5th in the TT for Marryatt is good I think. Happy with that and got some good points. Davila loses a bit of time on 8th overall but with the final stage I wouldn’t count him out of improving is GC position just yet. I believe Rodriguez moved up a position or 2 as well. Overall a good day for us. 1 more to go and 1 more chance to score some points!
Congrats to UU in the 1-2! And thanks for another excellent report KB
I will definitely take that - our 5th stage win of the race and first ever for Cabrera (not sure he is likely to get a lot of wins so nice to score one when he had the chance), Sosa losing a place was pretty inevitable.
And at least we won't lose the by 2 seconds this year. Of course others won't have paid attention to the size of the gap as much as I do. But to let you know - Sosa lost 1'53 to Elosegui on that disastrous stage 14, and currently sits 1'54 behind him (putting aside that the intervening stages would surely have gone differently). Not sure how I feel about that.
Can't afford any errors tomorrow as Misbah is not far behind.
Jesus Christ Giannoutsos... Wake up already! Oh well, atleast he was consistanly asleep throughout the race.
Not getting any gaps hurt a bit with so many from our team up front, but it was for minor points. We threw away the Team GC on one single stage, and never managed to recover, despite being the 2nd strongest team in all but this one stage.
Overall we come away with a decent points haul, but no way near what could have been achieved. Still a reasonable harvest, and a fun experience. In hindsight I would probably have scored similarly without Giannoutsos, where Mavrikakis would have done better, and Christakos would have freedom to attack for stages and KOM. Atleast it would have been a significantly better outing to use 21 RD's differently for Giannoutsos. We kinda knew that before going into the race however.
A huge congrats to those coming away with succes here - and a big shoutout for the awesome reports throughout the race. Despite being a bit annoyed at times it was definately not because there was a lack of quality in the reports!
What a race for McCormick. That's stage win number 6 if I counted correctly. And without that one weird stage by Sosa, they'd have won the GC as well. Looks like it just isn't to be - yet. I'm sure they'll try again!
Big congrats nonetheless to Mre, Elosegui was a perfect pick for this race, and even though he wasn't the strongest on most stages, he was the smartest and - most importantly - the most consistent one! Big result for you, which - I guess - should seal the division title, in particular comparing your result to Gjensidige's. Great job!
A really good race for Lotto as well, who will probably end up being the 2nd best scoring PCT team thanks to Wouters' stage wins and their great GT depth! And for all three of McCormick, Lotto and Sauber, it should be a good step away from the relegation zone!
And ELCO? Well, the big favourite didn't quite deliver - his climbing advantage apparently wasn't big enough to really make a difference. Still, 3rd place in GC and a couple of good stage results, which will likely seal promotion for them, too.
And last but not least, big thanks to kb for bringing us the race - his 3rd GT of the year if I remember correctly?
Awesome job, take some well-deserved rest now
A perfect IRL birthday gift! It was a huge gamble to use half of Elosegui's race days here instead of helping Jorgenson more, but our faith in him paid off tenfold. Can't believe how well everything has gone this year. After all the suffering of the past two seasons with back-to-back relegations, this feels extra special on top of everything Jorgenson already accomplished this season.
Thanks for reports! Was checking the website multiple times a day, eager to read each report. Well done on the coverage over the last three weeks!
Congrats Mre. I thought with Jorgensen finishing maybe he’ll slow down scoring but nope aha
I think we had a decent race. We scored pretty well and basically unless we won stages or were higher in GC we probably got close to our peak.
There were some highlights for sure! Mudgway did some excellent sprinting and got a 3rd plus some other decent finishes. Rodriguez in the breakaway getting 2nd in a stage, so close to his first ever win was great! Huera also on a breakaway getting a podium finish was great and unexpected. Marryatt with 5th in the TT probably wasn’t his best but still a great finish for him.
Finally 9th overall for Davila continues a good season he is having. I was hoping for a little bit more out of him but I’m happy with what he did in the ToA. In total after doing some quick math I believe we are around the 150-160 points mark for the race. Which isn’t too bad when you add in our GP Pluoay points from Scott and hopefully some more points in Bongo.
A good month so far.
Thanks for all the amazing reports KB. It was incredible and congrats again to MRE. Pure dominance in the CT this year from your two mountain guys!
