It was the first test for our cobblers - and as expected, the result wasn't too exciting.
We did however get some TV time. The plan was for one of our cobblers duo to try something - preferrably to get into the break of the day. Or to attempt a late move.
Well, we then made another rookie mistake: to put all of our eggs in one basket. Not one, but both of Jake Stewart and Jan Sommer joined one of those mid-range attacks which never, absolutely never succeed, and whose sole reason is - getting TV time. We would have preferred some more promising moves, but to be honest - a top result was never realistically on the table in this race.
Jan Sommer chasing the front group that already included Jake Stewart.
They were obviously caught and neither was able to follow the decisive moves (we'll never know if they would have been without spending too much energy prematurely), and we were expecting a zero-pointer. But while Sommer indeed ran out of gas, Jake Stewart saved enough energy to hold onto 21st place, scoring the expected 5 points. Even after his extra-effort.
So while we didn't quite follow our game plan, the result was satisfying enough - and the way we got those points (missing out on an even higher score by just one spot) gives us some hopes for the upcoming cobbled races!
It's always fun when other people are telling you how you should feel about your team
It's fine - I guess I really overreacted because of that final TDU stage (which I still think is a shame for an otherwise great race by Paez). Let's hope we learnt our lessons then
Sometimes it makes the frustrations more nuanced though...
Awesome team for the Tirreno! I think a "top" result is very likely there. Also fun to see if Larsen can actually get a good result or two here. The prologue could be fun for him atleast.
Indeed, very happy with Tirreno so far
Frustrations are just part of the game - but starting a season with two frustrating races (even though TDU was nice apart from the last stage) after an already very frustrating season just isn't that motivating...
Have to agree that Tirreno will probably be the most fun to watch! Basically every stage should give you some fun dynamics to watch.
Please take as many points away from our CT counterparts in GW!
Looks like the sprint stages might be the only ones we don't really care about, but indeed fun to see the team so far If only they did that last year (tbf Schmid wasn't trained, guess that really makes a difference in PT races).
Will see what we can do in GW, won't refuse some points
January wasn't really kind to you, but as long as Schmid shows some of his PT magic in his ranking races as well you should have a strong season ahead of you!
The 2nd out of 4 cobbled HC classics on our calendar was another one where we didn't have big hopes. Too many cobbles, too little difficulties - not the greatest terrain for our best cobbler.
But we still wanted to light up the race, and we did! This time, we sticked to the initial strategy, so it was only Jan Sommer attacking. First, he attacked to join the early breakaway - the group was however caught with 60km left.
He then tried again, even initiating the move this time:
Jan Sommer having some fun in Belgium
This move lasted even less time than the first one, but alas, we got our TV time. All eyes now on Jake Stewart for the finale!
What a shocker for us then when Jake wasn't even in the front group of 33 with 35km to go! He was just awfully positioned when the split happened - another throwaway race, and the season's first zero-pointer for us...
...but wait! Unlike the DS, Jake didn't throw in the towel yet, and passed one exhausted rider after the other! He actually finished 16th - which is worth 10 points, twice as many as we expected!
What a great fight by Jake - he just leaves us wondering what could have been had he simply paid a little more attention in the decisive moments of the race... But we happily take these points anyway.
Race Review | Tirreno - Adriatico | PT
Unlike the cobbled races, this one was a sure zero-pointer. Just because it was a wildcard race. We were here just for fun - and we did indeed expect to have some fun!
And indeed, the fun started right on day 1 - as one of our riders really had some redemption to do for last year's bad results:
Niklas Larsen on his way to the hot seat in the prologue.
Larsen led the race for quite some time, before eventually slipping down to 4th. As much as we would have loved a podium - the top 3 simply were stronger, both on paper and on the road. So this part of his redemption tour was just fine. And by the way, Fabio Christen finished 11th, taking the white jersey on day 1!
But what we were mostly here for anyway was the hills! We really wanted to see how Mauro Schmid performs against a PT competition after his intense training camps. He did pretty well!
An stage 2, Andres Paez stayed with him even on the final kilometer, bringing Mauro into a fantastic position - and the latter rounded off the great team work in the best possible way:
Mauro Schmid winning stage 2 of the Tirreno - Adriatico!
