Fabianski wrote:
As expected, I don't like Joeri's schedule
He should be the big favorite in any HC/C1 race he enters, so his chances for three-peats in Omloop and KBK are definitely not small. Although I do hope that Theuns will stop his streak in at least one of them

Portugal could be another really good race for you, with the startlist being maybe the weakest ever, and Meintjes liking all those hills (and few TT kilometers). And joining you in Paris - Nice for a PT wildcard race will hopefully be a cool experience as well, even though Meintjes will probably leave Stüssi in the dust

We're a bit behind schedule as April racing has already started, but we'll take it a step at a time - here's a look back at our races in February.

The Volta a Portugal was our first PTHC race this year and the debut of Louis Meintjes in Bralirwa colors. The race started slowly for us - after an unremarkable first four days, it was actually Valens Ndaysienga scoring our first point with an 8th place on day five. But a day later, Louis made his first mark: He finished third on the hilltop finish, securing some valuable bonus seconds.

A time trial on stage 7 saw Nils Politt in 5th place, while Meintjes had a mixed day, entering the final mountain stage in 8th overall, 29 seconds behind GC leader Joao Rodrigues. But that's not where he'd end up: On a phenomenal day, Louis won the stage and jumped all the way up to third overall! What a first impression to leave.

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad has been very good to us, with Joeri Stallaert winning both previous editions. It is thus not surprising that this one was a win goal for us.

Alas, this year, he couldn't quite pull it off. Indeed, as it would turn out over the next weeks, a new nemesis emerged for the first time here, as it was Jura GIANTS' Edward Theuns, who broke off a group of three from the peloton and beat his two companions to win the race. Joeri was left to sprint for 4th place, a sprint he duly won. A missed goal, but still a decent result.

The first of our three C2 outings the year, the first of two cobblestone races. Matthew Teggart got a chance to shine as a leader and ... he actually did really well! Keeping himself near the front at all times, he even attacked with around 10 kilometers to go and held a gap for a while until being brought back 5 kilometers later.

Yet he still had the energy to finish 5th in the sprint to the finish, a very satisfactory outcome. Jean-Eric Habimana also has the best result of his young career, even if he just misses the points in 28th place.

Following OHN, Joeri Stallaert remained in Belgium for another HC classic: Le Samyn. He had also won this race before, but in 2019, still riding for Volvo. Last year, he had one of his few disappointments, finishing 9th. He wanted to do better - and he did. While once again not being able to stop Edward Theuns, who won his second race in a row, Joeri finished 3rd in a tense sprint. No win yet, but very consistent so far ...

Before Joeri would get his third chance of the month, the team took on our second PT Wild Card stage race of the season in France. Fabio Silvestre started the race on a high note with a 5th and a 2nd place, respectively, on the first two stages - and he would go on to score another 2nd place later on. Then, Ion Izagirre emerged as our GC leader on day 4, when Louis Meintjes decided to sit back and lost quite a bit of time.

Was that a great decision? Perhaps not. After a middling time trial, Ion went into the decisive final two stages in 7th overall, but dropped all the way to 17th by the end, Louis 3 places further behind. But we weren't here for the points, anyway (though Fabio would have delivered quite a few, actually!). That being said, it was slightly disappointing that we only joined a single breakaway all race long.

Like I said, Joeri Stallaert had one more race this month. Like OHN before, he had won Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne two times in a row. Like OHN, this was a win goal for us. But after a 4th and a 3rd place, surely this had to be a 2nd place finish?

Actually, no! Three times was the charme, and doubly so as Joeri actually pulled off the threepeat! In a slightly surprising, but ultimately excellent move, he attacked with some 15 kilometers to go alongside Nathan Van Hooydonck and Lukas Spengler, taking the Belgian with him all the way to the line and beating him easily in a 1 v 1 sprint. A terrific ending to a terrific month that included a stage win, a one-day win and no less than 4 further Top 5 GC results.

