Whereas June was a big month for PCT because of all the PTHC racing, it also was a crucial one for CT teams, with a total of 5 C2 races - thereof two stage races. Two more C1 classics, plus an HC stage race for 5 teams - let's dive in!
The first race of the month was one for the sprinters, the C1 Hanko classic. A race in Sweden according to the reporter, but in Finland according to geographic knowledge. Wikipedia says it's the southernmost city in Finland - but the reporter wasn't completely wrong given that Swedish is an official language as well.
Anyway, 6 CT teams found the right place to race in. And 3 of them actually headed back home with points in the bag. Most points went to Simba Cement, with Zariff finally, finally delivering and getting a strong 7th place. 28 points for him and his team.
Willwohl was CT's 2nd best sprinter in 13th place, followed by Carsi in 14th. Which means 10 and 9 points respectively for Würth and Euskadi.
Next up was a highlight for the rare species of managers loving TTTs. You know I'm among those, too - sadly my team couldn't participate in the C2 Monterrey TTT.
"Fortunately!", must be what Genii's manager thought, given that his team (formerly BWT) won the race for the 3rd time in 4 years! It's just surprising they didn't find a Mexican company as their new main sponsor with this awesome race record!
That's 75 points for the Luxembourgers, with Glanbia getting 50 points for 2nd place and the Turtles in 3rd picking up 40 points.
The stage racer's highlight of the month definitely was the 7-day Tour of Vancouver. And good news for CT teams, no PCT team made the trip to Canada! Definitely one for the climbers here - an opening MTT and two MTFs. Three flat stages - and a closing TTT to decide on the final placings. Let's go!
Sadly, the route design meant that there was no suspense at all right after day 1. Because this year, it's pretty obvious who wins these mountain stage races - of course it's Jorgenson! After winning the day 1 MTT, he was wearing yellow, polka dots and white all race long, and in the end also claimed the points jersey. A jersey sweep, and 2 stage wins on top of that - a whopping 203 points for the American! Which is also Newton Foundation's total score.
Jersey sweep but no depth means that the winners still left some points on the table. And it's funny that the 2nd and 3rd placed teams are separated by 1 point and scored 203 points combined - the same amount as Newton alone. So they obviously got 102 and 101 points respectively.
In 2nd place, we have Simba Cement! They won two stages - stage 3 from a bunch sprint with Barbari (who was 4th the day before and 4th in points), and the day 7 TTT to round off the race. This TTT win also propelled Kozhatayev up to 2nd in the final GC, another huge result after his Tachira win. The two top scorers got 85 points combined, with 16 more going to the TTT winning teammates - and one final point to Manfredi for 25th place in GC. 102 points for Simba, well done!
One reason why Kozhatayev finished 2nd was Duvel's awful TTT, with Smith losing twice his pretty comfortable advantage. Still, 4th place in GC isn't awful for the latter, having a 4th place on day 4 and 3rd on day 6 as his best stage results. Teammate Egger went even one better, finishing right ahead of Smith on stage 6 - and ending up 2nd in KoM. Duvel also won the team classification, totalling 101 points in the end. Good job!
And right onto the next C2 race - one for the sprinters, the Hungarian Betonexpressz GP.
And it indeed was one for the sprinters, with rouleurs not standing a chance for once. The fastest of the fast men was - even past his prime - Krieger, netting Hilcona some very welcome 50 points.
Kennett showed a rock solid sprint once again, finishing 2nd and getting 35 points for Glanbia. And then, even though Barbier "only" ended up 4th, we have Gjensidige - who also had Lunder in 14th, for 32 points in total.
More sprinting? Here we go - the C1 classic Frankfurt - Eschborn was next. Well, many sprinters don't really like it because it has quite some climbing in the first half, but those who manage to get over these obstacles while staying in the pack often still get decent results.
But the winner wasn't a sprinter this year. It was a breakaway rider. It was a CT rider - with Kawasaki having the biggest engine of all (no surprise given his name), cruising to a commanding win for Babymetal! 80 points for him and his team, they'll definitely take those!
