Overall a pretty massive transfer season for JURA and an exciting roster going into the season with the trainings. Love to see the money going into the Swiss core, who are moving into elite territory. I think promotion is definitely in the cards and maybe next season being in an even more stable place to stick in the PT.
And suddenly Schmid looks like a fantastic rider! I love that you continue to back him, and I'm fancying him to repay you this season, leading the team for promotion and a comeback to the PT, also in a better position compared to your first promotion. At least this looks like a team that should do very, very well.
Liking the look of Schmid v2! I think you chose the right path with +1 to MT and Hill to make him more versatile is the way to go. Not as big a fan of the Bisseger training though Always cool to see regional riders trained though.
Godoy looking a very smart pickup now with promotion a huge probability, and him being an easy sell next season to go straight into Darbellay’s training fund then.
Great choices on Schmid of course, but even more excited to see Bissegger at 80! Should be a favorite for a couple races, especially if he can find ways to avoid Powless throughout the year!
Amazing training even after the Godoy purchase. Should allow you to bounce back up to PT easily while also developing Swiss cycling. I especially like what you've done with Schmid here. Wouldn't have favored pure hills or mountains for him. At this point the versatility is his comparative advantage.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Overall a pretty massive transfer season for JURA and an exciting roster going into the season with the trainings. Love to see the money going into the Swiss core, who are moving into elite territory. I think promotion is definitely in the cards and maybe next season being in an even more stable place to stick in the PT.
Thanks. I think you had an even better transfer season and should easily finish ahead of me, though, having a far more complete coverage of all terrains (and more depth)
If we should promote with this team, then I do indeed think that the foundation is more solid than last time, in particular with Schmid and Bissegger being leaders for 4+ more years. We'll need to bring in a sprinter and a cobbler for sure, and maybe replace Godoy with someone younger - but that will be on the cards no matter whether we promote or not. It would just be easier with a PT cap
And suddenly Schmid looks like a fantastic rider! I love that you continue to back him, and I'm fancying him to repay you this season, leading the team for promotion and a comeback to the PT, also in a better position compared to your first promotion. At least this looks like a team that should do very, very well.
Fantastic, I don't know... That 73 Sta still isn't outstanding But it might be enough in PCT, where he should be given priority thanks to the improved main stats. The main issue often was that he ran out of gas because he was badly positioned and then had to close gaps - obviously you shouldn't do that with low stamina ^^ But I'm hoping for some big results - at least MGUCI think he should be the best puncheur of the division (which I clearly don't agree with, at least Hirschi and Benoot should easily outscore him, despite the latter being rated more than 1 OVL point lower :roll
As mentioned in my response to Bush, I think I can agree that the starting position should be better if we go back to PT, banking on Godoy, Schmid, Bissegger and Darbellay!
Liking the look of Schmid v2! I think you chose the right path with +1 to MT and Hill to make him more versatile is the way to go. Not as big a fan of the Bisseger training though Always cool to see regional riders trained though.
Godoy looking a very smart pickup now with promotion a huge probability, and him being an easy sell next season to go straight into Darbellay’s training fund then.
We'll see if it was the right call. But I think it is worth more than just going +2 Hi (Bissegger wouldn't have been trained then ), as I think he should also be competitive in one-week races without huge monster climbs. Last year I'd have done +2 Mo, but having lost a year already on hills training - and probably another one next year with another stamina boost required - I wanted to get those red digits now, as that should give him race favourite status even in most PTHC races.
I don't understand why you don't like Bisseger training though
To be honest, it's not too unlikely that he'll get another bump, as in PT you almost need 81+ to be among the top contenders. And I'm pretty sure that Darbellay won't get trained anymore, due to his age - it was most likely this year or never. But I already brought him up from 77Mo/75TT to 79Mo/76TT, I think he got his fair share of training
And it's pretty clear that in two years it's going to be Christen who gets +2Spr, so we might need to prepare for that already next offseason ^^
Great choices on Schmid of course, but even more excited to see Bissegger at 80! Should be a favorite for a couple races, especially if he can find ways to avoid Powless throughout the year!
I have no preference, I like both
Avoiding Powless obviously won't be possible very often, but Zmorka will be his main rival anyway (outside of PTHC where even Zmorka is an outsider). I don't actually even expect a single win from Bissegger (apart from the NC), but some podiums should definitely come in!
