Count Arach's Blog

HC Race Selection

I've had a number of media requests lately asking about my reaction to the news that Jelle Vanendert will be leaving Domina for the year, given that I named him as one of our potential targets quite a while ago. I am ready to confirm that we will indeed be prepared to put in a large bid to offer him a leader's contract for next season. He will have the right to race whichever races he wants and we will see that he is adequately supported. I hope that puts to rest all the reports and buzz surrounding the story.

Now, my real purpose for today is discussing the HC races that we have been accepted into. Obviously for a team just starting up these are immensely important, as they provide plenty of opportunities to solidify our place in theranks of the Continental Tour. Below is the complete list, as well as some comments.

MTN Cycling Classic - January - A very punchy course that could well suit our team if we manage to get a few decent classics riders together. Not one of our highest priorities for the season, we would nevertheless like to display ourselves in the first race of the season.

Corsica International - March - Our leader in the climbs will look to shine here, with the very hard first stage likely to be key. If we don't have anyone who can really hold their own in the climbs we hope to look for a sprint victory in the tough second stage or a placing in the time trial.

E3 Prijs - March - One of the most important races this season for us. Tough cobbled climbs in front of a Belgian audience - look for us to really show ourselves here.

Profronde van Drenthe - April - Another cobbled classic that is a bit harder to predict given that the cobbled sections are so far from the end. Still, we hope to perform well here.

Bayern Rundfahrt - May - A stage race taht is slanted towards the punchy time trialists. We will be looking to have someone in our team who can perform this role and hopefully take a stage or a top 10 overall.

Giro del Capo - June - We will come to this race mostly looking for a stage victory, as the mountain time trial might be too difficult for our team. There are a lot of opportunities for agressive puncheurs though.

Clasica san Sebastian - August - For a team that claims the classics are their ultimate goal, missing out on San Sebastian would have been devestating to our morale. Yet, the organisers have granted us entry and we will be there performing to our highest level.

Volta a Portugal - August - This is going to be the ultimate goal for our leading stage racer, though we suspect that going for a stage victory will prove more fruitful.

Urkiola Igoera - August - A classic that requires a climber who is stronger than most of the riders we are looking at, we nevertheless will be targetting this race in the hope of a top 10.

Tour of Britain - September - With no queen stage and plenty of sprints, we will be hoping that getting into a long breakaway will allow us to do something in this race, and if that doesn't work our best sprinter will be targetting this race anyway.

Circuit Franco-Belge - October - One of our goals for this season is to achieve a top 10 here in front of our home audience. The second and fourth stages could potentially go to a strong puncheur, but if not then we will also be sending a strong sprint team here. We truly believe that this goal is achievable.

Giro dell'Emelia - October - The final HC race for our season, we aren't sure what to expect from this, though our best climber will have to be here.

So with all that in mind, we are sure that we can perform well at a good number of these races, as well as normal CT races. In addition, we are ready to announce that for next season we are hoping to get accepted as wildcards into at least 2 cobbled ProTour races, if our budget allows.

Thanks everyone, and make sure to keep supporting your local team!

Count Arach

Transfer Season 2012 - Team BPost

In amongst the transfers of the largest and best-established teams, it is often the case that the transfers into the new Continental teams go unnoticed.

Today, it was officially anounced by the Team BPost management that they had secured the signature of two young riders from the ProTour Wikipedia squad. The first was Remco Broers, a Dutch domestique on the cobbles aged only 24. The second signature secured was the 22 year-old Ben Curfs, the Belgian climbing domestique who has a bright future ahead of him.

"Obviously we can't build our team around either of these two riders," said a spokesman for the team, "but even the best riders need helpers in their chosen terrain. Remco will be there driving the peleton along the cobbled sections and Curfs will be able to stay with our climbing leader when the terrain starts getting steep."

In addition, it also surfaced that the team will be loaning in Willem Van Den Eynde from the Carmeuse team to give him some professional racing experience.

Cobblestone Champion Set To Join Team

Today, with the utmost joy, the team can announce that we have secured the signature of none other than Pieter Vanspeybrouck, the most outstanding talent of last year's Continental Tour's cobbled races.

In the last season he managed to pick up wins at Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, Nokere-Koerse, E3 Prijs and Scheldeprijs whilst riding for Team IKEA-Bianchi. These achievements put him in 24th place in the Continental Tour rankings. Obviously he required a substantial increase on last year's wages, but it shows that whoever else is signed for our team, we can guarantee that we will be competitive in our home races. Not only at a Continental Level, but hopefully also after receiving wild cards to enter the ProTour cobbled classics.

For the coming season much of our team will be built around Vanspeybrouck and his signature gives us hope that several of the world's best cobbled domestiques will be ready to join our squad.

In the coming days we hope to be able to announce the majority of our line-up but that is the only announcement we have for today.

Thanks,
Team BPost

ANFreeman wrote:
Goodbye, any hope of me doing well in cobbled races
Great signing, well done. No doubt he'll bring you some good points

SotD wrote:
I was REALLY thinking about making an 400K offer for him this morning when I realised that Bennati got overtaken by 20K, but then I couldn't make myself do it - I'm also quite happy that he is not in the Pro Tour

SotD wrote:
I'm also quite happy that he is not in the Pro Tour

dave92 wrote:
Great start to your team, you got him at a very good wage as well. And you have Broers to back him up

Transfer Season 2012 - BPost Announce More Signings

Today Team BPost called a press conference where they announced some of their newest signings.

The conference kicked off with the announcement of two veteran domestiques - Tom Stubbe and Johan Vansummeren. "Stubbe will be there in the mountains for our leader in the climbs, and Vansummeren will be there for the hills and cobbles, helping out through the entire classics season. Both of them bring a lot of experience to our team that will prove absolutely necessary."

