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!
----------------------------
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!
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [PT] Xero Racing
Nice to see a lot of positives come out in your HQ after a bad season last time. Safe to say, you're one of the leading contenders for a direct return to PT and probably even a PCT title contender again.
I can't see a way this team doesn't have a fantastic year providing you don't have a load of cobbles and sprint RDS, 3 very good leaders in their own ways Schmiid probably still not able to ride hilly classics as well as would be liked but wont be a non factor which is all important, Godoy a very good MT stage racer and i really like the Bissegger training
As the others have said you have one of the strongest squads of the division and should be an obvious contender for promotion, but what I like best of all is that transfers for once didn't end as a huge disappointment and that you sound much more happy with your entire project again!
For me it is, yeah I mean, I could probably have built a stronger and definitely deeper roster, but from my RP PoV, it is a success. Signing Christen and training Schmid and Bissegger were the main goals, so I'm happy with that.
Nice to see a lot of positives come out in your HQ after a bad season last time. Safe to say, you're one of the leading contenders for a direct return to PT and probably even a PCT title contender again.
I do indeed hope that promotion will be possible. But maybe a better suited calendar for Godoy would have been needed - we'll see. Getting the title would need quite a lot of luck I guess, looking at some other teams - but I wouldn't refuse
I can't see a way this team doesn't have a fantastic year providing you don't have a load of cobbles and sprint RDS, 3 very good leaders in their own ways Schmiid probably still not able to ride hilly classics as well as would be liked but wont be a non factor which is all important, Godoy a very good MT stage racer and i really like the Bissegger training
Cobbles and sprints indeed are reduced to bare minimum (or rather to the consequences of band selection). And still, I think most cobbled HC races actually are pretty nice fits for Stewart; Macskako and Samyn have enough hills for him to be competitive, and Benelux is a great race for him apart from the prologue. PTHC could be zero-pointers though... And if Szarka gets Top 20s in our three flat classics, I'll have to be happy.
Mauro will be disappointing in some races (especially classics) for sure, but there's hope he'll have a couple of outstanding results as well Bissegger will have his chances as well - and Godoy will mostly get a luxury domestique given the few mountain stage races on our schedule ^^ So yeah, hoping for all three of them to score big enough to be in the promotion fight
As the others have said you have one of the strongest squads of the division and should be an obvious contender for promotion, but what I like best of all is that transfers for once didn't end as a huge disappointment and that you sound much more happy with your entire project again!
It's much more positive for the present, for sure. Only thing I'm disappointed about is the recent lack of talents (apart from the Christens), in particular compared to France. Getting talents will surely always remain a priority, even though we might have to broaden our focus.
But for now (and the next 3-4 years), the project should be on track - it should at least be sufficient for "higher PCT level" I hope
Looks like this will be just a quick pit stop in PCT before returning to PT with an even stronger rider core.
That's the hope, and I think it's indeed possible to promote. The core would be clearly stronger than last time indeed, where we only had Theuns on a "red stat" - but the depth looks less cool for now. Something to work on!
Very successful transfer season it seems. Bissegger didn't find much success in our colors last season, but looking forward to seeing how he'll do this season after additional training.
Very successful transfer season it seems. Bissegger didn't find much success in our colors last season, but looking forward to seeing how he'll do this season after additional training.
Yeah, I think Bissegger was pretty unlucky last year, always ending up on the lower end of the 79ers pack. I hope that with 80 TT he's now among the race favourite in HC/C1 races, and so gets better treatment by the AI - the scoring improvement will hopefully be worth those 1.2M And it's definitely worth it in terms of RP; think he's one of only 5 Swiss riders having a red main stat this year (not counting PRL) ^^
I wouldn't be surprised if you come out on top this season congrats with your transfer season and best of luck!
I had a pretty good feeling as well - until I wrote down the expected points per rider and race... Looks like I'm either pretty wrong, or we might end up not too far ahead of the relegation zone... Hoping for the former in this case
After two seasons in PT, it's back to PCT for us, and we're hoping for a relatively low stint - two years at maximum.
After we shifted our focus even more on promoting Swiss cycling last year, we continued on this path - even though that meant selling our best scoring rider over the past two seasons, Kaden Groves.
This was always going to happen after our relegation, though, as we wanted to make room for one of Switzerland's best talents in the last couple of years - even though we're still waiting for a world-class talent.
