Once upon a time, a little yellow single-celled organism was searching around for some food for his friends, the other little yellow single-celled organisms. He found a tree full of bananas, and it became the most holy food for them; only apples (or babbles, as they would pronounce them) came close afterwards, but the bananas stayed on top forever. They could continue to eat bananas without anyone noticing, until capitalism.

A bunch of Americans found out about the bananas, and decided to eat them as well. The organisms weren't too happy about that, but the Americans only wanted to sell bananas to them for ridiciously high prices. The organisms agreed on the deal, because they just couldn't live without bananas. The Americans founded a company called United Fruit Company, which would later be known as Chiquita Brands International.

After the deal, the little yellow single-celled organisms were living in peace again, even during both World Wars and the Cold War, but their rest was disturbed again in the 21st century when an American/French film crew decided to use them for a movie. The company, who named theirself Illumination Entertainment, had a big plan with them, and they even gave them a name that will always be recognized, the Minions!

Illumination Entertainment became a subsidiary of Universal Studios, a rich and famous American company. The film, called Despicable Me and released in 2010, became a hugh success, and the Minions became rich. A sequel would follow 3 years later, and that made them even richer. In 2015, the Minions will finally get their own movie, suprisingly called Minions, where they will finally be main characters. Despicable Me 3 is scheduled for 2017.

One of the Minions was a big fan of cycling, and decided to found a cycling team with the money he earned from the movies and the bananas. He, however, did not have enough money to it, neither did all the Minions together. They first asked Universal Studios to sponsor them. They decided to help, but they didn't offer enough money to fund the entire team. Then Chiquita came to rescue, and offered an amazing amount of money for the team, accompanied by a giant raise in the price of the bananas. Team Chiquita-Universal was born!

The Minions began strong, designing jerseys, making goals and selecting races. Riders were signed, but they made one critical mistake. Instead of human currency, the riders were paid in bananas. This did not only effect their health, but it also resulted in some angry Minions who had to either go to rehab or switch to babbles. And things didn't get better when a film crew showed up to make a new movie about them, which is to premiere soon.

This slight controversy resulted in a big mess. Minions weren't motivated to watch races or write about it, riders weren't performing due to the lack of support from the Minions and organizers threatened to take our license away. Our season marked just four highlights, though that's more than none. The victory of Chad Haga in a TT in Algarve resulted in a mass celebration in our lab and a daily pilgrimage to Portugal. Carter Jones won the mountain jersey in the Tour de Beauce, but those 2 wins were all there would be last season. There were some minor celebrations when Jakob Rathe achieved our goal in a for Minions impronouncable race (Cigar City Brewing Twilight GP) and some decent performances in our home tour: the Tour of America.

It didn't look good for the Minions though. 24th out of 26 was definately a big bummer, though higher than most critics expected. It was a nail-biting offseason, but their but-jokes, banana-bribery and cute smiles managed to secure a new license for this season. We managed to keep both our main sponsors and secondary sponsors aboard (Chiquita, Universal, Illumination Entertainment and Gameloft). To keep the Minions happy, we decided to change our name to Chiquita - Universal powered by Minions, after we were already informally called Team Minions last season. We were given a new appearance as well, with a new jersey designed by renowned artist Bikex. Last season was trial-and-error, this season will be trial-and-succeeding!

The Minions aren't dead. The Minions are alive. The Minions are more fond of cycling than ever and extremely driven to perform this season, and of course gain more bananas. Or babbles. Or both.

Now, the Minions cycling team is in their third consecutive season in the lowest level of cycling. The Minions are losing hope, but is there a Minion who can stand up and lead them to promotion, finally?

Where did it go wrong last season? The start was promising, with our license renewed and Minions being added to the official team name. However, there was some controversy regarding the not very child-friendly abbreviation. We would like to maintain a good relationship with children, and therefore we rectified our error immediately. We also found out that Piamonte didn't like bananas. He was thrown out of the HQ immediately.