The next announcement was Michiel Elijzen. A time-trialist who road for Highroad-TomTom last year, he appears to be playing a super-domestique role in stage races for this latest Belgian outfit, a well as being the leader in short stage races with a time trial.

"Finally," Team Manager Count Arach concluded, "we are sbolutely delighted to present our leader in the hills - Jelle Vanendert. He jumped for joy when presented with the opportunity to lead a young Belgian squad like ours, and we will be doing our utmost to be supporting him throughout the classics season. He will also assist in stage races if his own commitments allow."

With that, the manager ended the conference, taking no questions. They have also signed young sprinter Kevin Peeters recently, but cyclingnews.com understands that they are looking to loan him out to a ProTour team, explaining his absence from the announcements.

Yet More Signings Announced

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, and members of the press. Team BPost are pleased to make the following contract announcements after busily negotiating contracts. First off, we must say that we are disappointed to say that Jurgen Van de Broeck will not be joining our team next year - despite offering him leadership in every race that he entered this year, we could not afford the wage he was asking for. We wish him the best of luck in the coming season.

We would first like to announce that we will be taking Silvan Dillier on loan from UBS - La Pierre, who wish for him to seek Continental Tour experience before embarking on his illustrious time trialing career. We are pleased to help him through this first year and hope that he will perform well in time trials for us.

Our second announcement are the two sprinters Jurgen Van Loocke and Stéphane Poulhiès. The first of these two shall be our lead sprinter for this season and Poulhiès shall be looking for some placings and hopefully a win throughout the season. On occassion he may also act as Van Loocke's lead-out man, though at this point it looks as if they will both have to be operating without any lead-out. We are hoping their experience will enable them to find the right train to follow.

We are pleased to announce that Francis De Greef shall be joining our team next season. This all-round super domestique will be making his own luck this season a lot of the time, and could possibly be the best climber we have for the season. Hopefully he can pull in a win or two, but we have already told him that we have no expectations for him, except when acting as a domestique for Vanendert.

We can also announce the signing of two youngsters new to the sport of cycling - Robin Stenuit and Guillaume Van Keirsbulck. Stenuit is a budding sprinter who we hope will progress into the sport as we do. Van Keirsbulck is a talented man who is capable of acting as a domestique for our team in both types of classic, particularly over the cobbles. In the next season or two he will be out there learning from Vanspeyrouck.

Speaking of the cobbled races, we have one final announcement to make. We are pleased to state that we have secured the signature of Niels Albert, winner of the 2010 Tour du Faso and both the Tro Bro Leon and the GP Herning in 2011. He was Vanspeybrouck's right hand man in the cobbled races last year and he will follow him to our team to perform the same role again this year.

Thank you everyone for your attention, and we hope to have a couple more big announcements for you in the coming few days.

Team Announces Two Big Signings!

Greetings one and all! It is with an even greater pleasure than usual that we announce two of our recent signings. First off the bat we have Cyril Gautier, the young and aggressive French puncheur who we are sure will be able to pull in some great results for our team when he isn’t supporting Jelle Vanendert. Our team will be riding for him in those situations where Vanendert is not present and we need a punchy leader.

Our second big signing is none other than Nikolas Maes! This great cobblestone rider came 7th in three tough races last year – Gent-Wevelgum, the Strade Bianchi and indeed in the greatest cobbled classic of them all – Paris-Roubaix. Clearly it would be wrong to relegate such a rider as him to domestique duties, so he shall be sharing the leadership duties with Vanspeybrouck. We are confident that with a team like this we will be capable of getting at least two riders in the top 5 of every cobbled race in the Continental Tour and that his presence will ensure us wildcard entries into the cobbled ProTour monuments.

In other news, we can announce two new signings for the next season – Jan Polanc and Welle Jallays. Polanc is a young Slovenian rider who already has an enormous amount of talent on the cobblestones. In the coming two seasons he will play a huge role in forcing the pace of the peloton across this rough terrain. Jallays already has shown his talent in the time trialling discipline and will be seeking out a ProTour team to take him on for the coming season and to give him the experience he needs to become the best possible rider.

We would finally like to state that, though we are disappointment with the recent news that we will have to wait longer to know if we have in fact managed to secure the signature of Niels Albert, we are confident that we have enough space left in our budget to ensure that he will find a space on our team.

You will also notice that we have updated our front page with a complete list of our team as it stands now – we hope that this will prove a very useful resource for you all!

Securing a Belgian Climbing Future

On the back of the announcements that we had today of the signing of Maes and Gautier, we are also happy to announce that we have signed a contract with the young rider William Maesen. Unlike most of our new signings, Maesen will one day turn into a very accomplished mountain climber and could potentially lead a team in his own right. Alternately, he will work for whatever stage racer our team ends up with in coming years.

We are elated to have him on our team and look forward to a long future with him.

Young Belgian Superstar Signs With BPost

Just a couple of hours ago, Team BPost made an announcement on their website that could perhaps secure results for at least the next five years for the team.

They announced the signing of Joeri Stallaert, the sought-after young Belgian sprinter who also has proven himself to be remarkably proficient on cobblestones. Many other teams were seaking his signature for the coming year and Cyclingnews.com understands that he was signed on for no less than 150,000 Euros.

"I'm thrilled to be given this opportunity," the young man said, when asked to comment, "I have been promised that in three years' time I will be the absolute leader of this team both in cobbled races and in as many sprints as I wish to contest. Absolutely nothing could make me happier than being part of this great Belgian project!"

It was also announced that the team had signed on Mathieu La Lavandier, the French climber who was new to the cycling scene. It is also understood that the team is in negotiations with his twin brother Maxime La Lavandier. These two riders together could create a potent force in years to come.