We might be halfway through Q4, but regardless we feel like doing our regular quartal review of what happened, and introduce our team for the final Q4 races.
Both Q1 and Q2 went surprisingly well as you can see below. Q1 ended up 546 points higher that expected! Let's break down the numbers for Q2.
A lot of races, and fortunately a lot of solid races, was ridden in the Q2 department. In the end we come away just shy of 500 points higher than we anticipated. Most races were pretty much on par, but races like Tour of Slovenia, Tour of Northern Europe and GP Moscow contributed heavily to the periods success. But we have to highlight our consistency as the main factor for doing so well, that outliers can produce points directly to the bottom line.
Kinoshita performed exactly as we hoped in the ardennes, Altur almost exactly as expected in his cobbled races and our depth set in where we expected it to do so. This leaves us with magnificent (and surprising) over performances mainly from Farantakis, but also riders like Karatsivis and Kiriakidis chipped in with solid performances in Criterium du Daupine Libere and Tour of Northern Europe.
We did have a fair bit of more negative results compared to Q1 aswell though, but fortunately those results were still affecting us in a minor way. Paris-Roubaix was OK, the doubleheader of Rheden and Battenkill slightly underwhelming, but in no way disastrous and Chrono des Herbiers were also ever so slighlyt out of tune. It was only in Scandinavian Open road Race were we turned out to be a no show, despite having a reasonably strong potential with Kinoshita in particular. We came away with 45 points, and expected around 100.
Still another perfectly executed period to set is around 5th in the overall PT standings, and realistically well above our final expected result.
Let's take a look at Q3, which is slightly lower than normal, in order to make Q4 have an actual effect..
July Racing
Only two races in July, but plenty of racedays. We participate in the flat one day race Rund um Köln, as well as the Grand Father of Cyling - Tour de France! We expect something similar to 400 points combined.
Start
End
Race
Category
01-Jul
Rund um Koln
PT
Exp. pts: 150pts Expectations: Having Stylianos Farantakis present we always have a hope for something good. He could be winning the race, but also missing the top 10. The most likely scenario is somewhere around 3-5th.
Start
End
Race
Category
03-Jul
23-Jul
Tour de France
GT
Exp. pts: 250pts Expectations: We bring a very attack-minded setup without any real leaders. Therefor we expect to be visable in the early part of the race picking up the KOM fight, and maybe minor stage results. Ideally we come away from the race with a stage win - or atleast something remotely close to that. From a GC perspective this is probably a low scoring race, significantly lower than Giro d'Italia atleast.
August Racing
The 5 races in August is likely going to determine whether we can settle in as a top 10 team in the overall standings, or if we are going to be in an outside risk of the upper relegation spots. We have mainly cobbles and sprints aswell as a single timetrial, which on paper is a good fit for our team. We are expecting around 700-750 points from this month
Start
End
Race
Category
01-Aug
GP Kigali
PT
Exp. pts: 150pts Expectations: Altur is here with his solid team around him, and thus we expect his usual performance around 4-7th in the race suplemented with some depth results.
Start
End
Race
Category
03-Aug
05-Aug
Ras Tailteann
PTHC
Exp. pts: 175pts Expectations: Farantakis have fond memories from last season where he did reasonably well here. He seems to have lifted his game further and we think he have a realistic shot at a podium, aswell as a couple of good stage results.
Start
End
Race
Category
07-Aug
East Midlands Cicle Classic
PT
Exp. pts: 130pts Expectations: Much like in Kigali we expect Altur as our leverage, and some depth to cover the points difference. Should be a decent race for us.
Start
End
Race
Category
13-Aug
Chrono d'Arenberg
PTHC
Exp. pts: 100pts Expectations: This race have give it's ups and downs in the past. Still with riders like Stavrakakis, Cavagna and Vlatos here we should be able to pick up a decent amount of points.
Start
End
Race
Category
16-Aug
20-Aug
Deutschland Tour
PTHC
Exp. pts: 175pts Expectations: Farantakis is here to lead us in the sprints. 4 flat stages should be enough for him to get atleast a couple of good results. The rest should come from depth points in the Timetrial where we have 5 riders from 76-78TT.
The season is slowly beginning to fade with just 5 more races left to race. The Q3 have effectively been ridden, and it turned out to be another decent period for us!
Rund um Köln
EXP: 150pts
ACT: 292pts
Tour de France
EXP: 250pts
ACT: 178pts
GP Kigali
EXP: 150pts
ACT: 146pts
Ras Tailteann
EXP: 176pts
ACT: 348pts
East Midlands Cicle Classic
EXP: 130pts
ACT: 90pts
Chrono d'Arenberg
EXP: 100pts
ACT: 120pts
Deutschland Tour
EXP: 175pts
ACT: 174pts
STATUS
EXP: 1130pts
ACT: 1348pts
It's a little bit interesting, because we "failed" 4/7 races, but still ended up with a good period, where we outscored our expectations by 218 points. Mostly it is because we actually managed to hit all races pretty spot on, except for 3. Tour de France gave a negative of 72 despite having low scoring ambitions, but we won both Rund um Köln and Ras Tailteann which combined make for 315 points above expectation.
GP Kigali and Deutschland Tour was both very much on point, only 5 points below in total on an expected 325 points. So among the more important races to get right. Overall we come away with a good feeling, but also a feeling that it is very much Stylianos Farantakis that keeps us going with a total of 645 out of those 1348 scored points.
Regardless of how the final 4 races is going we are ending up with a higher pointscore than we expected prior to the season. We expected 5.500 points which should be sufficient in the survival battle. We are currently on 5.851 points, and if we keep our expected scores we will end up with 6.761 points in total. Last season this would have equalled 6th in the Pro Tour. Seeing how the July rankings ended up it seems very likely that 6th will yet again be scoring around that amount of points.
We do have one more Grand Tour to go however, which can always trigger new normals, and we expect to score similarly to the Giro d'Italia, which was a good race for us. Given how we performed in the Tour de France, we might well be on a very low score though. We expect to end up around 6.500 points in total, which is still very much better than pre-season.
Let's take a look at Q4, before closing the season.
September Racing
Just two races. A one day race in the cobbled department, and the final Grand Tour of the season, La Vuelta a España!
Start
End
Race
Category
03-Sep
Strada Appia Antica
PT
Exp. pts: 130pts Expectations: Marcos Altur leads the way for one last time here in Italy. He have been remarkably solid throughout, without any real outliers in either direction. He topped the season getting 4th in Ronde van Vlaanderen, while his lowest was 11th in the most recent race - East Midlands Cicle Classic. We expect somewhere in between.
Start
End
Race
Category
10-Sep
30-Sep
Vuelta a Espana
GT
Exp. pts: 450pts Expectations: Giannoutsos is here to lead the way, and is being fairly held up by the likes of Ioannidis, Kiriakidis, Agrotis and Christakos. We don't expect big things, but we hope it will be enough to fight for a top 10 aswell as seeing some aggressive riding, like we did in the Giro. Koumpetsos is also here in the hope that he will participate in the bumpy sprints of the race.
October Racing
The final 3 races of the season should suit us better than the races of September. Farantakis is present in both Praha and Philadelphia so atleast we have a realistic chance of scoring points, while Lombardia probably isn't for us.
Start
End
Race
Category
07-Oct
10-Oct
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha
PT
Exp. pts: 150pts Expectations: With 2 sprint stages, 1 prologue and 1 long ITT we believe Farantakis is a good fit. Not for the overall GC, but sufficient to do damage early on, maybe with some luck claiming the leaders jersey at one point aswell as a stagewin. That is the ambition, and then we hope our TT department can supplement with some depth, despite facing serious competition here.
