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Volta a Portugal Discussion
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 19-10-2023 20:40
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Small Tour Specialist
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Ah yes, fair point.
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| jandal7 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 04:58
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World Champion
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Wonderful to see a rider I've liked for a long time in Galta (will never forget writing reports of his stunning 80km solo TDF stage wins and assault on the GC) get a GC victory  Thanks for the entertaining reports as you always bring UU 
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant."
[ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT]  Xero Racing
5x  x5
2x  x2
2x  x2 |
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| baseballlover312 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 05:00
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Tour de France Champion
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First off, that is an insanely tough gap for Rodrigues. Just barely crossed the threshold for the game to count it I guess. Commisserations to Binance, especially dropping to 4th, but what a battle.
But wow. Unreal for Galta to win his first GC race with leadership for us. I'm just stunned. We were on the front the whole day, putting the pressure on the other contenders and their teams, whittling down the group and chasing down attacks. We burned every domestique we had and sacrificed what little depth scoring we could hope for to do it. But oh, was it worth it. Galta wasn't as amazingly strong as his stage win, but he fought and fought and stayed with the group in the end just enough to claw it out. An energy stat or two ended up being the difference.
We paid big money for Galta, and his performance here has certainly made that feel worthwhile. I contemplated his schedule a ton during planning. Two GT's? Or more of a stage race calendar? In the end, Portugal was the choice. And it was a risk with the PTHC points scale. But we got lucky with both the startlist and the racing. It feels good to have my choice validated with some serious points.
So, Galta wins the overall and ties for the KOM win. 3rd on teams too. And we end up with two stage wins, including a very fun TT win for Lenny. It's February, the season isn't decided in PTHC Portugal. but these are kind of performances we need if we wanna stay up, and we got one.
Thank you Ulrich for the phenomenal reports, as always. Such a treat to read before bed each night.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy |
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| Ad Bot |
Posted on 21-11-2024 23:58
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| roturn |
Posted on 20-10-2023 05:49
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Phenomenal performance by Galta here, all week was the strongest. In addition to Kämna as perfect support and TT winner, it surely was a nice race for BBL. Congrats on that.
Also nice to see ELCO being rewarded with 2nd after all the Greek training/focus while a few riders e.g. Rodriguez unfortunately missed out today by a tiny bit.
A bit surprised that Meintjes wasn't stronger in general but I guess the lack of TT stat wasn't helping him positioning wise neither.
And finally to my team. What a brilliant ride and even overperformance by Cras. Wasn't expecting this not even in C1 but not in PTHC anyway. 3rd on the stage shows that while his mountain is not as strong as others, his backups work well alongside nice support by Vanhoucke and Vansevenant. Both drop a bit but we're still very decent and didn't hang up. It was good to see that after Hong Kong the team played it a lot better without ignoring it swapping leadership from stage to stage. Makes me wonder what Cras could have done in Hong Kong, would have been the much better option there afterwards.
Thanks for the reports. Was a joy to read. |
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| SotD |
Posted on 20-10-2023 06:30
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World Champion
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So close to both stagewin and GC win. Unfortunate!
That being said, 2nd is well above expectations, and some very welcome succes after a horrible start to the season. We need to find a way to perform i. PT races though. We can’t survive from these races.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 07:32
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World Champion
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Very happy with the outcome of this race after all!
Madouas really showed up as the underdog captain that we need after Demare's departure despite getting no love in the off-season, and even got very close to a Top 10 overall against opposition with 4-5 more MO than him.
There certainly was some FL influence on the final day, and his general grit helped out as well to stick with some specialists.
Slight annoyances come from that one late corner hindering a second shot at a stage win and a bad stage 6 keeping us from going for green, but we far exceeded expectations here regardless with over 100 points scored at the quickest of glances.
Congratulations to two of my favorite managers in BBL and SotD, great scoring for both of you!  Lennard winning the TT was fun to see too despite his inattentiveness keeping him from potentially even contesting the overall win from the lead.