Selling Kaden - and a couple of other riders - meant that we were able to fund some intense training camps for some riders - as well as (rather surprisingly) bringing in a really great addition. And you'll find out very soon who we're talking about - let's dive right into the presentation (and expectations) by department!
Climbers & Stage Racers
2025
Spoiler
Hey, we did relegate - but we also did strengthen this department! Not in terms of numbers, sadly (losing Castrillo definitely hurts here), but we've never had two 79+ climbers, so our Top 2 climbers actually are stronger than ever before!
Sadly, we definitely didn't expect to sign a top climber, and so our calendar is not optimal at all for this situation. Nonetheless, we're sure that Caio Godoy - our first ever Brazilian on the team - will do a great job! We obviously did have to take some risks with his schedule - notably TTs and the lack of support in some races - so we're well aware that he won't be able to achieve his full scoring potential having a perfect schedule and support cast. We still think he could be a PCT Top 20 rider if most races go really well, but we expect him more in the 20th-30th place range according to last year's scores.
On the other hand, we don't expect Valentin Darbellay to score really big this year. The main reason being that he will spend 27/48 race days supporting Caio! Given the acute lack of other climbing domestiques, we had to take this decision to give Caio a good chance of doing well in his most important races - you'll soon find out which ones they are.
Val will quite obviously tackle some stage races with longer ITTs, as well as some more TT-heavy races - where there could be quite some upside if it goes well, but it could also be a complete failure like it often was in the past. The main reason why we're trying again is that we do have a stronger TTer this time, so hopefully our team will get some better positions in the peloton!
All in all, we're well aware that our schedule and our lack of depth don't allow our top climbers to develop their full potential this year, something we definitely need to work on next offseason! And still, despite the lower points scales in PCT, we actually expect more points from our climbers than last year:
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Caio Godoy
550
0
0.00
0
0%
Valentin Darbellay
120
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
670
0
---
0
0%
These 550 points would have made Godoy the 12th best climber/stage racer in PCT last year. We believe that he should be ranked a bit higher - but with our calendar and roster situation, we think he could indeed end up a bit lower than what would be ideally possible. It would still be a decent score, roughly in the same region as Quintana scored for us in 2021.
The 120 expected points for Darbellay might seem a bit rough after last year's 642, but he doesn't have a GT available this year, and will spend more than half of his race days supporting Caio. Of course, getting decent results on his own could still be possible, but given his situation we had to set the bar rather low.
Still, these 670 expected points are still more than what they would have been with only a trained Darbellay on board, so let's see what we can get!
Puncheurs
2025
Spoiler
Just like the climbing department, the puncheur leaders seem to be a bit stronger than last year. While we got a slight improvement on the #2 position, the gain in strength is definitely due to Mauro Schmid's heavy uphill training! He improved in every single uphill domain, making him an even stronger rider than he already was!
His achilles heel will still be his lack of stamina, at least in long stages and classics. But we are quite positive that he should still be strong enough against PCT competition to make the Top 10 in most cases, and Top 5 in races that suit him more. He will do classics and stage races, and we even hope that he will be able to fight for a GC podium in two of his stage races - more details are yet to come.
Andres Paez was primarily signed to support Mauro, and secondly to lead us in some races, classics and stage races. However, he quickly noticed that he's a faster sprinter than Mauro, and so refused to support the latter in any race that has a flat-ish finish, instead claming leadership in his own.
We didn't quite agree, but still decided to separate the two in most cases. There are a couple of exceptions, but only in races where Mauro is the clear leader given the race profile. Which obviously costs us a lot in terms of support for Mauro - but on the other hand gives Andres even more interesting opportunities. And we're pretty convinced that he will do well in at least some of them...
So we have one great hybrid puncheur in Mauro, and one more classic puncheur who can also sprint pretty well. The two can cover almost all hilly stages this year - what does this mean in terms of points expectations?
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Mauro Schmid
700
0
0.00
0
0%
Andres Paez
140
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
840
0
---
0
0%
Indeed, despite the lower points scales and less RDs in PCT, we expect Mauro to score higher than in PT. Which obviously is due to his training on one hand, and due to the weaker puncheur field on the other hand. We do expect Mauro to get a couple of wins - even though he definitely won't dominate the division - and, as mentioned before, a couple of good GC results as well. 700 points is an ambitious target - but looking at last year, it would "only" be a lower Top 15, whereas MGUCI actually has him as the 3rd best PCT rider... We would love the final standings to reflect this, but we don't really believe it before we see it.