After Paez got his first win on stage 2 of the Tour Down Under, Schmid now did the same in Italy, edging out Evenepoel on the line! First PT stage win for Mauro (and only his 2nd career stage win), what a way to kick off his season! And by the way, Paez finished 7th, so a really great result for the team - accounting for... zero points, sadly.
Sadly, the stage was surprisingly unselective, and so Mauro still had a lot of time (and ranks) to make up in order to get a Top 10. The next stage, ending on a fast downhill, would have be a perfect chance to double down - sadly Mauro wasn't positioned well enough and "only" took 8th on day 3. But this stage was much more selective (with Paez and Aebersold making the front group as well), so our two puncheurs were 10th and 17th after 2/4 hilly stages.
Mauro then changed his strategy for the final two days - instead of risking to miss out due to bad positioning, he decided to control things right from the front - which made things look pretty similar on days 6 and 7:
Mauro Schmid leading the peloton on the final 500m both on stage 6...
...and stage 7.
However, it wasn't the winning strategy, either. Maybe he could pull this through with another little bit of training - but this year it was just other riders capitalizing on his work.
On stage 6, Schmid dropped all the way down to 13th, so that really was a bad move. He did much better on the final day, though, taking 3rd place and another stage podium - and moving up to 6th place overall! Just 2 seconds short of 4th place, though, so what could have been had he timed his stage 6 move a bit better...
But we don't want to complain. We were here to have fun, and to learn. We achieved both. We got a stage win, a 3rd place, a Top 10 GC result (plus Paez in 14th place!) - and Mauro did learn a lot about how to spend - and not to spend - his energy.
Furthermore, Mauro ended up 4th in the points standings, tied for 2nd in the KoM standings (with Roman Holzer taking 4th, just 2 points behind Mauro!), so it was a really good race overall. One of those races we would have needed last year to stay up - but also a race that gives us hope that we could be in for a pretty fun season in the PCT hills!
January wasn't really kind to you, but as long as Schmid shows some of his PT magic in his ranking races as well you should have a strong season ahead of you!
Yeah, Tirreno definitely gives me some hopes He will surely have his weaker races as well - in particular the long classics, where he could be hit or miss - but I'm hoping for some really good results for sure
Schmid looks indeed pretty scary for the races where it does matter, I sure don't look forward to having to face him most of the time with Madouas And a solid result by Stewart in KBK, curious to see what he can do at Le Samyn today!
Schmid looks indeed pretty scary for the races where it does matter, I sure don't look forward to having to face him most of the time with Madouas And a solid result by Stewart in KBK, curious to see what he can do at Le Samyn today!
Well, I'm not looking forward to always facing Madouas, either Guess it's going to be quite the rivalry, in particular in a certain kind of races (in the other kind I'm not looking forward to facing Awezama ).
But yeah, he looks promising indeed. He better does given the amount of money we already pumped into his post-max development
Stewart can do very well in some races and be anonymous in others - he's in that range where performance (not even potential, because that's always there) heavily depends on startlist and profile. Samyn and also Macskako should be favorable; Luxembourg as well in theory, but lots of things can go wrong there... So yeah, hopefully some more points by him
The first of two mandatory cobbled stage races this year (the final one being the wildcard ToNE) - although often that just seems to be an alias for "lottery". Those races can go either way, more than any (or most) other.
Still, we believed that with local hero Jake Stewart we brought a very well-suited rider to this races - he's got the sprint to fight for bonus seconds, the punch to survive the stage 2 hills, and of course decent cobbles skills to (mostly) hang onto the big guns. He was - once again - supported by Jan Sommer.
The plan indeed seemed to work out right on day 1, where our riders still showed great presence with 3km to go - only to decide not to participate in the sprint. A first bummer, and one we didn't have any explanation for. Well, Stewart still decided to sprint a little bit, and ended up 13th - so nothing lost, but far away from any valuable bonus seconds sadly.
Stage 2 was the one we supposed to be decisive for the GC, with a rolling finale. Perfect terrain for Jake. On paper, at least. In race, he seemed to just not feel well - he couldn't hold onto the first chase group (including the likes of Eekhoff, Lapeira or Kubis - riders he absolutely matches on this kind of stage usually). He led home a huge group of 20 riders, taking 11th place - not an ideal constellation, with 13th through 30th being on s.t. The positive point though was that Sommer made this group as well, so at least we now really had two cards to play!
Jake Stewart sprinting to 11th place, just missing out on fully closing that gap.