Congrats to MRE on a great win, as Fab said, Elosegui was the most consistent. Unfortunately for us, we have had a strong contender two years in a row but lost out to one of or key rivals having a slightly better suited rider.
A great finish to Sosa for our 6th stage win. Probably his best ride of the whole race, although he seemed to benefit from Giannoutsos and others suffering some paralysis.
Despite not achieving our win goal, an incredible race for us. The goal of being the first team with a South American rider to win is still out there.
Being an American team the organizers often consult with us on the parcours and from what we have seen we might take a year off next year. But sure we will return to tilt at this windmill in the future.
Thanks to KB for the reports and doing 3 GTs. There is at least one great line to be found in every KB report.
Thanks a lot KB for the very entertaining reports, and congrats to Mre and Ulrich for very good races.
Race was decent for us, though not great for the 21 RD needed, but that was to be expected. Lafay did what he needed, with 2 stage wins and the KoM. That alone is a great value and will be remembered. Theres a decent GC from him and Rochas also, for some more points. The latter is probably the biggest disappointment, not really trying anything though he hadn't any chance in the big mountains, though I thought it would be a good race for him. With Berthet maxing, we'll have to see whether he'll still have a role in the team.
The reste of the team contributed well, be it in the break (the youngster, even getting minor stage placings), in the sprint or in the TT. Would have love to see Politt getting that 3rd stage win, but with the terrain and 3 weeks of racing, his result is not shameful at all.
With the decent result in Plouay also, it makes a good month for us, though not something to come back in promotion contention, with October not in our favour. All eyes on Wackermann at Zurich!
“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably."
A. Roy
First of all, huge thanks to KB for all these magnificent reports Great work mate!
We couldn't have been happier with the points haul. Wouters was great all race long, winning three and snatching the green jersey. Also good GC depth with Min, Quintana and Bouchard trying the best they could. I think we took the maximum out of this race. All four guys in front of us were clearly better. We can take our focus to the offseason
Congrats to MRE with his birthday and the overall win! Your smart moves in the offseason had an immediate impact. Jorgenson dominating CT and this was the icing on the big cake.
Also congrats to McCormick, fantastic stuff throughout the race. With these performances and those of Yates you will take a big step forward in the rankings. I'm sure you'll come back one time to win.
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
4th GC and enough depth to get 2nd in teams is a really good result for us.
Misbah went out and beat our expectations coming in to the race so we are really pleased with him. We definitely were fearing that 1-2 punch from Lotto in the final week and it was a relief to survive it.
The podium was never really in reach and the top 3 all made it there safely in the end.
Thanks to KB for all the reports, hopefully we'll be back again next season.
Congrats MrE. Sad to see McCormick come second again but I think they had a good tour.
For Glanbia it was as bad as expected. I was holding out hope for a stage win but it wasn't to be. Mannion dropping a couple of KOM places on the final day was a blow but he did well.
Weirdly delighted with Archie Ryan getting a top 50 and scoring some u23 points
As usual, I'm posting the full scores of the GT in the discussion thread.
But the ToA is special. Given that it has scoring eligible participants from two divisions, it's not just the numbers here, but the full race review. Every PCT and CT team in the race is getting covered!
The 2024 edition of the Tour of America was a pretty special one. Not only that 18/21 stages took place in Asia, not America (iirc there has already been someone who confused the two continents quite some time ago).
No, it also seems like this might have been the last real GT-edition of the ToA, lasting for the full 21 stages. And hence, it might also be the last time that the really big points were awarded - the race itself is categorized C1, but to honour the big RD investment a participation represents, the HC points scale was applied.
The main reason for the probable shortening of the race is likely the participation. Only 4 PCT teams wanted to take part in this unique event, which might be an all-time low (I'm no MG historian, though). With 10 teams from CT, we get much more interest from the lowest division, with more than half of the teams making the trip to Asiamerica.
With the lower than usual amount of teams on the startlist, the average points per team obviously were higher than in other editions. But does this just mean more points for each team - or a higher score for just a few of them?
Well, it's the latter I'd say. But no worries - Kraftwerk's unreal 908 points scored back in 2020 were never even remotely within reach. Again, I'm no historian, but for me that's pretty much my reference mark (not knowing anything about the points scale back in 2011, with Pellizotti getting the GC win along with 12 stage wins...)
But considering all scores back to 2020, we still got the 2nd best value this year! Kraftwerk scored 617 in 2021 - and that was beaten now, for the first time since the race-day reduction (that surely had an impact on the startlist) effective in 2022!
So, who scored more than 600 points? Well, it's not that hard to guess. 6 stage wins (the 2nd most winning team had 3 of them), 11 stage podiums in total (the next team had 8) - it's been a pretty amazing race for McCormick! It wasn't the perfect race - for that, GC rider Sosa would have needed to be attentive on every single day. He wasn't, and lost more than his final GC deficit due to just one bad day.
But hey, Sosa still got three stage wins, and a 2nd and 3rd place each on top of that. He was wearing the yellow jersey for 10 consecutive days, taking it over after winning his first stage on day 4. He looked like the big race favourite until that one weird day, that crazy stage 14. A tailor-made stage for him, with a medium length uphill finish. But he cracked. Not just a bit, it was a total collapse. As the #1 stage favourite, he only finished 36th, losing 1'41" to his main rival.
At the end of the race - after winning his 3rd stage - he was 1'12" down in GC, so it's pretty easy to say where he lost the race. But with all his great stage results, all his days in the leader's jersey, 2nd place overall, and 2nd place in points, he still was the highest scoring rider by quite some margin - totalling 394 points!
But McCormick score a lot more points than this. Marco Haller took the first opportunity, right on day 1, to take over the exclusive lead of ToA stage wins, getting his 13th victory. He added #14 on stage 9, wore the green jersey from day 1 until stage 16, and ended up 3rd in points. No 3rd green jersey for him, but 14 stage wins in 6 ToA editions, thereof 5 consecutive ones - hats off! 156 points for the Austrian - which is the 4th highest value!
And yet another stage win for the Americans, on the penultimate day - it even was a 1-2 by Cabrera and Daniel in the ITT! Kind of making up for the rather disappointing TTT result (3rd place) earlier in the race. Cabrera also ended up 22nd in GC, with loyal domestique Kuss taking 18th place. Revard, Hoehn and Hecht all made the Top 50 as well - in the end, every single rider contributed at least 7 points to McCormick's grand total of 655 points! Congratulations - even though it's not for the race win.
The 2nd team in the list didn't get the race win, either. Instead, it's the only other team having a 3-times stage winner - and the only team with two riders in the GC Top 10. It's obviously Lotto!
Wouters was the most successful sprinter, winning stages 3, 10 and 16 - and the green jersey on top of that! Haller still scored more points (thanks to green and yellow jersey days), but the Belgian's 153 points are the 5th highest individual score!
But Lotto wasn't "just" Wouters. Lotto was also Min, getting quite some Top 5s, including his stage 5 podium (3rd). The Korean got 7th in the final GC. Lotto was also Quintana, who even finished 2 spots higher in 5th place, and also got a 3rd place on a stage (S11). And GC-wise, Lotto also had Bouchard as a 3rd rider in the Top 15, taking 14th place.
Which means that Lotto wasn't just individuals, Lotto was a team - a great one - confirmed not only by their 2nd place in the stage 6 TTT, but also by their great win in the team standings, by almost 6 minutes!
So while Wouters, Quintana and Min obviously are the top scorers - all making the Top 10 individually, which no other team achieved - every rider contributed at least a couple of points. And in the end, that's quite a lot of points - 454 to be precise!
Depth scoring sometimes beats winner scoring - and so, the GC winning team doesn't even take 3rd place! Instead, we have the 3rd out of 4 PCT teams - the team of pre-race favourite Giannoutsos, ELCO.
The Greek was tied for the best climber, but the many short and steep climbs in the race didn't really favour him. Plus, when there were long climbs, he still wasn't at his best in most cases - most notable in stage 11. He did get 3 2nd places, but no win. In the end, he had to settle for 3rd place in GC and 188 points - the 3rd best individual score.
However, even though ELCO don't win many races, they're all about depth scoring - and they do that really well this year. For example, Soulious. The puncheur didn't get a stage win, either - but like his teammate finished 2nd three times. And ended up 24th in GC.
Sprinter Edmondson was the team's sole stage winner, celebrating on day 13. That's 7 stage podiums for the team, thereof one win and 6 2nd places. "Almost" and "not quite" must the the words most often heard in their team bus.
GC-wise, they also had Mavrikakis in 13th and Christakos in 20th, plus Vila in 45th on top of Giannoutsos and Soulious - with Christakos also dominating the U25 standings. ELCO ended up 4th in the team standings, mainly due to the lack of breakaway participants - otherwise they might not have ended up 10 minutes behind Lotto.
All in all, it's 411 points for the Greek team, and a clear statement in the promotion fight - close to 20 PpRD isn't an awful result from ToA!
So, we had 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 7th in GC - now we finally get to our GC winner - and the final team above 400 points!
It's definitely not often that a CT team takes the overall win in ToA - I don't know if it has ever happened. It did happen this year, which might be a little bit of a surprise, but definitely not a big one!
Elosegui is just the perfect GC rider with his physical strength, loving long stages, long climbs, long races. He doesn't like short climbs that much, though - which is why he'd have lost the race to Sosa if not for that one hilly stage where the latter failed. Elosegui on the other hand was always attentive, and always strong! He "only" got a single stage win, but 4 additional stage podiums and lots of bonus seconds on top of that. He also was very solid in the two TTs, and in the end won the race more than a minute ahead of Sosa! Congratulations - to him and to his manager, whose training decision for the Spaniard turned out to be an awesome one! Elosegui's 327 points are easily the 2nd best individual score, great job!
The team only got one other podium spot - it also was Newton Foundation's only stage win, with Pronskiy catching everyone by surprise on day 8 and then easily outsprinting Soulious! The Kazakh also took 15th place in GC, scoring 51 points in total.
The reason why Newton Foundation end up behind three PCT teams was their lack of depth scoring. Quinn did a good job for sure, finishing 36th in GC and 4th in U25 (after sitting in 1st or 2nd for about half of the race). But otherwise, Canal was the only scorer thanks to his 50th place in GC - the 4 other riders couldn't contribute at all. So it's "just" 403 points for the Americans - which is still an amazing outcome for a CT team! Congratulations again - on the great score, but especially on the GC win!
We had one team scoring really big, three teams scoring well, over 400 points that is - but for the final Top 5 spot, you didn't even need 250 points!
And that final Top 5 scoring spot goes to the team with the final Top 5 GC rider not covered yet. You may have guessed it, it's Sauber's Misbah that I'm writing about. His - and the team's highlight - was without any doubt the stage 17 win, one to remember, the MTT up to Mount Fuji. After this stage win, Misbah - who also finished 3rd on day 8 - was just 16" behind the GC podium and had a realistic shot at moving further up. But already the day after, he couldn't keep up the Top 3's pace, still easily holding onto 4th place in the end.
Other than that, Sauber was mostly going for depth points. Which did more or less work out; Misbah scored 145 opints, his teammates not even 100 points combined. Chen and Dulanjana ended up 16th and 17th in GC - not the really big points, but still some points, and even some bonus points for 2nd in team standings. Campero (25th) and Voisard (32nd) also made the Top 50. But the lack of a sprinter or stage hunter meant they had no other big scorer, with the overall total of 238 points probably being just OK, but definitely not great for the final PCT team in the race.
Even they scored even slightly less, Air New Zealand will be absolutely delighted with 6th place and slightly more than 10 PpRD on average! CT's red lantern had a great race compared to the rest of their season, taking 2 stage wins and a total of 8 stage podiums (only McCormick had more)! By the way, every time one of their riders got a stage Top 5, it also was a podium, so that's pretty efficient!
Their first stage winner was a rather surprising one - with Fabbro attacking with 2.5km to go on stage 5, and holding out all the way to the line - even getting as close as 9" to taking the race lead! Sadly, Fabbro then had some awful luck on stage 11, suffering two punctures - the second one right before the penultimate climb where things heated up. He dropped from 2nd all the way down to 12th in GC. It's obviously an open question what he could have achieved with some better material, but he could easily have lost two minutes less - which would've meant 10th in GC in the end. Now, it was 11th place - still a good performance and 100 points, but: what if?