Start
End
Race
Category
13-Oct
Philadelphia International Championship
PTHC
Exp. pts: 105pts Expectations: The last dance for Farantakis to put the final nail in the coffin scoring an unbreakable Greek high! He have Zingle to lead him out and the usual domestiques for the early and later part of the fight. A win would be amazing to end the season, hopefully a top 3 is possible.
Start
End
Race
Category
17-Oct
Giro di Lombardia
M
Exp. pts: 75pts Expectations: Kinoshita have done pretty well in the ardennes in the long endurant races. This will be his last stint in the ELCO - ABEA jersey before "retiring" from the team. We wish him a good final race and have invested everything we have in aiding him. That being said, this isn't an ideal race as it could well be too difficult.
The season has come to an end - as a newly promoted team we can obviously be very happy that we managed to survive. That was always the main objective!
Let's start by taking a look at the final 5 races that concluded the season for us.
Strada Appia Antica
EXP: 130pts
ACT: 215pts
Vuelta a Espana
EXP: 450pts
ACT: 404pts
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha
EXP: 150pts
ACT: 92pts
Philadelphia International Championship
EXP: 105pts
ACT: 49pts
Giro di Lombardia
EXP: 75pts
ACT: 114pts
STATUS
EXP: 910pts
ACT: 874pts
The month of october started out nicely with us overperforming in Strada Appia Antica, however the Vuelta was slightly underwhelming despite Giannoutsos claiming his second Grand Tour stagewin, after taking one in the Giro several months ago. We did somewhat expect him to score better than 10th in the GC of one of the Grand Tours, so overall he unfortunately scored less than anticipated. Still the month was slightly above our expectation. In fact every single month had been, albeit this was the lowest overperformance we had so far.
Unfortunately we went on to end the season in a negative as both Praha and Philadelphia were dissapointing races from our perspective, and at a bad time, as we were actually fighting for 3-5th at the time. Luckily the season ended alright after Kinoshita took another top 10 in a monument and landed 9th in Giro di Lombardia.
Overall we ended up scoring 75 points below expectations.
Looking at how we performed in the different racing categories, we see a clear tendency that we need to develop our Grand Tour capabilities.
Cat
Expected
Actual
Dif.
GT
1150
1039
-111
Mon
675
864
189
PT
2375
3079
704
PTHC
1300
1743
443
SUM
5500
6725
1225
Pro Tour ranking
Regardless of a slight underperformance at the end of the season, we have achieved a top 10 which is a massive succes. And while 6th was within reach if we hadn't scored 75 points less than expected in november, top 5 was out of reach unless we had scored a whooping 225 points more. This was never really close to being realistic.
Pos
Last
Team
Total
RD
PpRD
1
1
Evonik - ELKO
7558
180
41,99
2
2
EA Vesuvio
7335
180
40,75
3
3
Rabobank
7126
180
39,59
4
4
King Power
7011
180
38,95
5
5
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
6951
180
38,62
6
6
Tinkoff Team - La Datcha
6809
180
37,83
7
7
ELCO - ABEA
6726
180
37,37
8
9
Team Puma - SAP
6653
180
36,96
9
8
Indosat Ooredoo
6446
180
35,81
10
11
Xero Racing
6335
180
35,19
11
10
Fastned
6326
180
35,14
12
13
Aker - MOT
6120
180
34
13
12
cycleYorkshire
5992
180
33,29
14
14
Polar
5990
180
33,28
15
15
Cedevita
5852
180
32,51
16
18
Gazelle
5248
180
29,16
17
16
Los Pollos Hermanos
5231
180
29,06
18
17
Sony - Force India
5164
180
28,69
19
19
Team UBS
4897
180
27,21
20
20
Grieg-Maersk
4566
180
25,37
21
21
Lierse SK - Pizza Ullo Pro Cycling
4398
180
24,43
22
22
Jura GIANTS
3999
180
22,22
Pro Tour ranking
The individual rankings saw the best ever greek performance when Stylianos Farantakis clocked 1670 points, which is beyond comparison to previous results. Unfortunately it was the last time Farantakis could be developped, so we will have to enjoy him in the next couple of seasons!
