kandesbunzler26 wrote:




QED

redordead wrote:

Hopefully MAL delivers some top results.

redordead wrote:


Better late than never

Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier wins the Tour de France for a record breaking third time. Previously he shared the record with Silvio Herklotz, Andy Schleck, Angel Madrazo and Simon Spilak who all won the race twice.

The race started with a shocker on the opening stage where Lecuisinier lost two minutes on the peleton on a flat stage with no meaningful action. Afterwards, we were able to see a clinical exercise of winning the race with the least effort possible. Behind a strong Evonik team, Lecuisinier looked in control of his main rival throughout the race but only took over the yellow jersey on stage 16 in Alp d'Huez when he climbed the famous turns quicker than everyone else and secured his only stage win of this year's Tour.

A particular shoutout goes to Tobias Foss and Pascal Eenkhoorn who did valuable work in the mountains in support of Lecuisinier while also securing themselves a top 20 GC result.

knockout wrote:



Absolutely cant complain about his last races. Which probably means that lithuania will be super disappointing

redordead wrote:


Spot on

August is a super short month for us with only two cobbled classics - one of which already took place. Ovsya is an outsider for both races. Fairly obvious lineups so we want to point out that Jente Michels is making his professional debut.

We are definitely gonna lose some of our lead to our rivals in the title fight.

AbhishekLFC wrote:

No more climbing required indeed! Time to hold on to the gap from here. Congrats on the TDF win and PHL's record. Well deserved

jandal7 wrote:

As the cliche says the championships seasons are often the ones where even when things go wrong for you they end up going right.

It's another flat classic and we are yet again relying on the same formula you know already. Ovsyannikov is our main sprinter while we bring a bunch of possible attackers. This time featuring Calmejane who has shown his attacking spirit succesfully in the very recent past. Watch out for Kristers Ansons who is particularly motivated in his home race.

Time to say goodbye. This is Ovsyannikovs last race in an Evonik jersey (presumably?) and it's a final opportunity on the cobbles. We would love to end the partnership on a high so full support goes towards him once again.

One of the remaining hilly classics for Lopez. It's certainly not his favourite one as the downhill sprint finish arguably makes tactics and positioning more important than pure strength. He has shown in 2023 that he can win it but 8th places in 2022 and 2024 show why we don't consider this as one of his better route fits. Still with Lopez on the startline, we are obviously hoping for a top 5 result.

And finally the last Grand Tour of the year. Grand Tours are often some of the highest point swings and as the presumed favourite to win the title at this point, they are the biggest risk as a Shikai like surprise can quickly throw a wedge into the plans.

We are going with a focus on mountain breaks and depth GC. Luke Plapp is leading us here and will be a hot contender for the youth classification although he expects a tough challenge from homecrowd favourite Carlos Rodriguez as his team got a wildcard for this Grand Tour. Plapp is targeting a top 10 GC result among stage success. Whether he will join breakaways is a question that's likely depending on the General classification situation but we also expect him to target the stage 12 time trial in Santiago de Compostelo.

Pascal Eenkhoorn is another proven GT rider. As 14th in last year's Vuelta and 20th in this year's Tour despite heavy work for Lecuisinier, he has shown that he can improve over three weeks. We hope that he finishes inside the top 15.

Nikias Arndt is a third strong climber. We expect him to be more focussed on break hunting than GC. Alekss Krasts is a second guy who could reasonably be argued to be in the youth classification fight while Frisk, Holowesko and Mendoza are in pure domestique roles. Bauhaus is our lone sprinter.

A very early September preview but no point in waiting to write this when we are already done with August. With the final GT on the horizon the month will bring a lot of certainty as it will set up the final ranking fights for the last few races.

Evonik has decent squads in all four races with quite some upside in most of them but there is no real premium race with guaranteed high scoring in the month.