After a period of inactivity due to mounting IRL commitments, I finally found the time to get back into the swing of ManGame things. With almost exactly half of our race days already under our belt, here’s a lengthy review of our first half of the season:

As a reminder: The previous transfer season revolved almost entirely around the acquisition of Biniam Girmay. That endeavour was eventually successful, but we sacrificed a lot to get there, giving up our entire time trialing department – a group which contributed a lot of points last year – while downgrading our sprinting prowess and dealing with Joeri Stallaert’s first decline.

Consequently, after a couple of years in the promotion race, our main concern going into this year was holding the ship steady and simply keeping ourselves afloat in PCT in what is effectively the first season of a rebuild around future leaders such as Girmay, Lennert van Eetvelt and Jago Willems.

Despite his first decline, we would’ve still expected for Joeri Stallaert to be a Top 3-5 cobblestone rider in the PCT division. This has unfortunately not fully transpired. His consistency is still remarkable, but the level has dropped a bit more than we had hoped for. In the five C1 and HC classics so far, he didn’t crack the Top 5 even once, finishing between 6th and 10th each race. A 7th place in PTHC Franceville Classique was therefore a pleasant surprise, though.



Louis Meintjes, on the other hand, has kept his level pretty steady compared to last year, even though once again he’s missing the big highlight results, at least so far. In the Tour of Eritrea, he turned a 4th and an 8th place stage finish into 8th overall, slightly underwhelming. But he improved to 4th overall at the Tour de Pologne and then added a very good third place in the Pro Hallstatt Classic, making amends with the race after landing outside of the Top 30 last year.

Joeri Stallaert has the Benelux Challenge, the GP Kigali and the Rheden GP left on his calendar to increase his output. Louis Meintjes still has the majority of his race days ahead of him, as he will participate in the Tour de Suisse, the Tour du Maroc, the Balkans International and the Tour of Japan.

From the get-go, we knew that we needed good results from our entire roster to have a respectable season. Be it through consistent depth scoring or the odd outlier highlight here and there, we couldn’t rely only on our leaders, like we had done so often these past few years. And while some riders have performed below expectations, we still got many good contributions including indeed some very fortunate surprise highlights.



In fact, the season started out with one: At the Great Ocean Road Race, youngster Lennert Van Eetvelt was part of a rare winning breakaway, sprinting to third place in the PTHC classic. Matthew Teggart, who’s proven to be a threat in C2 races before, stepped his game up in a big way, scoring second places at Gent – Wevelgem and the Lincoln GP before winning Dwars Door Vlaanderen! Adding a 7th place at 1 Jours de Dunkerque, he sits in 35th place of the April PCT Rankings, a stellar performance so far.

Kevin Feiereisen, our makeshift solution after fumbling the sprinter situation quite badly during transfers, is also delivering steady performances. With four Top 5 stage finishes across four C1 and HC races and a 12th overall at the Tour of Guadeloupe, he’s scored more than 60 points so far, which is more than we could’ve hoped for, honestly. The likes of Valens Ndayisenga, Jean Eric Habimana and loanee neo-pro Hatem Ben Ameur have all scored a bit over 30 points, too, which is especially strong for the latter two.



But far and away our biggest success this season, and the most outrageous one, was Bonaventure Uwizeyimana’s GC win at the Tour of Norway. After an okay but quiet first four stages, he found his way into the breakaway on the final day. And when the peloton found itself unable to organize a coherent chase, his third place finish and the gap to the rest of the contenders proved enough to take the yellow jersey. Only our third stage race win in team history, it’s certainly a lucky one – but we’ll take it!

While we had some great results, not everyone in the squad is pulling their weight. Natnael Tesfatsion is doing … alright? He shone most brightly at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, where a podium place on the final stage helped him to 6th overall, as well as 2nd in the U25 rankings. He finished 2nd and 3rd, respectively, in the U25 rankings in Eritrea (where he also missed a stage win by the tiniest of margins) and the Tour de Pologne as well, alongside Top 25 GC finishes – no beating Bagioli this year –, adding 16th place in the GP Wallonie, which has him in 54th of the PCT Rankings at the end of April. It’s not necessarily the kind of results that inspire confidence in him as a future team leader, but solid nonetheless.