Amazing training even after the Godoy purchase. Should allow you to bounce back up to PT easily while also developing Swiss cycling. I especially like what you've done with Schmid here. Wouldn't have favored pure hills or mountains for him. At this point the versatility is his comparative advantage.
It's indeed the big hope that we get back to PT very quickly - this was also the main reason why I went for the Godoy deal instead of training Darbellay... The latter would have allowed me to go for some more talents instead (due to free cap space), but promotion would have been more unlikely imho - despite the subpar calendar for Godoy. Will have to find races where he can score well enough to justify his signing
With the training news being the final update of the transfer season, let's take a look back and find out where our plans worked out - and where they didn't at all.
We did have two major goals, and a third one that is pretty closely linked to the 2nd one. Here they are:
1. Sign Jan Christen
Whereas not on world-class level as we were kind of hoping for (we still wonder how other countries find 1-2 of those each year lately), he's still one of the best Swiss talents entering the peloton for quite a while - and the first one since we joined in 2019 (that's 7 years!!!) who could actually reach a "red main stat" without any kind of training. It's no question that we wanted to sign him, and we were ready to go quite far to do so.
2. Train Mauro Schmid & Stefan Bissegger, optionally Valentin Darbellay
If we want to bring Swiss cycling closer to the top of the world, we have to invest a lot into our riders - in particular given the aforementioned lack of world class talents. Mauro & Stefan were the clear training targets, the goal being to train Mauro in both Mountain and Hills, and Stefan in TT. And if we got sufficient funds, training Darbellay as well - depending on the cash in Hills, TT or even Mountain.
3. Have a shot at promotion
Whereas PCT is a great division - we do in particular like the added freedom in terms of schedule composition compared to PT - the big races and points are in PT - and also the biggest sponsor money. So if we were to give our Swiss riders another boost in the near future, we should get back to PT asap.
Those were the three main goals. Goals 1 and 2 required on one hand freeing up some wage cap, and on the other hand bringing in some cash. Which is why we transfer listed quite some riders. In particular, we were ready to sell the following riders:
Kaden Groves Luis Fernando De La Cruz Chapulin Muhammad Abdurrahman Teten Rohendi Andreas Odie Purnama Setiawa Filippo Colombo
Depending on how much cash we would be able to bring in through these sales, the following riders could also potentially be made available:
Niklas Larsen Jose Fernandes Gergely Szarka
Whereas we intended to keep all other riders, only Mauro Schmid, Valentin Darbellay, Stefan Bissegger and Fabio Christen were flagged as "untouchable".
So, this was the strategy. How did it pan out? Let's take a look:
1. Sign Jan Christen Success
The most important goal was achieved! It did take us some extra money and extra nerves though, as he was about to accept our initial offer of 200k - until some last-minute move made him hesitate. But with a wage of 255k, he's still well within the limit of what we were ready to spend.
In fact, we expected quite a fight for him, in particular with UBS - EDP; but the latter (fortunately for us) decided to focus more on their new secondary sponsor's market, Portugal, so the supposedly biggest rival didn't even enter the competition.
We were ready to go up to roughly 800k for Jan - which we could have done by not getting (respectively re-selling in one case) our two South-Americans. We'll talk more about them later. But we would have been willing to free up the necessary cap space for them - even though this would obviously have had a negative impact on the 3rd goal.
But we're happy to have Jan on board, and even though he'll never be a world beater, we're sure we can turn him into a very cool rider, be it in the mountains or in TTs - this remains to be seen.
We were indeed able to accomplish the big trainings we were hoping for. Mauro should now be one of the best puncheurs in PCT (MGUCI says the best, but we don't believe this until we see it), and Stefan will be a Top 5 TTer. Both obviously wouldn't be among the top contenders in PT, but for the time being we're very happy with their training outcomes!
We were actually in the situation where we could even complete the optional part with the best possible outcome - training Valentin's mountain skills - but then we got an opportunity that would bring us closer to achieve goal #3, and given that we already secured the "mandatory" part of this goal, we decided to further strengthen our roster by a final trade.
Despite Valentin obviously being unhappy, we (and our sponsors) are happy with what we got from this 2nd goal as well!
3. Have a shot at promotion Success?
Relegating dead last from PT clearly showed us that the roster might not even be strong enough to bounce straight back. And after the Groves deal was signed, it was clear that achieving this goal would really be tough - even though we knew about the planned trainings already.
Furthermore, we didn't just lose a leader, we also lost a lot of depth during this transfer window, and so bringing in Andres Paez as our secondary puncheur (and Mauro's main domestique) was great news.
But we had to wait until the very last 24h of the transfer window to strike a deal that would really give us a good chance to promote, when we decided against Darbellay's training and for signing Caio Godoy!
In terms of pure climbing skills, Caio is among the Top 20 in the world, and shared 3rd in PCT behind Almeida and Padun (without considering our competitors' potential training camps). So we truly have a very strong rider on board - a rider whose acceleration in particular isn't matched by many.
The downside of this late addition is that our schedule doesn't really fit him; given that we considered that Valentin would be our stage racing leader, we picked lots of races including time trials, and no pure climbing races. But we're sure we'll be able to put together a schedule for Caio where he can score well - not as well as he could have under more favorable circumstances, but hopefully still well enough to help securing promotion!
We do think that we have a good shot with our final 2026 roster (hence the "Success?" outcome), but it's obviously not a given, and we'll have to fight hard in every single race!
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Now, what did achieving these goals cost us? The good news is, not as much as we were afraid of, in particular for goal #1! We wouldn't have been able to fit Paez or Godoy otherwise, and promotion would probably have been very difficult to achieve.
But we still lost one leader - Groves - and plenty of depth: El Chapu, the Indonesians, Fernandes, Colombo. And one rider who we really would have liked to keep: Pablo Castrillo. In the end, we kind of swapped him for Godoy; we got 1.3M for Castrillo and paid 1.2M for Godoy (which after taxes is still a net loss). So we traded quick success for a great talent - something we don't usually like to do.
However, at first we thought we traded him for Valentin's training; we don't believe we would've sold him to get Godoy. It just happened like this. And we also realized that Jan Christen will most likely develop into a pretty similar rider (although less well-rounded sadly with the new level-up gains), which is why we finally decided to let him go for a great offer. Which we surprisingly got.
But other than Castrillo, we really sticked to our plan concerning the riders to sell - and we didn't offer too many discounts on these riders. The highlights in terms of transfer fees:
- Kaden Groves, 1.35M (1st)
- Pablo Castrillo, 1.3M (2nd)
- Jose Fernandes, 700k (4th)
We're only keeping track of the fees for straight cash deals, as deals including swaps are more difficult to estimate - for example, in the past we sold Stüssi for 1.1M plus a rider, or Masnada for 850k plus a rider, but these sales don't currently appear in our statistics.
The same holds for buys - in fact, we didn't do a single straight buy this year! With 1.2M, Godoy would be #2 in terms of plain cash, behind Quintana who cost us 1.4M back in 2021 (and who we re-sold for 1.2M the year after, he was our #1 before this transfer period).
In terms of straight sales, we set a clear new record this year, getting 3.75M from selling 4 riders (Abdurrahman for 400k is the one not in the Top 3 listed above). We earned 4.39M from rider trades, plus 740k from loans.
The total incoming fees of 5.13M are a clear all-time team record - sadly, this also holds for the 876k tax bill... No, we don't like taxes - maybe we should relocate to Luxembourg as well...
We surely won't, but what we do is looking back at a record breaking transfer season - including training, where we spent 3.35M - which however is "just" 50k more than last year. "Thanks" to Godoy...
Summary
All in all, we look back at a transfer season that started very, very slowly for us, but turned out to go almost 100% according to plans. We lost only one rider who we didn't intend to trade, but instead kept one (Larsen) with high demand. So at the moment we're happy with what we have done - but only the 2026 season will reveal whether what we did will actually lead to the success we're hoping for!
Always cool to see regional riders trained though.
Jan Christen
Kaden Groves
Luis Fernando De La Cruz Chapulin
Muhammad Abdurrahman
Niklas Larsen
Jose Fernandes
Gergely Szarka
Andres Paez as our secondary puncheur (and Mauro's main domestique) was great news.
Caio Godoy!
Pablo Castrillo. In the end, we kind of swapped him for Godoy; we got 1.3M for Castrillo and paid 1.2M for Godoy (which after taxes is still a net loss). So we traded quick success for a great talent - something we don't usually like to do.