Transfers went better as the year before. The PR-Minion didn't mess up the validation process and got it right in one go. Some star riders were signed, such as Martinez and Kinney. Yet, there were also failures. Jones was loaned out to a even worse team where he couldn't progress. 500,000 bananas were invested in sprinter Tolleson, but his stack of top 10's were limited, if there were any. The old and decreasing Duggan was signed to provide experience, but can he be useful for another season? And in the closing stages we signed the overpriced Italian fighter Santambrogio. Our 200,000 bananas donation to Festina might have been the key to their ProTour victory.

Resultwise the season also went better. Our first season resulted in 1 stage victory, the second season that increased to 3! Kinney won a stage in Pologne, Haga the TT in the USA Pro Cycling Challenge and Montenegro won from a breakaway in our favourite race, the Tour of America. He and Haga also fought for the mountains competition, but where a few places away from victory. The race has given us some great memories, and we will certainly return this year. Martinez had some great stage race results, including a sixth place in the prestigious Vuelta a Tachira.

On the other hand, Tolleson couldn't impress in the sprints. At one point, Santambrogio managed to outdo him on a regular basis. The lack of points in sprinters races is the reason we couldn't compete for promotion positions. It will now be a Mexican standoff between Carlsberg, Lierse and us to decide who will be the last team to promote from the 2014 entrants.

We lost 16th place in the standings on the final race, yet 17th out of 26 is much better as our 24th place. If we can improve by the same margin this year, promotion will be within reach!

For the Minions themselves, 2015 was quite successful. The eponymous film was a box office hit, and grossed billions worldwide. The Minions now have some time of before they start working on their new movie, Despicable Me 3. Kevin the Minion was knighted by the Queen of England, and is now known as Sir Kevin. He will replace Dave as general manager, who has decided to move on and seek new challenges in the world of the yellow single-celled organisms.

In 2016, the team will revert to its 2014 name, but without the Team prefix. Due to new restrictions by the MGUCI, a character lenght was introduced, which made our team name too long for their administration. The team will officially be known as Chiquita - Universal, but as always the media will always associate us with the Minions, who will not leave the world of cycling in the near future! The team is now officially based in Guatemala, because the Minions want to be in a banana republic. This will mean an increased focus on Central America, but we will not forget the most important market on the earth, the United States of America!

However, we must be realistic. Some Minions are getting depressed. Promotion has to be achieved, otherwise who knows what will happen. Complete Minion breakdown? The apocalypse? It is up to Sir Kevin, team manager Stuart and the directeurs sportifs, including Bob, to find the most despicable master to... ehh sorry, that's the plot of the movie.

To get the team to the top of the world of cycling, that's it!

They say third time's the charm. Well, it certainly was the case for us. We are now allowed to add a P in front of our opening abbreviation because we promoted to the Pro Continental Tour in the MGUCI system. But it's a miracle we got to this place at all. Here's a quick reconstruction:

On the bike things went pretty well. We managed to sign two great sprinters in Drapac and Manarelli, and three cobblestones specialists in De Haes, Marcos and Matthews. This meant that we were able to participate on all terrains for once. Yes, there were also some less successful acquisitions this season but far less so than the previous years. Haga and Selander were send on loan to a ProTour squad, and would come back to us having gained valuable experience.

Over the first two season we scored a total of four victories. However, we knew very quickly that this season would be much better, as we had already won three stages when we came to March. Barton and Sarmiento, two new riders as well, both won a stage in the Tour of the Middle East, and De Haes won us our first classic: the prestigious Geraardsbergen - Bosberg. But the big fish came from New Zealand, the Tour of Southland, where Martinez won the fourth stage and consequently the general classification. You could imagine the celebrations, fireworks and Minions who drank slightly too much at the headquarters.