On day 3, it was redemption time, with another sprint finish after a hard start of the stage. We really expected Jake to sprint this time - but he cared even less than on day 1! Instead of trying to get some bonus seconds - aiming to at least secure a Top 15, and not risking to drop to 30th - he simply didn't care and finished outside the Top 100! Definitely not an attitude we liked here.
At least, our sprinter talent Fabio Christen joined the sprint, gaining some valuable experience already. He didn't quite manage to get some ranking points, finishing 11th, but it's still a rather promising result. By the way, Jan Sommer cared much more about positioning, being well aware of the implications on his GC position - he finished 20th on the day and moved up to 13th place in GC!
Fabio Christen in the mix on day 3, testing his legs against the strongest sprinters and cobblers.
So we had two riders in the Top 30 heading into the final stage. In principle, it could have been a promising one, including a hill whose final meters are cobbled - but that hill was way too far away from the finish line and we didn't really expect it to have an impact.
Our two cobblers stayed safe in the pack all day long, so it all came down to the final sprint of a big bunch - 61 riders in total - after a very unselective stage. And our riders got the message: they both were pretty well positioned - and both sprinted this time!
Jake Stewart and Jan Sommer both sprinting for bonus seconds!
And indeed - both managed to grab a Top 8 and hence some crucial bonus seconds! Jake finished 6th, getting 3", whereas Jan got the final bonus second! Which put them ahead of all the other riders they were on s.t. with before this stage!
And while we had some - more or less - secret hopes of getting a GC Top 10, the final result with Jake Stewart in 13th and Jan Sommer in 14th place is definitely a great achievement as well! Getting more than 80 points out of this race - a PpRD above 20 in a cobbled race! - is really amazing and is exactly what we needed after a relatively slow start to the season (ignoring some cool wildcard success)!
Just to put things into relation: We expected 80 points in total from the two "lottery" races - getting more than this in the first of the two already is clearly great news - and hopefully a sign of more great things to come from our cobbles duo!
Race Review | Le Samyn | HC
No respite - after a three-day break, the cobblers already faced their next challenge! Back in Belgium, Le Samyn awaited them. A pretty easy race on paper, but with repeated cobbling and climbing and - most importantly - an uphill sprint finish, we had quite some hopes for Jake to do get his first classic Top 10 for us!
For once, none of our riders was in the breakaway - and none of them did any of those mid-range attacks we don't really like to see. Instead, we saw some helpers close to the front of the pack, even taking turns. Which might be surprising at first, but given that the raze organizers had Jake as a Top 5 outsider, it wasn't that surprising after all.
There were plenty of attacks in the final 30 kilometers - but Jake didn't join them. Instead, Jan was always by his side, protecting him throughout the entire race (except for the final kilometers).
When there was a group of 9 getting away with less than 10km to go, it looked like we might have missed the decisive move - but Jan Sommer did a great job, contributing to bringing them back! So it all came down to the last kilometer... And under the red kite, the situation looked like this:
Jake Stewart in 7th position, with some gap to the Top 5.
It turned out that this gap was decisive - and at least for the Top 2, it actually was. And with 200m to go, Jake was still outside the Top 5 - or can you spot him here?
Per, Girmay, Wisniowski, Tediashvili and Jacobs - and where's Jake?
Actually, we noticed in hindsight that he is there - we can just spot his front wheel on the right edge. But the next time we saw him, the picture was much clearer - and a pretty surprising and exciting one:
Jake Stewart crossing the line in 3rd place!
Indeed - out of nowhere, Jake suddenly surged to 3rd place, narrowly beating UBS' Jacobs for the final podium spot! What a fantastic sprint by our great Brit! Congratulations! And by the way, Jan Sommer also finished inside the Top 30, adding some points to his tally, too.
A podium in a classic is always a good result, at least it has always been for us. But this one still feels special. Yes, we do have two cobbled classic wins, and some podiums. 3/3 wins and 4/5 podiums so far were scored by team legend Eddie Theuns (with Tediashvili getting the final podium in a C2 race).
So today, we got our first cobbles podium in the post-Theuns era. With a 76 cobbler. That's quite something! It wasn't fully unexpected - we knew this race and Macskako suit Stewart really well - but a podium wasn't a given nor even an expectation by any means. Jake (and we) had this dream - and it came true! Great job!