Andres' scoring will depend a lot on startlists, but we're pretty positive that he can be in the mix in quite some stages. If things go well for him, he could easily get more than these 140 points - but it could easily go the other way as well. So we think it's a realistic assessment.
840 points is the highest we expect from one department - without much surprise it's the puncheurs once again that we expect to deliver the most points.
Time Trialists
2025
Spoiler
Ouch. We already said last year that the comparison to the previous year hurt. It does even more this year. With Fernandes, Ferreyra and Jussaume, last year's Top 3 are gone - two even before transfers started, Fernandes was sold later on. And we decided to not include Janssen this year, as we needed some more people on the domestiques list.
What we do have, however, is the strongest ITT rider we ever had on our team, after Bissegger's back-to-back training! Stefan and Mauro are our first ever Swiss riders trained to a "red stat" - and the first ever Swiss riders having such a "red stat" in one of the main skills (not counting prologue, sorry Gabby).
We do believe that in PCT, Stefan's improved skill on the TT bike should be worth quite some points, in particular with the Zalgiris duo gone. Behind Zmorka, Bjerg and CT's Powless, Stefan should be #4 in most races - so he should be at least able to fight for some podiums. Both in stages and stage races.
Stage podiums are also the goal for Niklas Larsen, as he's one of the division's strongest in short races against the clock. And even on slightly longer routes he's still solid. Unfortunately, though, there aren't many prologues for him - actually only three, two thereof in the same race. Ukraine and TdS aren't true prologues - and we had to skip Benelux for him, as he wanted to claim team leadership for this race. Despite a tough cobbled stage. Nope.
But instead, Niklas will also be lined up as our sprinter in quite some races, given that we only have a single representative of this department left.
So, only very few prologues for one rider, Top 5 contender in many TTs for the other - what does this give us in terms of numbers?
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Stefan Bissegger
300
0
0.00
0
0%
Niklas Larsen
60
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
360
0
---
0
0%
We think that 300 is a pretty realistic number for Stefan. It's somewhat less than what Bjerg scored for Minions last year, but Danmark got demoted to C1 and we don't have Deutschland due to the clash with Danmark. And we don't have a proper TTT unit anymore. So it might even be a pretty optimistic target - but we still hope that Stefan will be able to achieve this score!
For Niklas, 60 points might look ridiculously low, but with only a couple of really well-suited races for him, we might have to settle for that amount. Depending on how his races as our sprinter go, it could obviously be much more points - but that's not something we can realistically expect. Just hope for...
Cobblers
2025
Spoiler
Well, the positive news is that this department didn't really get weaker. Of course, loanee Uhlig was a tad stronger than (also) newly maxed Sommer, but we still prefer the latter's skillset.
The negative news is that we usually don't consider 76 main stat riders as our "leaders". So we didn't really get any stronger as well - maybe a tad stronger relative to the division's overall cobbles quality (which sadly has also massively increased).
We still think that Jake Stewart will have a couple of good races. There will be anonymous ones, for sure, but he does have some upside with this punchy and sprinting skills, and we hope to see them in action! Besides the cobbles, he'll also join the puncheurs on some occasions - or even give us a shot at stage results in less trivial flat stages.
Jan Sommer actually is "just" Jake's main domestique - but he'll also be our leader in our C2 races! We believe that he does have a solid enough skillset to fight for some Top 10s, even though it won't always work out. Otherwise, he'll obviously support Jake, but also compete in flat races and in stage races where we might need to chase after some breakaways.
So, this doesn't sound like they'll get tons of points in - what are our expectations?
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Jake Stewart
120
0
0.00
0
0%
Jan Sommer
50
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
170
0
---
0
0%
Let's be honest - if we could skip cobbles altogether, we would have done it, and would have sold Jake. But we think he's a very solid option for the cobbled races we have to do, and he does give us a shot at scoring some points if things go well. All in all, 120 would be a nice score - and it could be even more in particular if Benelux went really, really well for him.
50 points for Sommer would be fine, but we're conscious that even this target might be difficult to reach. Still, we have faith in him, both as a support rider for Jake and as our team leader in C2 races! And any points coming from this department will be valuable anyway!
Sprinters
2025
Spoiler
Sadly, the plural "s" isn't really a thing anymore this year. The undisputed leader is gone, and now it's up to Gergely Szarka to ensure we still get a handful points from flat races!