Natnael Tesfatsion comes agonizingly close to a stage win in Eritrea.

Unfortunately, our strategy to stack depth on hilly stages, both in individual races and throughout the calendar, has yet to pay off. Dylan Teuns, a late and somewhat spontaneous addition during the transfer window, has turned his 24 race days so far into a whopping 11 points.

Simone Velasco adds another 9 to the tally, but at least he was in a breakaway once, something we’re hoping to see more of in the future, from him but also from guys like Moise Mugisha and Louis Blouwe (8 points each so far).

Pos	Last		Team	Total	RD	PpRD	Proj
1	1		Team UBS	1733	79	21.94	3576
2	9		ISA - Hexacta	1521	68	22.37	3646
3	4		Specialized	1309	70	18.7	3048
4	3		Tryg - Eni	1304	79	16.51	2691
5	10		Indosat Ooredoo	1288	66	19.52	3182
6	2		Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo PCTeam	1258	59	21.32	3475
7	5		ELCO - ABEA	1257	43	29.23	4764
8	7		Bralirwa - Cegeka	1250	73	17.12	2791
9	6		Ekoi - Le Creuset	1079	64	16.86	2748
10	8		Sony - Force India	978	54	18.11	2952
11	13		DK Zalgiris	933	64	14.58	2377
12	11		Manada Coyote	838	57	14.7	2396
13	19		Sauber Petronas Racing	779	66	11.8	1923
14	12		Minions	755	58	13.02	2122
15	21		McCormick Pro Cycling	714	61	11.7	1907
16	15		Llapi-Vita	681	68	10.01	1632
17	17		Lotto-Caloi	679	41	16.56	2699
18	14		Kraftwerk Man Machine	644	59	10.92	1780
19	18		Benetton Bimex Cycling	622	51	12.2	1989
20	20		Everesting	614	71	8.65	1410
21	16		JEWA TIROL	573	53	10.81	1762
22	23		Tafjord Kraft	541	50	10.82	1764
23	24		Team Popo4Ever p/b Morshynska	517	55	9.4	1532
24	22		Podium Ambition	450	58	7.76	1265

With all that text out of the way, here’s a look at the cold, hard numbers. We’re currently in 8th place, which is pretty fantastic. However, with the third most race days already spent, and given that we can’t bank on those surprise successes to continue throughout the second half of the season, a significant slide down the rankings is not unlikely.

Given our goal of just making it through the year, though, we can be a good amount more optimistic now than we might’ve been at the start of the season.

I still want to wrap up the 2024 season with a final recap and an overview of our talent development, but with transfers so close, renewals and availability take priority. So here we go.

We headed into negotiations with 19 riders and the intention to bring most of them back, but there were a few cut candidates as well. The biggest question was: What do we do with our aging stars? Louis Meintjes hit his first decline this offseason, Joeri Stallaert even his second. But both are still capable riders who could be valuable assets – if they agreed to substantial wage cuts. And in the end, both did! Louis quickly agreed to a salary that almost halves his previous one, and while Joeri was a tougher negotiator, we eventually came to a similar agreement.

In contrast, four riders did leave. Those include perhaps the two biggest disappointments of last season, puncheurs Dylan Teuns and Simone Velasco. While both did get offers, they were unwilling to adjust their salary to what we thought was more reflective of their performances. Kevin Feiereisen was very solid as our main sprinter last year, but with his first decline, he simply doesn’t have what it takes at PCT level anymore.

The last departure is the one that hurts most. We signed Louis Blouwe as a 25 year old last offseason and maxed him out with the intention of having him as a mainstay of our puncheur squad for a long time. Unfortunately, his wage demands reached a level that, given our experience with similar riders in the previous season, we just weren’t comfortable with. In hindsight, this is the one where management is most unsure if they might’ve made a mistake, but perhaps we will talk again in free agency and come to an agreement there.