And it didn't stop there, as our sprinters delivered on their promises as well. Drapac won a stage in Circulo de Juarez and came close to the overall victory. He also won the opening stage in the Tour of Denmark, taking the leader's jersey before losing it on stage three to our very own Kinney, who won that stage as well. Unfortunately he also couldn't win the overall classification. Manarelli managed to rack up four victories over the season, one in the Tour de Pologne, one in the Herald Sun Tour and two consecutive stages in Ruta America del Sur. Martinez also won a time trial in the USAPCC, the exact same one Haga won the year before.

This did us well in the rankings. We were within reach of automatic promotion all season, and although we couldn't challenge for the title which went to Ferrero, we still finished in fourth place, one place ahead of our rivals Carlsberg, after Lierse chickened out of a battle of the last team of the 2014 generation to promote. Fourth place means we could finally kiss goodbye to the bottom depths of the CT, and start mixing us in the midfield of the PCT.

However, off the bike things went a little bit less well, understatement of the year. First there was a bit of a miscommunication with Esmaeli regarding his future, and he left the team midway through the season after only participating in two races. Then, our sponsors started to withdraw, all for the silliest of reasons. Universal withdrew because they though we favoured Chiquita, and that wasn't true, and they knew it, but they wanted a way out for something else. Because our operations were moved to the glorious banana republic of Guatemala for tax reasons, our team became, let's say a lot less liked by some organisations. The people of Guatemala noticed their bananas became extremely expensive due to some of our employee's habits, and soon we had some major riots outside our building.

We knew we had to bail when even Chiquita, our most beloved sponsor (sorry Universal, you had this coming), left us and joined the side of the protestors. We took our stuff and got the hell out of the country, before they burned our HQ to the ground. Back in the US of A we couldn't find a place to stay, we couldn't find a sponsor to work with and we couldn't eat bananas because we didn't have them anymore.

Then, as an angel descended down from heaven, Tareq Esmaeli came back with money from his dad, who apparently is a super rich oil Sheikh from Qatar. He bought the license and saved the Minions from bankruptcy and most likely prison. This means we're once again on the move, towards Qatar, with our new sugar daddy paying for everything we need (including apparently a mountain made of oil for a new race). We have no sponsors who could direct where we go and what we do, it's just the Minions from now on. And Tareq the banana lover is back with the team, and we will never ever threat him the way we did last season.

Long story short: we're on the most wanted list of the CIA, FBI and Interpol, we have both Chiquita and Universal suing us, the governments of the United States and Guatemala want to see us extradited, and for some reason the Walt Disney Company has send mercenaries to kill us. But that won't stop us. We're going to continue were we left off: to conquer the world of cycling, whether you like it or not!

Let's start with the good news (pun intented): we survived our first season in PCT! How? Well, read below.

We realised our squad was in need of a major make-over, since our CT leaders would not be good enough to lead PCT. Our two major signings were Úran for the mountains/stage races, and Betancourt for the hills. Albert was brought on to lead at the cobbles, and Drapac remained sprint leader though we knew he would struggle more. A leader in every discipline, what could go wrong?

A lot, actually. We spent over a million bananas on helping Betancourt lose weight so he would be in top shape going in this season, but his performances were not what we expected. We wanted constant scoring while he only delivered a few good result contrary to many bad results. Albert didn't have the best of seasons either but at least he tried. And our support riders didn't really get themselves inside the break or in a low points-scoring position for them to be of any help for the rankings.

We made mistakes, we'll admit. We left over 150k in our wage cap to afford Betancourt's training, money we could have used to sign better riders. And the riders we did sign weren't scouted that great either. We signed Goodnews Clifford purely because of his first name and the laughs we would have, not because of his skill. Jeandesbosz had previously been signed by us but never raced, so we brought him back to close the chapter, but his age had already caught him and he wasn't as good as he used to be. Albourdainy was signed because he's friends with the Sheikh's son and while he wasn't too bad, we could've signed someone with more pedigree.

That still doesn't answer our earlier question though. How did we survive? Well, a large part of it is down to one man: Úran. He scored well in every race he participated in, but in August he delivered big-time when he won Deutschland Tour in the PTHC category, against ProTour opposition, and single-handedly pushed us out of the relegation zone we'd been spending in since January. A statue for him has already been erected outside the HQ.