We'll look into more detail what this means in terms of points when the ranking updates are here, but what we can say is that we outscored the (low) expectations of this Cobruary by far - just with Cheshire and Samyn. And Stewart has already reached his season target. This lets us hope for more to come! Maybe tomorrow already, when Sommer will ride the C2 Gent - Wevelgem?
Whereas two days ago Jan Sommer did an amazing job for Jake Stewart - who got a fantastic 3rd place in HC race Le Samyn - it was now his turn to lead the team, and to get everyone working for him. Our mandatory C2 races were selected with him as our leader in mind - and while not all races might suit him, we expected Gent - Wevelgem to be one of his best chances to shine.
A rather flat race - with no hills near the finish line - and lots of crosswinds usually favours the better rouleurs among the cobblers (with decent stamina as a bonus), and some sprint skills are always handy when a sprint of a small group is expected. That's pretty much what Jan brings. The race organizers honoured his skillset by putting him 2nd on the favourites list - no pressure, Jan!
However, we didn't have the right riders to work hard in the peloton - no single cobbler besides Jan, just talents gaining experience - and so we picked the best strategy for not having to take turns - breakaway. It was neo-pro Cameron Rogers who managed to join the BotD:
Cameron Rogers (bib 67) riding in the front group.
However, it was a very fast race, made hard by the chasing peloton - and so Cameron couldn't stay with the group when things got really tough. But the entire group was caught with about 30km to go, so he didn't miss out on a big chance.
Once Cameron was caught, Jan Sommer definitely had the freedom to attack. A first attempt wasn't fruitful, but a second attack over the top of the Kemmelberg did quite some damage:
Jan Sommer in a strong 8-rider group with less than 30km to go!
10 kilometers later, this group's lead had grown to 1'33", and it looked very much like the winning move! And even better news - Jan actually was the best sprinter in the group - meaning he had to be very much aware of attacks, given that some riders surely wanted to avoid going head-to-head with him!
However, there were no attacks - not too surprising given the heavy winds - with just two helpers dropping from the group. So they were 6 battling it out for the win - and it's pretty clear who had to sprint from the front:
Jan Sommer having to launch the sprint from the front...
You don't want to have the best sprinter behind you, so Jan had to take the worst position. But no-one managed to take him by surprise, and so...
Jan Sommer winning Gent - Wevelgem!
What a day, what a performance, what a sprint - what a win! Jan Sommer, race winner - that sounds pretty incredible, but it came true today! The proof:
Jan Sommer celebrating his first career win - in a Belgian cobbled classic! Insane!
What a couple of days this have been for us - first a really strong team result in Cheshire. Then a fantastic 3rd place by Stewart in Le Samyn. And now, a classic win! Yes, it is "only" C2, but it's still an amazing story - as always, when you get a homegrown rider to celebrate such a win! Jan will never shine on the biggest stage - he's not a future monument winner, we know that. And had we remained in PT, he would not have won a race this year. But our relegation led to this big opportunity in C2 - and what a way to take it! Big congrats, again, Jan!
And just to relate: so far, we had only one rider winning on cobbles - the legendary Eddie Theuns, scoring 3 wins (and 4 podiums). Jan is our 2nd rider to get crowned. And the 4th to achieve a podium (with the 3rd being Stewart two days ago). He's the 5th Swiss rider to win a cobbled classic after Cancellara, Spengler, Dillier (yes, I include Arenberg in the list) and Jacobs. And only the 9th Swiss to win a classic at all (highly expecting Hirschi to become #10 this year!). And it's even Switzerland's first ever C2 classic win (great thanks to Mre and Ulrich for the win list!), so that's not just team history he's just written, but also Swiss history to some extent.
We'll go into more details about the points once they're confirmed for February, but what we can already say is that the team (respectively Stewart and Sommer, our only two scorers this month) have exceeded the scoring expectations for the season already - great job, and hopefully everyone else takes an example of them!
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad | 
Jake Stewart and 
Jan Sommer joined one of those mid-range attacks which never, absolutely never succeed, and whose sole reason is - getting TV time. We would have preferred some more promising moves, but to be honest - a top result was never realistically on the table in this race.
Tirreno - Adriatico | 
Niklas Larsen on his way to the hot seat in the prologue.
Andres Paez stayed with him even on the final kilometer, bringing Mauro into a fantastic position - and the latter rounded off the great team work in the best possible way:
Cameron Rogers who managed to join the BotD:
