Along with the rest of the cycling world, we have been deeply saddened by the passing of Tijl De Decker five days ago following a training accident. Even if his presence in the ManGame and with our team is just the tiniest aspect in all of this, we would like to extend our condolences to his family, his loved ones and everyone else affected by this tragedy.


In consultation with the MGUCI, we've agreed that Tijl will no longer be part of the game. The roster spot, including skill points, wages and all that comes with it, will instead be filled by Jago Willems. Even if he wasn't originally intended to enter the ManGame, and despite the circumstances which have changed that, we welcome Jago to the team with open arms and hopes of a long future together.

Tijl's memory will live on in many people's minds and hearts for a long time. And, insignificant as it might be in the grand scheme of things, so too will it in this little corner of the internet.

redordead wrote:
You should be more than safe this season, but with the ages of your leaders you'll probably need to add some new ones again next year.

I didn't pay any attention to talents this year (PT sucks ), but it seems like everyone got some really good riders

TheManxMissile wrote:
Van Eetvelt is a steal at 200k imo. Not quite the total overhaul I thought was coming, but the talents are in, relegation is far far behind you. All very settled and positive.

Laurens147 wrote:
I'm jealous of your new pool of talent I've looked at all 4 of them, but I couldn't join the bidding war.

Like always a cool combination of African talent with foreign leaders. And now with Meintjes as GC leader it looks even better All the best!

Fabianski wrote:
Meintjes is a perfect fit for you, although I'd obviously have preferred getting him myself
Picking up Habimana was a given as well, I didn't even bother bidding against you there. Van Eetvelt obviously is fantastic, even though I didn't expect you to be going for him

Overall, I think you don't have to worry about relegation. Stallaert and Meintjes should bring you close to safety already, and you've got enough depth riders to secure the missing points. From nothing to a solid TTT core is impressive as well, should be pretty valuable! And we shouldn't forget about Silvestre, despite his first decline. In any case, looking forward to be racing against you again

cunego59 wrote:
Didn't love that interjection in the Meintjes transfer, but you can't blame someone for trying

Fabianski wrote:

Yeah, sorry for that. I don't usually hijack deal threads, but I was already talking to jph about Meintjes - and just as I told him I'd go for 1.4m, he had put up the thread some seconds before. Otherwise I guess he'd have opened the thread with 1.5m right away

Looking forward to some Stallaert vs. Theuns battles, hopefully not always with the better end for the former

Plans can often change, but these won't: After much deliberation, we have the 2023 PCT Season for Barlirwa - Stevens all mapped out. Getting all of our preferred bands in the PTHC and HC categories as well as our favorite C2 races, we have no excuses to not perform well.

In addition, we have also received entry to six PT races via wild cards. While those will be used for development purposes for our youngsters, we also bring our leaders to challenge the PT teams. Fabio Silvestre leads us at the Tour of Qatar for the second year in a row, and in sprint stages at Paris - Nice, where Louis Meintjes will compete in the GC. Louis is also in contention at the GP Liechtenstein, while Joeri Stallaert will get a chance to prove himself at the highest level at Strada Appia Antica, Macskako Kerekparverseny and the E3 Prijs.

Have a look at our full calendar (shoutout to Fabianski for the assist):

One fact that we're especially happy with is that we compete in every single African race on the entire MGUCI calendar, from the Franceville Classique in PTHC down to the Tour du Faso in C2. That also includes a debut at the Tour of South Africa, which is certainly fitting, given our new team leader.

One African race also made it to our season goals:

We're all in for Joeri Stallaert here, unsurprisingly perhaps. He has won both Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne twice in a row, so we hope he can do it again. He also finished 2nd and 1st in Franceville these last two years, although the race is different this year. Finally, we're making our team debut at the Rheden GP, but Joeri is no stranger to this race: He won it in 2015 and came 6th in 2020, still riding for Volvo.

Given that we didn't know how big a rebuild we might be heading into prior to transfers, we went conservatively with our team standings goal. Top 15 is hopefully achievable and we'll consider the season a success if we make it.

Our leaders' schedules will be discussed soon, otherwise this post will get way too long. Stay tuned!

Fabianski wrote:
I see, PCT really is a crowded division
Obviously lots of Stallaert vs. Theuns clashes incoming (I can see why you don't like the latter's arrival in PCT, but Stallaert should still be easily superior in most races ), unfortunately not in Franceville which should make quite a big scoring difference.

It's also a lot of TTT clashes, which I'm not as happy about as last year Will be interesting to see who you're sending to those races, but I guess my climbers will mostly be no match to Meintjes. Curious to find out if (or rather: how often) you use him in hilly races! I can't really imagine you using Izagirre as your main puncheur tbh...