Air New Zealand also brought a good sprinter here. And Scully did indeed get 3 stage podiums - but no win. He was still the team's 2nd best scorer with 42 points. But what makes the team performance really impressive is that they had no less than 6!!! different riders on a stage podium! Which obviously means they were pretty successful with breakaways - Phelan's win on stage 12 obviously being the highlight, but they also had Shalunov in 3rd on stage 7, Visser in 3rd on stage 10 (taking over sprinter duties from the gapped Scully), and Gaze in 2nd on stage 19.
GC-wise, only Shalunov got some points besides Fabbro, taking 28th place. But all the nice stage results - plus 4th in KoM by Shalunov - were worth more than 100 points, making it a total of 222 for the Kiwis!
We're taking another step down, below the 200 points mark - but all other teams except for one at least broke the 100 points barrier.
In 8th place, we have Zain-Omantel, even though they couldn't bring their big star Carapaz due to race day restrictions. And they had a pretty rough first half of the race - but with a 2nd place from the breakaway by Albalooshi on day 12, they had an almost optimal start to the second half!
Their biggest moment of the race came two days later, though, where Bartl was the only breakaway rider surviving, and winning the race-defining 14th stage. He moved up to 13th in GC thanks to this win - and would even improve that result by one spot to take 12th place in the final GC! In the end, that's 62 points for the German.
The final stage podium for Zain came the day after, where it was Maxime La Lavandier's turn to join the breakaway - and he did rather well, too, ending up 3rd.
However, consistency ended up being more important for the final scoring than a stage win. Because Bartl wasn't the team's top scorer - it was Borisavljevic! The Serbian was never among the best, but never lost a lot of time, either - and ended up 8th in GC! He still got a couple of Top 8 stage results, and all things considered, ended up with 75 points.
Besides him and Bartl, Zain also had the La Lavandier twins in the Top 50, with Maxime (29th) beating Mathieu (31st) by two minutes. And, mostly thanks to their good breakaway results, they also ended up 3rd in team standings, scoring a couple of bonus points. Which gives us an overall score of 192.
Next up is another team that mostly was below expectations this year - Euskotren. But I'm sure that Lafay's KoM jersey win - capped off by his wins on stages 2 and 15 - will make up for a lot of failures this season! The Frenchman isn't a GC rider, though, and so his 30th place didn't add many points - but with 129 points, he's still easily the team's best scorer!
Which is also due to the Basque outfit not bringing any great GC rider at all. Rochas was their highest finisher in the GC, taking 26th place. And he was the second best scorer with 14 points, barely more than 10% of what his teammate got. Which is the reason that the overall score is good, but not great in the end, despite Lafay's awesome race.
With Rodriguez, they had another rider in the Top 50, but that's it in terms of GC points. Politt took 3rd place in the stage 20 ITT, the only other stage podium besides Lafay's two wins. Darbinyan tried to compete in the sprints, but 4th on day 1 was his best result by far. So it's only smaller points by Lafay's teammates - at least, every single one of them got at least 4 points.
All things considered, that's 184 points for Euskotren.
The fight for the final Top 10 spots was close, with the next 3 teams all within just 10 points. In the end, it's Spark who claim 10th place here!
Sure, with Bennett they'd have had one of the absolute top favourites - he even won the race back in 2022. But with the Kiwis running out of RDs, it was Lemus Davila who had to take on GC leadership duties.
And the Mexican was rock solid, once again. Not getting any spectacular results, but being consistent throughout the race - which was rewarded by 9th place in GC. His 57 points were the team's highest contribution, and a result that's perfectly within the expected range.
Their second best scorer was one who will certainly aim to score much higher later in his career, with Rodriguez set to grow into one of the world's better stage racers! Even though he's still developing, the Spaniard already got very close to GT line honours on day 15, only missing out to Lafay. He finished 27th in GC and 2nd in U25, definitely a promise for the future! 43 points for Spark's greatest talent.
While their youngster did really well, their sprinter probably underperformed slightly. Mudgway only got a single stage podium, taking 3rd place on the 3rd stage, but otherwise was fairly anonymous. His 19 points are still Spark's 3rd best score.
Spark did get one more stage podium, which came on stage 19 - the day when Mudgway finally won the sprint of the bunch, Huera was up front in the breakaway and secured 3rd place. And a Top 50 GC result, with 48th place.