Thank you Ulrich for your reports, as always you deliver excellent coverage!
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 07:35
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baseballlover312 wrote:
Thank you Ulrich for the phenomenal reports, as always. Such a treat to read before bed each night.
They were indeed a treat after waking up each morning Thank you UU, and big congrats bbl, what a performance from Galta and, as others have pointed out, from the entire team. Very impressive results by Giannoutsos and Cras, too, outdoing quite a few nominally stronger riders.
Tough break for Rodrigues, but a lucky one for us as that brought Meintjes to the podium. Really great stage win for Louis there to vault him up to third. I was briefly hoping for the GC win when he kept up his gap near the final kilometer, then worried when the gap got closed down quickly, but he had the legs to just barely make it to the line. And the 8 seconds for third place two days ago were indeed the difference to get him to 3rd.
That, plus shared second in the points and shared fourth in the KoM (can someone remind me how that is scored?) makes this the second successful stage race of the year for us. Uwi with solid scoring again in 23rd overall (bit of a shame that Hadi collapsed as bad as he did, could've scored a handful points more otherwise, but that's nitpicking).
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| Ollfardh |
Posted on 20-10-2023 07:50
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I just don't get it. Even on a -5 day Novak shouldn't lose over 3 minutes here. What a disaster.
Changed my sig, this was getting absurd.
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| cio93 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 07:50
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cunego59 wrote:
shared fourth in the KoM (can someone remind me how that is scored?)
Add the points for 4th, 5th and 6th together, divide by three and assign that to each rider.
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| cunego59 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 07:55
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cio93 wrote:
cunego59 wrote:
shared fourth in the KoM (can someone remind me how that is scored?)
Add the points for 4th, 5th and 6th together, divide by three and assign that to each rider.
I thought it was something like that, but wasn't sure. Thanks!
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| Jakstar22 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 08:32
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Interesting that Sakalou was basically useless. I expected a lot more support for Madrazo from him. Madrazo had a strong race until 1-2km to go and unfortunately right when it mattered. Still 10th overall is a good start for him and we had a few top 10 placings on stages to go along with that. A decent start for him in the team and hopefully the support for Madrazo gets better in future races.
Congrats to the winnner and thanks for the amazing reports!
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| Nemolito |
Posted on 20-10-2023 09:39
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Very solid final stage by Aular! Good for him to stay with the top group and finish sixth in GC in the end. Also liking this final stage for Meintjes stage win (congratulations cunego!) and Galta winning it for Carlsberg (congratulations bbl!). Good for Elco to finish second in GC here after a bad season start and great for Fastned's title ambitions that Cras is third here as well
Quispe finishing in the points with the final KoM-standings in PTHC (albeit just one point) is phenomenal, an absolute madman. Can also be content with our time trialists here, although the lack of depth from Osorio and definitely Lopez Nolasco isn't amazing. Still, around 20 pprd here, which is decent for us.
Thanks for all the great reports, Ulrich. A pleasure to read every one of them.
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| roturn |
Posted on 20-10-2023 09:44
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Nemolito wrote:
Very solid final stage by Aular! Good for him to stay with the top group and finish sixth in GC in the end. Also liking this final stage for Meintjes stage win (congratulations cunego!) and Galta winning it for Carlsberg (congratulations bbl!). Good for Elco to finish second in GC here after a bad season start and great for Fastned's title ambitions that Cras is third here as well
Quispe finishing in the points with the final KoM-standings in PTHC (albeit just one point) is phenomenal, an absolute madman. Can also be content with our time trialists here, although the lack of depth from Osorio and definitely Lopez Nolasco isn't amazing. Still, around 20 pprd here, which is decent for us.
Thanks for all the great reports, Ulrich. A pleasure to read every one of them.
Nope, you can take this I guess.
Top5 is all I want.
With Vansevenant not being a scorer at all this year I assume, the title is gone.