Btw, KBK is C1, not HC as stated in the goals section
When speaking of goals, you obviously have the perfect rider to achieve them. All of them look pretty realistic, although especially the win goal obviously always requires some luck. Team standings might be too conservative with this team, but better take those points than narrowly miss out on a higher goal

redordead wrote:
I approve of those wildcards for the cobbled races. Go go Stallaert!!

I don't feel quite the same about Qatar, Paris-Nice and Liechtenstein

It's time to wrap up the off-season with one of the more anticipated posts: presenting the schedules of our leaders. We're going to take a look at four riders in particular: Our two returning leaders, Joeri Stallaert and Fabio Silvestre, and two of our new signing, Ion Izagirre and of course, most importantly, Louis Meintjes. But let's start with the former two, out of habit:

No big surprises for the most part here: Joeri takes on every cobbled race available, leaving only Battenkill and Cheshire on the table because of PTHC band choices. In addition, he's our sprinter at the Lisbon Classic, the Tour of Eritrea and the Tour du Maroc, while supporting Fabio Silvestre in our Wild Card race in Qatar and at the Torshavn GP.

When Fabio was a focal point of our season planning in the past two years, we tried to attend as many sprinter-favored races as possible. After his first decline, our priorities shifted and it shows in his and our calendar. The number of sprint classics is down to 5 from last year's 9, similarly the Tour of Guadeloupe is the only pure sprinting stage race, compared to 3 of those last year.

More race days are now spent in stage races where he won't be able to go for the GC, but hopefully still perform well, even with the occasional chance for a yellow jersey on day one. This includes PTHC stage races in Lithuania, Slovenia and Germany, as well as in Romandie, Norway, Gabon and the UAE at HC/C1 level. Those combine for 17 sprint stages, so hopefully enough opportunities for Fabio to score valuable points.

This wasn't an easy selection to make. With his strong puncheur qualities, Louis would have been a good fit for a whole bunch of races, but his race days, unfortunately, are limited. Ultimately, we tried to select races that gave him a chance to exploit his punch versus the other strong climbers in the division and avoided long, flat ITTs as much as possible. This excluded races like the Tour of Andorra or the Tour of California and lead to the schedule above.

The Tour de Pologne is the only pure puncheur race on it, as it's been kind to strong puncheur-climbers before. The Tour of South Africa as well as the Balkans International were certainly considerations, but ultimately we decided profiles such as Romandie (with our hopefully solid TTT setup) and Maroc (with actual mountains but punchy finishes) suit him the best. Japan might be the most questionable choice, but concerns about how the game treats him in a race where pure puncheurs are the favorites on paper ultimately played a role, too.

Ion is the big unknown in our calculations of what to expect from this season. The scoring potential of puncheurs who can time trial well is huge in PCT, but his atrocious speed and mid backup stats call into question how good of a puncheur Ion actually is. That will determine if races like Hong Kong, Pais Vasco, South Africa, Norway, Slovenia and Britain can be as good as we think might be possible, or if they are just a string of disappointments.

The same goes for the pure puncheur races, although our expectations are simply much lower there. In those, which include the classics plus Balkans International, we'll have Valens Ndayisenga and Natnael Tesaftsion as punchier options, too. Ion will ride a bunch more races, especially those with TTTs, but these are the ones he'll lead us in.

These are the races where none of the above are our leaders. Those include first our C2 schedule. Matthew Teggart will lead us in the GP Herning and the Tour du Faso, the latter alongside Tesfom Okbamariam (we made a bit of an error in overlooking the clash of GP Herning with Le Samyn, so Tesfom will be helping Joeri for the latter), and we have 4 74-75 time trialists eligible for Monterrey, hopefully scoring us some points alongside our youngsters.

La Tropicale Amissa Bongo, the Arab Tour and the Deutschland Tour will be decided on time trials, which means our leaders will be Nils Politt and Carlos Verona. We can't expect any top results, but hopefully some depth points - same for the Isle of Man TTT. In Arenberg, Darren Young should be able to score a few points, too.

Finally, the Tour of California and the Tour d'Andorra are the two mountaineous stage races on our schedule without Louis. In Andorra, we hope for some aggressive KoM and stage hunting by Valens Ndayisenga and Mektel Eyob. Meanwhile, Bonaventure Uwizeyimana can hopefully compete for an okay GC rank in California thanks to his all-around decent skillset in mountains, hills and time trials.

