Challenge, then our home race, the beauty that is the GP Kigali. He will have to overcome hills in both races to score big, but it's not like he hasn't done that before. Similar to Angel Madrazo, a lot is riding on how efficiently Joeri will convert these few opportunities.

	Race	Cat	Date
	Benelux Challenge	HC	01.08. - 06.08.
	GP Kigali	C1	01.09.

While our team is heavily geared towards our three leaders, some of our other riders had their moments to shine, too.

Bonaventure Uwizeyimana scored a brilliant 4th place at the Hong Kong Challenge early in the year and added a good 9th place in a strong field at the Tour of Norway more recently. Tesfom Okbamariam also finished 4th at C2 Gent - Wevelgem, as well as a terrific 12th place in support of Stallaert at the 1 Jour de Dunkerque.

Back at C2 level, Tesfom was slightly disappointing at the Tour du Faso, missing out on the Top 15 in the GC. Nonetheless, it was here that we got our most unlikely highlight of the entire season: Alex Mengoulas, in on loan from ELCO - ABEA, went into the breakaway on stage 2 ... and pulled off a most surprising stage win!


In general, our youngsters have joined breakaways somewhat regularly, with Moise and Samuel Mugisha as well as loanee Samuele Menicucci standing out, though not with much success. Hopefully, there's more to come in that regard.


So, some good stuff to look back on and much to look forward to as well. While some races have not yielded as many points as we'd have hoped, we're still in the thick of the promotion race and the goal is still very much to finish in the Top 5. Tough, but definetely not impossible.

Additionally, there's one more wild card race left, the Tour of Northern Europe. We haven't touched on that topic yet, I think we'll have a big wild card roundup post after the ToNE, which will then include recaps of the Tour of Qatar, Paris - Nice and of course the Giro d'Italia. Until then, maybe we'll manage to get monthly recaps out again, maybe updates will continue more irregularly. I guess we'll find out together!

redordead wrote:
I guess the 'big three' haven't been as dominant as I thought they would be. A touch of bad luck and not optimal planning for Madrazo as likely culprits.
But there are still quite a few races left for them and automatic promotion is well within reach

Fabianski wrote:
Stallaert is just a cheat code, even in PTHC. Congrats on all those wins! Good to see that Madrazo has finally woken up - let's hope he continues that run to justify all that money thrown at him! We'll unfortunately face him both in Andorra and in Morocco
Silvestre is still really consistent, but maybe at a more realistic level than last year where he just overperformed (in my opinion). He had some lows already, but I'm sure he'll compensate that with some highs in the second half of the year

It'd be great to see your Africans contribute a bit more to your scoring, although I guess you can be happi with Uwi so far. And if you get some more breakaway luck, I'm sure you'll get some more great results from Africans

I really like to follow your project, and I hope that in the long term you can really develop Rwandans into great point contributors, just like SotD did with his Greeks! Promotion along with more budget would certainly help, and I guess a Top 5 this year should indeed still be possible for you

Well, don't y'all look silly now Welcome to our slightly late season recap!

So, yeah. Not quite the promotion campaign we were hoping for. On the last day of the season, we even slipped outside of the Top 10. The reasons are relatively simple. Fabio Silvestre scored 200 fewer points than last year, Angel Madrazo didn't come close to matching expectations and we sacrificed nearly all of our depth to sign and support him. It was a gamble and the team was not quite as optimistic as some, but this is still an absolute disappointment.

The team will have to undergo some significant changes for next year, in part as a consequence of those failures. That said, it wasn't all bad in 2022. Here are some of the highlights:

8 wins are 5 less than last year, but still very solid. Especially Joeri Stallaert was once again on top of his game. It's kind of appaling that Angel Madrazo wasn't able to win a stage race, but he did give us our first win in a mountain classic, and two stage wins in Andorra as well, where he finished third overall.

Loanee Alex Mengoulas' stage win at the Tour du Faso and Moise Mugisha's polkadot jersey in our wild card race Tour of Nothern Europe - adding a second place on the final stage in the process - were very charming surprises. Another wild card race was our first Grand Tour in team history, the Giro d'Italia. Angel Madrazo ended up in fifth place overall with two Top 3 stage results.

In addition to Andorra, Madrazo also scored podium finishes at the Tours of East Java and Maroc. Fabio Silvestre added a second place at the Tour du Guadeloupe, while Joeri Stallaert finished third in all of 1 Jour de Dunkerque, Lillestrom GP and, most importantly, our home race, the GP Kigali.

We were very ambitious with our goals, pushing for a bigger budget while knowing that we might pay for it in the following year. But Joeri Stallaert came through to hit two win goals, even if he missed one by a good bit. Fabio Silvestre did okay in Juarez, a race he won the year before. And well, the team standings are of course a big disappointment, but it's a narrow miss, at least.

I mentioned earlier that Silvestre scored 200 points fewer than last year. Of the riders that rode with us both this and last year, Valens Ndayisenga (-99), Moise Mugisha (-41), Mektel Eyob (-21), Janvier Hadi (-18) and Souheil Khederi (-13) all decreased their points total, too.

On the other hand, Bonaventure Uwizeyimana (+94) is the big positive surprise of the year. Tesfom Okbamariam (+40) and Houcaine El Sabbahi (+28) made big steps forward, while Joeri Stallaert (+2) and Natnael Tesfatsion (+3) scored almost identical points compared to last year - though on different ends of the spectrum. Alex Mengoulas and Samuele Menicucci were very successful loans, Karl Patrick Lauk did a decent job even if it didn't reflect on the stat sheet. Our stagiaires didn't make much of an impact, while 21 year old Renus Uhiriwe already contributed a few points.