Another interesting take is that everyone from the individual top 3 will be looking for either a new team or a new division. Silvio Herklotz and Tom Wirtgen are both without jobs after their teams disbanded by the end of the season, while Mads Pedersen is relegating with his! And from there Farantakis actually came relatively close to matching the next in line - Areruya and M. Angel Lopez.
Pos
Rider
Team
Total Points
1
Silvio Herklotz
Team Puma - SAP
2189
2
Tom Wirtgen
EA Vesuvio
1927
3
Mads Pedersen
Grieg-Maersk
1821
4
Joseph Areruya
Xero Racing
1775
5
Miguel Angel Lopez
Evonik - ELKO
1674
6
Stylianos Farantakis
ELCO - ABEA
1670
43
Marcos Altur
ELCO - ABEA
747
68
Tomohiro Kinoshita
ELCO - ABEA
548
73
Miltiadis Giannoutsos
ELCO - ABEA
525
109
Nikolaos Ioannidis
ELCO - ABEA
346
113
Georgios Boutopoulos
ELCO - ABEA
323
134
Ioannidis Kiriakidis
ELCO - ABEA
280
141
Remi Cavagna
ELCO - ABEA
255
145
Axel Zingle
ELCO - ABEA
250
147
Panagiotis Karatsivis
ELCO - ABEA
246
164
Zisis Soulious
ELCO - ABEA
205
181
Georgios Stavrakakis
ELCO - ABEA
186
195
Michail Kortsidakis
ELCO - ABEA
171
252
Jay Vine
ELCO - ABEA
133
260
Pangiotis Christapopoulos
ELCO - ABEA
129
358
Anastasios Koumpetsos
ELCO - ABEA
86
396
Kamiel Bonneu
ELCO - ABEA
75
400
Aimiliano Vila
ELCO - ABEA
74
423
Martinos Moutsios
ELCO - ABEA
68
445
Scott Davies
ELCO - ABEA
61
452
Dimitrios Christakos
ELCO - ABEA
59
473
Samuel Welsford
ELCO - ABEA
48
488
Kaspars Sergis
ELCO - ABEA
35
489
Panagiotis Vlatos
ELCO - ABEA
35
Before the season we set expectations for every single rider, and while most performed according to our expectations we did have a few underwhelming performances. We expected 600 points from Miltiadis Giannoutsos, who scored 525. Not a disastrous underperformance, but we had hoped he could beat the expectations being a clear leader in our team. Anastasios Koumpetsos was slighly below par as we hoped to see him score as little as 100 points. But the 3 major dissapointments came from Jay Vine, Dimitrios Christakos and Kaspars Sergis. We weren't expecting big things from either, so it's within the acceptable.
On the positive side we have to applaude the big off season gambles: Marcos Altur and Tomohiro Kinoshita. For Altur we expected 650 points and got 747, while we expected 450 from Kinoshita and got 548. So both scored aproximately 100 points higher than we thought they would. They also check in as the 2nd and 3rd best performers of the season for us.
Fortunately the next in line are also Greek in the shapes of Giannoutsos, Ioannidis, Boutopoulos and Kiriakidis before seeing strong performances from Cavagna and Zingle aswell! It somehow fits the team nicely to have a continued french sector.
Unmaxed Karatsivis scored 246 points, and we are extremely intruiged by what we can expect in the future from him! In a not to distant future we will let you guys know a little bit more about our development plans!
Paris - Roubaix
Giro d'Italia
Tour of Slovenia
GP Liechtenstein
Amstel Gold Race
Fleche Wallonne
Tour of the Battenkill
GP Moscow
Hanko Classic
Tour de Suisse
Scandinavian Open Road Race
STATUS
Rund um Koln
GP Kigali
Ras Tailteann
East Midlands Cicle Classic
Praha - Karlovy Vary - Praha
- Also a big congrats on your promotion! It's going to be fun to be in the PT at the same time.