Finally finally, we should note that Natnael Tesfatsion is a Top-10-ish young puncheur in CT and PCT. Depending on his rivals' schedules and a bit of luck, we're hoping for some U25 points in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, the Tour of South Africa, the Tour de Pologne and potentially, though less likely, even in Eritrea or the Balkans International.

Fabianski wrote:
It looks like we clash a lot. At least with two of your leaders.
Stallaert was pretty obvious - there just aren't enough cobbled races to avoid the other cobblers of the division, unlike in mountains or hills. Whereas I guess Stallaert will mostly beat Theuns - and therefore clearly outscore him - I still hope we can be successful in a couple of races

Fabianski wrote:
Silvestre obviously is in many races we participate as well, but whereas he should easily defeat Page, I hope Bol can beat him from time to time. Silvestre doesn't look great energy-wise, but in all previous PCM versions I feel like this could be ignored, at least for sprinters. It has to be the same for him in PCM22 to still be successful, we'll see how that goes.

Fabianski wrote:
For Meintjes, the only race I'd have liked to avoid him is Romandie In all the others, we shouldn't have any podium chances anyway, but where there's a TTT, I'm a bit more hopeful. He will be a fun rider to watch anyway, though
And it looks like we'll have Izagirre in pretty much all of our hilly races, plus the TT ones - his OVL (and hence his numbers of RDs) is actually a joke for a 79 puncheur, especially given that backup stats really weren't that important in PCM20. If that's still the same, he could be a big scorer for you - but if energy stats or acceleration somewhat matter, that could also be 170k thrown away. And it might be the difference between promotion and "just" staying for you.

Looking forward to racing against you again, will hopefully be a fun season for both of us

cunego59 wrote:
Theuns easily should have the upper hand in Kigali, Dunkerque, Benelux at the very least, while only being at a small disadvantage in the flat races (if at all), so I'm way less sure about Stallaert outscoring, but we'll see Wouldn't mind your prediction coming true, of course ...

cunego59 wrote:
Honestly, I think Page has a decent shot at beating Silvestre regularly, too. But all three are somewhat close, so it might be a classic sprint coin flip most of the time Overall, you're obviously in a nice position with those two sprinters, being able to divide the schedule nicely between them.

cunego59 wrote:
I think in addition to Romandie, Japan is the obvious race where Stüssi should have the upper hand over Meintjes with his TT skills. Which really only leaves Hallstatt (and Paris-Nice) as head-to-heads, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if Stüssi comes out ahead in those That also indicates to me that I did a decent job of avoiding the ITT-heavy stage races

cunego59 wrote:
I think at 170k, Izagirre is an okay bet from a value standpoint. That amount typically shouldn't sink a season on its own. Then again, as I've said before, in my estimation Izagirre working or not is more the difference between staying comfortably and fighting relegation, which I could well see us do if those 170k are indeed thrown away. But Izagirre, like Madrazo last year, is simply a rider the likes of which we haven't had on the team before and that'll ideally make us competitive in races we weren't able to really target before. So yeah, hopefully a fun season is ahead

cunego59 wrote:
Not sure Silvestre is much of a thread in Qatar anymore

The season is about to start and the plan for our HQ presence is to preview and recap each month as the year progresses. There have been issues with consistency here, that's undeniable, so let's cautiously start and see how it goes.

Anyway, it's going to be a simple look at the race profiles, the teams we're sending there and our expectations. In January, Bralirwa participates in three races, though one of them is a wild card race with no points on the line. The other two could well provide some good insights into the team's strength going forward.

The Down Under Classic will always have a special place in our team's history. Two years ago, Fabio Silvestre started off our first PCT season with a win, setting us on a path that would eventually lead us to very solid Top 10 finish in the team standings. Fabio followed that up with a decent sixth place last year, but now aged 33, the expectations are more limited.

That said, with many of the top PCT sprinters present, we might get a decent picture of how competitive Fabio still is. He has the tools to still crack the Top 10 on a good day, but the variance and negative outliers will increase. We will be happy with a Top 10 result here, anything outside of the Top 15 still has to be considered a disappointment even with Fabio's decline.

Unsurprisingly, we don't bring a leadout, but Tesfom Okbamariam and new signing Matthew Teggart should provide enough support to keep Fabio in a decent position and well supported throughout the race. Speaking of new signings, all four of our neo-pros make their debut here.

For the second year in a row, we enter the Tour of Qatar as a wild card team. It's a fairly straightforward setup: Joeri Stallaert joins Fabio Silvestre as they try to get a result or two from the sprints, while all three of Fabio, Nils Politt and Carlos Verona try their luck in the prologue lottery on the concluding day. Everyone else is just along for the ride (and the XP).

