We set relatively ambitious goals to gather enough training money for Biniam Girmay and unsurprisingly, our goal races are geared exclusively towards him, too. Two wins in HC races and two Top 5s against PTHC competition is far from easy, and neither is the Top 5 Team Standings goal. But all are realistically achievable, and if we fail, it hopefully won't be by much. Also, all four goal races are done by mid-February, so we'll know quickly how well we did.

24 non-Wild Card cobbles race days for Bini this year, that's 2 fewer than last year. But with the addition of the Cheshire Cycling Tour, there's another stage race that promises additional points, and of course we're hoping for better results in the races overall compared to last year.

The remaining race days will be as the lead-out man for Jago Willems in four classics and the Circulo de Juarez. With the addition of Madushanka Perera, there was no need for Bini to race anything as the primary sprinter this year.

Like last year, Takeaki rides a good mix of stage races and one day classics. With San Sebastian, Andorra, Milano-Torino, the Japan Cup and the Giro dell'Emilia, five races return from last year where he finished no worse than sixth. The Criterium du Dauphine was one of his poorest outings last year, he gets a chance to rectify his 17th place there.

New on the calendar are the two PTHC stage races to start the season, as well as the Tour de Langkawi, Euskal Bizikleta and the Pro Hallstatt Classic. We're hopeful for good performances in all three. A notable absence is the Tour du Maroc, which he won last year.

Valentin Madouas also has a decent mix of classics and stage races, though with more of a focus on classics. Still, we're hoping for strong GC results in Down Under, Britain, the US and Poland, and who knows how far he can go in Morocco, where he's primarily planned as a stage hunter.

He shares leadership in two classics with Takeaki Amezawa, but preseason tests indicated that we can expect good results from both in these scenarios. Otherwise, we expect high finishes in all races except perhaps Strade Bianche and, of course, the PT Wild Card Strada Appia Antica, which will be a throwaway race thanks to a clash with the Benelux Tour that went unnoticed in planning.

Looking at the opportunities as a leader, this is not quite the schedule Lenny probably hoped for. We obviously tried to maximize for everything hilly and mountaneous in race selection process, but since we had to avoid almost anything with time trials, that limited the total number of race days to the point where Lenny will only ride two races as the clear GC leader.

Those are the Tour of America and the Tour du Maroc. He will be secondary leader to Amezawa in two stage races and to Madouas in another two, and while we hope that he'll still secure a lot of U25 points and at least minor GC points, his output will be limited compared to what he could achieve on a more favorable schedule. In testing, he also proved to be quite adept in hilly classics, even with Madouas around, so we threw a few of those in there as well, hoping for some Top 15-ish results.

Jago Willems will ride every flat classic and every sprinter stage race available to us. The latter including the Circulo de Juarez, the Tour of Lithuania and the Baltic Chain Tour, all of which should give decent U25 scoring as well. With the remaining race days, he rides four more stage races with at least two sprint stages available each.

Our five team captains have almost every race covered, but there are a few more where none of them are our primary option. First, Jean Eric Habimana, who will be the faithful lieutenant to Bini for most of the season, gets a chance to ride for himself at the Viana do Castelo.

Having benefited tremendously from C2 cobbled classics with Matthew Teggart over the last years, we (almost) completely pivoted away from that as our C2 strategy. One, because Matthew was no longer eligible, and two, because more and more PCT teams had the same idea, and that niche got quite crowded - in addition to a stronger CT cobbles field overall this year.

We think we found a decent new niche by signing Madushanka Perera. Even after his first decline, we think he's in the conversation of being a Top 10 sprinter in the CT field, so he will ride both C2 sprinter stage races and the two classics (even if both classics might prove too long for his low stamina, but we'll see). His remaining race days worked out perfectly to fill every stage race with sprint stages that Jago Willems does not ride, so he'll have plenty of opportunities to go for results there, even if he might be outmatched by PCT competition in most.

While those Perera races filled the minimum quota for the category, we added one more C2 race after we couldn't find a better use for our final two race days in C1. Jasper De Buyst and Gerben Kuypers will compete in Geraardsbergen-Bosberg, which will be an interesting "control group" test to see if our new strategy for C2 works out.

Lastly, the Tour de Romandie is our only race on the calender where we have no realistic ambitions for a strong or at least solid overall finish. A team time trial and another ITT (even if it's a mountain one), combined with only one mountain stage felt like too much of a risk for wasted race days for our climbing leaders (though an argument for taking a shot with Van Eetvelt can certainly be made). Hamza Mansouri will take the "GC lead" here, but we're mainly hoping for a decent result or two from a breakaway, with the likes of Wellens, Miltiadis and Barguil all on the start list.

Fabianski wrote:

The goals make perfect sense, and I would indeed not be surprised if you got 5/5. Ovsya should be the biggest threat in Omloop and KBK (even though Per could also just ride away on a good day). Roma Maxima is absolutely feasible as well - the biggest question mark for me being Cheshire. Those stage races with cobble are sometimes really weird - if the game decides that on one stage you have a different leader for whatever reason, the race can be gone... But Bini is so great that this surely won't happen?

Pretty happy about not clashing a lot with Amezawa (he'll meet Godoy in Langkawi and Andorra, Schmid in 4 classics) - not so happy about Madouas' schedule This guy will be a pain all year long and surely wouldn't have needed any training

I think you scheduled your leaders really well, and anything else than promotion would be pretty surprising. You did gamble on Bini two (?) years back - now it's fully paying off, and you'll easily have a rock solid PT team as mentioned by WJ before!

AbhishekLFC wrote:

A big Per block stands in the way of 5/5 goals, but I think 3 or 4 goals should be almost certain for the season, including the Team standings!

jt1109 wrote:

Interested to see how Jago goes think that could be a strong source of points this year Bini will be insane and Amezawa calender youve pretty much perfected by now! and Madouas is such a cool x-factor to have