Would need close to perfect seasons by Groenewegen/Olivier/Hooydonck to stand a chance to take the title alongside Cras continueing like here. |
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| alexkr00 |
Posted on 20-10-2023 09:48
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Good thing we got that stage win with Van der Kooij since we were so invisible in the last stages. It wouldn't have come to anything in the end, but it would have been nice to try to get in the breakaways especially since we had negative GC aspirations.
Thank you for the reports and congrats on quite a huge race for you, bbl. I'm starting to get nervous seeing relegation opponents doing so well
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| whitejersey |
Posted on 20-10-2023 10:01
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Currently out of the country for work so sorry for not being too active in the stages themselves, but thanks for the reports and I am very happy with a 7th from Monsalve! Also huge race for SotD. Fun race to follow! Congrats to bbl on the win!
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| ember |
Posted on 20-10-2023 10:12
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Thank you for another nice report, UU! Very exciting finish of the race and the GC.
What a race that was for Carlsberg! Sensational stuff, really happy for bbl. Congratulations! Also a brilliant race for ELCO, which they must relish after a poor Qatar and Tasmania.
For us, I definitely need to take notes and give up on this race for rider types like Amezawa. The AI just doesn't allow such riders to fight for the GC with aggressive racing on the hills. With a similar setup next year, we'll probably go pure stage hunting here, not bringing any GC ambitions to the race. Nice to see Mohoric go in the breakaway, and then also be smart enough to secure some sprint points to get the jersey.
The prologue win for Kragh was also very nice, but all in all, I'm slightly disappointed seeing the lack of results and aggressive racing we did here. After all I thought we brought a team for exactly that. We try again later! |
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| Fabianski |
Posted on 20-10-2023 12:16
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Congrats to Bralirwa for winning the final day - alongside 3rd place in the GC, Meintjes definitely had a great start on his new team!
Congrats to Carlsberg as well for some great stage results - and obviously the GC win! Given that I was after both Galta and Meintjes during transfers, seeing both of them on the podium somewhat hurts, but still tells me that I don't have the worst feeling for what riders could be good 
PCT teams generally did well here, with LPH and Fastned also getting some great GC results - and after all I guess I should've skipped band 1 despite all RP reasons and gone for band 6 instead - Stüssi might have been one of the main favorites actually with his 75TT (not even mentioning that Arenberg and Franceville would've been great fits as well, looking at it post-transfers).
Thanks for the entertaining reports, UU, great work as always!
Just like ember, I'm however disappointed by the AI on the hilly stages; the puncheurs just aren't able to get some serious gaps anymore in the last couple of versions...
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| roturn |
Posted on 20-10-2023 12:36
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Fabianski wrote:
Just like ember, I'm however disappointed by the AI on the hilly stages; the puncheurs just aren't able to get some serious gaps anymore in the last couple of versions...
While it is not too different in RL where good time trialists are more and more dominant in formerly puncheur events as well, I think for the MG we must consider "changing" the stage race hill stages to force gaps. e.g. not really using the profiles are right now like real life hill stages, but more like the big hill classic stages, e.g. LBL as stage race options as well.
Otherwise I think the puncheurs won`t stand a chance whenever a TT, mountain stage etc. is as they are the only terrain not being able to gain time.
In RL though the same riders are winning every race nowadays and those are mainly climbers that also win GTs. The pure hill specialist as e.g. Gilbert is no longer out there. |
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| Bikex |
Posted on 20-10-2023 17:14
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Wow my team dropping back to support a 67 MO rider. This is probably the most stupid AI I’ve seen in a while.
Thanks for the reports UU and congrats to those who did well! |
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| DubbelDekker |
Posted on 20-10-2023 18:48
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Congrats on the nice Galta win bbl! Well done
Strong final stage by Senni. Still finishing top 15 GC despite the stage 6 split is a solid achievement. Also decent bounceback by Leknessund with a top 25 GC and second in the young rider category. We leave slightly disappointed but also optimistic for the future.
Thanks for the great reports UU
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