Other two silver linings were Drapac, who caused an upset when he won Nahakon Rahamanakon Classic in Thailand (that's not how it's spelled but we've never done it correctly and you probably never noticed), and De Haes, who won three stages in three different races from the breakaway. Those fringe points proved to be just enough to stay above the five bottom places.

In the end it's twentieth place, two places and just 237 points ahead of relegation. This year we have to do better, this year we have to sign riders better, this year we have to plan races better, this year we have to race races better, this year we have to be better!

Because we're not going down, we're going up!

And so we made it to our sixth season. Can you believe it, six years already. We started on this adventure knowing absolutely nothing, which showed in our first seasons, but now we're at a spot where we know what's going on and how to improve.

Take our fifth season. We barely avoided relegation in our debut in PCT, and improvements were necessary to improve on our ranking position. We knew we had some additional cap space held behind by Betancourt, but selling him for a record fee opened up some real possibilities. In response we bought Zepuntke for a record fee and assembled a strong cobblestone squad. Additionally, we focussed on time trials to avoid the painful moments whenever they took place.

The season indeed went a lot better than before. Not only relying on Úran to score points, but he was still our top scorer. Despite not winning a stage race this season he was a lot more consistent and finished second and third almost every stage or race. This brought him to eighth place in the individual rankings. The cobblestone squad also took a lot of points, including Zepuntke and Albert as second- and third-best scorers respectively.

But it were the little guys who made it into a great season. Loanee Moulingui finished third in Omloop het Nieuwsblad. Third for an unmaxed, 23 year old in the highest category possible is a wonderful performance, and meant he finished sixth on our end-of-season rankings. Drapac also picked his race where he overperformed, winning a stage and finishing third in the GC at Baltic Chain Tour.

Not everything was bright though. We made our GT debut in the Vuelta, but largely remained anonymous except Úran taking seventh place in the GC. Betancourt's replacement, Quevedo, was not up to standards and scored even less. This means we have to look for a new lead puncheur for the third year in a row. But you know what they say, third time's a charm.

Put everything together and we have a solid midtable finish of thirteenth. Way ahead of the relegation spots but also behind the (disband) promotion spots. For a while we looked to battle for the promotion spots, placing sixth or seventh midway through the season, but with less racedays in the latter months we dropped back a bit. That's not a shame, it shows we have a great base and with a little tweaking, we can promote to PT this season.

Third time's a charm, we'll promote to PT!

And here we are in season seven, still with the unwanted C in our division prefix. Our triple three-years plan ([CT] learning - building a base - promotion - [PCT] survival - building a base - promotion - [PT] survival - building a base - champions) is now officially one year behind schedule. Whereas we managed to get through the Continental division in three years as planned, the ProContinental arc of our team history will have at least four chapters.

For the third year in a row Uran was our highest scorer, elevating his status as team legend even further. A few stage wins here and there, and a lot of GC top fives, but his big win came in the Corsica International, a race he had won before for a different team but always fell just short of in our colors. He once again finished in the top ten of the individual standings, in exactly tenth place with a total of points similar to the previous season.

We brought in Claeys to tackle our persistent puncheurs problem, an unlike his maligned predecessors, he actually got some results. Two wins in GP Wallonie and Tour of Southland early in the season were his highlights, but after those two he thought he did enough and couldn't achieve the same results for the rest of the season, only occasionally making the top ten.

The cobbles squad, though slightly dismantled compared to the previous season, also did a good job, with Zepuntke and Albert being our third- and fourth-best point scorers with some decent results, though no stand-out Moulingui-like performance. Janse van Rensburg also surprisingly had some decent results where we did not expect him to perform well. In all honesty, there were multiple riders which scored more points than anticipated. Marcos and Ivanov scored more than 100 points, Martinez had a top 25 in a PTHC stage race. Even Esmaeli picked up six points during the season!

