Not going to say too much until after the final stage, but what a man is Pierre! Amazing ride. Firdaus also incredible. Not going to talk about him until later. Too many weird shenanigans could still bring it undone tomorrow.
Congrats Jandal, what a ride by Areruya. Happy that him and Latour could finally break free from the clutches of oppressive Sergio and fight for a win and gain some time. Thanks for the terrific report also Ulrich!
Thrilling stage, unfortunately we seemed a little worn down and Carthy didn't really come good in the last week like we hope. That said, (1) Carthy still in the top 10; (2) we get the team standings; (3) AKA makes the time cut (for now, apparently that can change). So, everything good for us. We're now just a flat stage away from our top 10 goal and a very successful race.
Of course, we know that holding gaps on flat stages is far a guarantee. Not sure how the AI will manage the fact that AKA is still a lead sprinter and has a technical shot at the points jersey. We'll just have to hope Carthy (and Gregaard) play it smart and let the rest of our guys work.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Quite a few 3rd places in stages for us here so far. I was very confused when we were one of the teams selected to build a sprint train for Contreras. I did not account for that at all, so my riders here are not very suitable for that. In the beginning that lead to nothing but it got better as the race progressed and Contreras even has another chance tomorrow. From the break both of my Thai climbers got 3rd places each, which is an acceptable yield, but especially Chaiyasombat should usually do better. Unfortunately he is also no factor in the GC after having lost so much time early on already. Anyways, our third Thai rider here got us our goal of a stage win. I'm very happy the gamble with Mano paid off, such a short TT is usually not too much to his liking. And of course also Matsuda in 4th using his McCormick learned skills is noteworthy making that day the highlight of our race.
Of course there was never a doubt about who would end up on top of the podium after 3 weeks. It was still very fun to follow along. Thank you Ulrich for the great reports throughout!
Well, the farewell wasn't met to be for AKA, just ran out of gas there in the end. Still so proud that he had this kind of race. Two stage wins, a couple more placings, and 2nd in the points competition as the top sprinter. Could not have fathomed that outcome at the beginning. He was a couple more breakaway days in the mountains from actually taking it home. Still one more race for him, but it feels like a proper goodbye. I'm gonna miss having this guy around.
In general, what a race for our team! The goal coming in was a top 10 for Carthy and not much else. Well, he got the top 10. And funny enough, besides that result, Carthy had a pretty underwhelming race. Never had any standout days. Made a few fruitless attacks, but was always just hanging around that second tier of climbers to Zubeldia his was into the top 10. And a top 10 is what the sponsors wanted, so that will do.
It was really Aranburu and Gregaard who shined of our climbers. Aranburu in particular came alive in his Spanish NC jersey. Winning a stage here, numerous podiums, and holding on for a top 20 GC. Magical race for him that really gives me hope about his lack of stamina when planned correctly. He lit up a lot of the race and was super versatile throughout. Gregaard too. Again, I'm so impressed by how different of a rider he is than Aranburu, yet both of them had so much success uphill here, often together. It was cool to see. And even Hellemose snagging a top 25 with his steady domestique work. All great to watch, and helped us bring home the team classification.
Congrats to all those who had success, but most of all, thanks again to Ulrich for amazing coverage. It's been a treat to come home from some very long days at work and have an exciting, thorough, and captivating report each time. So grateful for your efforts. Thank you!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Thanks so much Ulrich for the awesome reporting over the last few week, very enjoyable to read of a morning
Congrats to cio on the abomination’s latest GT escapade - he just too good. Hopefully you’re back at some point to read the reports and enjoy the race. Congrats to red on the KOM, glad Schlegel could try and redeem his season a bit here.
Very happy with how the Vuelta went for us. Latour rode really well all race, even though he wasn’t really rewarded for it until the final few stages. Best of the rest is a great achievement here I think and he’s landed the first ever GT podium for our team which is awesome! It was a joy to watch him put pressure on Herklotz in the later stages and I won’t forget his team attack against Herklotz with Firdaus anytime soon.