Karatsivis also got a GC Top 50, plus also 3rd place in U25 - another promising rider, who will however return to home team ELCO after the season. But this season, he's scoring for Spark - and Spark scored 154 points in total.
Spark were the first out of just 4 teams not getting a single stage win - the next one is Gjensidige. The Norwegians, leaders of the CT division for most of the season, didn't bring a great team - and it showed.
Lunke as their GC leader did a decent job, though. Sadly, he had his best stage on the final day, where he took 3rd place, even beating race winner Elosegui. In the end, Lunke finished 6th in GC, which seems fair considering his skillset. And 102 points is nothing to scoff at for sure!
However, the rest of the team didn't even score 50 points combined. Which isn't surprising if you don't bring any top rider on any terrain. Consonni actually kicked off the race in a great way for them, though, taking 2nd place right on day 1! But he didn't get many more points after that, ending up with 34.
The team's third stage podium finisher was Della Lunga, with the Italian achieving this outstanding result from the stage 12 breakaway, taking 3rd place and 10 points there. And that's it, almost - with Nygaard Madsen adding an intermediate standings KoM point, for a total of 147 for Gjensidige.
Three teams left. Hilcona are next. The Liechtensteiners brought veteran sprinter Krieger as their team leader - and the German indeed got them two stage podiums, 3rd on stage 9 and 2nd on stage 16. 38 points for him.
But that wasn't enough to be the team's best scorer. Fortunately not, looking at the score. Instead, it was Majoral who contributet the biggest amount! The Andorran finished 2nd on stage 7, "best of the rest" behind Preidler. And he also ended up 2nd in the KoM standings, after having even worn the jersey for four days. 34th place in GC also added a handful of points, for 73 in total.
Whereas these four days in the Polka Dots surely were a highlight for the team, their biggest moment came only on day 19: a stage win! Aebi outsprinted his 5 companions to take Hilcona's sole win of the race. Which made him the 3rd best scorer with these 25 points for the stage win.
Van Uden and Martinelli also scored minor points, with the other three riders taking nothing but a lot of experience back home. And Hilcona packing 144 points in their bags, not a bad result for them after all.
The final team above 100 points - and therefore avoiding the last spot in the rankings - are Babymetal. With only 2 podium spots - and as many Top 5 results in total - they were the 2nd least successful team in terms of stage results.
But at least they got close to winning twice, in particular on stage 13 where McGill almost won the bunch sprint but had to settle for 2nd. The day after, Verschaeve had his best day in the mountains, staying closest to Elosegui when the latter made what turned out to be his GC winning move. Verschaeve finished 3rd on that day - and 10th in the final GC, scoring 57 points in total.
Petelin was 21st in the final GC, and both Kawasaki and De Laat made the Top 50 as well. With the Japanese also taking 5th in U25. And let's not forget about Todome, who wore the white jersey after the first two stages, and also was 2nd and then 3rd in the early KoM standings - scoring 11 points in the end.
All in all, that's 115 points for Babymetal.
And last but not least, the red lantern. It's weird to see a team that used to do well so far down in the rankings. In fact, Glanbia won the race in 2023 with Eastman. But this year - no Eastman, no party. And no Bennett, no Craddock, no Cruz - the riders who also won stages for them in the past.
In 2024, Glanbia were the only team not getting a single stage podium. And they only got a single stage Top 5, thanks to Mannion's breakaway effort on day 7. It was only good enough for 4th, though. And so, the team's highlight probably was Crowley as the race's first KoM leader, taking the jersey on the 2nd day and holding it for 5 stages. They even had two jerseys after stage 3, with McCambridge taking the U25 lead for a day.
But after stage 7, it mostly was a race to forget for the Irishmen. Mannion tried to mount a KoM challenge after Crowley lost the jersey, and was able to claim 5th place in the end. In the final GC, we find their best rider - Mannion - in 40th place. Ryan 7 spots behind - still taking 7th in U25, though.
Points? Yeah, they did score some. Mannion and Crowley ended up with almost the identical outcome, scoring 24 and 22 points respectively. McCambridge and Ryan also got some points - 13 combined - and that's it. 59 points for Glanbia. I don't like it, but it's the 2024 reality.
That's all, folks! Below, you can find the scores - of the teams and of all the riders who scored any points!
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