Looking at efficiency metrics, Uwizeyimana is easily our strongest rider in terms of points per wage. Silvestre is also looking well alongside Okbamariam and Angel Madrazo. However, if you factor in the extraordinary transfer fee, Madrazo's value plummets. In total, you really can't say that the investment paid off.

cunego59 wrote:

Well, don't y'all look silly now Welcome to our slightly late season recap!

cunego59 wrote:

Well, don't y'all look silly now Welcome to our slightly late season recap!

Fabianski wrote:
It's a shame that you didn't even achieve the very conservative Top 10 team standings goal. Madrazo should easily be the biggest disappointment in PCT, no clue why he failed so hard so many times. The total score doesn't even look that bad with respect to his wage, but as you say, with the transfer fee factored in, it probably wasn't worth it. Especially not on the longer term.
I agree that the main reason for not even getting close to promotion is lack of depth. The numbers clearly remind me of Xero's scoring structure, whereas Cedevita did pretty much the opposite - no huge scorer, but fantastic depth.

I'm sure you'll come up with a good strategy for the next transfer period, though - and I guess with no goal missed by more than 5 spots, and two win goals achieved, you should have quite some money to play with

redordead wrote:

I would've more than taken our positions at least being swapped

AbhishekLFC wrote:

More silly than others

Shame how it turned out. Madrazo wasn't great and rebuilding the team for him didn't work out as a result. Think you still have a good base to build on for the coming season though Can foresee some changes for sure with major declines. Look forward to see how you approach this.

jandal7 wrote:
Love the name and shaming - we get it all the time for managers who overperform the predictions but good on you for still doing it the other way around Not the season you wanted maybe but this is still such a good base to build for next year (even if as Fabianski has pointed out you didn't get the depth scoring you would have fairly hoped for similar to us).

On the bright side about the Madrazo signing, he massively outscored the alternative in Girmay, so things could have been a lot worse!

cunego59 wrote:
Also, good point on the Madrazo/Girmay comparison. Until Bini takes a win at the Pro Hallstatt Classic, I'll consider myself squarely the winner of that fight

Mresuperstar wrote:

It's only a matter of time... Enjoy it while it lasts.

Nemolito wrote:
I am proud to say that, unlike others, I never really believed in this team.

Jk of course, was really rooting for you. Looking at the win list you would also expect this team to be higher in the rankings. Of course that's a result of the lack of depth, but definitely lack of luck in some races I think as well. I'm glad to see your goals were okay in the end, so you're assured a decent budget probably this season.

I know you hoped to go up this time, and you would have definitely deserved it as well for all your work and activity. Hopefully Stallaert can go crazy one more time in his final year at his prime, and with the 'right' FA's and transfer who knows where you'll end up this year. Already looking forward to how you'll manage the transfer season and what your main targets will be

Always a fun part of the offseason: Checking in with your talents and seeing how they develop. And as a special treat this year, we get to see the first crop of talents signed in our first season reach their maximum potential (... for now). Take a look:

One of our first two Rwandan youngsters we signed in our first year, Moise Mugisha leads the way in our efforts to put Rwandan cycling on firmer ground. He’s a capable puncheur with a big attacking spirit, something he’s shown throughout his three years on the team and which has most recently culminated in winning the mountain jersey at the Tour of Northern Europe - no small feat on PT level. This is what we expect from him going forward - going on the attack, scoring mountain points and perhaps at some point even a win or two.

Samuel Mugisha has often been involved in breakaways, too, and he’ll be encouraged to continue that. He’s now also coming into his own as a solid time trialist and good all around domestique with a big motor on flat roads but also decent ability to go uphill.

Jonas Rutsch has spent the past two years out on loan, but he returns as an elite cobblestone domestique. His great resistance and stamina, combined with his above-average flat and cobbles skills will make him a valuable addition to Joeri Stallaert’s support staff. And let’s not forget that, even if it didn’t look like it for much of the past year or two, this is still a part-German team. Jonas is a foundational piece on which we intend to build upon.

Our talent roster is very diverse in skillsets, as you can see. A puncheur, a time trialist, a cobbles specialist, what’s missing? A fast guy, of course! That’s Houcaine El Sabbahi. He’s lacking the top speed to make him a true contender even on lower levels, but with his excellent supporting stats, he’s an elite leadout man at the very least.

While all of the guys above are exciting, no one is at the talent level of Natnael Tesfatsion. Even now, at age 24, he’s already the best puncheur of the team. Now, that arguably says more about the team than about Natnael, but you get the point: He’s a good rider and he’s only getting better. We’re very excited for his future.

A strong complement to Natnael Tesfatsion, we have another talented Eritrean puncheur in our ranks in Yacob Debesay. He’s not quite the pure puncheur, but with no discernible weaknesses, a good punch and a fighting spirit, we hope he’ll both be an important part of any puncheur squad, and an exciting attacker when allowed to go for himself.

To conclude our talent review section, we have another young gun from Rwanda. Renus Uhiriwe is a talented time trialist, who will become an excellent addition to any team time trialing unit, a solid time trialist in his own right as well as, potentially, a perennial national TT champion.

A less fun part of the offseason: looking at your ageing riders and seeing them decline. This year, we’re hit especially hard as two of our most important riders regress - one for the first time, one for the third already.

With Fabio Silvestre and Angel Madrazo, our all-time leading scorer as well as the biggest name we’ve ever had, who also happened to be our biggest scorer last year, are visited by father time. Both are still capable riders even at their respective ages who we’d be happy to have return, but their output will necessarily decline with their abilities, which doesn’t bode particularly well for the upcoming season.

That being said, looking at this overview, we can generally be very happy. Our talent factory is flourishing and even if some of our leaders may be past their prime, this will only make room for other riders to fill those gaps. We couldn’t be more excited heading into the upcoming transfer season.