Speaking of Firdaus, I can’t believe we have an Indonesian rider winning a jersey in a GT! Absolutely massive for the team. He rode a really great race and was really strong throughout. I think he definitely benefitted from timing his break shenanigans well (see: dumb luck) and was able to focus on protecting Latour which kept him up the front most days. His break effort on the final MT stage was immense, he kept up for a long time and then managed to hang around in the favourites group for a while and even help out. Very excited for his future after this race.
Congrats to all the stage winners (esp Abhi on the final stage) and those who did well.
The shit lead out is back I guess. Ultimately this is a failed race for Philipsen. Two stage wins looks nice, but the top sprinter in the race was never even close to getting any classification points. Comparisons to others make even less sense to me.
Thanks to Chumil's stage win and Schlegel's KOM the race ends up being a success. Not as good as the TDF, but much, much better than the Giro. Not sure if it does anything for us in the rankings. Probably not.
Thanks to Ulrich for some very detailed and consistent reporting across the 3 weeks
Another third. Overall decent stage results from Contreras even though I had the small hope he might snatch a stage along the way.
Cool to see our Indonesian neighbours doing so well this race!
Thank you for the race coverage Ulrich and congrats everyone who did well!
A superb win by Kuli to give Sony a big boost towards survival, congratulations!
Aular as fifth in GC is nice, also with some great stage performances by Lopez Nolasco makes this race quite decent for us. A shame he dropped heavily on the last stage, but la vida es dura. Nice depth as well
Thank you very much for 21 fantastic reports, Ulrich, absolute hero!
Good sprint by Prasad, finally! Happy to see him and the team get it close to right, at least.
Thank you for splendid coverage all throughout the race, UU! Really appreciated.
The race itself was a real brummer for us, and admittedly very far from what we hoped for. Valter had his moment on the first hilly stage with a stage podium, but that was also it from him, which is super disappointing considering all the hilly stages there was here. 9th in GC is cool, and a GC above expectations, but in the bigger picture, but still a very disappointing outing by him.
Prasad and the team being poor in the sprints was also a disappointment. Admittedly I was surprised to see us consistently do leadouts here. Thoughts in the race planning was that there was going to be more of the top sprinters present. Having said that, the leadout seemed to be okay on several occasions, but Prasad is not strong enough to finish them off/it takes too much of him to be at the front for so long. That’s understandable looking at his stats, but gave room for lots of results we can’t really be happy with.
Congratulations to all the winners! Sony and Carlsberg in particular with races well above expectations, at least I’d say so. Happy for both of them
First of all, a big thanks to Ulrich for consistent and amazing reports from the start! It was great to read and looked forward to reading them just after waking up
Kulikovskiy finishing off the race in the best way possible gives us a major boost in the relegation battle. GC-wise, our race was under-par, was hoping Leemreize, Hayter and Roson would all be much better off. I think their domestique work for Broxham took its toll and the deficit was too much even with decent results in the last week. Speaking of the latter, our rider of the race was definitely Broxham, a lvl 4 loan-in no less! His scoring was the difference between a decent race and a bad race.
The winner was expected but the GC battle behind that was topsy-turvy. Stage 20 changes could also play a major role in how the final standings shape up.
A mixed raced for us with some really nice highlights including the monster ride by Plapp but also some disappointing moments e.g. when he overextended himself on the chase for break success and lost his good gc position. Eenkhoorn quite solid too.
It's weird to highlight mediocre performances of other teams but the lack of big overperformances from Rabobank/EA/King Power/Tinkoff gives us a great ranking situation before the month and that might be a lot more important to us than our own race
Thanks for the reports, was always a joy to read them first thing in the morning, still lying in bed. Great quality throughout, really enjoyed the race once again!
Not even a single podium stage is not something that I thought would happen with Champoussin and van der Kooij in the team. Champoussin missing out on the KoM rankings and not getting a good GC place is the worst possible outcome for him here.
It's not a disaster, but it's definitely bellow what I thought it would be realistic for us here.
Thanks for the reports, UU! Some of those mountain stages did not look like they were easy to follow!