Yet we only finished in fourteenth place in the final rankings, a place lower than the previous season despite scoring an additional 156 points. We wanted promotion but ended up far, far away. As scapegoat we labeled the sprinting department as biggest failures. Drapac did not have a win this season but did finish second once, whereas Vantomme, whom we signed with the explicit goal of participating and scoring high in sprints, did not participate or score high in sprints. At least the performance in the other departments was good enough to avoid relegation.

So, we are a year behind schedule. Does this mean a major revamp? Doing this differently from now on? A fresh breath in management and the squad? Behind the scenes we have been negotiating contracts, planning the schedule, infiltrating rival teams and blackmailing the MGUCI to make sure this year we will get what we deserve, a top five finish and promotion to the highest echelon of cycling!

And finally get rid of the bloody C!

People following our progress ever since our baby steps will have seen our lack of updates for the 2020 season. No race previews or reviews were posted during the season, there were no answers to press question or fan mail, yet the manager was spotted all over the world doing everything but writing for his own team. Only after the season there was a Minion (read: a Minion who was forced to do so, otherwise he wouldn't get a banana) who provided minimal statement on the races of the season.

The season itself wasn't one we had hoped for either. We had hoped to get rid of the C in our division title, but in fact we have not gotten any closer. We finished in fourteenth position again, and thus will be heading into our fifth season in the ProContinental division. It could be worse, as relegation is also avoided with some wiggle room, but the progress has stagnated drastically.

Uran went into the season as undisputed leader again and got out as our top scorer, but not to the levels he had shown in previous years. This can be attributed to this age. The Colombian is in the autumn of his career, with the next generation to take over the reins. An important acquisition turned out to be Vesely, who would score very close to Uran's tally and proved to be our first ever consistent sprinter. Haga also rode some good races with his dangerous combination of climbing and riding against the clock.

There were some major disappointments as well. Zepuntke did not really get to fight for podium positions but still scored points in the races where he participated. Claeys on the other hand was clearly not giving everything he had and would often be one of the first "favorites" to get dropped. The biggest disappointment occurred before the season however, with the teams minutes away of signing legendary time trialist Coppel before being snatched away by a rival outfit.

So what's in store for the upcoming season? Uran and other subleaders are only getting older, and the talents such as Bjerg and Hodeg are not ready to take over yet. The transfer season will be an important one to take in fresh blood which will push us further up the rankings, as we are sick and tired of this time loop where we are stuck in the boring mid-tables.

We want to conquer the world of cycling, remember?

The 2021 season was the season where the Minions should finally have achieved promotion to the ProTour. Things didn't quite turn out that way though.

The star signing was Hagen, earning a record fee of close to a million bananas. We were delighted to have a superstar sign for us with multiple monuments and a World Championship on his CV. He would be the one to break the puncheurs curse. Even though he ended up as our highest scoring rider his performances were somewhat disappointed, especially in the early part of the season. So the puncheurs curse continues.

Other riders also failed to impress. Vesely continuously started his sprint 500 meters too early. Uran's best days are far behind him and we really started noticing the effects this season. Haga could not pull some miracle performances like he was able to in the past. Zepuntke received expensive training which did not lead to noticeable better results.

The positives are hard to find. An obvious one is Hodeg, who sprinted to two stage wins in his home race. Kalaba also looked like a more consistent sprinter. Future time trial star Bjerg won a time trial in the Tour de l'Avenir. Haga scored a WC-bronze medal, but given it was in the team time trial it will hardly be remembered.

Despite the negative tone we were never in real relegation danger. Seventeenth place and three-hundred points above the line is not enough for angry door smashing, but it is our worst result since our first season in PCT. We keep on saying we want to achieve promotion but we seem to be on a more downward trajectory, which needs to be reversed to avoid going back down to CT.

Oh, and most important of all, almost our entire organization was arrested at the end of the season, casting doubt over the future of the team. While we maintain our complete innocence, the evidence fabricated by the intelligence agencies seems enough to be locked up for life. We cannot run a cycling team from prison, where there are no bananas.