We know that he won't be among the main contenders, in particular in the few mandatory flat classics we have on our schedule. A Top 20 in those will already be a success - even though we think sometimes he might be capable of more, thanks to his great riding on the flat.
But where our main hopes are with him is in stage races - not flat ones, obviously, we're skipping those. But stage races where most teams won't send their top sprinter to, those are the stages where Gergely can shine. Shine how much? We'll find out - but we definitely do expect him to score some points:
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Gergely Szarka
100
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
100
0
---
0
0%
100 points should be possible for him to get. Not easy, but possible. He even has a Giro stage win and a couple of podiums to his name, so he knows how to sprint. Up to him to show it again, after last year was rather disappointing!
And yes, we do also expect some minor sprint points from Larsen, but they're "hidden" in the TTers section. It's however undeniable that we'll need to strengthen this department (and the cobbles) again next year!
Domestiques
2025
Spoiler
Another comparison that hurts. And in this department, it's not just numbers that we lost, but true quality. Both will lack, mainly in mountains and hills, where our leaders might be left alone too soon.
We're really glad that we managed to get Lorenzo Delco back from Free Agency, and even on a very reasonable wage. He'll be our key domestique, a true Swiss Army Knife - well, almost, as he can't do cobbles. But all of our climbers and puncheurs will be happy that he's still there!
Christoph Janssen also is still here, as he has been since he started his pro career. He will remain one of our centerpieces for the TTT unit probably for years to come. Getting some depth points in stage races could also be on the table depending on startlists, but it's not his main task.
The other two names on this list are new - at least on a permanent contract. Gustas Raugala was already on loan with us in his neo-pro year, and we're happy to have him now with his full capabilities! A very important part of this year's TTT outfit, and a very handy rider for the uphills as well.
This also holds for Stan Van Tricht, who could even be a handy breakaway rider on top of supporting our hilly captains.
Scoring isn't the main task of domestiques, but we're still hoping for these riders to rack up some points every now and then:
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Lorenzo Delco
40
0
0.00
0
0%
Stan Van Tricht
20
0
0.00
0
0%
Christoph Janssen
20
0
0.00
0
0%
Gustas Raugala
20
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
100
0
---
0
0%
It's not a lot that we expect, but if these four riders score 100 points in total, we're happy. We think that Lorenzo should be our highest scoring domestique, because he can finish in the scoring positions in classics or stage races - and maybe even get some breakaway points when given a free role.
But we don't really care aobut how the points are distributed among these riders, we would just like them to fight for every point they can possibly get!
Talents
2025
Spoiler
Well, in terms of numbers, there's actually one rider more in this department than last year! But we actually had 11 unmaxed riders last year, compared to 8 in 2026 - we just hid the loan-ins in other departments last year...
We actually have less "own" talents this year, even way less - only 5 of them, compared to 10 last year (7 riding for us, 3 loaned out). Aebi and Stehli who just maxed didn't agree with our renewal offers, Froidevaux and Tendon were released, Castrillo was sold - only Sommer (now maxed), Christen and last year's three loan-outs are still with us.
Let's start with the brothers. Fabio Christen is in his final year of development, and he's already a very useful rider! We could even have listed him in the TTers section, thanks to his 78 Prologue! Prologues will definitely be targets for him - not to win, but maybe to fight for some white jerseys. And he'll also lead out Szarka in case the latter ever opts for a personal leadout. Next year, Fabio will get his own chances to shine...
Fabio's younger brother Jan Christen is our only talent addition this year - on one hand because we weren't in a situation of getting more, on the other hand because he was really the only Swiss talent deserving a full contract (we might have offered one to Muller, but he was signed as a Junior before we were in a situation to get him).
In our 8th year, Jan is actually the first ever Swiss talent who would be able to reach a "red" main stat without any kind of training, so that's quite something! He most likely won't, though, as we don't feel like getting another puncheur, but we're still looking forward to what he can do in the future! Either become a strong allround TTer, or an aggressive high and medium mountain climber for classics or week-long stage races. We'll see.
Nils Aebersold and Robin Donze will both develop into handy uphill domestiques, but with the new dev paths Nils will most likely specialize in hills, and Robin in mountains, whereas initially we wanted to have hybrid climbers. That's no longer possible though, sadly.
Roman Holzer is set to become a decent leadout rider, for the time when Fabio will be maxed and trained.