AbhishekLFC wrote:
3rd, 4th, 5th, 3rd, (2 x Top 20 in wildcard), Win...that's some month!

We continue to deliver these reviews behind schedule, but we keep trucking on. Here then comes the review of March, our busiest month of the year by number of races with nine - though three of them are wild card PT races.

We beefed up our time trialing squad this off-season, mostly with an eye on stage races but we also signed up for two TTT classics and the Isle of Man TTT was the first of the two. We're still not one of the elite time trialing units of the division, but with 15 teams on the startlist, points were already guaranteed, and it was only about how many of them we could bring home. In the end, we ended on a very respectable 6th place, a result we were very happy with.

In the Basque Country, we continued where we left off and started with a team time trial. And we got off on the right foot, finishing third on the day. A day later, Janvier Hadi and Natnael Tesfatsion scored some points by finishing 4th and 5th in a bunch sprint following some hills. But it was stage 3 where the fun really began.

On a very tough profile, Ion Izagirre managed to just about stay with the main group of 14, vaulting himself into 2nd place in the GC off the back of our TTT performance. In the individual time trial a day later, he took over yellow! Our eyes widened as we began to dream of a big coup ... but the dream was over quickly. Stage 5 proved too tough for Ion, and he dropped to 10th overall.

Surprisingly, though, Janvier Hadi had a fantastic day, staying with some of the top riders and moving into 5th overall in the GC. And both of our riders would only lose one more spot on the final day. With Bonaventure Uwizeyimana grinding his way to 20th, it was a great overall team performance.

In contrast to prior years, and due to Fabio Silvestre's decline, we didn't prioritize sprinter stage races anymore this season - in fact, the Tour of Guadeloupe is the only one. And it showed us that the decision was justified. After a promising 5th place on the first stage, 3 finishes outside of the Top 10 followed, leaving Fabio in 11th overall.

Hill classics still aren't our strong suit and every decent result is a happy surprise. And so it was in Italy when Valens Ndayisenga finished 12th on the white roads, and Mektel Eyob added even more points in 22nd place. And on top, youngster Lennert Van Eetvelt had his first notable showing, joining the breakaway and only just missing out on points in 33rd place. About as good as we can hope for in these races!

Our first wild card race of the month was the Strada Appia Antica, a cobblestone race and thus a job for Joeri Stallaert. It's a hilly race, too, though, so not his ideal playing ground, and against elite opposition, he couldn't compete for the win. Still, he aquitted himself decently well and finished 13th.

Sometimes, you enter a race with high expectations are are disappointed. Sometimes, you expect little and are pleasantly surprised by a mild overperformance. And then there's this. Our man Ion Izagirre justified his hefty price tag with this race alone, there's no doubt about it.

But how did we get here? Well, after three mildly challenging stages, Ion Izagirre hadn't lost any time on any of the top favorites. And then, we once again pulled through with a great 3rd place in the following TTT. Thanks to some fortunate (for us) gaffes by other GC contenders, Ion found himself in yellow for the second time this month. And this time, he wouldn't give it up!

With a huge effort (and some, again fortunate, time gap judgments), he just barely hung on to the first group on the very tough fifth stage. And the final day was simply not selective enough for him to be in any real danger. Believe it or not, despite having a full year of Angel Madrazo, this is only our second stage race GC win, the first being Fabio Silvestre's triumph in Juarez two years ago. What a moment!

The rest of the month was all Joeri Stallaert. First, he once again took a shot at PT racing in Hungary. And it was his first big dud of the year - luckily in a race where it didn't matter at all. After a longshot attack with over 70 kilometers to go, he cratered and finished outside of the Top 30.

The E3 Prijs is more familiar terrain, in fact Joeri Stallaert finished 3rd here for us two years ago. The race was in the HC category back then though and it would've been too much to ask for him to repeat it now in a PT race. Still, he did much better, cracking the Top 10 and finishing 9th.

Back from PT and in the slightly more manageable world of PCT/CT racing, Joeri Stallaert ended the month on another high note. Despite trying to force the issue with an ultimately unsuccessful attack inside the final 10 kilometers, Joeri had enough strength left to go head to head with Edward Theuns in the final sprint. And while he lost that one, he outdid everyone else to celebrate second place, another piece in his tremendously consistent run of results in this spring campaign.

redordead wrote:

Stallaert not having as good of a season as last couple of years, but the team is doing better overall?

Somewhat reminds me of my team last year.

Almost up to speed now! With May racing underway, we bring you a recap of what we did in April. Seven races, including our final PT wild card, our second C2 race and, while overall results were again very solid, also our first zero pointer of the season!

Following the GP Herning, we again chose cobbles for our second C2 race of the season. Again, our leader was Matthew Teggart, and again, he did very well. Hanging on to the front group during both cobble stages, he finished 5th in the GC. Tesfom Okbamariam was very active with multiple attacks on the final stage, and despite those being unsuccessful, he still contributed a couple of points in 16th overall. Meanwhile, Jean Eric Habimana continues his solid rookie season with a breakaway appearance on day one and second place in the U25 classification.

Having finished 3rd in the Volta a Portugal in February, the Tour de Pologne was Louis Meintjes' second stage race of the year (other than wild card Paris - Nice). It was a tough field, but with many stages favoring punchy climbers, the route suited him very well and so a repeat of a podium finish was the goal. And Louis delivered. On stage 2, he was the closest behind dominator Joseph Areruya, earning valuable bonus seconds, and then he repeated the same feat on stage 6.

He didn't do anything extraordinary on the other two hilly stages, but he didn't need to. In combination with a decent prologue, it was enough to claim second place in the GC, the best case outcome in any competition that features Areruya in PCT this year. Mektel Eyob, Valens Ndayisenga and Natnael Tesfatsion all added some GC depth points to make this another very successful affair. Finally, shoutout to former Bralirwa talent Houcaine El Sabbahi, who scored a second place finish from a bunch sprint on day 4.

Louis Meintjes had another chance to prove himself this month in our final PT Wild Card race, the GP Liechtenstein. Without much fanfare, he hung on with the favorites as long as he could and ended up on a very solid 10th place. Mektel Eyob and Valens Ndayisenga continued their good run as well, both finishing in the Top 40.

Back to races that matter, points-wise, but still against PT competition, Joeri Stallaert competed in the first of his 3 PTHC cobbles races, Roma Maxima. He played his cards well, with one brief attack inside the final 20 kilometers his only flashy move, and steadily made his way to 5th place behind some of the best cobblestone riders in the world (and Ivan Siric). Another puzzle piece in an extraordinarily consistent cobbles campaign.

Last month, we did surprisingly well at Strade Bianche, one of the three hill classics we're forced to participate in due to our HC bands. At the second one, the GP Wallonie, we were less lucky. Lennert Van Eetvelt participated in the breakaway and that was really the only good thing that came of this race, as Valens Ndayisenga was our best finisher in 57th place. Still, having our first pointless race over a third into the season is pretty solid, I'd say.

Two flat one day races conclude our month, a type of race we haven't seen much success lately. And while we didn't do anything super eye-popping, we exceeded our internal expectations both times. First, Fabio Silvestre was called upon in the Netherlands. At the peak of his powers, he finished 5th here two years ago and in the messy final few kilometers, he came as close to that as he was all year.

In fact, he turned out to finish as the 5th best sprinter. Unfortunately, the race ultimately went to a group of four late attackers, so Fabio ended up in 9th place. Still, on the PTHC points scale, that's nothing to sneeze at.

On the same day, Joeri Stallaert was in Portugal to compete in the Lisbon Classic. In an odd sprint that got going extremely late, he did about as well as could reasonably expected, beating out some nominally stronger sprinters to finish 6th.

Given that the April Ranking Update is actually the most recent one, it finally makes sense to have a look at this, too, next to the race results. And folks, it's not looking half bad.