Will we see the Minions again?

The C is gone from the division abbreviation. This is not a mistake. This is not a drill. This is real, we made it to the ProTour!

In our sixth attempt to get out of the PCT midfield the team were joined by celestial superstars Subwoolfer, who aside from wanting to dominate cycling finished tenth in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, representing Norway with "Give that wolf a banana". Our headquarters were based on a remote tropical island in Bermuda, with every facility available to get our riders in tip top shape.

A notable omission this season was our legend Uran, who could no longer be entrusted with leadership duties. Hagen's failure of the past season saw him kicked out of the door with a lot less emotions. Fan favorite Zepuntke's departure did make a lot of us cry, but we knew he was going to a good home at Los Pollos Hermanos. Replacing them as leaders were Cattaneo and Dennis, two riders with PT experience to boast their big paycheck, but also not the youngest anymore.

The sprinters core remained consistent with Vesely, Kalaba and Hodeg. While the trio did not achieve any victory in terms of classics and general classifications, they did win nine sprints between them. Kalaba became the king of the hilly sprints and sprints in stage races, winning five in total. Vesely finished in the top thirty of the individual PCT rankings with two stage wins, while Hodeg continued to be underestimated with two stage wins as well.

We finally gave up on getting a star puncheur, as we'd rather be absent than disappointed each race. That did not mean we closed the book on hilly races entirely, on the contrary in fact. Dennis and lost son Brown were brought in for the common combo of hills with time trials, where they could challenge for the GC by being decent at both. The Australian had a stellar season, winning the Tours of Norway and Britain and was the fourteenth-best rider of the PCT.

But that's not all. It's hard to fill Uran's shoes but Cattaneo did everything we could dream and more. Fourth in the Tour of East Java and second in the Criterium du Dauphine, as PTHC races, were already great achievements, but taking home the yellow jersey in the Tour de Vineyards and Bayern Rundfahrt were icings on the cake! Ahlstrand, Areruya and Dunbar were the only three riders to score more points that season. Even Uran never finished this high.

Before the season most pundits predicted another boring mid-table finish for us, perhaps even putting us towards the relegation fight, but we once again proved those pundits have no clue what they're talking about. We finished on the podium of the 2022 ProContinental Tour. Third place behind runaway favorite Amaysim Cervelo and fellow surprise package Zara - Irizar. And you know what third place means, right? Promotion to the ProTour!

Now we're here, but we're not done yet. Step one: remain in the ProTour division. Step two: move towards the top of the ProTour division. Step three: win the ProTour division. If it takes another six seasons, so be it, but stay tuned for a heck of a ride!

After nine seasons we made it. Season ten would be the crown jewel on our work: the ProTour. But we don't wanna stop here, we're here to stay, we're here to win. Subwoolfer was thanked for their services since they turned out to be actual humans in wolf costumes instead of super rich space aliens, so it was back to just the Minions. But if there was one way we want to go on this adventure, it is this way.

Our only goal this year was to survive. Our main transfer target was an American with the same initials as toilet paper, but his wage demands were outrageous. Instead we signed PCT champion of the previous season Ahlstrand for a record fee, and broke our wage record to sign Liege - Bastogne - Liege winner Kinoshita. Keep Cattaneo from last year, add in a talented Bjerg, and a bunch of competent riders, and we should be good to keep our head above the water.

Things would not quite go our way though. We were thirteenth in the January ranking update, but for the rest of the year we would not be found outside of the bottom two positions. It wouldn't be until May we had shaken Binance off for the laterne rouge, but by then the teams above us were already too far away to even dream about staying above the cut line. The realization of relegation came quite early, so we could just enjoy the final months and tick off bucket list items.

This will be the only paragraph dedicated to the failures before we go into a more positive vibe again. Kinoshita underperformed, not coming close to a monument win and not scoring the amount of points expected from his stature and wage bill. Ahlstrand also disappointed quite often, especially compared to Vesely, whom we sold during the transfer, rocking in the PCT division. Our depth was lacking, we had no talents of our own and we had a cobblestone quartet with absolutely no chances of anything even if they did a race in relay.