Here’s the full overview:

	Rider	Age	AVG	2024 Wage	Change	Available
	B. Girmay	25	77,6	320.000 €	- 55.000
	L. Meintjes	33	77,07	270.000 €	- 200.000	���
	N. Tesfatsion	26	76,62	185.000 €	- 5.000	����
	J. Stallaert	34	76,09	195.000 €	- 155.000	�����
	L. Van Eetvelt	24	75,26	110.000 €	- 10.000	�
	B. Uwizeyimana	32	74,88	110.000 €	0	����
	V. Ndayisenga	31	74,84	90.000 €	- 10.000	��
	J. E. Habimana	24	74,67	83.000 €	+ 13.000	�
	J. Willems	24	74,04	65.000 €	- 10.000	�
	M. Teggart	29	73,89	95.000 €	+ 25.000	����
	M. Mugisha	28	73,41	50.000 €	0	��
	G. Kuypers	25	72,57	50.000 €	0	Loan?
	R. Uhiriwe	24	72,24	50.000 €	0	Loan?
	E. Verstrynge	23	71,61	50.000 €	0	Loan?
	S. Mugisha	28	71,31	50.000 €	0	��
.
	Renewals:			- 407.000
	Released:			- 365.000
	Wage Cap:			727.000

� strong intention to keep | ��� open for offers | ����� clear intention to sell

Adding another significant wage cut for Biniam Girmay and a very small one from Natnael Tesfatsion, our four most expensive riders combine for a reduction of 415.000. In contrast, there were only two wage increases: Jean Eric Habimana, commensurate with his continued development, and Matthew Teggart, well-deserved after tearing up C2 cobbles and doing well in virtually every race he entered.

We head into transfers with 15 riders, but as you can see from the availability, there might still be some reshuffling coming. Joeri Stallaert has been supplanted by Bini as our cobbles captain, but at 79 COB, 77 SPR he’s still a very solid PCT leader and a phenomenal rider at CT level. At a reasonable wage number, and with the pretty barren cobbles FA field, he’s the most likely to leave. Louis Meintjes is also available for a decent offer, very similar things can be said about his skillset, but given he is still our best climber at the moment, he could well stay another year, too.

Natnael Tesfatsion is perhaps the most interesting name listed. He’s shown some really solid promise in his first maxed season with two stage wins and a couple of Top 10s in both GC and classics. But to really fulfil his potential, I believe he should be trained. If we can provide him with that – great! Otherwise, we would try to afford him that opportunity elsewhere.

Bonaventure Uwizeyimana has been a staple of our Rwandan core for a few years now and it might seem odd to see him this available. But our schedules and team composition have not been optimal for him in recent years and if there’s an opportunity for him to shine somewhere else, we could make that happen. Meanwhile, Matthew Teggart becomes a bit more expendable due to the continued development of Jean Eric Habimana. Given his strong points scoring over the past couple of seasons, it would take a decent sum to get him, but we’re open to those offers at least.

Finally, we currently have six youngsters at Level 4 who could benefit from – but probably don’t necessarily need – a PT loan. Van Eetvelt, Habimana and Willems are likely to stay with us, but if you’re a PT team interested in bringing in either a good time trialist (Uhiriwe) or a solid hills/cobbles hybrid (Kuypers/Verstrynge) on minimum wage to bolster your depth, do get in touch.

Booker wrote:

Looking forward to competing against you in PCT this year, cunego (and probably being all up in each other's hair like last year's duel for Blouwe)!

Annoyingly, it looks like you're probably right that you can get quite a haul for Stallaert, and you might be selling at the top, even though his decline has started. Well done judging that the cobblists will be a hot commodity this offseason.

Looking forward to seeing what you will do with the roster as it appears many in your target nations are available, but fingers crossed we don't inflate the Belgians' prices too much!

SotD wrote:

Very very solid renewals! A bit surprised to see just how many Rwandan could potentially be leaving though. I hope Mugisha get's a good home. He was a great domestique for promotion

Meintjes should still be a great rider at all divisions.

kandesbunzler26 wrote:

There should be quite a market for your riders to get you the money for some more leaders to bridge across until the next generation will fully take over. Also it's a shame Teuns was so disappointing last season.

quadsas wrote:

That is a very strong young core, my instinctive thought is that you will make a big splash signing this year

baseballlover312 wrote:

Shocked and dismayed to see Girmay unavailable.

TheManxMissile wrote:

Ever growing regional competition doesn't make life easy, and neither does the decline of Joeri. But surely you'll rise to the challenge and drive the team to success yet again!