Pos	Last		Team	Total	RD	PpRD	Proj
1	3		Fastned	1540	72	21.39	3487
2	1		Jura GIANTS	1493	66	22.62	3687
3	4		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	1437	61	23.56	3840
4	2		Los Pollos Hermanos	1364	64	21.31	3474
5	8		Assa Abloy	1353	57	23.74	3870
6	9		Lampre - Pinarello	1080	66	16.36	2667
7	5		Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska	1046	69	15.16	2471
8	12		Indosat Ooredoo	986	58	17	2771
9	6		Tryg - Gobyk	971	61	15.92	2595
10	10		Sony - Force India	923	65	14.2	2315

We're sitting in third place with the second highest PpRD of the division! Now, we've always started the season off strong thanks to the spring cobblestone classics, and again we rely in large part on three team leaders, with Joeri Stallaert, Louis Meintjes and Ion Izagirre currently in 6th, 10th, and 18th, respectively, of the individual rankings. So far, so familiar.

The unusual thing is that all of our leaders, and especially Stallaert and Meintjes, who can be expected to score at least somewhat consistently, still have quite a lot of races left on their schedule. For Stallaert, that includes his 3rd place in Dunkerque, PTHC races in Franceville and Rheden, as well as the Benelux Tour and the GP Kigali. Meintjes, meanwhile, will race in Romandie, Hallstatt, Eritrea, Morocco and Japan, all of which are potential sources of significant points.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Our ranking position also rests heavily on depth scoring at a scale we've never had - which is great, but also partly stems from some surprising overperformances that we can't count on to continue throughout the rest of the season. We've tailed off pretty hard in the second part of the year twice in a row, so we certainly won't get carried away. Still, given that we entered the season with an eye much more towards the bottom of the table rather than the top, this has been fantastic so far.

Some catching up to do again with these recaps, but here we are, first with the month of May. Just four races, but once again with some pretty strong results among them. A ranking update will come in the next few days following the June and July recaps.

We started off in Switzerland for Louis Meintjes' third (excluding wild cards) stage race of the year. We had high ambitions and supported them in the opening team time trial, finishing second behind Jura GIANTS. Louis then held up his end of the bargain, finishing second on the first hilly stage, and while he did lose some time in the mountains on day four and the following time trial, it was ultimately enough for 4th place overall. Not the perfect result, but certainly not bad in a strong start list.

Meanwhile, Fabio Silvestre was our guy for the 2 sprint stages, finishing 6th on stage 2 and then 2nd from the field on the final day ... unfortunately behind six breakaway riders. No depth scoring from someone like Bonaventure Uwizeyimana was a bit disappointing, but overall this was still a decently successful race.

PTHC without Joeri Stallaert or Louis Meintjes are always tricky propositions, and nothing else was the case in Lithuania. Fabio Silvestre opened the race for us with a 7th place in the sprint, but was distanced in a split the day after. We actually did pretty well in the team time trial on day three, losing just 17 seconds, but our squad wasn't strong enough to convert that to any meaningful GC positions on the final hilly stage.

Bonaventure Uwizeyimana and Janvier Hadi just managed to slip into the Top 50, and with two more riders in the Top 100, we scored a handful of depth points, but nothing extraordinary.

Joeri Stallaert was back in action soon enough, though. The hills of Dunkerque don't suit him on paper, but he's been consistently good here, with podium places in both previous editions including winning it in 2021. And he kept that streak alive, finishing third just like he did last year.

Matthew Teggart added one more point in 25th, one place ahead of youngster Jean Eric Habimana, who had his best one day race yet. Despite also contributing no points, Tesfom Okbamariam rounded out a nice team result in 30th place.

With three flat stages, a time trial and a hilly stage, the Tour of Norway was a race with a wide range of possibilities for us. We've had GC success in these types of races before, and we've been entirely anonymous, and we've done well here and there in sprints and we've failed hard. In Norway, everything came together in virtually the best way possible.

Fabio Silvestre finished 5th on day one, but then followed it up with his first and only our second stage win of the year! In a super close sprint, he somehow gained the upper hand to provide us with our first amazing highlight. Not only did he get to wear yellow for a day - adding a 4th place on the final stage, he would also end up winning the points classification, our first classification win of the season and only the second in the last two years.

But that wasn't all. In the time trial, Bonaventure Uwizeyimana surprisingly was our strongest finisher ahead of Nils Politt and Carlos Verona, and with a great fifth place on the following day, he converted that into a spectacular 3rd place overall! Ion Izagirre, who has had some great overperformances himself already this year, added 9th overall, and then Janvier Hadi topped it off by finishing 22nd. An absolutely amazing race, no two ways about it.

Number two of three updates in to get back to current events. June was a good bit busier than May, with six races on the agenda. Unfortunately, highlights like Norway or Dunkerque were entirely absent …

The Gabonese race has been very kind to Joeri Stallaert in the past. Our leader won the Classique in 2022 and came second in 2021, but that’s when it was a one-day race. This year, a second stage was added and Joeri didn’t cope particularly well.

7th and 8th places on the days combined for an 8th place overall, which in a PTHC race certainly isn’t terrible, but not ideal, either. Tesfom Okbamariam on the other hand had one of his better races, finishing 30th overall, and Matthew Teggart added a few more points in the Top 50, too.

We’ve reduced the number of sprint classics following Fabio Silvestre’s decline, but the Hanko Classic remained on the calendar. Fabio finished 4th here two years ago, but unsurprisingly, that wasn’t in the cards this season. Still, we would’ve hoped for a little better than 15th.

After middling performances from our other two leaders, we were looking forward to the Pro Hallstatt Classic for the consistency of Louis Meintjes. He was considered a Top 5 favorite and we were hopeful that he would be able to live up to that billing.

Heading into the final climb, he was in the first group, everything was set up well and Louis converted that to a ... 36th place. Wait, what? Apparently completely imploding in the final few kilometers, Louis had a collapse for the ages and while he wasn’t the only favorite to disappoint quite heavily, his was the most astonishing result. He wasn’t even our best finisher - Valens Ndayisenga in 26th place saved us from making this a pointless race for us, but still, this was a shocker.

We returned to Gabon a few days later for the five days of the Tropicale Amissa Bongo. After the opening time trial, we started decently well. Lennert Van Eetvelt went into the breakaway and missed the polkadot jersey by just 4 points, and Fabio Silvestre finished 3rd on the day. But fitting to this month, things went only downhill from here.

We had no more breakaway appearances, Fabio finished 6th and 9th on the following sprint stages and while Nils Politt’s 11th place in the concluding time trial was decent, 14th as the best GC result isn’t much to write home about. At least Ion Izagirre and Carlos Verona also scored a few points.

The Tour of California is one of the very few mountain stage races we have on the schedule without Louis Meintjes in the lineup. Bonaventure Uwizeyimana was our guy for the GC, but unfortunately he wasn’t up to the task. And not in a „well, he tried but others were just a bit stronger“ kind of way. Almost comically, he ended up in 110th place in the GC.

It is thanks to Nils Politt that we were nevertheless able to take some positive things away from this race. Nils had his best day of the whole year in the opening prologue, finishing in second place! Thanks to smart racing in a breakaway and another great fourth place in the second time trial, he also ended up 4th in the points classification.

Moise Mugisha also entered the breakaway twice and while that amounted to nothing, Mektel Eyob used his day in front of the peloton on the final stage to sneak into both the Top 30 of the GC and the Top 5 of the mountain classification and contribute a handful of points that way. A somewhat conciliatory way to end what was undoubtedly our worst month of the year.

With August having just kicked off, we're once again almost back up to speed. After a busy but overall poor month of June, July was busy once again, but luckily quite a bit more successful.