While the Down Under Classic might be a decent measuring stick for Fabio Silvestre going forward, the same is certainly true for the Hong Kong Challenge and Ion Izagirre. On paper, this is a great race for him: two hilly stages and a decently long time trial. If he performs here, that might be a good sign for similar races over the course of the rest of the season. If he doesn't, we might have a problem. Although, to be fair, stage 3 is almost more of a mountain finish.

With that in mind, Ion is not our only potential scorer here. Bonaventure Uwizeyimana finished 4th here last year with his good climbing/TT combination. With Mektel Eyob and Moise Mugisha, we have two riders suited to go on the hunt for the mountain classification. And both Nils Politt and Carlos Verona could do decently well in the ITT. Our best case scenario is a repeat of last year's Top 5 finish with another rider in the Top 15, and anything that comes close to that will be a solid result that we'd be happy with.

Three races, one of which was a wild card race. Of the two we could score some points in, one was a major disappointment, but the second turned out quite well:

Fabio Silvestre finished first and sixth here to start the season in the last two years. We didn't expect a repeat given his first regression, but we expected at least something. Instead, Fabio finished 29th. No points on the first day, not a great start.

After the disappointment in Australia, Fabio Silvestre had the opportunity to redeem himself in Qatar, an early season sprinters' festival. Against mostly PT competition though, we didn't expect too much. And it didn't start very promising, either: 17th and 16th places on stages one and two weren't spreading much optimism.

But then, things started to improve. 9th on stage three was followed by 4th and 6th places, and making use of his decent TT skills in the epilogue, Fabio even ended up in 9th overall! While no points came of it, this was an important confidence booster going forward.

We came to Hong Kong with mixed expectations. Bonaventure Uwizeyimana returned after a 4th place last year, and on paper, a time trial and two hill stages are perfect for new signing Ion Izagirre. At the same time, the competition was fierce and we weren't sure how Ion would do on a longer climb like on the final day.

The race started okay with both Ion and Uwi, as well as Mektel Eyob placing in the main group on stage one, while Moise Mugisha joined the breakaway and placed third in the mountain classification - a position he would hold until the end of the race. The time trial wasn't ideal, though: Nils Politt scored a single point in 8th place, while Ion and Uwi weren't on their greatest legs. Still, they entered stage three in 9th and 11th in the GC, respectively.

The decisive final stage then turned out about as good as could reasonably expected. Uwizeyimana finished 6th in the first group behind stage (and GC) winner Brandon McNulty, moving up to 8th in the GC, while Izagirre hung on in the second group, ending up 19th and defending his 9th place overall. Mektel Eyob also somehow found his way into the scoring positions, and the team finished third in the team classification, rounding out a nice race with a total of 80 points.

The season really kicks into gear in February as we enter six races and both of our main leaders have their first days on the road.

As mentioned above, this is the first showing of Louis Meintjes in Bralirwa colors. He's targeting at least the Top 5 in the GC, hoping to capitalize on three hill stages with his great puncheur skillset. He has an excellent supporting cast with Ndayisenga, Tesfatsion and Uwizeyima, while Nils Politt and Carlos Verona target the two time trials. It's only the two sprint stages that we don't have any rider for, but perhaps we can get someone in the breakaway there.

This is really rather straightforward. Joeri Stallaert won this race twice in a row and we're going for the threepeat. It's a win goal, too. Edward Theuns' arrival in the division might complicate things, but at least Joeri gets all the support we can give him. New signing Matthew Teggart has his first major test here, and it's also Jean Eric Habimana's debut on cobbles.

Matthew Teggart gets his second chance to shine in Denmark, leading a young team onto the cobbles of Herning. He should have a decent chance at a good result, too. Unfortunately, he can't be joined by Tesfom Okbamariam because of an error in planning ...

... as we overlooked the clash of the GP Herning and Le Samyn, so Tesfom is needed here in support of Joeri Stallaert. Joeri had one of his few disappointments last year when he finished "only" 9th, something we want to improve on. Okbamariam and Darren Young hopefully still provide him with all the help he might need.

Our second wild card race of the year takes us to beautiful France for Paris - Nice. Louis Meintjes leads us to bug the PT teams. It'll be interesting to see if all those hilly stages will be selective enough to overcome the time trialing limitations that Louis likely has compared to the top PT stage racers, but if they are, he could do some real damage here. And if not, maybe Ion Izagirre can become a secondary GC option. Fabio Silvestre joins them to compete in the three sprint stages, we'll see how that goes.

To conclude the month, Joeri has his third chance at a great result. Like OHN, Joeri has won this race twice in a row, and again this is a win goal for that reason. We bring our usual cobbles setup and hope for the best!