And then we have our three loan-ins: Cameron Rogers will do many TTs and prologues, Joshua Golliker will support the climbers and puncheurs, and Bjoern Koerdt will be our professional bottle fetcher this year. Or maybe breakaway artist? We'll find out.
Only a few points are expected from our talents, except for one who should score a little bit more:
Rider
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Fabio Christen
30
0
0.00
0
0%
Nils Aebersold
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Robin Donze
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Roman Holzer
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Cameron Rogers
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Joshua Golliker
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Jan Christen
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Bjoern Koerdt
10
0
0.00
0
0%
Total
100
0
---
0
0%
Compared to some other riders, those 30 points for Fabio might seem a bit ambitious, but we're really hoping for a couple of white jersey points there. Which however would mean avoid or beat Jussaume at some occasions - we'll see if he can do that. We think he can score this amount of points.
We're happy if all others score 10 points - but any combination of scoring matching those 100 points in the end will be fine. And even if they get less, that's not much of an issue - we just want to see them fight like everyone else, as that's not a matter of skills!
Jura GIANTS 2026
2025
Spoiler
So, what's the conclusion? Generally speaking, we can conclude that our leaders are stronger than last year. Sure, Groves is gone, but Godoy could have a similar scoring potential, and both Schmid and Bissegger got stronger. In terms of leaders, probably only the 2024 season with Groves, Theuns, Stüssi and Schmid was stronger - but that was on a PT budget.
The downside however is that we have clearly less depth than last year. In principle, this isn't a huge issue with PCT points scales, where often only the best 30 riders score points. However, good domestiques are sometimes crucial in enabling their leaders to deliver top performances.
We do believe that we have the leaders required to fight for promotion. But the big question mark for us is whether we can support them well enough so they can score the points we need. If we look at our total points expectation, the conclusion can only be that we're pretty pessimistic:
Dept.
Exp.
Act.
PpRD
Proj.
Proj. %
Climbers
670
0
---
0
0%
Puncheurs
840
0
---
0
0%
TTers
360
0
---
0
0%
Cobblers
170
0
---
0
0%
Sprinters
100
0
---
0
0%
Domestiques
100
0
---
0
0%
Talents
100
0
---
0
0%
Total
2,340
0
n/a
0
0%
2,340 points. We were quite shocked when we first saw this expected total score. In last year's PCT rankings, that would have been 17th place. Considering the reduction to 22 teams in 2026, that would be the final safe spot.
Are we really going to struggle to stay up? Aren't we any better than this? Well, we think that for some of the leaders, the expected score really should be the floor. So we think that there is potential to end up somewhat higher.
But from 2,340 points to promotion, that would be 900 points - at least in 2025. Can we be able to do that? We'd need quite some luck probably - in particular we'd need much more points than expected from our non-leaders. This is surely possible, in particular with breakaways and depth results.
However, to be honest, it could well be that we'll have to wait for another year to mount a serious promotion challenge. The good news is that none of our leaders are 32 yet, so in theory we could try again with more or less the same squad. But cap space won't be on our side after this year's heavy training - our best hope would be to see the OVL formula be adapted to better reflect Mauro's actual scoring potential (hence lowering his projected new wage).
But no matter what, we're still looking forward to the upcoming season, hoping to see some great results by our Swiss riders (and obviously by our South Americans as well!) - and who knows, maybe we just heavily underestimate our squad?
Well, we were hoping to underestimate our squad last year as well, but the projections were just 100 points lower than the actual outcome, so we'll see...
After all, last year we said that we weren't looking forward to the future. And that we could well imagine it would be our final season. And it did really look like this. But somehow, we just couldn't let go of this project - and even though all of our current Swiss leaders do have their flaws, we're still hoping for some world-class talents to come through some day - we believe ours and UBS' continuous scouting and talent development work will eventually be rewarded big time! The Christens are already really cool talent - but we think that even more is yet to come!
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.
Jake Stewart will have a couple of good races. There will be anonymous ones, for sure, but he does have some upside with this punchy and sprinting skills, and we hope to see them in action! Besides the cobbles, he'll also join the puncheurs on some occasions - or even give us a shot at stage results in less trivial flat stages.
Gustas Raugala was already on loan with us in his neo-pro year, and we're happy to have him now with his full capabilities! A very important part of this year's TTT outfit, and a very handy rider for the uphills as well.
Stan Van Tricht, who could even be a handy breakaway rider on top of supporting our hilly captains.