Following Hanko Classic in June, we started the month with another sprinters' classic in Scandinavia, this time in Norway. Again, this meant it was time for Fabio Silvestre to perform. And he did a better job here. Two late attackers beat the peloton, where Fabio was the 7th quickest, meaning a solid Top 10 finish in 9th place. A perfectly reasonable result in a tough field.

In the one non-wild card race that both participated in, Joeri Stallaert finished 25th, and rookie Welay Hagos Berhe joined the early morning breakaway, so overall a pretty decent race for us.

Fabio Silvestre was in the spotlight again in the Arab Tour, which featured three sprint stages. Unfortunately, Fabio couldn't step up and what was decent in a classic is virtually useless in a stage race: 9th, 12th and 8th places combine for exactly one ranking point.

Surprisingly though, Fabio instead contributed a few GC points. A decent time trialist for a sprinter, he did okay in the TT on stage 3 and then benefited from a split on the final stage which brought him up to 16th overall. Unfortunately on the wrong side of said split was Nils Politt, who was sitting in 15th overall after a good time trial, but fell all the way outside of the Top 50.

Those two weren't our only cards to play, though: Youngster Jean-Eric Habimana found himself in the breakaway on the stage where the most KoM points were awarded and finished second in that classification, which gave us another nice boost.

Louis Meintjes returned to action in Eritrea after his disastrous showing in Hallstatt last month and he was eager to wash that taste out of his mouth. But it was Joeri Stallaert, our main sprinter here, who gave us the first highlight with a really good 4th place on the opening stage.

But when it was his time to shine, Louis didn't disappoint either. On the hilly stage 2, he finished third alongside stage winner Yates and Oomen, 9 seconds ahead of the chasing peloton. And he followed that up with another third place on the following mountain top finish, securing a great second overall place.

He also finished third in the points classification, Natnael Tesfatsion added a third place in the U25 classification, and thanks to 22nd and 24th places overall for Mektel Eyob and Valens Ndayisenga, we even ended up in second place in the teams classification, a somewhat rare sight for us. Certainly a great return to form from Louis and our entire squad.

Following his two slightly unusual appearances as a pure sprinter, Joeri Stallaert was back on more familiar terrain at the Benelux Tour. Although that is only half right: Although stage 2 featured a small cobbles section, it was basically just another flat stage, and stage 3 was mostly just a little bit hilly. Following an expectedly horrendous prologue, Joeri did very well here though, first finishing 4th, and then hanging on over the hills in the first group to end up 8th on the day.

This already moved him up to 22nd overall, but his time to shine was only just arriving. Stage 4 held the most difficult cobblestone stretches in store and Joeri made the most of it. Pulling a group of three away from the peloton and almost singlehandidly keeping it ahead, he lost the sprint for the stage win to Nathan Van Hooydonck, but gained enough time on his other rivals to move up to 6th - just 5 seconds behind 2nd overall.

We were hoping to get there on the second tough cobbles stage, but we were disappointed. Not only was the stage as a whole rather unselective, Joeri didn't seem to have the best legs and only finished in the middle of the main group. Already having made our peace with 6th overall, we headed into the final simple flat stage without expectations, but Joeri wasn't done yet: With an entirely unexpected 2nd place, he moved up to 2nd in the GC after all! Add to that his 2nd place in the points classification and Matthew Teggart's 20th overall, this again turned out to be an excellent race for us.

The Tour of Slovenia opened with a bang for us: Fabio Silvestre had one of his better days and finished 2nd on the opening stage. We followed that up with a slightly disappointing 17th place in the team time trial, but our GC hopes were minimal at best anyway. Two hilly stages and an ITT followed, at the end of whose our best GC finisher was Janvier Hadi with a very, very respectable 29th place.

Bonaventure Uwizeyimana, who we had expected to be our main man, just missed out on the Top 50, but was joined in the Top 100 by Ion Izagirre and Nils Politt, adding minor points. Combined with that 2nd place by Fabio, we're looking at another race where we slightly exceeded expectations.

In Andorra, we had one of the very few mountaneous stage races without Louis Meintjes in the lineup. It was therefore on Valens Ndayisenga, Mektel Eyob and Natnael Tesfatsion to make something happen from breakaways. And they did - well, two of them anyway. Valens unfortunately had an entirely anonymous race, neither going for breakaways nor the GC. A disappointing performance in the only race he was considered our captain this year.

But the other two picked up the baton. Both entered the breakaway twice, including once together. And while neither managed to win a big prize, they made sure we don't leave completely empty-handed. Mektel was part of the only successful breakaway of the race, and while he wasn't strong enough to compete for the stage win, he hung on and ended up 4th on the day, as well as eventually 35th in the GC, our best placed rider.

Natnael, meanwhile, made his bid for the KoM classification, falling just short in 2nd place. He also ended up 3rd in the U25 classification as well as inside the Top 50 of the GC, as did Valens. No big highlights, but enough small points here and there to leave with a good feeling overall.

It's been three months since we last had a look at the rankings. Back then, we were in third place, almost 400 points ahead of the first non-promotion spot. Now ... we're still in 3rd place! But the distance to 6th place has almost halved to just 211 points.

Pos	Last		Team	Total	RD	PpRD	Proj
1	4		Los Pollos Hermanos	2880	124	23.23	3786
2	1		Jura GIANTS	2535	115	22.04	3593
3	3		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	2534	123	20.6	3358
4	9		Indosat Ooredoo	2480	128	19.38	3159
5	2		Fastned	2370	119	19.92	3247
6	5		Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam	2323	130	17.87	2913
7	6		Assa Abloy	2313	124	18.65	3040
8	13		Xero Racing	2295	121	18.97	3092
9	7		Sony - Force India	2264	123	18.41	3001
10	8		Lampre - Pinarello	2253	120	18.78	3061

There are reasons to be hopeful that we can actually hang on to that promotion spot, and there are certainly reasons to be doubtful. Only time will tell, so instead of endless speculation and weighing the pros and cons, let's take a brief look at our individual riders:

	Rider		Team	Total
5	Joeri Stallaert		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	736
14	Louis Meintjes		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	549
37	Ion Izagirre		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	317
48	Fabio Silvestre		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	256
71	Bonaventure Uwizeyimana		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	195
121	Janvier Hadi		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	100
143	Matthew Teggart		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	86
164	Nils Politt		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	69
186	Mektel Eyob		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	47
191	Valens Ndayisenga		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	43
210	Natnael Tesfatsion		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	36
226	Tesfom Okbamariam		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	31
250	Jean Eric Habimana		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	25
310	Moise Mugisha		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	15
326	Samuel Mugisha		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	12
373	Carlos Verona		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	7
382	Lennert Van Eetvelt		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	6
413	Darren Young		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	3
449	Welay Hagos Berhe		Bralirwa - Stevens Bikes	1

A few things stand out. First, many riders have already passed their 2022 points totals. This includes, incredibly, Joeri Stallaert despite having two more races upcoming where he has significant scoring potential. But Bonaventure Uwizeyimana, for instance, already already has more points than last year. Janvier Hadi has more than doubled his tally! Mektel Eyob and Moise Mugisha are doing better and so is Natnael Tesfatsion (as you would expect after another step in his development).

And then there are the newcomers. Ion Izagirre is obviously exceeding even the loftiest expectations. Matthew Teggart has surpassed and outdone Okbamariam as the second-in-command on cobbles, Nils Politt is contributing well. And while Louis Meintjes won't be able to match Angel Madrazo's total from last year, he should be able to come much closer than might've been expected. Even Fabio Silvestre, technically also a transfer signing, while having obviously regressed, is still doing very, very well (and there's a big haul coming from his exploits in Germany yet to come).

Overall, it's been a really fun season so far. Even if we're looking at potentially our weakest year in terms of actual wins, we've never had as deep a roster, with even the rookies contributing. Will we put the cherry on top by promoting? I guess we'll find out soon enough.