The other CT participants weren't quite as successful. Page ended up 13th, scoring 10 points for Simba - plus one for Smit's 25th place. Newton Foundation had Mengoulas and Lopez in 17th and 19th, scoring 10 points combined.
Back to stage racing then - and even to the highest possible level for some CT teams, with the HC Tour of California welcoming 5 of them! Some flat stages, some hilly ones, an MTF - and a prologue and a longer ITT surrounding all the rest.
The good news is that all 5 teams actually did score. And with 53 points, one team even got a reasonably good PpRD out of the race. And that's the Turtles! They even managed to score more points on day 1 than any other team in the whole race! They got 2-4-5-6 on that day with Hamza, Frame, Keough and Oka. The former then joined the break on day 3 and secured the points jersey for 2 days, ending up 7th in that classification in the end. 37 points for Hamza, and 51 in total for the Turtles!
We then have two teams in 2nd place. On one hand, there's Euskotren. Iturria scored all points for them with his final GC, 13th place, 32 points. Nothing else, but not awful, either.
It's a little more complex for Newton Foundation, who had 5 scorers. Obviously Pronskiy and Madrazo for their final GC (18th and 36th respectively), then Viennet for his prologue and TT results (7th and 6th), Welten for an 8th place in a sprint and Quinn for taking 8th in U25. All in all, that's 32 points, too.
And even more stage racing - with the Tour of Luxembourg making its comeback appearance after 12 years! Rated C2, the route mostly led the peloton through hilly terrain, with even the single flat-rated stage having quite some ups and downs. The stage was set for a great race!
Well, it turned out being a great race mostly for one team: Trans. They don't have any of CT's best puncheurs, but that wasn't needed - instead, punchy sprints were what mattered! And in that discipline, Korosec definitely is among the best! He finished 2nd on the first two stages, then benefitted from race leader Koretzky surprisingly losing time on day 3 - and that was enough for the GC win! And the points win, and 127 points in total. But that wasn't all! Teammate Govekar finished 3rd on stages 1 and 3, which was enough for 3rd overall - and the white jersey win! Trans also ended up 3rd in teams, and took 3 more scoring places in U25 with Glivar (3rd), Murn (7th) and Kunkumpai (8th), scoring a whopping 200 points overall!
It was a final stage to remember for Ethiopian Airlines, with 4 in the Top 10: Goncalves took the stage win, and Bystrom (4th), Hamilton (7th) and Vendrame (10th) all finished high up, too. GC-wise, they had 5 in the Top 21, with Bystrom (6th) and Hamilton (8th) making the Top 10. Bystrom got another great stage result for them with 2nd on day 3. It's 2nd place in team standings for Ethiopian Airlines, and 120 points scored in total.
But the tragic hero of the race was Koretzky. No longer at his top level - by far - he still has the race instinct, enabling him to win the opening stage! And thanks to some generous timekeepers, even with quite a gap. A gap that would've been sufficient to bring the GC home - but stage 3 made it clear that he no longer has the physical strength of past days, getting dropped at the very end and losing some seconds too much. Still, he held onto 2nd in the GC (and 5th in points), scoring 86 points! Lunder (5th in U25) and Barbier (7th in stage 2) scored 3 more points for Gjensidige, who ended up with 89.
What about some more C2 racing to round off the month? The Hong Kong Challenge got a huge downgrade this year - from C1 to C2, and from 3 days to a classic. The only thing left from past years was stage 1, which was now raced as a classic.
And - surprise, surprise - a rider who was never able to finish in the Top 50 of this exact same stage when it was part of a stage race actually won this race! Moscon attacked at the foot of the last notable hill, and simply rode away, getting a great solo win here! After all earlier disappointments this year, definitely a very satisfying outcome for Cervélo, for whom Boily added another point for 25th place, making it a team score of 51 points.
Also a rather big surprise was Bernard taking 2nd place, beating all of the division's top puncheurs (bar Moscon). With Barta adding an 11th place on top of that, it's 43 points for Genii, another great result!
Whereas Nikiema "only" finished 5th here, he had some strong teammates present as well, with Laas (13th) and Manfredi (15th) both getting a Top 15 as well. Which adds up to 35 points and is good enough for 3rd place.
That's all 8 races covered, time to do some book-keeping.
And the winner is... ehm, sorry, that's wrong. It has to be: And the winners are...
Trans and Newton Foundation! Yep, two teams scored the exact same amount of points in June to take the win.
We'll start with Trans, as they've got the far better PpRD. The Slovenians spent 15 RDs to score 307 points - resulting in a PpRD above 20! The main reason for this performance is easy to find, with Luxembourg making up almost 2/3 of their total score. Still, Vancouver wasn't too shabby, either, and it's enough for a well-deserved win.
Newton on the other hand were one of two teams spending 24 race days - the highest amount this month - to reach 307 points as well. And just like Trans, they had one race making up for almost 2/3 of their scoring, with Jorgenson's Vancouver domination. Otherwise, three races around 30 points, so no further highlights. Still a good month, as even their PpRD of just below 13 is enough for 3rd place, a good outcome.
3rd place in terms of "hard" points goes to Gjesidige, scoring 237 points. That's 70 less than the winners, but having spent only 15 RDs they still reach a PpRD of almost 16, #2 this month. Vancouver and Luxembourg were their main scoring races, as could be expected.
4th place, still above 200 points, is taken by Simba Cement! Vancouver was their obvious highlight, but they also had a good performance in Hong Kong. And with 210 points in 21 RDs, they get a PpRD of exactly 10.0, which is 5th place - clearly going into the right direction for them.
The second team with 24 RDs spent was Ethiopian Airlines. And they weren't quite as successful as Newton Foundation, scoring 120 points less. If your good in maths, you already know that this means they scored 187 points - almost 2/3 (recurring pattern) of which in Luxembourg.
Close behind, and missing out on the Top 5 by just 7 points, are Genii. The Monterrey winners also had a rather surprisingly good result in Hong Kong, and got decent points all over their 15 RDs - resulting in a 12 PpRD average. 4th place, just where they want to be.
It's then a 30 points gap to the midfield, starting with Babymetal in 7th (152 points) and reaching all the way down to Glanbia in 11th (132 points). 5 teams within 20 points; these teams are Babymetal, Cervélo, Hilcona, Duvel and Glanbia. Of them, Hilcona have the best PpRD with almost 9.5.
We then have to make another 20 points jump to reach down to Team Würth, scoring 113 points, followed by the Turtles and Zain who end up above 100 points as well. Euskadi narrowly miss out on doing so, scoring 91 points.
And finally, we have three backmarkers, with Spark, Air New Zealand and Euskotren only scoring 59, 54 and 42 points respectively. Bottom 3 both in terms of points and PpRD, in particular for Spark that's pretty bad news.
Here are the full numbers:
Pos
Team
Han
TTT
Van
Bet
F-E
Cal
Lux
HK
Total
RD
PpRD
1
Trans Looney Tunes
0
25
81
0
0
0
200
1
307
15
20.47
1
Newton Foundation p/b Zwift
0
0
203
29
10
32
4
29
307
24
12.79
3
Gjensidige Pro Cycling Team
0
35
81
32
0
0
89
0
237
15
15.80
4
Simba Cement - Tanga Fresh
28
15
102
11
11
0
8
35
210
21
10.00
5
Ethiopian Airlines
0
0
21
19
0
25
120
2
187
24
7.79
6
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
0
75
31
0
0
0
31
43
180
15
12.00
7
Babymetal
0
0
24
24
80
0
13
11
152
19
8.00
8
Cervelo Test Team
0
10
25
5
3
0
54
51
148
19
7.79
9
Hilcona Racing Team
0
0
6
50
0
0
74
12
142
15
9.47
10
Duvel-Tsingtao
0
0
101
8
0
0
7
23
139
19
7.32
11
Glanbia
0
50
35
35
0
12
0
0
132
18
7.33
12
Team Würth MODYF
10
10
11
16
0
0
40
26
113
21
5.38
13
SEE Turtles
0
40
9
4
0
53
0
0
106
22
4.82
14
Zain-Omantel
0
0
88
12
0
0
0
2
102
17
6.00
15
Euskadi-Murias
9
0
46
7
0
0
7
22
91
19
4.79
16
Spark Team NZ
0
0
23
0
0
0
19
17
59
13
4.54
17
Air New Zealand-Alfa Romeo
0
0
26
7
0
0
21
0
54
13
4.15
18
Euskotren - Pays Basque
0
0
0
6
0
32
4
0
42
13
3.23
Full Ranking
With Gjensidige losing only 70 points this month, the Norwegians easily stay up front in the rankings. They have reached 1,246 points so far, resulting in a great PpRD of 15.38 - well on track to reach 2,000+ points! According to recent years' final rankings, they need less than 100 more points to seal promotion - it's almost impossible they'll miss out. And the CT title is clearly still on the table, too!
