Monsalve finishing just outside the top 10 is about as good as it's going to get for us, combined with the two stage second places we at least get a minor points haul with us from here.
Congratulations to UBS, Jura and Kraftwerk on great GC placements.
For the future tho we need to look into whether or not these types of races need one more GC stage when a TTT is involved, especially when the only mountain stage provided very few gaps.
whitejersey wrote:
For the future tho we need to look into whether or not these types of races need one more GC stage when a TTT is involved, especially when the only mountain stage provided very few gaps.
It's definitely not an outcome we should see too often - although I'm on the receiving end here, it's not really balanced.
However, I don't think it's mainly an issue with the course design, but rather with the startlist.
Last year, there were 9 80+ climbers here; the front group on stage 3 had 11 riders, with most of these climbers.
This year, Ranaweera was the best climber with 80 Mo (last year: Cattaneo with 82 Mo), and a pretty level field behind him. As a result, the front group was twice as big as last year, and many teams were able to get multiple riders in - instead of just their 80+ leader.
The issue this year in my opinion was the clash with Deutschland Tour, where pretty much all teams with strong TTers except for UBS are participating. I still picked Vineyards, knowing that even without my top TTers I'd have a competitive team here thanks to my TT department's depth.
The teams without strong TTT mostly avoided this race, unsurprisingly. So these two reasons ruled out many PCT teams - having just 8 of them here means it couldn't be a stascked field anyway.
I don't know why Vineyards was moved to clash with Deutschland (no significant clash last year), but teams interested in the race could've adjusted to the situation during transfers or race planning. I don't think it's optimal like that, looking at the outcome. Had there been more PCT teams betting on TTers, I think the field would've looked differently and the result more balanced.
But that doesn't mean I'm necessarily against adjusting the route; especially having a more selective mountain stage probably wouldn't be bad, as it would make the race more interesting to teams without a top-notch TTT unit as well.
And yeah, when speaking about unbalanced routes, maybe we should take a look as well at Olympia's Tour - or just move it to HC so there would be more competition anyway...