Now that's off our chest, some positive notes. We rode three Grand Tours, all with a level of success. Ahlstrand won the final stage in the Giro, which also made him win the points classification. Kalaba won the opening stage of the Tour, which gave us an iconic shot of a Minion on the podium in the yellow jersey. Cattaneo finished in a decent eighth place, and so close to seventh. Vosekalns was often spotted in breakaways and challenging for mountain classifications.

Elsewhere, Kinoshita contributed with a win in the Grand Prix Cyclistes. Bjerg had a breakthrough year, winning the young rider classification in the Tour of Tasmania, finished third in the Tour time trial and won the time trial in the Tour de Suisse. Kalaba once again had a stellar season in the secondary sprinter role, as did Hodeg in the tertiary. The four loanees from (Pro) Continental teams all held their own in this tough division as well.

This year we are back in the Pro Continental Tour, with leaders who are getting older and little young talent to take over the reigns immediately. We have shown we can get to the ProTour, so we can get there again. How and when is to be seen, but we have confidence. We still believe.

We'll be back.

We've smelled the ProTour for a season, and it tastes like more. But we have to remain realistic, we don't want to become a yoyo-team who can't get a foothold at the top of the world of cycling. Returning straight again would have been nice but it's not a goal in itself.

The transfer period had a great strategy: sell our ageing leaders Ahlstrand, Cattaneo and Kinoshita and invest the money in younger riders and training. A great strategy on paper, but in practice no one wants to buy old leaders with wages based on past performances, so we went into the season with the same leadership as in ProTour, but now must of them are a year older and not necessarily better. We even had to sell a bright talent Hodeg in order to not go bankrupt, but the money was used to develop another bright talent in Bjerg and bring in a bunch of new talented riders. This massive misjudgement has delayed our plans by at least a year.

The results at the start of the year weren't exactly bad, but also not exactly fantastic. We were never in relegation danger but also nowhere near the top ten let alone promotion. It would take until March for us to show up at the top step of the podium, when Kinoshita won the Tour of South Africa, and in May we won the team time trial of the Vuelta a Pais Vasco. Ahlstrand and Kalaba had some decent sprint finishes but often fell just short of crossing the line first, and De Witte scored what he could in the C2 cobblestones, but Cattaneo was not the same as the one from 2022 who brought us the promotion in the first place.

Starting in August, something seemed to change. Perhaps the races were suited better with less throwaway cobblestone races and more time trials in which Bjerg could deliver on his promise. The PTHC Deutschland Tour saw Ahlstrand win a stage and the young Dane finishing sixth overall, followed by a second overall in his home race accompanied by a Kalaba stage win. The performances that month saw us go from an anonymous fifteenth to an accomplished tenth position. Despite a very good La Tropicale Amissa Bongo with both of them in the GC top ten, we went into the final month in eleventh. The goal was clear: top ten.

A motivated team can do wonders. Kalaba won a stage in Japan with Cattaneo finally finding some old form with a second place overall there. The other resuls that month were good enough to reclaim that tenth place in the final rankings! Ahlstrand just edge out Kinoshita as best individual rider, both of them very consistent over the year but without many highlights. Bjerg, Cattaneo and Kalaba also finished in the individual top fifty, the first time we had so many riders near the top.

Unfortunately, we are faced with the same problem again, as three out of these five decline even further and are not expected to perform like they did last year again. The rebuild we wanted to do, we need to do it now. Retire the retirement home jokes, we are aiming for the future. This transfer season might be our most active yet, performing an open-heart surgery in the team's DNA. Because if we want to go back up to ans stay in the ProTour, we cannot depend on has beens living off past glory.

Minions 12.0 here we go!

This story is completely fictional. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious as well. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, but I hope the little yellow single-celled organisms are real