Newton Foundation are the 2nd team to reach 1,000+ points, as they currently hold at 1,095. Taht's about 150 points behind Gjensidige, so they still got some work to do if they want to win the title. But their main goal is promotion, and it's hard to see them miss out by now.
We then have three more teams who are looking pretty good so far, and although they're not locks for promotion yet, they could soon be. First are Trans, making a big jump from 7th to 3rd thanks to their June win. With 869 points, they're more than 200 points behind Newton Foundation (having spent 6 RDs more), so it's safe to say that the rest of the division will be battling for 3rd.
And the Slovenians got some strong competitors with Genii sitting just 23 points behind. They could hold onto their 4th place, and currently are on track to go back up again. With 9.5, they also have a strong PpRD so far (just like Trans with 9.8) - it's currently looking like these two could battle it out for the final podium spot.
But beware of Duvel, just another 10 points down! The Belgians have struggled a bit more lately, dropping from 3rd to 5th this month, but in particular for a new team are still doing a tremendous job. They'll need to find some ways to score higher again, though...
Right behind them we have Glanbia, dropping out of the promotion zone this month. "Right behind" might be the wrong expression, though, as the Irishmen are 101 points behind Duvel, and are also projected to end up with this gap at the end of the year. They might need to find another gear to seriously threaten the current Top 5.
Simba Cement did find another gear this month, but they'll have to consistently perform at 10+ PpRD level to have a chance of continuing their way up. So far, it has led them from 9th to 7th in June, totalling 699 points - 36 behind Glanbia.
Next up are Team Würth with 675 points, losing two spots this month. Still, the Germans currently look to be the final team that could still fight for automatic promotion - but even for that, they'll need something more, something special. Like a dominant Zepuntke win in Faso, for example?
Ethipian Airlines were among the stronger teams this month, and this shows by their jump up from 13th to 9th. Still, it's an 85 points gap to Würth, or almost 250 to the Top 5. Not really great perspectives for automatic promotion, but a Top 10 would be a good outcome for them, too.
Euskotren were certainly hoping for a much better season, but so far, they're struggling to find consistently good scoring. Being the month's red lantern, they dropped from 8th to 10th, even further away from their promotion dreams. And with 6.8, their PpRD is almost 2 points lower than Duvel's, so they'd need something really big to get up to where they want to be...
Euskadi are just 4 points behind their Basque rivals, but having spent 11 additional RDs, it's not looking great for them to win this duel. And after a great month of May, they were back in the lower regions this month, so we'll see if last month was a temporary high, or whether they can find such success again.
We're down in 12th place now, which was and is still held by the Turtles. 538 points scored so far, lower midfield - they would surely love to be higher up, but so far they're struggling to do well in races that don't have a TTT. Time to change that?
The team that got most predictions to be the "best new team" wasn't Duvel, and it wasn't Ethiopian Airlines, either. No, it was Cervélo, with their puncheur armada. Well, we know by now that this armada hasn't been working well often enough - but at least it did this month to move up from 15th to 13th. With 517 points, that's 319 behind Duvel, so there's some work left to do to catch them...
Whereas new teams don't have that much to lose, things are starting to look pretty desastrous for Spark! Relegated last year, they had some nice results so far - but this month they dropped down 3 spots, from 11th to 14th, getting further and further away for what was the only goal for them this year: promotion! Taking a closer look, we see that PpRD-wise they're actually in 9th place, so they could potentially move up a lot in the next couple of months - but can they turn potential into actual points?
Zain are the final Top 15 team, and the first below 500 points, currently totalling 486. 15th is also their projected final position - can they turn things around and move up a bit in the final months?
Both Babymetal and Hilcona actually had a pretty good month, and even though they didn't move up a lot (Hilcona gained one spot), they got a little bit closer to the next teams. But it will take several strong months to make a real difference - motivation should be there now, after both of them had a great classic win this month!
On the other hand, motivation for Air New Zealand might have dropped even further. At least the team can't now, as they've taken over the red lantern. The Kiwis are struggling everywhere, and if they get some decent points, the other backmarkers do the same. We'll see if they can finally find a road to glory - let's hope they will!
And that's all. And after all that text, let's get some numbers:
After winning his monthly C2 stage race, Matteo Jorgenson has left everyone else behind even further - with these 203 points, he now holds at 666. And whereas I wasn't that sure he'd be able to reach Chiarello's 853 points from 2023 last month, now it's looking pretty good, as he should still have about 10 RDs left. Bad news for his competitors I guess...
His closes rival now is Richard Carapaz, who also did very well in Canada. And who has now scored 314 points. Yep, that's less than half of Jorgenson's points. Not much more to say about that. Just dominant.
Brent van Moer has dropped one spot, but he didn't have any scoring opportunities apart from Monterrey. With 308 points, he's just 6 behind Carapaz. But also just 16 ahead of 4th place, where we have...
Thymen Arensman! Thanks to a great Vancouver result, he fended off any attacks from behind, and still makes it 2 Gjensidige riders in the Top 5. Just in case you wondered where their points come from...
Dion Smith still rounds off the Top 5, but it took another strong showing in Canada to defend this spot. With 252 points, he's just 9 points ahead of Rok Korosec, who scored huge in Luxembourg and moved up from 21st to 6th!
KHJ also was hoping to do well in Luxembourg, but it wasn't really his race. Which is the reason why he dropped one spot, watching Korosec flying by. 226 points for him.
Which is 5 more than Kennett, who also lost one spot, but still keeps his Top 10 for now. And yeah, that's the highest ranked sprinter, even by far! (Not counting Korosec as a sprinter obviously ^^)
Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev is back in the Top 10 after his Vancouver performance, as the final rider above 200 points. Only 30 of his 210 points weren't scored in Tachira or Vancouver, by the way...
Ruben Guerreiro also made a nice jump, from 18th to 10th, kicking teammate Zepuntke out of the Top 10. The Portuguese did a great job in Luxembourg and Hong Kong, whereas the German is desperately waiting for some cobbles...
The other rider losing his Top 10 spot was Bennett - who is just 9 points, but 5 spots behind Zepuntke, so it's really crowded in this table region Which should also make big jumps possible, but we didn't really have any big improvers apart from Korosec.
Well, if we go outside the Top 20, we find some, like Eiking (47 -> 23), Hamza (38 -> 26) or Krieger (53 -> 32). And obviously Koretzky (116 -> 34) and most notably Kawasaki (175 -> 41).
But I'll let you find your own special stories, as usual - here are the hard numbers you'll need for that:
The only good news from this is it was a month without Bennett and races that suit us and we still have the lowest race days spent so far. Still lots of racing but we need to convert race days into points.
Really wish I'd been able to find some success in the sprint classics this year but Tivani is not the man I thought he was. Might even demote him off of captain status to finish off the year if he can't figure out anything else.
Really proud of Hamza for another year - a cornerstone of the Turtles so far and will be tough to see him age.
Proud of our team even though things haven't gone well.
